Doogee Smini
I do have Cubot King Kong Mini (1,2), after 6 years I can say this phone has ideal sizes (for meTM). However the battery is dying, proximity sensor stopped to work, something is going on with microphone (people have troubles to hear me). I work in dusty environment, thus any phone that does not at least declare some kind of protection is ruled out. KKM Android 9 is getting old, some apps refuse to work anymore. Thus I decided to give a try to Doogee S mini.
Smini
This phone on paper has everything the basic small phone has to have - small, relatively light, good speaker and loud speaker for noisy environment, is somewhat IP68 rated, notification LED, outstanding camera (+separate macro), fingerprint sensor, extra button, 18W fast charging (measured 16W max), NFC,,... "just" the main display is sub-optima. Even thou it declares 4.5" its ratio makes everything smaller than on KKM even thou android settings are at max sizes. The developer option for "smallest width" can not be adjusted to less then 320, which is already default.
The max brightness of the display is also lower than KKMs. The rear display (DigitalScreen in settings) is mostly useless and can not be set until you enable location (the temperature and humidity is read from some weather website, definitely not measured by the phone), what is worse is that if one places the phone at its back it sits on this screen + the same glass is shared with camera - when this gets damaged the camera will be useless. The edges of everything on the phone are rough - buttons, bezels, and this rear display borders are just sharp to touch.
Finger print is fast, phone came with charger, cable and screen protector which is nice, but screen protector makes me crazy when swiping from top as the protective glass is not covering front camera and with every swipe you hit the sharp top edge of the protector.. also this size of the display is already uncomfortable with one hand as reaching the display top means you have to change the phone grip. Phone has a notification LED, but there is a limited (almost no) configurability - charging (red <15%, blue when charging < 90%, green when full), phone call and SMS notification, for calendar its not working for some reason. The Easy key (additional button) is great addition and mapping there flashlight is a breeze compared to hasl you have to undergo for other phones (flashlight LED is not very bright thou). For the hell I can not change the camera app there are no options to clear the default camera disable it or replace the app started with double power button tap. The USB-C rubber plug is replaceable with screw, which is wise because on KKM you have to disassemble the phone to replace it, thus I do not have it for some time already comprising the USB-C port for dust and watter. Phone does not have a lanyard loop hole (what an oversight)!
Phone weight (measured) is 155g, while this is just 30g more than KKM you can feel it's different.
For some reason beyond my understanding, I can not start Google Photo application on this phone/android without google accound - it insists that I have to "Keep your memories safe" and "Sign in for backup". No way to go further without sign in.
Specific problems: In app list the phone is randomly switching to landscape mode (no idea why, sensor is calibrated).
Android rant
Now to the android and it's doogee version. First the general rant about android - google is forcing the android to use higher and higher resolutions with newer android versions as "minimal". The android itself is bloody ineffective in using a screen and small screens are suffering most. I have on old Samsung Xcover 271 (dumbphone) that has 2" (?) screen - everything is readable and screen is used to fit maximum possible. Android dialogs, settings etc are wasting so many pixels for nothing.
On KKM android the top menu to enable/disable wifi, BT, airplain mode etc. were just icons, on Smini these are icons plus text - the text does not fit to the "bubble" scrolling instantly, bubbles are big the icons and texts are tiny. I do not understand who the hell came with this stupidity. Next I do not get is why clicking on the wifi on/off opens a dialog instead just switching wifi on/off as it used to do. For some reason the quickstep launcher on this Smini is not able to "shorten" the names of the applications under icons, with increased font size, they are overflowing and being cut. On KKM the names were shorted with three dots like "Messag..." to at least fit.
This android version is using everywhere the onscreen button pairs like for call to "accept + deny", alarm "snooze + stop", while pevious versions were using a "swipe gesture" on button to accept the call (while in phone settings it says "incomming call gesture hoizontal swipe"...
The next big android pain is that apps you used to install few years back are just gone - either orphaned, not compatible with newer android version, their licensing changed or not available at all. This makes every transition to a new phone painful, not speaking about "offline" (local) transition, that is merely not supported, while there is absolutely NO reason why it should not be possible to transfer data like contacts, SMS, call logs, wifi passwords, app profiles and data via e.g. BT or just hotspot on one phone connected to wifi on the other one. There are third party attempts but there is too many of them, most of them not working for "you" as they are not maintained or are not able to solve all the android versioning puzzles. Google in Android 12+ deprecated the adb backup/restore functionality and its not possible to transfer app data thru them to smini.
Many people is asking why there are no small phones. The reason is the same as why there are no notification LEDs, why there are no persistent calendar event ringing/alarm - these OSs/phones are tuned to make you constantly check your display, drawing your attention, binding you to the "social" media content notifications and forcing you doomscroll the advertisements.
Transfer
Opera - tabs->list->select all->add to->bookmarks, main->accounts->bookmarks->...->Export
main->accounts->passworss->settings->export
When copyiing photos, the creation date is lost!!! Make sure to copy them via tar otherwise you have to fix the date with adb shell or
exiftool "-FileModifyDate<DateTimeOriginal" -r /path/to/photosnot possible thru mtp.
SMS Import/Export could be used to transfer SMS, Contacts, Call logs... but contacts could be still exported via Contacts app to vcf, Calednar to ics (then use Calendar Impot/Export), Barcode scaner can export too, same for FreeOTP
WiFi passwords are not possible to extract on Android 9 at all (without root), on A13 you can share the network via QR.
After I disabled most of Google staff in Apps, I can not open anymore local Google Calendar and local Google Photo - both want me to enable network and login somewhere?! Switched to Etar cal. with ICSx for exported calendars and using just Google Files.
Missed Notifications Reminder is not working anymore, Event Reminder app is in free version having only 10s alarm. Ted text editor is not even in repositories anymore, but can be installed from apk and works.
So you buy a "smart" phone for big money, but it can not do a basic tasks that "dumb" phones can do 20 years ago fluently, but it can create a heap of junk notifications, voice assistant popups, suggestings on "privacy for ads", cloud synchronizations, TV, captions, pedometer (can not be turned off)... etc.