2026-03-07 Re: Phones
I noticed on Antenna that Rob had written about the problems of finding and using a small phone, because they're all either old, poorly supported or poorly specced. Toby Kurien also responded that he'd been frustrated with phone sizes for years.
I've been similarly frustrated with how phones have only gotten bigger and bigger. When I bought a new phone a couple of years ago, about 6 inches was the smallest I could get if I wanted something new and well-specced from a known brand, sold locally. And even that top model was too niche to receive carrier support for VoLTE or VoWiFi. I don't have particularly small hands, but I can hardly reach the top of the screen when I use it with only one hand. The āsolutionā? They put in a function so you can switch between fullscreen and using only the bottom half of the screen, so you don't have to reach as farā¦
Thankfully, as Rob and Toby both note, there is a small niche market providing āalternativeā and often smaller phones. Unfortunately, these typically suffer from several weaknesses:
- they run an old version of Android (a potential security issue);
- they have short-term or unclear update policies;
- they have poor specifications, risking earlier obsolesence;
- they aren't sold locally, incurring shipping and import fees;
- no local sales also means no local warranty or rights; and
- they have unclear or comletely missing support for ādifficultā apps like banking.
For some people, these points may not be dealbreakers. If that's you: congratulations, what are you waiting for? For me, I would like a smaller phone, perhaps even one with a physical keyboard and maybe even an e-ink screen. But all of the above makes me extremely reluctant to adopt any āalternativeā phone. The Jolla phone is a great concept, but it's also too big and probably won't be able to run my banking apps. I saw someone talking about banking on either Graphene or /e/OS the other day, and they said it was fine ā they just had to reinstall the app and reauthenticate every two or three days. Hardly an inconvenience. (Except, of course, when you actually need it.)
The issue is that banking and similar applications have high requirements for security and integrity. To ensure your identity and the integrity of the device and software, they rely on security features provided by Apple and Google. Apparently, there are no alternatives, because building one would be too expensive in a market already covered by the existing monopolies. There simply isn't any demand, so there isn't any alternative. Or so they say anyway. Society has become so digital, we've locked ourselves in to two giant American companies.
This means that I have two options: buy a ānormalā phone and live a normal life, or buy an alternative phone and forsake all innovation since 2010. No digital ID, return to physical keyfob. No instant money transfers to friends, return to cash or online bank transfer. Which has to be done through the web portal, since the banking app is also gone. Depending on the phone, I might even have to trade my digital public transit ticket for a physical card.
So I end up with a smaller, less annoying and surveilled phone, but have to carry a bunch of other crap with me instead. I'm just not convinced it's worth it.
The only phone I've found so far that seems like it would tick most of my boxes is the Clicks Communicator. It's not e-ink like the Minimal Phone, but it has a qwerty keyboard and runs new stock Android, which means it won't be less tied to Google but it will at least likely run the apps I need.
The Clicks Communicator website
But it's still American, meaning warranty, shipping and support is rather suboptimal. I can't go to a store to try it first, and imports make returning it impractical. And besides, I still like my current one and was hoping to have it last a little longer; I don't really have a reason to replace it yet, other than wanting something tasting less of big tech and big screens.
I just want nice things. Why does it have to be so hard?