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Comment by gm-conspiracy | Hacker News Reader

Any recommendations for a small form-factor, yet functional, Android phone (about the size of an iPhone 4/S)?

Doesn't seem to exist, sadly, Android or otherwise. There are no good phones of that size any more and I can see no hint that any company will ever make one again.

I have a Sony Xperia Z5 Compact. This is often recommended to people asking for a small phone, and it's a very nice bit of hardware, but it's still too big.

I owned a Sony Xperia Z3 Compact for a while. Absolutely loved the form factor: overall size just _slightly_ larger than an iPhone 5, but much bigger screen. Only problem is they're two years old at this point, and won't move to Nougat. But you can buy a used one very cheaply, just to try out.

Can't go wrong with the Nexus phones. 5X sounds like your ideal phone. Or perhaps the new pixel phones.

Except he wanted something smaller. The Nexus 4, 5, and 5x are all much bigger than an iPhone 4.

Except hes looking for a small form factor Android phone, roughly the size of a iPhone 4s, not a phone that has to be smaller than a 4s.

OP, grandparent is correct, I was in your situation and a 5X was perfect. Pixel and Pixel XL look like they'll be too big, but you should wait for the October 4th event to confirm.

And probably slower than an iPhone 5s. Honestly I don't really understand how is it possible that google throws out a phone that is slower than is predecessor (the Nexus 5) and still manages to sell a huge amount of devices.

I have still have a iPhone 4/S for this exact reason. Surely given the huge competetion in this market one supplier would think there is a viable niche in going small.

I think they just don't have the tech. Really. Android is a battery hog compared to iOS and the chips aren't as efficient either, so an Android phone the size of a 5SE would have unacceptably short battery life or would have to use an old CPU with a lower power draw but that just wouldn't be competitive. I just don't think the engineering works out well for them, otherwise somebody would be doing it.

I would be willing to live with shorter battery life provided the size was good. I would think the power drain could be controlled by undervolting the chip on demand along with the benefit of a smaller screen. I would be happy to live with a slower CPU most of the time provided I could increase it as needed.

Sony Xperia X

With Android huge update problem, I wouldn't go near to Android phone,unless Google's own phone. Let be honest Android manufacturers, just ripping off people and don't care a little bit about customer experience/security.

Think about this fact , many of high end phone from last year or year before that (which customer spent ~700$ -which is quite money-) has not fixed stagefright vulnerability and don't have any plan to update to new version. Thats total fraud , which they pull off (manufacturers).

Android doesn't have an update problem, Android OEM's do.

> Think about this fact , many of high end phone from last year or year before that (which customer spent ~700$ -which is quite money-) has not fixed stagefright vulnerability and don't have any plan to update to new version

And that would be exactly which ones? Samsung did update their high end phones, so did Sony, HTC and LG.

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