Positronic

3 years of OS updates and 4 years of security patches according to the product page

If you're willing to pay a lot of money, Sony might be an option. They have kept the micro SD card on their phones. There are rumours they'll start updating their phones longer with the VI series too but we'll have to wait and see.

First of all sorry for the delayed reply but i only got the notification a few hours back for some reason.

I wouldn't go as far as to claim that "more cameras" is the complaints being made here.

It is one of the most common complaints cited against buying a smaller phone especially in tech enthusiast circles. Some people say they ended up getting the bigger phone because it had better cameras or the presence of the telephoto was enough.

I hard disagree with this. Apple is literally the worst company to try to make this shit work.

We'll have to disagree. Apple have been one of the best at maintaining equality between a larger phone and a smaller phone in recent times since they manufacture phones in enough volume to actually care about miniaturizing components. The minis had feature parity with the regular iPhones of that year. The Pros are larger but they've maintained feature parity with the Pro Max in most instances except for the 12 Pro/12 Pro Max and 15 Pro/15 Pro Max. Even with those two instances the only difference was in the cameras. I'll acknowledge there's no fair comparison with Google or Samsung but that's only because they don't make a smaller Pro/Ultra phone. Even if they did, I'm fairly sure the cameras would be different.

1 in 20 is still a decent number of people.

In the volumes Apple sells, that probably equates to a couple of million units. 5% would not be a very attractive proposition for other manufacturers since they'd need to increase profit margins to actually make money from making a smaller phone as they deal with much smaller volumes.

Realme 12 Pro+ does what you're asking for but availability is limited to a few countries. Design may still be considered fancy though.

Not... Really... Sure it makes some difference, but the much more constraining factor is the money. Cameras arent that big, but they're one of the priciest pieces of hardware in the device.

There's isn't enough physical space for three sensors on a smaller phone especially if it's the size of the iPhone mini. They can fit them on a 6.1-6.2 inch device, that's why the S24 and iPhone 15 Pro have them. However the 16 Pro is supposedly getting larger because it's getting a larger sensor for 5x optical zoom. If you look at a periscope lens, it needs a substantial amount of extra width as well. A teardown of any recent flagship reveals that camera modules occupy more space than they did if you look at tearsowns from three or four years back. This makes sense because the sensor itself is increasing in size and the size needs to go up both length and width wise to maintain the aspect ratio of the sensor. Heck in some cases like the Xiaomi 14 Ultra and Oppo Find X7 Ultra, the camera modules occupy more space than the rest of the motherboard.

The problem is more that they keep trying to sell small phones at cheaper price points.

The iPhone mini was cheaper but it had pretty much the same specs as the regular iPhone except for wireless charging speed iirc. Sales were much lower than the regular model despite that (around or less than 5% of total iPhone 12 and 13 sales). If Apple couldn't make a smaller phone sell particularly well, I doubt anyone else could.

Yeah it's strange some of them expect the exact same specs as the Pro or Ultra phone in a smaller form factor. Some sacrifices have to be made to fit components in a smaller form factor as you cannot overcome the laws of physics. I've seen many ridiculous comments saying manufacturers can fit the same cameras and all the sensors along with a bigger battery if they made the phone thicker. It's almost as if they expect the bigger phone to get neutered to maintain parity.

Flexible OLED panels have smaller bezels, better viewing angles and are less prone to exhibiting a rainbow effect. You can check Dylan Raga's review of the Pixel 6, 7 and 8 to see why the 8's display is an upgrade over the 6 and 7.

Yeah that's a fair point. I don't like the output of the primary sensor and the 3x on the S24. Feels like they oversharpen and oversaturate colours way too much. Also feel the hardware is lacking compared to the Pixel 8 and iPhone 15 Pro's sensor as they're physically bigger and don't have as much of a problem with shutter lag.

I'm not a fan of the cameras on the S24 and base iPhone 15. Samsung have recycled the same cameras for three generations now, I think they can put a larger primary sensor in there.

To be honest looking at the teardowns it's impressive what Apple and Samsung have managed to fit in their phones, I think the Xiamoi 14 Ultra isn't doing itself any favours with that camera placement though, seems inefficient having the modules in the middle of the phone?

Idk, Apple does a better job with the Pro as compared to the regular model. Google, Xiaomi and Asus managed to fit bigger batteries on the Pixel 8, Xiaomi 14 and Zenfone 10 without increasing the size too much. Here's a teardown of the Xiaomi 14 Ultra. It seems like they're using space pretty efficiently in there.

I don't think they're going to be able to put the same cameras on a smaller phone, especially if you look at something like the Xiaomi 14 Ultra or the Oppo Find X7 Ultra. The sensors are massive and require a lot of space. You may be able to fit two of those sensors on a 6.1 inch phone without compromising on other things like the battery, haptics, antennae for example. They could probably fit a bigger battery by making the phone thicker but it seems like manufacturers like a uniform thickness for most of their models or somewhere thereabouts probably because it's easier to machine the frame.

Yeah they're regular sized, you could consider the iPhone 15 and 15 Pro as regular sized as well. I think they could probably do a smaller phone about the size of the iPhone 12/13 mini as well if they wanted to. However I'm not sure if they'll do it since the S22 is their smallest phones since the S10e and they haven't gone smaller than that unless you go all the way back to the S4 (which itself has a similar width to the S10e). I understand why they wouldn't do it because it seems the people who want an iPhone 5S to iPhone mini sized phone are extremely vocal but that doesn't seem to translate to numbers in real life.

It probably is if the rumour about them switching to a 19.5:9 resolution is true. It'll still be larger than the S24 and Pixel 8 because of the top and bottom bezel but height should decrease by a couple of mm.