Small phones are less common than they once were, but there are great options like the Google Pixel 5 or iPhone 12 mini.
The best small phone is still fairly mighty, despite the focus being placed on larger phones nowadays. While the options are fewer, they’re still very good. It’s worth thinking about what you consider to be a small smartphone first though. With not as many small phones released as there used to be, we’re considering any phone with a screen size of 6-inches or below to be small for the purposes of this article. If you have an older smartphone, that may sound a bit big to you, but compared to the 6.8-inch Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra and the 6.7-inch iPhone 12 Pro Max, these phones are definitely on the small side. For those who want something significantly smaller, there are still some excellent options, such as the 4.7-inch iPhone SE (2020). There’s also the iPhone 13 mini with its 5.4-inch screen. Although we haven’t yet fully reviewed it, we do expect it to rank somewhere here in future. For now, read on and you’ll find a range of the best small phones including the iPhone SE (2020) right up to the larger (but still small) Google Pixel 5 at the 6-inch end. All the best small phones here are far easier to use with one hand and more compact than typical smartphones and should suit those with smaller hands, pockets, or needs than others. The iPhone 13 mini is a rare small phone that’s still high-end when it comes to hardware. Its 5.4-inch display is a Super Retina XDR OLED display so it looks great, thanks to some strong brightness levels. It’s the same tech as you’d see on the iPhone 13, only smaller. Similarly, its camera is fairly potent. It has a 12MP f/1.6 wide camera with 1.7µm pixels for low-light performance, while the 12MP f/2.4 ultra-wide camera offers 120-degree field of view. Taking photos in low light situations works well too, easily being some of the best we’ve seen. Speed wise, the iPhone 13 mini uses Apple’s A15 Bionic chipset so it’s fast and easily capable of multitasking. iOS 15 works super smoothly here. Just count on paying for the privilege as it’s pricier than the iPhone 12 mini that came before it. Read our full iPhone 13 mini review The iPhone 12 mini is that rare thing – a phone that’s not only genuinely small, but also genuinely high-end. As the name suggests, it’s basically the iPhone 12 in a smaller size, with a 5.4-inch 1080 x 2340 OLED screen. That’s a high-quality display, and while it’s bigger than the screen on the iPhone SE (2020), the relative lack of bezels means the iPhone 12 mini is actually a smaller phone overall.
