I'd would love such an initiative, but there is the already mentioned question of the blobs, but also a not mentioned one: how to get an agreement on the phone external design?

some would want a hw keyboard.
some would want a 5" screen
some would want a 4" screen
etc etc

It was stated before but there are already countless devices out there with big screens so the only thing they need is a Sailfish port, and we don't need yet another 5+ inch slab to add to the pile. Almost none have a smaller screen, and none have a hardware keyboard. One device with a 4- inch screen and a hardware keyboard wouldn't be a bad idea. Put some Apple or Google marketing people on it and it'll be hailed as 'Innovative Small Smartphone With Real Keyboard Ready To Take The World By Storm'. It's certainly an untapped market.

Thread discussing power consumption of the rpi zero

Rephone might be better as a starting point. Some interesting projects are discussed on their forum.

I think nthn is right that all the slab hardware is out there, what isn't out there is a small device (Xperia X Compact is the best you'll get and even that isn't N9 small) and keyboards (much beloved by this community, although personally I can take them or leave them) have all but dried up too.

So we're going to ask a Chinese ODM to make us a Cyanogen-powered Lauta, right? Then feverishly try to get the hardware adaptation done before the thing becomes obsolete, which probably (unless one of us is a hotshot with acres of free time) means paying someone to do it full-time (if it's even possible with the level of non-cooperation you'd get from your average ODM), then paying Jolla to license SFOS?

Sign me up.
I think.
Oh and make it an OLED screen so we can get our LPM back please!

I vote Xperia mini pro

There are no Sailfish OS MediaTek ports yet, but it's possible given that Ubuntu Touch works on MediaTek devices and there is going to be official SFOS device from Oysters with MediaTek CPU. The port is doable as long as they can give kernel sources (Android device tree would be nice too, but is not a must since most of MTK SoCs have device trees leaked already).

The question is what kind of customizations can they offer and what will be the price/minimal order. Hardware keyboard is going to be hard, probably, since there are no such devices manufactured currently.

I also agree there are plenty 4.5" and bigger smartphone on the market.

But, let's not talk in term of screen diagonal, when we say we want a small screen, I'm pretty sure we mean we want a 60 mm maximum wide phone. With such a width, we can expect a 4.3" 720p screen.

If we want to make things a bit more realistic we've to choose a hardware which is the closest possible of something already existing on the market. So, personaly, I don't vote for a HW keyboard.

And we've to find how to get a realistic external design.

If the port issues with the keyboard layout and some other issues can be solved, I expect there will be a sudden surge in second hand Xperia Mini Pros sold - even though it has an old processor and not a lot of RAM. For anyone interested, there are a lot of Xperia Mini Pros being sold on the Polish and Portuguese versions of OLX.

nthn, if xperia is ok for you then fix keyboard layout by yourself. Sailfish use xkb so it's "easy".

Maybe we need to convince sony to make a new Xperia Mini Pro :P