Pixel 10 Phones
(blog.google)434 points by gotmedium 4 days ago
434 points by gotmedium 4 days ago
> I love the idea of an on-device model that I can say something like "who's going to the baseball game this weekend" and it'll intelligently check my calendar and see who's listed. Or saying something like "how much was the dinner at McDoogle's last week?" and have it check digital wallet transactions.
It's probably just me (or a few like me) but I don't really keep my life in digital format as much as others (and I'm a "geek" for my family/friends since i work in the software industry). If I'm going to the cinema or baseball or any other event... I don't have it in any calendar. I pay with debit/credit cards but I don't have any digital wallet. I don't take my phone with me most of the time (my phone is big and having it hanging in my pockets is not nice).
The features described in the Pixel 10 left me with a sense of "I think I am missing something! But... oh well, whatever, I don't need any of that". Which is weird again, because I'm supposed to be the "geek".
> If I'm going to the cinema or baseball or any other event... I don't have it in any calendar.
If I don't have it in my calendar, it doesn't happen. I would fail to actually go to the event otherwise.
I'm in between. I do use a calendar for pre-planned personal outings, but more for blocking off dates/times than tracking details. If I hide work meetings, pretty much my entire calendar is just a bunch of events generically named "Balls" with no other information. Occasionally I'll use someone's name or the name of a travel destination.
I used to consider myself a "tech guy" but the world seems to have moved on without me. I look at announcements of new phones and computers and I'm not even remotely excited about any of it. They're not solving any problem that I have anymore. I have a 9 year phone, and nothing released since then has really been compelling enough for me to upgrade. The only reason I will probably get a new one at some point is because the OS manufacturer and 3rd party app developers have (at best) stopped supporting my device and (at worst) are actively blocking my using their software/websites purely because of the age of the otherwise perfectly working device.
I used to have this "I'm missing something" thought but I don't think that anymore. This isn't me failing to get on board with what they think I should care about--It's the device manufacturers who are missing/ignoring my needs in the market.
Same, I only catch up on tech by reading summaries sometimes and for a couple of weeks when I know I need a new device. I’m still the friends and family go to tech person for purchases and support but don’t need to be always up to do, which is great since I’m not interested anymore like when I was young.
Unless you're mailing letters, it's almost certain that your life is in "digital format". It sounds like you just don't use a calendar.
But surely you have an email confirmation for your movie, baseball, or event ticket. And maybe you texted or otherwise messaged with your friends who were going? Took pictures on your phone with them? Carried your phone with you when you went.
I'm right there with you. I work in tech, but I don't want to fuss with tech when I'm off the clock. Like, it all annoys me and just feels like work.
When my router breaks I just buy a new one. When my laptop gives me the first sign of trouble I just buy a new one.
I see people fussing with unlocking their phones to pay for lunch and I am totally bewildered. Why is it so hard to pull a card out of your pocket? I have a rule "no new chargers" when buying stuff. If it comes with some proprietary charger I make a half-assed attempt to keep up with it but I just throw it in the trash after about 6 months and buy something with a cord.
Maybe I'm an old man, but maybe that means I know now that life is too short to spend my Saturday morning messing with HomeAssistant.
>> When my laptop gives me the first sign of trouble I just buy a new one.
Well, some people enjoy fixing old things. Even though I work in tech I don't get to fix physical devices at work, which means fixing them at home doesn't feel like work at all. Rather it feels like an excellent and fun way to save money for something more meaningful than buying a new router or laptop.
I have some passion for technology, but zero passion for wasting the little money I'm paid on expensive devices, which will be outdated in a couple of years anyway.
> Why is it so hard to pull a card out of your pocket?
Because I haven't carried a card for years now. I couldn't even tell you where my physical credit card is.
I guess this is very geographic dependent. I live in a country where only maybe 80% of merchants accept Visa/Mastercard (and thus only those can accept Google/Apple Pay) so I need to either carry a card for our domestic payment card infrastructure–or carry cash in order to be able to transact with any shops.
I can empathize. I have some similar rules:
- if an app won’t sign up without a phone number I don’t use it anymore
- if a product is single purpose, and isn’t a phone or some jogging tracker or a set top box I don’t buy it
- if a product requires me to sign into a service for it to do anything, I don’t buy it
>>I see people fussing with unlocking their phones to pay for lunch and I am totally bewildered.
