The Sony Xperia 5 V is a 6.1-inch smartphone with Android 13 that is equipped with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 and its Adreno 740 GPU. It also comes with 128 GB of internal storage and 8 GB of RAM. Other features include a 2520 x 1080 pixel OLED panel with Gorilla Glass Victus 2, dual-SIM operation with eSIM, WiFi 6E, a dual 48 MP camera as well as stereo speakers and a 5000 mAh battery. Charging up to 30 watts and wireless charging are supported.
IMHO frame width matters more than anything else for one-handed use. Personally I would love to see a modern phone with flagship specs at <65mm wide but I doubt it’ll ever happen again.
<70mm wide is what passes for “compact” nowadays.
Galaxy S23: 70.9mm
Pixel 7: 73.2mm
iPhone 15: 71.6
Zenfone 10: 68.1
Xperia Five-Five: 68mm
For comparison, the Xperia Z3 Compact in 2014 was 64.9mm wide. Even in 2014 it was one of the smaller phones available, and widely regarded as the best “compact” phone.
The only other phones released since 2022 that are compatible with my network and under 68mm wide are the iPhone SE and the Xperia Five-Four.
At this point I don’t know what I’ll get for my next phone. I might just give up on one-handed use and get the biggest slab that can still fit in my pockets.
Really, you want a narrow phone? The difference in width is the biggest thing I dislike about the new longer-aspect-ratio phones. I used to use a Moto z, which was 16x9 aspect ratio instead of the modern 20x9 and that’s the biggest thing I miss - the typing that wide screen was heavenly.
I’ve been using gesture typing for about a decade now. On my Pixel 7, I have Gboard set in mini mode so I can swipe over it with one thumb. For me, a narrower phone would make typing easier, not harder.
That’s funny, I have the same phone, but I’m naturally a two-thumb typer. When I gesture-type I still find it okay, though even without the mini mode. I’m a short guy but I guess I’ve got big flexible thumbs.
I used to lie down on the sofa and surf Reddit two-thumb typing in landscape mode on my old Moto Z, which is why I really miss 16:9 screens - on 20:9 screens the keyboard obscures the entire text area in landscape you literally can’t see what you’re typing, so I can’t do that anymore. I was a huge landscape-typing fan, I used to even own a side-slider keyboard phone. I bought the Moto Z initially because of the Livermorium side-slider keyboard Moto Mod… which never materialized.
My dream phone would probably be the size of a Pixel 4a but with a 16:9 aspect ratio and some kind of Moto Mod architecture for snap-on batteries and game controllers and the like. I’m still salty that failed.
Makes sense. I’ve been considering moving to an open-source keyboard out of privacy concerns, none of which (in my experience so far) have good gesture typing. So I might switch back to double-thumbing it and end up in the same boat as you.