📱 Phone Decision

One hard constraint: the phone must be narrower than your thumb is long. Your iPhone SE (2nd/3rd gen) is 67.3 mm wide — that's the bar everything here is measured against. Researched 2026-09-22; every width is the manufacturer's spec.

The blunt answer: nothing new in 2026 is as narrow as your SE. Asus killed the compact Zenfone after the Zenfone 10 (2023, 68.1 mm) and then quit phones entirely in January 2026. Sony's compact Xperia 10 went from 68 mm to 72 mm. Apple's narrowest current phone is 71.5 mm. The 67 mm class is dead on the new market.
So there are only three real moves. (1) Buy a used phone that's still SE-width or narrower — the iPhone 13 mini is narrower than what you have. (2) Accept +4.2 mm and buy new — test it in your hand first. (3) Go niche: the Unihertz Jelly Max is the only new phone on sale narrower than your SE, and it's a 16 mm-thick oddball.
Doing nothing is a real option this year. iOS 27 dropped no iPhones — your SE 3 is still on the current OS, and so is every phone on this page's "used" list. A battery replacement is the cheapest move on the board.

1 · Set your actual limit

Everything below re-sorts itself around these two numbers. Don't guess — measure.

How to measure your thumb in millimetres, right now

  1. Grab any credit/debit card. Every one is exactly 85.60 × 53.98 mm — a free ruler in your wallet.
  2. Lay your thumb along the card's long edge, base crease of the thumb at one corner.
  3. Where the tip lands: at the card's short edge it's ~54 mm; halfway along the long edge ~43 mm; past the far end, over 85 mm.
  4. Cross-check the answer you already trust: your SE is 67.3 mm wide and you can work it one-handed, so your thumb is at least 67 mm.

Measure the usable span — base crease to tip — not just the last joint. And measure with the hand relaxed; you don't grip a phone with a hyperextended thumb.

67.5 mm

Default assumes the minimum your SE already proves. If you measured more, raise it — it opens up real options.

+4.0 mm

This is the trap. A slim case adds ~2–3 mm of total width, a rugged one 5–7 mm. The phone you hold is never the phone on the spec sheet.

2 · Actual size, and where your thumb reaches

Every phone below is drawn to the same scale — these are real footprints, not icons. The blue wedge is your thumb swept from the bottom-left corner, the way it pivots when you hold a phone in one hand: anything outside the blue is a two-hand reach. The dashed outline is the phone once your case is on it.

← scroll sideways for the rest of the field →

Outline colour = the fit verdict at your current slider settings. The wedge is a simplification — a real thumb pivots from a joint set back from the corner, so treat it as optimistic, not generous.

3 · Every candidate, by width

Bars are body width plus your case setting. The solid line is your thumb; the dashed line is your current SE. Scale starts at 55 mm so the differences are visible.

fits your thumb within 2.5 mm — try before you buy wider than your thumb

4 · The candidates

5 · Ruled out, so you don't re-research them

Flip foldables (Razr, Galaxy Z Flip). Folding is vertical — it halves the height and leaves the width alone. The Razr 60 is 73.99 mm wide open and closed: wider than any slab on your shortlist. Pocketable ≠ one-handed.
Anything named Plus, Pro Max, Ultra, or Fold. 76–78 mm. Not close.
"One-handed mode" as a fix. iOS Reachability and Android one-handed mode slide the top of the screen down — they help with height, not width. Your constraint is the span across the glass, which software can't shrink.
Unihertz Jelly Star / Atom (≈50 mm). Narrow enough, but a 3 in screen is a pager, not a phone. Listed for completeness only.

6 · What I'd actually do

  1. Measure the thumb with the card trick and set the slider. If it comes out at 72 mm or more, this whole problem dissolves and you can shop the mainstream.
  2. Go hold an iPhone 17e at an Apple Store or carrier shop — it's the narrowest new phone worth owning (71.5 mm, $599). Unlock it one-handed, thumb to the far corner, and do it with a case on the display model if there is one. This is a 10-minute errand that settles the whole decision.
  3. If it fails the hand test: buy a refurbished iPhone 13 mini (~$250). It's 64.2 mm — 3 mm narrower and 7 mm shorter than your SE — with a bigger 5.4 in screen, and it runs iOS 27 today. Buy from Back Market or Swappa with battery health listed at 90%+, or budget $89 for Apple to replace the battery.
  4. If it passes: the 17e at $599 is the obvious buy — current A19 chip, 256 GB, and years of iOS ahead of it. If you want to try Android on the same width, the Galaxy S26 (71.7 mm) is the same size class with a better screen.
  5. Either way, sign up at smallandroidphone.com (free, 30 seconds). It's the only organized pressure to build a 64 mm Android again; it needs 50,000 signups and is sitting at ~41,000. Don't wait for it — there's no ship date — but push the counter.

Prices are September 2026 street prices from Swappa / Back Market / manufacturer sites and will drift. Widths are manufacturer specs and don't drift.