How are people "fussing with unlocking their phones" to pay though? It literally couldn't be any easier - I pull it out, touch the screen on the fingerprint sensor to unlock it and tap on the terminal, done. It's about 200x easier than pulling the card out of my wallet, and the card can only be used for contactless up to a certain amount, and half the time it randomly asks me for my pin anyway so the whole benefit of contactless is lost. Paying with your phone is a massive improvement to convenience.
>> When my laptop gives me the first sign of trouble I just buy a new one.
I mean I hope you recognize the incredible priviledge behind that statement - for a lot of people tinkering with their laptop isn't about being a hobby IT person, it's about the fact that a new laptop costs half their salary so it's quite literally not an option.
>> life is too short to spend my Saturday morning messing with HomeAssistant.
Sure but you make it sound like it's a chore - most people(I'd guess) set up HA because it provides value in their lives, that other, more simpler devices cannot provide. So at the cost of X number of hours once a year you get a device that consolidates all of your home automation and data. If you could buy a premade device that did it without fuss - I'm sure a lot of people would.
You don't add to your calendar but you probably got a confirmation email. Or you may have used an app that could expose this data to the operating system. OR, you called, and the phone app transcribed and summarized the call.
Same for the wallet... if you have your credit card / banking app installed it could expose this.
But yeah, none _needs_ any of that, for different degrees of fun and life optimization.
> If I'm going to the cinema or baseball or any other event... I don't have it in any calendar.
When I buy a ticket to an event and the e-mail about it arrives, Google automatically adds the event to my calendar. My wife and I have shared our calendars with each other, too, so we both see it no matter who buys the ticket.
I dont think I have left my house without my phone in 5+ years.
I'll often leave my phone at home if I'm going somewhere with my wife and kids. If they're with me, they have their phones and I'll instantly know if something happens to them, so no need to carry my phone.
It's basically a self-psyop to break the dependency. I spent the first 25-ish years of my life without a cell phone, after all.
I think you're doing technology right tbh. We don't really need all this new tech, and it's better for the environment to just skip it and keep using what we have.
If you have an email receipt, and you store email on your phone, it's probably accessable. I don't think you're missing out on anything though.
Re: geek, AI has a lot of mainstream hype at the moment. I don't think there's anything inherently geeky about buying into the hype.
> (my phone is big and having it hanging in my pockets is not nice).
Not to critique how you love but a little bum bag could fix this.
> I pay with debit/credit cards but I don't have any digital wallet. I don't take my phone with me most of the time (my phone is big and having it hanging in my pockets is not nice).
But I've also recently moved away from flagship phones and I really don't feel like I'm missing out on anything. I also used to root devices and underclock them after having them for some years to help extend their lives. Similarly I didn't feel like I was missing out on much. But at the same time, whenever a new phone would drop I'd feel like there was this cool new feature yet when I actually had it in my hands none of those features were actually that big of a deal. Even if nice. So moving to a non-flagship is nice entirely due to it being smaller and fitting in my pocket better. And it's not all about the thickness...
> Which is weird again, because I'm supposed to be the "geek".
I mean there's still lots of things to geek out about and lots of dreams and fantasies about the future and tech that just don't have anything to do with the current direction of innovation.
There's non flagship, and there's ex-flagship.
I'd much rather have an ex-flagship phone that, at the time, had what was considered one of the best cameras (actually pretty much all I care about).
That said, I'm looking forward to trying this out in about 5 years!
Written from my "new to me" pixel 6.
I think on-device models will be the breaking point for AI. Nobody wants to pay for a trillion dollar cloud bill. We've made consumers think that the only way you're paying for software is if you have to buy hardware that comes with it. If you want AI to truly blow up, make it run on potatoes. It doesnt have to do EVERYTHING, just specific needs.
That said, what is with Android phones and their back cameras? They look silly. I thought Apple adding 3 to theirs for the 12 was a bit silly, but at least they made it look nice. One of those models looks like a Battlestar Galactica villain...
It's preference. I think the cameras on the non-pro iphones are so ugly -- especially the diagonal design. The pro cameras look ok to me. Can't not see my old college stove when I look at it, but I don't think it's too bad.
