thats a tradeoff rather than an error. Making the phone bigger makes it fit differently but is an overall user experience preferred by many.
It's a terrible tradeoff. Every time I need a new phone I search for the smallest one I can find, and it's always bigger than my last phone.
Except if you have bad eyesight, enjoy gaming, long form reading, watching video while traveling, etc.
If you want to spend any significant length of time long form reading, even a 5+ year old E ink e-reader would be better than the biggest and newest phone.
I’ve got a 12 mini. It’s just about usable, however I find myself using it less for things like the internet as anything in the top left is out of reach
Wait until you get older. I can't do anything on small phones because my eyes don't focus that well anymore.
People have the same options you do and make different choices. I'm well aware I could have a smaller phone. My last smaller phone was really annoying for web browsing, which accounts for like 90% of my phone usage.
For me, there's literally no use of this much screen area on a limited communication device that I use away from home. Not a single upside. I'm not a large person, I often use my phone with one hand, and I almost never watch any sort of video on it. I trade the convenience of an ergonomically sensible phone size to get nothing in return.
Then buy a candybar phone. The rest of the world agrees that a larger screen is desireable since it makes almost all interaction better.
In the modern society you'll be denying yourself a lot of convenience, and annoying other people in some cases, if you don't own a phone capable of running Android or iOS apps. So no, at this point it's a hard requirement that it runs a recent version of Android.