To this day, you can still hear people on internet forums complaining that there are no small, high-end phones. Is this true, however? But more importantly, what constitutes “small” these days?
You could say that the Apple iPhone 12 mini is the only true mini flagship on the market. You might be tempted to include the Sony Xperia 5 II on this list, but it is questionable if it belongs – even Sony doesn’t call it a Compact (a true Compact can be on the way, though).
Check out the table below with some potential candidates for the mini flagship category. We’ve included flagship models as well as mid-range models (a small entry-level phone is much easier to find).
| size | Width | |
| iPhone 12 mini | 131.5 mm | 64.2 mm |
| iPhone SE (2020) | 138.4 mm | 67.3 mm |
| Xperia 5 II | 158 mm | 68 mm |
| Xperia 10 II | 157 mm | 69 mm |
| Pixel 4a | 144 mm | 69.4 mm |
| Pixel 5 | 144.7 mm | 70.4 mm |
| Galaxy s21 | 151.7 mm | 71.2 mm |
| iPhone 12 | 146.7 mm | 71.5 mm |
We have sorted the table by width because we consider it to be the most important metric. No matter the height, the Xperia 5 II is the tallest phone on the list and it’s something you can definitely feel in your pocket.
This is also a good example that width and height are separate dimensions. Back in the days when 16: 9 screens were the norm, the two dimensions were closely related. But now we have all kinds of aspect ratios, so we’ve split this question into two separate polls.
Let’s start with the width. We went in 2mm steps to create multiple categories: 64-62mm category only has one phone (iPhone 12 mini), then 66-68mm and 68-70mm both have two phones , finally three telephones fall under the 70 -Category 72 mm.
We think this is a fair enough split, so 2mm should be precise enough to determine the perfect width.
Then we did something similar for the height, although this time we took 5mm steps. This divides the phones into several categories with only one or two phones in each. A smaller step would lead to too many options in the poll, which could dilute the results.
By the way, we’re not including screen size here, because the best screen is always the largest that can fit. Look at the iPhone 12 mini and iPhone SE (2020) – the 12 mini has the smallest footprint and yet its screen has more surface area. The 12 mini is clearly a better mini flagship than the SE.