I, too, am biased but prefer Pixel's camera layout. Visually, I like the symmetry of the camera bump on the back of the device. Functionally, the symmetrical bump means the device will not rock on a table and it's a nice place to rest your finger and support/handle the device. A design decision that's unique and has some (small) utility.
Tier list:
Good: Pixel line, any phone with no camera bump Ok: iPhone Pro Bad: Samsung's many iterations, iPhone 2 camera vertical layout Horrible: iPhone 2 camera diagonal layout
Batteries are heavy. I don’t need a fat ass battery making the phone heavier just to hide the camera bump.
> Visually, I like the symmetry of the camera bump on the back of the device. Functionally, the symmetrical bump means the device will not rock on a table and it's a nice place to rest your finger and support/handle the device.
Is anyone using smartphones without a cover that pretty much negates any camera bump those smartphones have?
> Nobody wants to pay for a trillion dollar cloud bill.
Buying dedicated hardware as a way to keep your AI bill down seems like a tough proposition for your average consumer. Unless you're using AI constantly, renting AI capacity when you need it is just going to be cheaper. The win with the on-device model is you don't have to go out to the network in the first place.
You misunderstood what I meant, I mean make models that run on potatoes, nobody wants to pay what chatgpt's subscription model probably SHOULD cost for them to make a profit.
The "dedicated hardware" will be an Apple TV in the Apple ecosystem for example if something centralised is needed.
Or just your phone or laptop. Fully local, nothing leaves the device.
Just rumours but Apple is supposedly embracing a similar design for iPhone 17. https://www.macrumors.com/roundup/iphone-17/
I mean, look at these examples. Is a big LLM really needed to hit most of what people want?
Seems like Android just needs to lean into the voice command hooks API. A local LLM can grease the natural language into the mechanical APIs installed on your device. That's a much simpler task than an omniscient robot with access to all of your data.
The Nano model is 3.2B parameters at 4bit quantization. This is quite small compared to what you get from hosted chatbots, and even compared to open-weights models runnable on desktops.
It's cool to have something like this available locally anyway, but don't expect it to have reasoning capabilities. At this size it's going to be naive and prone to hallucinations. It's going to be more like a natural language regex and a word association game.
The big win for those small local models to me isn't knowledge based (I'll leave that to the large hosted models), but more so a natural language interface that can then dispatch to tool calls and summarize results. I think this is where they have the opportunity to shine. You're totally right that these are going to be awful for knowledge.
The point in these models isn't to have all the knowledge in the world available.
It's to understand enough of language to figure out which tools to call.
"What's my agenda for today" -> get more context
cal = getCalendar() getWeather(user.location()) getTraffic(user.location(), cal[0].location)
etc.
Then grab the return values from those and output:
"You've got a 9am meeting in Foobar, the traffic is normal and it looks like it's going to rain after the meeting."
Not rocket science and not something you'd want to feed to a VC-powered energy-hogging LLM when you can literally run it in your pocket.
They wrote a whole ass paper about SLMs that do specifically this - expert small language models with narrow expertise.
And then went for a massive (but private and secure) datacenter instead.
I love the idea of on-device AI. But the implementation of Gemini on Android is fully toxic. In the assistant settings I'm able to select what app I want to use as the assistant. But if I even open the Gemini app, it sets that automatically to be the phone assistant app. It doesn't ask, there's no confirmation, it just changes that setting. After that many tasks will fail because Gemini can't launch google maps to navigate you etc etc. Super annoying.
This. I tried Gemini, twice, and each time my usual use of hand free tasks were no longer possible. This is what I don't understand, all these big tech companies think I want to have a conversation and ask questions to an AI in every part of my life but I do not. All I want is to tell my phone to put in a calendar invite, play a song on an specific app, navigate to somewhere, etc. My android phone triggers itself when listening to podcasts too, which is fun.
> I love the idea of an on-device model
My impression is that most people here haven't tried similar small models and don't have first hand experience with them. They are, to be honest, terrible. They may be good for certain tasks, but are much weaker than something like GPT4. I don't feel excited about these small models that are not fast yet hallucinate all the time.
