The team behind the beloved Pebble smartwatch has turned its thoughts to a miniature Android phone.
We love our Android flagship phones here at TrustedReviews, but if there’s been one consistent murmur of complaint over recent years it’s that they’re getting darned big. So much so that the Xiaomi 13 with its 6.36-inch screen is what passes for a small Android phone these days.
Pebble founder Eric Migicovsky once put out an impassioned call for some one to make a smaller Android phone to rival the iPhone Mini. Now it seems he’s decided to make one himself.
Migicovsky has told The Verge about his involvement with a “community-based project” to take up the small Android phone cause. He has a team – the Small Android Phone team – working to design just such a device.
The team has quietly made efforts to source the compact components necessary for such a phone – internally code-named ‘Marvin’ – as well as discussing the capital that would be required to launch such a venture.
The company has laid out some of its intentions across a number of design calls and interactions. This will obviously include a compact size (we’re talking a sub-6-inch display), but also a premium build with a distinctive camera bump.
While smaller phones often compromise on camera quality, the team wants its product to be strong in the photographic department. This will probably involve a 50MP camera allied to custom image processing software.
Contenders for the Pebble Android phone’s processor sit below the current cutting edge, with the Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 and a future mid-tier Qualcomm chip currently under consideration. Even so, expect to pay a fairly premium $850 price for the phone, or about the same as the iPhone 14 and the Samsung Galaxy S23.
This is all very early days, of course, and the company is currently struggling to source a suitably premium compact display. It’s also about 12,000 signatures short of the 50,000 it wants, and hasn’t even progressed to the crowdfunding stage yet.
Still, it’s heartening to learn that someone other than Asus (shout out to the Zenfone 9) is working on this stuff.
