I get the appeal of small phones, but sheesh, you guys don’t have a lot of options.
I must say that there are wayyyy too many upstarts with closed-source software and hardware. We should fund the likes of Framework, Fairphone, and Librem, and be done with it.
Who knows, fund them enough, and Fairphone/Librem will start making small phones as well. Framework could start making phones, but I digress.
Ok, but locked bootloader. You can buy it but not own it. How is this even legal?
Is it? The article doesn’t say that, and I didn’t spot any statement either way on the Kickstarter or official website.
If it is the same i heard of yesterday and i didn’t confuse the name, then yes.
I am not subscribing to read this
The Enough Phone is made by and for people fed up with big screens
Nov 6, 2026 at 7:00 AM EST
It’s a bad time and maybe also a great time to make a new smartphone.
Brennan Jordan and Austin Boer are two-thirds of the trio behind the Enough Phone, a small phone that will run your choice of stock Android or the minimalist OdysseyOS. They’re currently seeking funding on Kickstarter, and just a day after launching, the project is over halfway to its $250,000 goal.
The Enough Phone’s target specifications include a 5.3-inch display, 3,500mAh user-replaceable battery, MediaTek Dimensity 7500 chipset, a 50-megapixel Sony sensor in the rear camera, and 8GB of RAM. The dimensions listed on the Kickstarter page suggest an iPhone Mini-ish size; Jordan and Boer also happen to be former iPhone Mini users themselves.
This prototype unit shows the user-removable back plate that will allow for simple battery swaps.
Photo: Enough Phone
The two of them cofounded a software startup called Sleke, which sells refurbished phones loaded with OdysseyOS, their minimalist, low-distraction version of Android. Putting the software on existing phones is a win for sustainability, but it also helps them get their software to market faster, Boer tells me. The pair offers small batches of Pixel 8 and 9 phones right now through the Sleke website, but the large devices didn’t feel quite right to some customers.
“One of the biggest things that we get is, ‘I don’t want this large of a phone for a minimal operating system,’” says Boer. They’d wanted to make a small phone, and the opportunity arrived when Will Stults approached them about creating one. Stults operates an online store for non-smartphones called Dumbwireless. He also brings familiarity with the smartphone manufacturing process to the mix thanks to some previous work with a “big” phone brand.
But hardware is hard in the best of times, and 2026 has proven extremely challenging for phone companies big and small. The chip shortage has driven prices up and made RAM scarce. Jordan and Boer are feeling the pressures, particularly around pricing. The Kickstarter campaign offers some discounts for early backers, but after that the Enough Phone will sell for $599. “We don’t want to be charging as much as we are,” says Boer, “but as a startup you can only do so much.” They’re a self-funded operation and want to keep it that way, he says, so they can choose their own priorities. Outside funding would change the dynamic and might put pressure on them to shorten their promised five years of software support or cut other costs.
As it stands, the project is on schedule. According to the Kickstarter page, it’s in the production tooling phase, with plans to ship phones to customers in May 2027 — though a footnote says that the RAM shortage’s “ripple effects across the entire electronics manufacturing industry” could still throw a wrench in the works.
Prospects for small phone fans (disclosure: I am one) were bleak even before the chip crisis. Apple’s last Mini was released five years ago, and there’s no indication of another one in sight. Asus’ Zenfone used to be a nice, small-ish Android option before the company made it bigger and quit selling it in the US. Pebble founder Eric Migicovsky made a lot of noise about launching a small phone, but has since shifted priorities. And there’s Unihertz’s Jelly Max — certainly small, but its specs lag behind a modern midrange phone.
Boer sees this gap as an opportunity, even in the midst of a global RAM crisis. “Nobody was doing it, and we’re kind of seeing why — because it’s not the ideal time to start. But that also kind of makes it the ideal time to start, because no one else is doing it,” he says. “Let’s just do it ourselves.” Enough is enough. At least that’s what they’re hoping.
I’m really surprised by the lack of open-source OS choices.
I’m just going to keep buying refurbished iPhone SEs until that becomes impractical. Then I’ll see what the market is like.
why iPhone SE?
Because the original SE is the smallest somewhat modern phone you can get.
Because, as with the Enough, it’s smaller. I can use it with one hand unlike any bigger phone. And the SE3 has eSIM, WiFi 6, and 5G. Apart from replacing the battery from time to time, it will continue to work for a long time.
How often do you need to replace your phone?
I replaced my Samsung S4 when the UK dropped 3G. My second-hand S10+ is still perfectly fine.
The article says it runs OdysseyOS. It’s not open source? Looks like it’s based on AOSP.
Lack meaning that’s the only OS they mention. I’m wondering what kind of software support it will have in the future.
It’s not cheap enough. Also doesn’t have enough headphone jacks. Though, I think more phones should use Thunderbolt — and more phone users should understand that Thunderbolt is not an Apple protocol, but an Intel one, Apple’s just the one most known for using it, since they slap it on everything, because it’s awesome.