Weaker by what metric? Are you asking them to explain the fall of Rome to you?
The point of a small model isn't to be an interactive Wikipedia. It's there to call tools, get more data, aggregate the data and return a natural language result.
It does not "hallucinate", because it only uses what the tools provide.
If you just look ar similar discussions on HN, you'll see that these models often don't even answer the specific question you ask but just give you random nonsense. I'd rather see an honest "I don't know" instead of complete gibberish.
I'm not going to use any small model that has a chance of dialing 911 when asked to send a text message to a friend.
This is what tool calling is for. It's just the model being trained to produce a specific type of JSON when it needs an external call
After that it's plain code.
if phone_number == "911" return false
The model might even make something up, giving police "reasonable suspicion". Not that it seems it's needed anymore in the US
call me insane, but i used to want a virtual assistant that run and listen to me 24/24. Yeah, some paranoid would scream like hell, but think about what we could achieve.
It could listen to my conversation, take notes, and auto add a reminder in my calendar if needed.
Since it has a large amount of context, i could something "Hey do you know when John said he would come back from his trip?" and it would answer me "Yes, he said he would be back on Friday at 5 PM".
This is absolutely being worked on. Limitless.AI has a hardware recorder + mobile app for reviewing your todos plus syncing / processing, and an AI backend, and an MCP API for ... whatever else you want to do. (plus a sprinkling of privacy / "HIPPA compliance" etc.)
I'm a customer of theirs. And I have NOT researched the subject much further. However given the tone and concern of the discussions by the other customers in the limitless forums, and of the devs, I am confident what you're asking is here or coming.
I really wish Pixel phones went with a more capable Snapdragon Elite 2 or Dimensity 9500 along with UFS 4.1, instead of sticking to their cost-cutting Tensor strategy. From past Pixels, on-device features like Magic Editor have been painfully slow compared to the same tools running on other Android flagships.
It's replacing Google assistant so popups instead and has integration. Problem I've found is it was quite lazy on occasion in searching your gmail etc. and just says can't find anything unless you argue with it. I do think this is improved at least in the last uodate so don't want to be too harsh on them.
It being by Google, I have a feeling Google and LEA will be able to use tools on your phone too. They could very conveniently use this for "we didn't analyze your data using AI, we instructed your local AI to analyze your data" so it isn't technically a violation of your rights.
> I love the idea of an on-device model that I can say something like "who's going to the baseball game this weekend" and it'll intelligently check my calendar and see who's listed.
The question is whether you are ok with the model naming someone who isn‘t listed, or failing to name someone who is listed.
But if it is all handled locally on my device, the idea is that there is no intrusion
This seems like a good place to randomly drop my thoughts on switching from a Samsung s20+ to a Pixel 9 Pro. The hardware is excellent in the hand. The display is great, battery life excellent, the UI is snappy, does all the basic things I expect from a quality device. Over all, no huge regrets..... but...
The scrolling in every app is just "different" from the Samsung, and in a "not as good" way. I moved to Pixel with the (as I now realise) very out dated idea that a Pixel phone would allow me MORE customisation and configurability than the Samsung/Galaxy environment. Oh boy, how wrong I was. Turns out there's a whole stack of Samsung bundled apps or ones available through their Galaxy store for free that I'd gotten so used to I thought it was default Android stuff.
I miss:
- per app volume control
- nav bar customisation
- lock screen config
- many of the good lock apps
- shake for torch
- the samsung camera app
- control of what apps CAN run in the background (the pixel murders everything)
- subtle ways that Nova Launcher has problems
I want Google to be better...
As a Pixel / Galaxy / OnePlus user...
My app and photo quality preference are OnePlus > Pixel > > > ... > Samsung. shrug Really it could be a toss up between OnePlus and Google depending on generation. My partner's Pixel 7 takes nearly as nice photos as my OnePlus 12.
My Galaxy photos were... very watercolor paint. I could not stand them.
To be totally fair:
* I'm a pixel peeper
* Photos shared for most web usage on little mobile phone screens are fine
Had an S21 Ultra, bought it for the 10x zoom. But ultimately the quality loss with zoom and subsequent software processing left the phones looking unpleasant for my tastes.
