Small Android Phone is developing a phone with modern specs and a small display

Smartphone screens have gotten larger and larger in recent years. It’s increasingly difficult to find a phone with decent specs and a display smaller than 6 inches.  So last year Eric Migicovsky wrote an ode to small-screen phones and asked other folks who were interested in one to sign a survey to express their interest.

Now it looks like Migicovsky has assembled a small team of people looking to turn the Small Android Phone idea into reality.

While anyone can just say they want to build a phone, Migicovsky has a bit of credibility in the hardware space. He founded Pebble, an early innovator in the smartwatch space (and early Kickstarter success story). Pebble was eventually acquired and killed by Fitbit… which was then acquired and killed by Google. Pebble watches developed a small but loyal fanbase – thousands of people were still using the watches as of a few months ago.

So Migicovsky and other folks from Pebble do know a thing or two about hardware and software development, and the Small Android Phone team includes a number of Pebble alumni.

At this point, the team seems to be kicking around ideas for the phone. Specs haven’t been finalized yet, but The Verge reports that the team has been showing concepts and talking to community members in “a small Discord.”

Among other things, the first Small Android Phone will likely have near-flagship specs and features such as a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 or a next-gen Snapdragon 7 series chip, a decent camera system headed by an approximately 50MP sensor, plus camera software that will allow users to snap high-quality photos.

Odds are that the phone will sell for around $850 despite having the kind of specs you might find from a $650 to $700 phone from a larger company. That’s the cost of buying a niche device from a startup that won’t be getting the same kind of discount pricing that comes from manufacturing high-volume components: the Small Android Team expects to manufacturer tens of thousands of phones for its first batch, while companies like Samsung and Apple manufacturer millions.

But in an interview with The Verge, Benjamin Bryant, one of the project’s leaders, says the team is already in talks with a “Tier 1” manufacturer, meaning the phone would actually be assembled by one of the companies responsible for many other high-quality phones on the market.

Of course, one of the hardest components to source will likely be the screen. Like I said, most phones these days have bigger screens, so it might be tough to find off-the-shelf displays that are appropriate for a small-screen phone. That could mean the team will have to develop its own screens, which would likely drive the price even higher.

Once the hardware, design, and potential manufacturing partner are settled on, the next step will most likely be a crowdfunding campaign to raise the money to actually build the Small Android Phone.

In other words, there’s no guarantee that this thing is actually going to get made. But there’s at least a chance that a small team of developers with relatively modest sales goals could pull off the production of something that larger phone makers are no longer interested in making: phones with small displays for the handful of die-hard loyalists who still call big-screen phones phablets.

You can read more about the Small Android Phone project at The Verge.