| > a smaller device will alway have 'poor' battery life or use a less powerful cpu to keep the battery life on par with bigger phones. I am not convinced by this -- not least because it will also have a smaller and lower-resolution screen, which brings with it power savings. Before I switched to iOS, I had a Sony Xperia Mini Pro -- the second version. Slide out keyboard, absolutely tiny. And it was _very_ powerful indeed for its price and size in its day, with surprisingly good battery life (from a really tiny battery) and an incredible display. A contemporaneous review was here:
https://www.gsmarena.com/sony_ericsson_xperia_mini_pro-revie... Can't tell you how many admiring looks it got even from iPhone owners. Decent camera for the time (and a hardware shutter button), and a fantastic little thumbs keyboard. I then had an iPhone 5S and SE. The 5S was an older device by the time I got it, but the SE was/is very capable and it has excellent battery life (especially by Android standards), again because it's driving a smaller, lower-resolution display. It might be a tough sell in the Android market, but I think it could be done again well technically. There just isn't enough interest to persuade app developers to support a smaller screen format, and web developers won't do it either. |
having a smaller display (and possibly downgrading/downclocking the gpu accordingly) saves some power, but the power draw of other components doesn't scale with the size of the screen. the display doesn't account for enough of the overall power budget to offset having less energy to power everything else. it's possible to make a small phone with "acceptable" battery life, but they'll never compete with bigger phones on that front.
btw, apple doesn't have some magical solution to this scaling problem. their small phones have significantly worse battery life than their larger offerings. it's just that their overall efficiency advantage makes a small iphone more viable than a small android phone.