I've been running a Samsung S21FE since release and I would _never_ buy a Samsung phone again.
I don't need customization, I need stable features, and not having to fight with my OS for which clock and notes app I'm allowed to use. Most of the features require you to be deep in the Samsung ecosystem. Hell, Google Gemini can only use Samsung system apps as of the recent update.
There are tons of bugs in the phone, and I regularly report them. The latest one is that the auto brightness is mapped to the slider. Which vibrates when it tops off, like any other slider for some reason. However, Samsung's engineers have obviously mapped the sensor to move the slider instead of directly managing the state, resulting in the phone constantly buzzing in your hand when you're outside.
The phone constantly runs out of memory, especially when taking photos. Since the OneUI 7 update, the screen often takes 5 seconds to wake. It regularly flushes apps out of memory.
I was looking at maybe upgrading to the S25 series but the cameras have horrible focus issues: https://eu.community.samsung.com/t5/galaxy-s25-series/galaxy...
Funny, my S22 Ultra just died due to the infamous One UI 7 update bricking phones with a boot loop. Replaced it with a One Plus 13 and I'm very happy not to have the Samsung bloatware all over the phone. The Samsung backup didn't help me at all.
None of that stuff adds value, just locks you in.
I feel compelled to stick with GrapheneOS even though I install Play Services and meta apps.
I do miss several Samsung features. Most of all, the ability to set the Always-On Display to only show when new notifications pop up. It is easier to see at a glance that I have a message vs. squinting at how many faint lines are displayed to see the messages icon.
DeX is a novel concept too, and with Samsung you can do USB-C --> HDMI out to use your phone to play on a TV. It is a choice Google makes that Pixel can't do that.
>with Samsung you can do USB-C --> HDMI out to use your phone to play on a TV. It is a choice Google makes that Pixel can't do that.
I have done exactly that with my Pixel 8 Pro. Worked great.
Do you know if it is also supported on GrapheneOS? I need a new phone, am struggling between FairPhone (does not have the USB capability for this) or GrapheneOS (on modern Pixel), both options align very well with my values, however not in the same dimensions, sadly.
You are correct, I was mistaken. I was thinking about the OnePlus.
As someone who had to use Samsung for 2 years at work:
I don't care about most of those decorative things you list there, it just made me mad that the phone was cluttered with Samsungs Apps. This replacing of perfectly working things like Settings was almost as annoying as the constant push for me to get just another account...this time with Samsung.
No please no...I don't see why I should give away space I've paid for to Samsung so they can spam me with their crap I don't need.
Never going back.
> push for me to get just another account
This is such a minor complaint though. I have 1150 accounts saved in my password manager and then another 150 in my company phone/laptop. What's one more? Who even cares at this point.
Or some app I will use to adjust settings then never open again. It's like being annoyed by having dconf editor or gnome tweaks installed. Yeah, I install them, use them twice, and then forget about their existence for another two years.
There are real issues with Samsung meddling in Android for no good reason. Primarily, that their oneUI is maybe prettier but way less readable and somewhat less intuitive than stock. Secondly, that they pull random stuff unnecessarily like ext4 support on external drives. Things that just should work and they burned calories to make them worse. Some app or account just ain't it.
Is is quite wqeird that the comment below you is [dead] when it's perfectly reasonable:
The "one more account" is not problematic because it's just another account, its problematic due Samsung's extremely invasive data collection and snooping. With Google phone you only have Google collecting your fata (unless you install GOS like you should ^^), but with Samsung you have both Google and Samsung getting your data.
Samsung camera app is buggy. Slow motion videos stutter. Its a common problem they wont solve.
Re. what apps can run in the background - have you checked out the "allow background battery usage"? This has worked so far for me.
>So yeah, next time I'm in the market for a phone I think I'm going back to Samsung.
Do yourself a favour and read Samsung's privacy policy first.
I'll add
- Flip the back and recent apps button in three button navigation. It's such a weird decision - like only left handed people should be able to comfortably use three button nav. Literally hurt my thumbs to use the phone.
- The quick settings panel is just abysmal compared to Samsung with massive pill buttons that have virtually nothing in them.
Looks like they're still only available in "Huge" and "comically oversized". I guess I can keep buying Pixel 4s until new ones (req for battery) are no longer available.
