Monstrous minis: mini smartphones with full-sized specs

The upcoming Sony Honami i1 device is set to rock the flagship world with it's crazy specs list, but we've just seen the leak of a full-specced mini version of the Honami, codenamed Ray 3. This mini flagship will destroy the S4 mini and One mini, along with most flagship devices out right now. Could this be the start of a return to full-sized hardware specs on smaller screened devices? What do you think? Do you want to be able to get the full power of a flagship device on the mini version or do you think top-notch specs should only be found on the larger screen devices?

— modified on Aug 19, 2013, 11:56:33 AM

As our article said, Apple is really the only manufacturer putting full hardware into a smaller-screened phone (but then, they don't have a larger-screened version either!). Sony will be directly competing with them on device size and will be pretty unbeatable in terms of hardware, possibly even once the iPhone 5S comes out on September 10th. I think it's great that you will be able to get all the hardware specs on a phone that still fits in your pocket easily (I know some of you have bigger pockets and hands than me though!), so it will be interesting to see how it competes against the other minis and if Samsung and HTC put better specs in their next mini offerings.

The Sony Xperia Z1 f, or Honami Mini, has been officially announced for sale in Japan and it is everything we hoped it would be. It'll be hard to keep an international audience away from this beast so with any luck it will get an international release soon enough, hopefully with multiple storage options. If you convert the Japanese price it's around $730 US.

Good points Rutger. I never would have pegged Sony to have camera issues, but there you go. And updates are beginning to be a major issue for consumers. Again, not something you would have thought a few years ago, but now, in the shop, you won't just be dazzled by the phone you're looking at, but actually thinking about the OEMs record for rolling out timely OS updates and how quickly they drop handsets from the update list.