I went from the iPhone SE to the iPhone 8 plus to the iPhone SE (2020) because the 2016 iPhone was an excellent low budget iphone that did everything you needed, in a small package. I switched to the iPhone 8 Plus purely to use the bigger phone screen with a drone. If you can see what you’re doing then a big screen is worthwhile. Eventually I crashed the drone and the need for such a large screen degraded, and that’s why I eventually settled for the iPhone SE(2020).
Crosscall Core S4 – Good for hiking, climbing, via ferrata etc.
At first I considered a feature phone as a backup phone so I got the Crosscall Core S4 because I was curious to see whether a feature phone could replace a smartphone for twitter, facebook, web browsing and more. It can’t. KaiOS should go for text only website displays but it doesn’t. It is slow and clunky. The one good thing is that you can drop it in a puddle and not worry about a thing.
Low End Androids
I was then tempted by cheap android solutions for 200 CHF but the issue with these is that they’re usually low end android phones that are slow, laggy, and give the same experience of a feature phone, but without the small screen but with added fragility.
Fairphone
I then considered Fairphone, and with its price point it is close to the iPhone, but with a deal-breaker flaw for me. A big screen. The problem with big screen phones is that they’re heavy, bulky and annoying to cycle or run with. They are also hard to hold and use with one hand. I also worry that with Fairphone the OS, camera and general user experience will be mediocre.
The Car
Although idiotic one of the reasons for which I decided to stick with iOS is that the car plays well with car play and when I tried to play with Android’s equivalent I had no luck. If you can’t use your phone for in-car navigation then the car’s software version costs about 300 CHF per map or more. For that price, it’s worth sticking with iOS for now.
Context
We are now in 2022 and mobile phones have reached a plateau in terms of features, apps and more. Now it is a question of iterative changes rather than revolutionary changes. As I wrote this blog post I read the specs for the SE and the 8Plus and they are practically the same phone, except for the processors. In light of this buying a 1200 CHF phone will not give you a huge advantage over a cheaper phone. The SE and 8 plus are similar, but the SE is small and light.
For around 500 Francs you can get the iphone SE, whereas for the flaship iPhone 13 Max, with better specs you’d be paying two to three times more, for something that could drop out of your pocket and break. I’d rather spend 1300 CHF on a laptop or camera, than on a phone.
The Advantages
Small phones are easy to hold, easy to carry, fit into most pockets and they’re light. The phone ways 60 grams less, but when you consider the difference that a case would make then the difference can be more than a hundred grams. When you consider that you carry your phone everywhere all day long, it’s worth having something small and light.
And Finally
This isn’t meant to be a phone review. This is a demonstration of the thought process that you may go through before choosing a new phone. It isn’t simply a matter of getting the flagship device, or the cheapest device, or the smallest device. It’s about finding the device that fills the niche that you want to fill at that moment in time. At this moment in time I needed a new phone with a healthy battery and a smaller size. KaiOS doesn’t fill that need, and I don’t trust cheap androids to fill a niche. That I could not automatically use android’s car features with ease, sealed the decision. This was a thought-out decision, rather than an impulse purchase.
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