It's interesting how this type of feedback always comes up for phones yet smaller phones have an extremely hard time actually selling enough units to justify making more of them. It seems part of it may be folks remaining in this group seem much more willing to stick with old devices anyways, helping drive less priority for small sizes on top of already being a smaller market segment. Perhaps there are some other big factors beyond those two things too.
Apple said the mini iPhones underperformed, but they were not some sort of commercial failure. They sold millions of units. Numbers most Android OEMs could only dream of for a single flagship model. Current day Apple is all about optimizing and determined that still wasn't enough, and I imagine the manufacturing for small, specialized display panels certainly took a chunk out of those margins, so Apple decided to pull the plug.
Myself and the people who said we wanted a smaller phone may be a vocal minority but we did buy the small phone when we were offered it. After I used the 12 mini for 2 years, I bought a 14 Pro since no mini was offered in the 14 generation, but I returned it a week later cause it was too big/heavy and bought a 13 mini. These days I'm using a 16 Pro since no mini is offered and the titanium did help a lot with the weight issue, but if they brought back mini phones I'd happily sacrifice the camera for a reasonably sized screen.
The number of people who aren't vocal tech people who actually want a smaller phone is a very small part of the market. In HN-like circles they're a notable minority but among the general population they are a smaller percentage. Especially when you consider huge segments of the market where your phone is your only computing device: a smaller phone is a massive anti-feature in large parts of the world.
Plus almost everyone who says they want a smaller phone will just buy a larger one anyway.
The sales numbers just don't justify it. Like people who pine for manual transmissions: they're vocal in car forums and publications but they're a tiny minority and making one is a money-loser even in the sports car segment.
Interestingly I have seen a high share of iPhone Minis in my tech-affine bubble around Berlin / Amsterdam etc. - also my grandma switched from SE to 13 Mini.
Also bought used iPhone SE (2016) in 2019 and 2020 - both time from (UX) designers - but the same people also ride bicycles, trains - or if car, really reflect their user requirements - be it a small EV or a van for vanlife.
Average consumers just buy the largest, most marketed (high margin) or "whatever the neighbour has" option - aka SUV or Pro Max.
> yet smaller phones have an extremely hard time actually selling enough units to justify making more of them
I don't buy this. The iPhone 13 Mini all by itself sold 6 million units in a year. That's about half the rate of Google's entire Pixel lineup. The market is small, yeah, but it definitely exists. I think a company could quietly make a high quality, straightforward, small Android device with maybe every-other-year hardware updates, and run away with a whole corner of the market all to itself.
You can't just look at units sold, you have to look at net units sold because the version of the product existed.
For example, if 5.9 million of those 6 million people would have bought the larger iPhone model anyway, then you didn't actually gain much by offering the Mini unit.
I have no idea what those numbers are, though.
Smaller phones tend to have a lower price point.
If they don't offer a smaller phone, you'll eventually buy a bigger phone. Once you are in camp big phone, you'll probably be back on the 2-5 year device treadmill. And you'll be spending more on the big phones.
Apple is in a continuous state of not giving their customers what they want.
A convertible Macbook with a touch screen and dual MacOS/IOS personalities would sell out. They will never make it because no one will ever buy an iPad again.
A high quality TV with Apple TV built in at a premium but reasonable price would sell like hotcakes. It would compete with Apple Cinema displays, however.
A basic "good enough" 5 inch phone for $499 would also sell fast.
Apple won't do these things because you'd be happier but spend less.
This thread seems to have a lot of people that love the iPhone mini (me included - I still use my 12 mini).
But from all reports that you can find with a quick search it seems clear that it did not sell well by Apple standards.
I would love them to bring it back and I’m not sure what it is about the Hacker News crowd that makes this phone over-represented. Maybe the tech crowd also uses laptops more, so we think of phones as our “small device” and use other devices more as appropriate?
Bigger phones encourage more user engagement and more screen space to show ads.
Smaller phones are used by people who use it less.
I have only anecdotal data, pretty sure google has the analytics to find that out.
I put Bloomberg TV on the other day, just because it's one of the easy to access channels on a Roku I was setting up, and that experience makes me agree with your statement about space to show ads. It wasn't full of ads (yet?), but the tiny actual video surrounded by huge amounts of other content reminded me strongly of the TV future shown in Idiocracy.
