We need small 5G phones and while the iPhone 12 mini fills that void, other phone companies should make similar devices too.
I’ve reviewed plenty of 5G phones in the last year, from the top-end Oppo Find X2 Pro to the affordable Moto G 5G Plus, and the launch of the iPhone 12 mini made me realize something; all existing 5G phones are way too big. Phone makers are always trying to convince us we want bigger smartphone displays, so we can see more of a game or a film, but the resulting phablets can be pretty hard to comfortably use one-handed. We rarely see ‘compact’ or small, phones any more, especially those ready for 5G. That’s changed with the iPhone 12 mini though, as with its 5.4-inch display it won’t stretch your grip. Apple even called the iPhone 12 mini the smallest, thinnest and lightest 5G phone in the world. It’s pretty bizarre that Apple is innovating ahead of Android phones (however strange it is to call ‘making a small phone’ innovation), and other smartphone makers need to follow suit as soon as possible. At the moment, the main uses of 5G are downloading music, movies and games on the fly, or streaming them straight from the web onto your phone. You’d expect these are tasks that work well with big-screen phones, as the extra display real estate would let you see media better. But bigger isn’t better, and most phone manufacturers bump up the screen size on their phones without also having higher resolutions – this can sometimes result in bigger phones making content look a little worse than smaller devices with the same resolution, as the pixel-per-inch count is lower. This insistence on huge screens also shows phone companies making the flawed assumption that everyone will be making the most of it anyway.
