[matthewkayin]

To take this a step further. I want a phone that is small (doesn't have to be tiny, just iPhone SE 2020 or smaller, please), has a replaceable battery, has an unlocked bootloader, has a headphone jack, and costs $400 or less.

It doesn't need to have a cutting-edge processor or tons of RAM and storage space or a 120hz screen or razor-thin bezels or a studio-worthy camera, yet somehow all these things are prioritized on the market over a basic, reliable phone.

[0_____0]

I guarantee you that, given your requirements, this will never be a product that you can buy.

Hardware projects live and die on scale. The engineering and tooling costs are a similar order of magnitude whether you make 1000 phones or 1,000,000. If you can guarantee that you have an accessible market for a million devices, then you're starting to get into the region of scale where this would be an OK idea.

Mind you, that's a million users who are cool with all the design tradeoffs you had to make to ingress protection, software performance with modern android, and form factor in order to get your desirable characteristic.

The Punkt MP02 is at roughly the price point and "niche-ness" as the product you describe here, and that sold for almost $400. They could afford to build in about the same amount of functionality as a Nokia brick of yore (but with 4G radios!) for that price.

[izacus]

Whenever someone tries to build a phone that even tries to tick those boxes y'all just find new excuses to not actually pay for it.

[PlatoIsADisease]

Have you looked at Motorola? I'm not sure they have all of those features, but me and you think similarly and when I did research, I ended up choosing their $130 phone for my contractors.

But I main the $900 pixel.

They are so similar its weird, but Motorola was slow with snapchat and the keyboard some time.

[zb3]

Is there an up-to-date list of their phones which allow bootloader unlocking? Not all of them do..

[protoman3000]

You should check the phones from Unihertz, “the worlds smallest smartphone”

[user_7832]

I forgot to mention in my comment, I also wanted it to be small.

Instead, the phone I got ended up being bigger than my last phone, and hasn't (unsurprisingly) helped my RSI at all. Go figure lol.

[rabf]

The motorola razr flip phones are great in my opinion.

[catlikesshrimp]

https://m.gsmarena.com/motorola_razr_60_ultra-13805.php

No headphone jack (neither the rest)

[iberator]

there are websites made for you with millions of parameters to find the phone you need. not amazon or ebay

[dvdkon]

Filtering for GP's requirements on GSMArena.com, I only see a handful of recent phones. Some of them do have an unlockable bootloader, but all of those are made by GPL violators, so you won't get the source code necessary to really make use of that unlocked status.

EDIT: I forgot to check the "removable battery" checkbox; with it you get zero matching phones. Maybe you should've checked that before assuming GP just can't search.

Not to end on such a negative note, foregoing a maimum height and the removable battery, Sony's Xperia 5 and 10 fit the rest of the requirements and are very good phones. Hard to find for sale in the last few years, though.

[iberator]

hehe so just kinda made Perfect non existent product. free niche :)

[renewiltord]

Most 2012 era used phones will work here. Pick one off eBay.

[hamdingers]

Wouldn't work very well as a phone though. The networks a 2012 phone support no longer exist. 2G and 3G are both fully shut down where I live. Even if you specifically got a 4G phone from 2012 it might not support VoLTE, so you'd be unable to make calls.

As a wifi internet device it would work but I'm not sure that's what OP is going for.

[progbits]

Batteries will be in bad shape.

Can we do 2010s phones with 2020s battery tech and modems please?

[mrkstu]

'replaceable battery'

[fsflover]

"chart of phones with replaceable batteries": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47099020

[solnyshok]

it is very difficult to find good (as in "good condition") battery for a 5+ old gadget. even if you find original one - it could be expired and DoA. but more often you get "compatibles" which die in 3-6 months.