It costs less than any of Apple or Google's offerings and they do not make money through software and services unlike Apple or Google. I think it's unreasonable to expect 7 years or more of OS updates on a phone that costs $300-400. They should do better on their flagship though, it costs double but still has the same support.

Tbf it is cheaper than the Edge 40 Pro, they messed up their naming. This phone is the successor to the Edge 40 not the Pro. Mind you there are still some downgrades as they downgraded the storage to UFS 2.2.

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 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.

Seems like an overclocked version of the 7+Gen 3, interesting they didn't release that chip with this one.

I definitely think Apple and Samsung can do a smaller premium phone if they want to as Apple makes the lion's share of profits in the industry and Samsung is the only other manufacturer that makes a significant amount of profit. Heck Samsung can probably do a smaller midrange phone as well. I do not think it makes sense for other manufacturers as they make 3% profit and targeting a very vocal but demanding minority isn't going to help them improve that.

Small phone users should also temper their expectation, I saw a lot of comments from people saying they didn't get the iPhone mini because they expected the Pro Max's specs in the mini form factor. They have to understand that the cameras on the biggest flagships occupy a lot of space and it isn't feasible to bring it to a smaller form factor. Increasing the thickness might help with the battery but that's about the only component that benefits with an increase in one dimension.

Well yeah NAND has a certain amount of read/write cycles but it's always going to be an issue with SD cards because they're using the cheapest form of NAND. As a result of that they're not going to get some of the complex safety mechanisms that are built into internal NAND. So I think we'll have to disagree here.

They were using the telephoto as a point of differentiation too. I'm not sure why they even bother with that awful 8 MP ultrawide since it's unusable. The images have no detail at all. Might as well just have one good camera instead of one useable and two unusable cameras.

I doubt they'll do it since it's not on the regular Pixel 8. I think that's a feature they'll keep for the higher end. Pixel Xa series already has a faster processor and better cameras compared to their competition in North America, Australia and Western Europe.

From my experience it's been the opposite, the phones have survived but the SD cards have died twice. Haven't cared about it since then.

I wouldn't say so. Not having the 8 Gen 1 is a massive positive in itself and the 8 Gen 2 is actually a good chip. They've also upgraded the primary sensor to match the 1 V. Lack of telephoto is a downer but they have made it a little shorter to compensate and they've managed to cram the same 5000 mAh battery as last year.