>iOS 13 drops support for the iPhone 5S, 6 and 6+. These iPhones currently account for 17% of my userbase.
A shame to see. I like my SE and will own one for as long as Apple allows, but designers are already forgetting to account for the 320 screen width. I see it with increasing regularity, in apps and on the web. I'd imagine that this will only accelerate once the SE is the only 4" screen left.
I don't get it! My hands are probably bigger than 95% of all humans, and I don't think a phone needs to be much bigger than the SE.
> I don't get it! My hands are probably bigger than 95% of all humans
This seems to be a recurring pattern, big-handed people as the last holdouts of the non-gigantic phone screen. Apparently the smaller-handed have given up on single-handed use several phone generations ago, so they have nothing to lose from even bigger phones.
(Written with one hand on a way too big XZ2 Compact)
> Apparently the smaller-handed have given up on single-handed use several phone generations ago, so they have nothing to lose from even bigger phones.
Yes, we do - RSI issues on the medical front and at some point you also simply exceed pocket size. For some of my jeans, a current generation Google Pixel barely fits into the pockets without sticking out at the top.
For me the ideal phone would be an iPhone SE running Android. There must be a market for this sort of thing and it doesn't make any sense to me that no company is even trying to play in it.
That's a silly statement. Nearly every woman I know carries it in the back pocket of her jeans/pants. Some will also carry it in their purse when her clothes don't have usable pockets.
This is entirely dependent on where you live, and where iPhone sales are concentrated. Look at the charts in [1] below. iPhone sales in China + Japan + the world > US + Europe. Women in Asia more frequently wear skirts to work, and tend to carry purses/shoulderbags more than, say, a casually-dressed American woman might. So it's not silly for >50% of iPhone sales (and also >50% of our species, see [2] below) to be heavily impacted by the market in countries where women "dressing down" is less tolerated or prevalent.
Note: I'm a dude who also prefers smaller phones. I have a used iPhone 5S but my primary phones are a slightly larger Android phone and a very large rugged Chinese phone (giant battery, dual SIM, good RAM, this is my travel phone).
No, it's silly to assume that your experiences are the only experiences that exist.
Nearly every woman I know carries it in the back pocket of her jeans/pants
Most of the women I know only wear jeans on weekends. And some, not even then. I don't own a pair of jeans at all. My wife has one that she breaks out for Halloween or gardening.
Some will also carry it in their purse when her clothes don't have usable pockets.
Some women can't carry a purse with them all day to stick a phone in. For example, shopgirls in high-end boutiques, who can't hold a purse while doing their jobs, and also wear clothing that more often than not does not have pockets.
At one time Burberry made a cross-body purse that was just a strap and a tasteful phone case. It was very popular among the class of women for whom jeans aren't a fashion go-to.
> No, it's silly to assume that your experiences are the only experiences that exist.
It's impolite to mansplain. Tracyshaun was course-correcting the following generalization:
> Women have been putting them in purses instead of pants pockets for a long time. Pockets usually aren't even an option for womens' clothing.
It's doubly impolite to put words in someone's mouth, such as stating that someone is assuming their own experiences are the only ones that matter ("your experiences are the only experiences that exist" -- not something Tracyshaun said or even implied). When read appropriately, Tracyshaun's comment reads as disputing a generalization with Tracyshaun's own personal experiences and those of friends.
We can make HN an even better place to comment by correcting such generalizations the way Tracyshaun did and not mansplaining people for re-baselining our expectations.
Because it's the only pocket available on most of our pants. The front pockets are sewn shut or cut in half to maintain a feminine silhouette in jeans. They often remove the zipper for the same reason.
Even this back pocket is small and a bad way to carry a phone, as evidenced by the fact that you can see it sticking out. You can't sit and you can't run without the fear of dropping it.
There is, but I'm not sure it's big enough. Sony plugged away at it for years with their Compact devices, and they were... not bad, all things considered. But they've stopped with the latest generation.
Ha. I finally gave up my "real" denim jeans and started wearing "stretchy" jeans because it was difficult to even walk, and forget sitting down, with my phone in the pockets.
