Consider giving Steven Erikson a try. Malazan Book of the Fallen is huge and time-consuming, but his style of writing is worth the effort in terms of story and character development. His Willful Child series is Sci-Fi and might provide a way of sampling his very unique style without diving into Fantasy.

Someday we’ll get that planned SGU conclusion. Someday…

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I was going to say that the Mini should be pretty cheap now that it’s two generations old – the 13 is down to $629 new, after all, and the Mini ought to be $100 cheaper…

But it looks like Mini demand has actually driven prices much higher than the normal 13. Strange, almost as if there IS demand for small phones…

The Z fold is 67.1mm across in folded mode. The iPhone 12 & 13 Mini is 64.2mm.

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Bad summary. TL;DR:

• Almost all phones used to be a lot smaller than the smallest phones today
• Today’s “small” phones are basically all the same size as the standard Apple and Samsung models. There’s nothing smaller.
• Sony and Google’s phones are honkin big.
• Folding phones are really honkin big unfolded, so if you have small hands, you’re screwed unless you never open them.
• Unihertz makes shitty small phones for people who aren’t very picky.
• Small Android Phone, a project started by the former founder of Pebble, is struggling to source a display smaller than the current Apple and Samsung flagships. The best candidates are a folding phone cover screen and refurbished iPhone Mini screens.
• Small Android Phone is concerned that their window of opportunity is closing and many small phone lovers will move to larger phones before they can launch.
• The author, a current small phone lover and recovering physical keyboard addict, was bamboozled into buying a Z Flip on sale. It is both thick and very large when unfolded, and will likely end in tears.
• “AI” summarizers are literal garbage that will make you miss very important details in any stories you trust them to read for you.

It’s a tradeoff of convenience. I want the jack because it’s a universal standard that doesn’t require external batteries or the right alignment of the stars for proper functionality. Quality has been fine since the dawn of the smartphone, IMO, at least for earbuds. You’re still free to use a USB DAC if there’s a jack!

I’ve been running a setup much like this for a year and a half now. I ended up buying a Samsung T5 2TB USB drive and plugging it into my RPi 4. Works amazingly, performance is ideal. And there’s even a way to boot from a USB SSD if you want to avoid SD card wear.

Why the T5 and not a higher tier SSD? Turns our the T7 and higher chips only benefit from speeds if you’ve got a thunderbolt port, consume a lot of extra power, and generate a ton of extra heat. The T5 will hopefully hold up better over time since it’s almost always cool to the touch. Performance has not been an issue.

Of course, you could also look into SBC with built-in PCIe ports and plug an SSD right in.