Small Phones are Dead and We Killed Them

- You know, if you've been watching my videos, you may have noticed a certain phrase that I've been saying for years. I've been saying that

small

flagship

phones

are a rare breed. And I say this countless times over the years, but today that is no longer true. That breed is now extinct. RIP to the little flagship phone. Well, we don't even have to go that far back to the days when

phones

were all

small

er across the board. But then, very quickly, we shot screens up to four inches, then five-inch screens became popular, and then six-inch flagships were everywhere.

We never got around to seven-inch phones becoming commonplace, but it seems like all the major flagships are now teetering around that. But the funny thing is that smartphone manufacturers have realized the same thing time and time again: smartphone screens are getting bigger and bigger. And then there's room for the smaller alternative phone to sit underneath that. So I just reviewed each and every Samsung Galaxy S. The year they started getting really big, of course, they also introduced a Galaxy S Mini. It's the most Samsung thing there is. But guess that? Now that's

dead

. The same from Apple.

We finally got huge iPhones and sure enough we got an iPhone Mini for two years, but now that's

dead

too. And this kept happening and happening everywhere until there was basically just one good little flagship phone left. The Asus Zenfone, the rare species. So, the Zenfone 9 came out in 2022 and it was a near-perfect flagship phone. Like truly flagship specs, incredible performance, physics that defy battery life, like rock-solid cameras. This phone won my small phone of the year by a landslide, even with the few small flaws it had, you know, the back material was a little less durable and it didn't have wireless charging.

Then in 2023, they released a sequel, the Zenfone 10. And that took something good and basically perfected it. They repaired the back stuff, gave it wireless charging, and updated it to the latest flagship chips. They didn't lose anything. Nothing went wrong. It was just this singular, excellent flagship phone with a sub-six-inch screen in 2023. So now it's 2024 and the new Zenfone is a gigantic 6.8-inch ultraphone. Now, honestly, we probably should have seen this coming, right? When has a small flagship lasted more than a year or two, right? But it just, I don't know, hits a little bit harder when this was the last little one.

Like there's something to think about, right? I think Apple is, you could say, one of the best supply chain companies in the world, right? This is how they built their business. That's how Tim Cook took the stock price from here to here. That's what they do. Tim Cook is in charge of the supply chain. So every time they launch a new product or range of products, they have to do the supply chain and determine exactly how many they need to produce. They have these complex studies and they are ways of estimating how many of each SKU they think will be sold.

And then that's the amount they need to make. Not too many, just the perfect amount, perfect inventory management. That's the supply chain question. That's a Tim Cook thing. So in 2020, for the first time, Apple decided to launch a new line of four new iPhones. It was the iPhone 12, the iPhone 12 Pro, the 12 Pro Max and the 12 Mini. Of course, the 12 and 12 Pro are the same size, right in the middle, this nice little sweet spot of the line, and the 12 Pro Max just has this absolute maximum, the biggest screen and the highest price. But the cheapest and most pocketable new iPhone in the range is this cute new Mini phone.

Now, Apple, Tim Cook, all the supply chain knowledge and studies they've done, they already know that small phones don't sell particularly well. Then they make all the changes and align how many of each they are going to produce. And then they send it, they send it all to production. And you know, the reviews, honestly, for the most part, were super positive across the board. People love the Mini phone. Yes, the battery life is lower on the smaller phone, but putting a flagship shape, a flagship chip and a flagship camera on a Mini phone is a very rare thing.

So it was very well received. Tech critics love it. Real users love it. The YouTube videos are lovely about the thing. And the iPhone Mini still sold much less than Apple had planned. There are some surveys that put the iPhone Mini at about 5% of total sales of the entire new iPhone 12 lineup, sometimes even less. I mean, it was really very unpopular in the grand scheme of things to buy an iPhone 12 Mini. Suddenly it went from being the favorite of the range to the least successful new iPhone of all time. And the headlines were talking about this and wondering if they would try again.

And they did it one more year, they made an iPhone 13 Mini. It fared even worse than the 12 Mini. And then it was quietly suspended. And guess what was in its place? A new large iPhone. Because of course. So the moral of the story is that the Mini iPhone experiment reinforced what we already knew, that it's not enough for people to buy small phones to make it worth it for a company, even the size of Apple, to devote all the research and the development to continue manufacturing

them

. things. Like some people think, oh, this is getting positive reviews so it must be a hit.

It's not always true. And also the counter, if things get negative reviews from YouTubers, that must be why he died. Also, it's not always true. So here we go with the Zenfone. Now here's the thing, without discounting the Zenfone 11 ultra, it's actually a really good phone. In fact, it is a great and perfectly good flagship phone. It brings all the good things about the Zenfone 10 to a larger scale, a bigger battery and incredible battery life. Latest chips and specs, again, lightweight software and smooth performance, rock solid cameras. In fact, it added a third camera with a telephoto lens.

So it's all here. You just lose the biggest thing, or I guess the smallest thing that really made it different. Just the fact that it was actually small and accessible from corner to corner and didn't require huge pockets or huge hands to comfortably open it. All that is gone. And now it's like a ROG phone without the gamer stuff. Actually, seriously, that's basically what it is. This is the new Zenfone together with the new ROG phone. If you take away the screen on the back, the 165 hertz display, the side USBC port, the shoulder triggers, honestly it's basically the same phone.

So this Zenfone feels like it's blending in with the sea of ​​other giant phones. If I were guessing, the Zenfone 9 and Zenfone 10, despite how much we loved

them

, didn't sell very well. And so they moved on, more or less in the same way, that the iPhone 12 Mini and 13 Mini did not sell particularly well. The last part of that equation, the funny thing is that even today, the most popular new iPhone is still the Pro and Pro Max, the largest high-end phone. And then what did Asus do? They made a great super high-end phone. Now, to be perfectly clear, Asus hasn't technically confirmed that they aren't going to make a regular Zenfone 11, but body language suggests this is the one.

They just renamed it the same way Apple stopped making the Mini and started making a Plus. We just assume the Mini is gone. So there is no solution for this. It is in line with the telephone dilemma of enthusiasts. Every time a phone maker comes along and starts making an enthusiast phone, they gather a very, very attractive audience for that specific device, but it's small, so when they end up trying to diversify and make it more successful, they miss the core. fans. And I don't know if this Zenfone will lose its core fans, but people who liked it for being small will certainly not like this one anymore.

And this also applies to budget phones. You know, small budget phones are getting bigger. Pixel 7A is a 6.1-inch phone. The Nothing Phone 2a that just came out is literally an ultra-large phone. And the rumors about the next iPhone SE also suggest that it will not be small. So the void is now open. You know, someone could come along and make another little flagship phone to fill that void briefly, but don't expect it to last too long. RIP, the little flagship phone. (light music)