Give me a phone with Thunderbolt 5 and I won’t complain about the headphone jack or an SD card slot, because then you’re going to see phone docks with USB, Ethernet, SD/microSD, HDMI/DisplayPort, internal M.2 SSD, etc, most of which won’t be necessary, but imagine if your phone could just be your computer and plug into a dock. We have the technology but no one puts it on phones. Samsung is close with Dex, but it’s not very good and it isn’t automatic (and their ports lack the bandwidth). With as much as phones are going up, it should be a given that they could double as computers.
Its main selling point is its size? It’s still almost as big as most other phones! If you truly wanted to downsize the Unihertz Jelly series is a way better option.
Except that the Unihertz is 19mm thick.
The Jelly has a much smaller footprint than all other phones to make up for the thickness, and the Enough Phone is lacking on that front. It’s 12 mm thick. That’s really thick compared to an iPhone 13 Mini (that shares the same footprint) at 7.7 mm thick, and to most other phones tbh.
I agree the Enough is also too thick. I’d be more interested if they made it 10mm or less at the expense of battery life.
Every time I see the next “phone for people who dislike modern phones” concept they never address my problem. A phone should not cost more than $100.
A phone that actually costs less than $100 will make money from something other than its purchase price.
In some markets, that means the carrier subsidizing the phone and charging you a high monthly rate. I would counter that phone service should not cost more than $15/month.
The other thing it might do is preload adware, spyware, or outright malware.
For that kinda money, you should get yourself a flip phone. They still exist. ;)
It’s barely economical to address it. Hard to pay off r&d and setting up production. Also, would probably require own Android fork or entire different OS with a lot of tradeoffs to run smoothly on ultracheap hardware.
I’m willing to pay upwards of £300 max, but it should also include being able to have a SIM card AND an SD card, as well as a headphone jack.
I just bought 2x sony experia xa2’s off ebay for £15each - so as I have some back ups for if i lose my other one. Unlockable bootloader so long as sony keeps its developer website thingy open. lineage os (dependant on above) . headphone port. micro-sd card slot. decent size. I don’t see any downsides - i don’t understand why people get rid of em. Maybe they don’t know about lineage OS.
£300 for a fucking phone ? good on you if you can afford that.
I bought a new Nokia E63 for AU$199 in 2009 (around US$160 at the time). I liked that phone! It had a QWERTY keyboard. Replaced it with a Samsung Galaxy S3 in 2013.
$100 or even $200 is likely not doable for a modern touchscreen phone, unfortunately.
HMD (the new nokia) have the Fusion for AU$500 ($340), I got one on offer to play around for €150 a couple of months ago as you can unlock the bootloader.
Have you considered a trip to India?
Neat, but a headphone jack is a must for me.
Ironically, the Lite phone was supposedly supposed to be a bare minimum phone minus all the mainstream smartphone stuff. Their poor marketing and outreach has not made them known and tbh, the price that they charge for what is essentially a “dumb” phone in 2026 is outrageous.
Capitalism just ruins everything man.
That seems quite expensive for a tiny phone with hardly anything in it. Good luck to them.
Low volume means higher price.
Anyone ever got a phone from kickstarer? Can you trust it will deliver updates 5 years from now?
Can you trust it will deliver updates 5 years from now?
My gut says no, because the company probably doesn’t exist in 5 years.
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I just want a modern Motorola RAZR, and I don’t mean the current RAZR. Ideally I’d want a 1:1 recreation of the V3xx with modern components and 5G and so on. Like the Light Flip I guess but not as chunky.
And yes, I’ve seen the Vortex V3 and it kinda sucks.
I was in high school when razrs came out and I never had one, but they were pretty popular in my school. I don’t know if it was just the comparison with Nokias, or that all the razr owners I knew were children, but they broke constantly.
Were they better than I remember if you treated them well?
Were they better than I remember if you treated them well?
I briefly had a V3i in like 2010. Never knew anyone who also had one.
Did yours ever break?
I’ve never really had a phone break unreasonably- I went from Nokias to super old iPhones and even though I drop them on tile, concrete, and cobblestones pretty frequently, I just get good cases and I’ve been pretty lucky. Sometimes the screens crack, but I’ve had to replace them more due to storage than anything else (I had 8, 16, and 32 gig models that just don’t work with modern OSs and apps anymore, but I did also run one over with a car, and that reasonably made it mostly unusable).
No, I don’t think what happened to it though.
And as it would be Motorola, perhaps it would run Graphene OS.
It wouldn’t even need to run Android, something like KaiOS would be enough IMO.
Edit: Nvm, KaiOS seems to be based on Android?
This
Seems a bit pricey, but they know their target demography - well situated white collar workers fed up with modern tech, and those will be ready to pay a premium.
seems like a modern phone with all the modern bullshit, except small. no thanks
Wow nice idea, but $600 is kinda a bit much. I’ve never paid more than $80.
You either talk about used phones, or you do not understand the concept of a telecom provider’s business model.
