// WIRED US/UK — MOBILE & WEB
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.
Austin 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.