Small Phones Have Vanished. Enough Phone Wants to Bring Them Back

Do you hate the size of modern-day smartphones? Wonder why Apple stopped manufacturing iPhone Minis? Turned off by the unwieldy size of an unfolded iPhone Duo? Well, then you might be interested in the Enough Phone.It's a brand-new Android handset whose biggest draw is its small size. With a 5.3-inch screen, it's tiny in an era when most smartphone displays sit at around 6.3 inches, like the iPhone 17.Most smartphone manufacturers have abandoned the small phone. Apple stopped selling the iPhone Mini in 2023 because of poor sales; on the Android side, Asus was one of the few phone makers churning out compact phones under its Zenfone line, but it paused its mobile division early this year to focus on AI, robotics, and smart glasses. Sony also discontinued its compact Xperia 5 series in 2023 (and has stopped selling its phones in the US).Smaller players have jumped in to fill the void, like Unihertz and its keyboard-equipped tiny phones. Clicks—a relatively new company that makes keyboard accessories for smartphones—is launching the Communicator in December, a 4-inch Android phone with a keyboard. Other devices focus more on digital well-being and don't offer the traditional mobile experience, resembling “dumb phones,” including the Light Phone III, Minimal Phone, or Mudita Kompakt.But the Enough Phone, launching today on Kickstarter for $499 (with a final price estimated around $599), takes a slightly more unique approach. When you buy it, you can choose Android 17 as the operating system and access all your favorite apps on the compact screen. Or you can choose OdysseyOS from Sleke—an Android fork with a dumb-phone-like software experience.The handsets are expected to ship in May of 2027.Courtesy of Enough PhoneCourtesy of Enough PhoneAustin Boer, Brennan Jordan, and William Stults are the trio behind the Enough Phone. Boer and Jordan manage Sleke—a company founded in 2024 that sells refurbished Google Pixel smartphones running its restricted OdysseyOS, which lets users access utility apps like Uber, Google Authenticator, and Spotify, but strips away social media, games, browsers, and anything else designed to keep you glued to your screen.Stults, on the other hand, helps run an ecommerce platform called Dumbwireless, founded with his girlfriend. The duo vet dumb phones on the market and sell them on the platform alongside a wireless plan powered by Gigs to make switching to a dumb phone as frictionless as possible.Stults met Boer and Jordan years ago through Dumbwireless, which carries the Sleke Phone. Sleke's approach was entirely software-based, as it upcycles Google Pixel phones, but a smartphone with a dumbed-down operating system doesn't need much screen space. Stults also liked that, out of all the dumb phones he's tried, Sleke's OdysseyOS has the least friction—you can still access many of the apps necessary to get through the day, like Uber, Spotify, and WhatsApp. You don't have to go cold turkey.Once the major mobile players made it clear they no longer wanted to bother with small phones, the idea for the Enough Phone was born. Boer, Jordan, and Stults have no direct experience in the smartphone or feature phone industry (though a few of Sleke's engineers do). When I asked what each of their roles is, Jordan said they haven't given each other titles yet.The Enough Phone is a 5.3-inch Android handset with a polycarbonate build. It looks simple—it only comes in black—but you'll notice the four Torx screws on the back. Like the Fairphone, you can remove those screws and replace the phone’s battery, in compliance with upcoming European Union regulations. The phone is 12 millimeters thick to accommodate a chunky battery—around 3,500 to 4,000 mAh, as the company is still finalizing some specs—for “all-day” battery life. That’s pretty thick for a phone; the iPhone 13 Mini is a little more than half that thickness, and the iPhone 17 measures 7.8 mm.The Enough Phone is second from the right, next to the iPhone 12 Mini. On its left are the iPhone 6 and the Google Pixel 9. Courtesy of Enough PhoneIt's powered by a midrange MediaTek Dimensity 7500 processor, with 8 GB of RAM and 128 GB of internal storage. It has a hybrid SIM slot that lets you expand storage via microSD, with eSIM support and 5G connectivity. No, there's no headphone jack—Boer says internal space was limited, and the team wanted to keep the price under $600. There's a fingerprint sensor integrated into the side-mounted power button, NFC for contactless payments, a 32-megapixel selfie camera, and a single 50-megapixel Sony camera on the back. It will work on T-Mobile, and the company plans to get it certified on AT&T. (You also can get a mobile plan directly from Enough Phone.)If the crowdfunding campaign hits its goal, you’ll be able to get a midrange Android phone in a size that's hard to find on the market. However, things like camera quality and battery run time are still big unknowns. If you go with Sleke's OdysseyOS, you're effectively buying a “smart” dumb phone, since you’re software-limiting your hardware so it can’t run any of the infinitely scrolling apps that demand your attention. Stults says you might be able to switch between Sleke's OS and Android in the future, but that's not confirmed.OdysseyOS has an app store that Sleke curates. Users can manually request that an Android app be made available, but Sleke will make the final call. News apps, browsers, multimedia apps, social media, and games aren't allowed, but utility-focused apps are, like banking, smart home, two-factor authentication, and so on. For messaging, you can use Beeper, which brings all of your chat apps together in one place—so you can still respond to Instagram DMs even without the Instagram app. If you want to look something up, Sleke offers a Perplexity-powered search bar to give you text-based answers. You can scan QR codes too. Jordan thinks most customers will opt for Sleke's OdysseyOS.“We don't want people to have this for a year and put it in the drawer or have it as a gag item,” Stults says. “We're really hoping this could be a five-year phone for people.” To that end, the company is pledging to support the device until 2032. (Most flagship Android phone makers pledge seven years of support.)You might be wondering where exactly the demand for smaller phones is coming from if all the major smartphone makers have given up on the size. But Enough Phone isn't planning to serve the massive smartphone market—as Boer says, what his team deems successful versus Apple is very different. He points to people who still use the iPhone Mini and its cult-like following.“They just want a slightly smaller phone, and that has yet to be served in a meaningful way since the Mini,” Jordan says. “What's not a success for Apple could be a home run for us.”