I recently had to replace my Pixel 7 Pro and went with the Galaxy S25. My hands are much larger than average and it is amazing how unweildy I find the Pixel 7 Pro is in comparison to the S25 even though the size difference doesn't seem that big when compared side to side. Makes me wonder how people with normal sized hands deal with the massive phones.
Probably. I don't expect the market to cater to me when I don't cater to it. The only reason I ditched my iPhone 5 in 2019 was the carrier entirely stopped service for it. I don't like my new 12 mini as much.
I don't see what I feel is the obligatory "I want a small Android phone!" post here yet: https://smallandroidphone.com/
It’s a HN meme at this point. For as long as I can remember, almost every single phone announcement on this site inevitably gets a bunch of comments about how it’s too big and how a smaller version would sell like hotcakes. You would think that phone manufacturers would have figured this out by now, but what do they know.
I replaced my 4a (which is not particularly small) after Google nerfed the battery into oblivion, but every once in a while I get it out of its drawer and am always immediately struck by how much better the form factor is. Using a modern phone with a 6+ inch screen feels like trying to tie a knot with one hand.
I agree with you, but I like the reminder that I probably shouldn't be using my phone for whatever I'm doing anyway.
If I'm at home, I should make the small effort to get a tablet or a laptop. If I'm out, should I just set a reminder and do it later and listen to something instead?
I realise that for many people, that time might be their only time available for doing whatever they were going to do, but on the other hand when I look at what other people use their phones for when they're out, it rarely looks important to me. Even the stuff people are doing for fun doesn't look much fun. Definitely not compared with the people who have also lugged a Switch/e-reader/actual book.
My 4a didn't have the battery issue due to GrapheneOS, however, it the screen died recently (twice), so I got a pixel 9 with GrapheneOS. But yeah, it is uncomfortable to use the phone with one hand - I miss the small sized 4a.
On the other hand, it would be fun to explore these on device SLMs on a more capable phone with extra ram/storage.
twins!
I miss it so much. I bought a replacement one after it got cracked, only to have the battery AND Sim get nerfed a month later. Putting a custom ROM seemed to work for a while, and then it just got too unstable with sim card turning off randomly and silently. So now it sits in a drawer and used as a kids camera and I am so jealous of them. My google pixel 8 is bigger, but somehow nowhere needs as performant for my needs (camera + voice calls is basically it).
I just went from a Z Fold 5 to a Z Fold 7 and I hate it for this exact reason.
Z Fold 6 and earlier were slim, one handed use phones when folded, small tablet when opened.
Now it's just a regular phone, and a medium tablet when I open it.
First phone I've ever regretted upgrading to.
Consumers have spoken though. Same as dropping the stylus...
Best phone I've ever owned and it's not close. Every phone since then has been a compromise, to the point that (in a sunk cost fallacy kind of way) I've just quit caring about phones and just buy whatever the cheapest available unlocked device is. I run them into the ground (way past the end-of-service date) because I know the next one is going to be worse.
The Nexus 4 was a nice phone but I thought the battery life was bad and it also ran hot.
My Moto-X was truly next level. It was oled and could do always on display that didn't need to power the blacks pixels on the screen. It was the first phone to do this. It has voice recognition for unlocking (getting info that you couldn't when the phone was locked). First to do this too since I believe it uses dedicated hardware at the time. It also knew when I was driving to unlock the phone for voice commands also. It was small.
I loved my nexus 4! It's a pity that I at one point could not use it anymore because the updates made it unusable slow.
I agree, but I got the Pixel 5 instead; the 5 is actually smaller while the screen size is larger due to the curved screen corners. It also has a fingerprint sensor, unlike the 4. That being said, I still miss the squeeze-activated flashlight on the 4.
There are no alternatives. S25 is 6.2, and Pixels put the Pro/best version in 6.3, while on Samsung you get a step up to 6.7 and 6.9. Much better specs on almost the same size.
s25 is super manageable, it's the most comfy phone I've had since ever.
I keep thinking of how the Nexus 7 has a 7.02" screen. And how modern phones tend to be 6.1 - 6.9". But never quite 7!
