[karaterobot]

"Well enough" is doing a lot of work here. It's not that they aren't successful, it's that they aren't immediate, runaway hits, so the manufacturers conclude: why bother trying to build this market, let's just go back to the playbook. That's how you get mediocre products, which is where we are now.

[dageshi]

I'm sorry to say this, but again just face the reality of the fact that not enough people truly want this size of phone.

There's a congregation of people on HN who do, I suspect they're also the type of people who'll run their phones for 5+ years where their bigger phone buying brethren are replacing every year or two at most.

The market for the "small" smartphone just isn't profitable enough to bother with for most manufacturers.