Technology

Why can't we go back to small phones?

The iPhone SE is dead,

Is there any chance that you chose to lock yourself into a very small walled garden with a vendor who might make decisions about product that you might not agree with?

Apple is the only one making iOS phones, and Apple doesn't seem interested in small devices anymore, so that door is shut.

Right. You stick yourself in that garden, you are gambling that the vendor is going to come out with the product that you want.

There are still a few niche companies working on smaller devices, like Unihertz, but those phones almost always have low-end hardware and limited software support.

Well, size is kind of a constraint on what hardware you can put in the thing.

If what you mean by "limited software support" is "apps are going to be optimized for the bulk of users and will probably feel small if the great bulk of users are using larger screens", well...I mean, yeah.

The iPhone 3 SE you have:

4.7-inch (diagonal) widescreen LCD Multi‑Touch display with IPS technology

1334-by-750-pixel resolution at 326 ppi

Memory 4 GB LPDDR4X RAM

https://www.gsmarena.com/results.php3?nYearMin=2022&nRamMin=8000&fDisplayInchesMax=5.5

Let's grab one from that list:

https://www.gsmarena.com/ulefone_armor_mini_20t_pro-13298.php

Size 4.7 inches, 53.3 cm2 (~63.1% screen-to-body ratio)

Same screen size as your phone.

Resolution 720 x 1600 pixels, 20:9 ratio (~373 ppi density)

30 pixels narrower, but 266 pixels taller than your phone.

8GB RAM

Twice the memory of your phone.

Can buy online in the US:

https://www.amazon.com/Ulefone-Armor-Mini-20T-Pro/dp/B0DJ74TQXT

And it was released October 2024, so it's pretty new.

Now, you may not be able to get an iOS phone that fits your hardware wants, but them's the breaks when you go with a platform that has only a single vendor making hardware for it.