I remember liking the design of the Xperia active. https://m.gsmarena.com/sony_ericsson_xperia_active-3998.php

The fact that it was waterproof, had the built in strap holder for securing it.

Make it lightweight durable and super long battery life (small screen, OLED) and you have a great device you wouldn't need to baby.

Unfortunately it's never going to happen. They don't do niche phones now. Everyone seems to have accepted phones are going to be generic slabs of glass. All about the same size. Boring.

What I have always wanted from a phone since Android came out is what I had with my HTC Dream (the first android phone, slide out keyboard, trackball, oh god, I loved it). I had a super chunky extended battery which made it last multiple days on a single charge, or for someone such as myself made it last the full day. My current phone has a 5003mAh battery and is 8.9mm thick. I would happily take something that was 20mm thick to have all that space taken by a battery, which based on the dimensions of the battery is about 0.17Wh/mm^3. The remaining space should provide enough space for about 23500mAh which would bring the total to just under 29000mAh. At my current usage of charging twice a day from about 20% up to 100%, so around 4000mAh x2, and assuming we want to work between 20% and 80% for extended battery longevity, that would make about 17000mAh or just over 4 days of usage. That would be a delightfully chonky phone with the easy ability to keep the charge within the healthy range, not to mention the ability to have it stand on its side or upright without a stand in many cases.

I got an xz2 compact and was so excited about it. Then I realized that even thought it supported wifi calling, you could not used the feature on Verizon network. I tried so many different ways to get it to work, but bottom line was Verizon wouldn't allow the required FW. Since I lived somewhere with no cell service, I had to replace it. It's so sad that a phone can have features that can be blocked on some networks...