I still carry my Pixel 5 for this reason. 2 replacement batteries in now and I have a spare sitting on a shelf. That said the Pixel 9A is tempting as it's not much larger than my Pixel 5. I hate that the finger print readers have moved to the front though. The sensor on the back of my 5 is perfectly postioned and also acts like a little track-pad for opening the notification tray. It was a perfect design IMO.
I've had a "spare" smartphone kept in a drawer for a year and when I needed it it was impossible to charge and I've never been able to wake it up.
You just blew my mind on the pixel 3 with the alternative way to open the pulldown menu.
I agree that I prefer the fingerprint sensor on the back. Very convenient and natural for the pocket grab and unlock maneuver.
I think they moved the fingerprint sensor because of all the magnetic mount and covers acting as a stand being trendy these days.
i would still use my px5 if it were not for 2 stupid problem: The promixity sensor does not work, thus the phone still think it's in pocket and won't wake the screen. Another problem is my power button has been missing.
I love my 13 mini but its battery is just too anemic. Slapping a MagSafe battery on it defeats the purpose of having a small phone. My 16 Pro lasts me all day, but I absolutely hate using it, as I don't do very much with my phone in the first place. I feel stuck.
Two reasons.
First is age. These devices are 5-7 years old. Many are using their original batteries, which have several dead cells. So they literally have less capacity than they did back then.
Second is JavaScript, in my opinion. I can often see my battery drain in real time when I use the browser, even when Low Power Mode is on. Demanding client side JavaScript is a big reason for that.
You also have extensions doing stuff on pre/post-load that also contribute to power usage.
Finally, so many web developers test against modern devices, and there isn't enough demand to warrant accommodating less powerful CPUs/SOCs. You can try to use the web without JS, but you'll find that many websites will think that you're a bot and block you.
I'm afraid you might be right.
Former user of 3a, I upgraded to 6 but it was way too big and heavy, and had a weird mass balance.
I'm now on 8 and it has perfect size and weight IMO (using it with a recommended Spigen case).
Looks like 10 is +17g heavier than 8 and 1-2 mm bigger. Not as big as 6 but almost as heavy.
https://m.gsmarena.com/compare.php3?idPhone1=13979&idPhone2=...
Samsung S25 is just 3 mm bigger than Pixel 4a. Is that too much of a difference?
I got a Motorola Razr 2025 Ultra. You can use it closed. Open it is narrower but taller than a Pixel. It fits in my pocket easily.
The size is about what every manufacturer settled on, and what most people want, it is unfortunate that smaller phones are not an option but it doesn't sell.
What bugs me however is that thin body with a huge camera bulge. Do anybody actually like that? It looks ridiculous, and the bulge defeats the point of having a thin phone. If you can't make the camera thinner, make the phone thicker, there is plenty of things you can do with more space: bigger battery, better speaker, more powerful vibration, more robust, etc...
There is a market, it is just not lucrative enough for big players to take it.
There is however a company that caters to these niches: Unihertz
The have small phones, massive phones with huge batteries, rugged phones, phones with keyboards,...
From what I have seen, not great on the software side though, and they have entry-level specs, with prices to match. It is a Chinese company.
I really liked my Pixel4 but in 2025 the hardware and software are getting too out of date.
I just hope that all the newer body models I purchase have bigger hands.
https://static.scientificamerican.com/sciam/cache/file/095D6...
Shot of humans from the future.
> Tensor G5 and the latest version of Gemini Nano work together to run Magic Cue privately and securely on your phone.
Running Gemini Nano on device is the most interesting thing here. Magic Cue sounds exactly like the Siri improvements that Apple failed to launch this past year (and have stayed mostly quiet about for this coming year, except saying "eventually"). I hope it works well, because on-device AI for simple lookups and such is actually one of the most interesting use cases for LLMs on mobile phones to me.
I love the idea of an on-device model that I can say something like "who's going to the baseball game this weekend" and it'll intelligently check my calendar and see who's listed. Or saying something like "how much was the dinner at McDoogle's last week?" and have it check digital wallet transactions. There are so many possibilities. I assume this kind of thing would just be implemented as tool calls with app intents. I hope we see this across the board in the next three years.