I'm still on a Z3 compact (4.6" screen, 5" total height) which I use single-handed quite a bit. Decided I would never buy a phone above 5" size, with 4.6~4.7" being my ideal preference.
My hands are (to my knowledge) average size, maybe a slight bit on the small side.
Really wish more vendors made high-end smartphones below 5"... (I previously used a Z1 compact, and before that a Nexus 4 - loved both.)
FWIW 5" bezel-less screens can fit into the same space as a traditional 4.7" phone. Just nobody is willing to make a phone that small any more. You really need to shop by outer dimensions rather than the actual screen size now.
I do look at outer dimensions and at weight. I try to stay under 130 mm and around 130 g. Very few decent phones are there. The SE for iOS and basically only the Sony Compact line for Android. But the latest model weighs more than 160 g and I can't understand what those extra 30 g are for.
I encourage you to stick to your guns on this. I used to have a Nexus 5X (which was a hair too big), and moved to a Moto x4. The x4 is basically the exact same size as the 5X, but they went with a "fancy" design for it with metal construction and a glass back. It's much heavier than my previous phone and it's slippery because of the glass construction.
It's borderline impossible to use with one hand, and hard to avoid dropping occasionally because it's so much heavier and harder to grasp. It's so slick that it regularly slides off of almost flat surfaces.
My next phone will be 5" or less. I have the same size preferences as you, and also owned a Nexus 4. I still think it was the pinnacle of the cell phone form factor.
I bought a "Love Handle" (https://www.lovehandle.com/) at a concert merch booth and have been using it ever since. It's thin enough that wireless charging still works, and much easier to get out of a pocket.
I think that you have the numbers mixed up, every source I have checked (including the Sony website and an actual device in my hands) had the XZ2 Compact at 135 mm in the longest dimension. The tall, narrow XZ2c is about as wide as older Xperia Compacts, but noticeably taller.
PS: additionally, I'm actually not all that happy with "better" screen to body ratios, coming to the XZ2c from the original Z1c. Accidental touch events from the holding palm at the screen edges are a daily nuisance for me.
Not great. The new models (PopGrips) advertise themselves as supporting it, because they're easy to remove with a twist (which defeats the convenience of wireless charging.) I still use it but 1) my popsocket is mounted flush with the bottom of my case, 2) it only works conveniently on a vertical charger[1], as they're narrower than flat pads[2] and 3) the phone has to lie horizontal so the PopSocket hangs off the back.
I did just test it vertically and it seemed to work if the PopSocket itself hung onto the lip of the charger. I think this might affect the charge rate, though, due to the distance from the coils.
I tried out a 6" screen for my last phone, and when it broke, I got a Moto x4 precisely because it wasn't huge (it's still a little larger than I prefer). I have pretty big hands, but the 6" screen was never comfortable and it didn't fit nicely in my (also rather large) pockets, so the smaller phone was a better fit for me.
My main annoyance is that I'm essentially stuck with "budget" phones since all of the top of the line phones have a larger form factor. I think 5" is ideal, but it's hard to find anything under 5.5" these days, much less something with decent specs.
This explains a lot. I can just barely use the regular Pixel 3 in one hand, and I never want a phone that is any bigger. If my thumb were a little bit smaller then I couldn't use the Pixel 3 one-handed and I might as well have a bigger phone.
I put a data-only SIM into my old Nexus 5 to use for tethering and as a secondary device. Right away I noticed just how amazingly small and thin it is!
Owning repair shops, I have heard all the reasons people buy bigger phones.
The #1 reason people buy a bigger phone is the better camera. They don't necessarily want a larger phone, but they definitely want that camera to take better pictures of their kids/dogs/vacations/spouse/family.
That's a very good observation - you make uncorrelated premium features require also getting the larger screen, and then your sales numbers prove that there's a strong demand for large screen devices!
> I don't get it! My hands are probably bigger than 95% of all humans, and I don't think a phone needs to be much bigger than the SE.
My reaction to this quote is to think of everyone without perfect eyesight, e.g. most people as they reach a certain age.
My parents love their plus-sized iPhones. Reading glasses + ticking some boxes in iPhones accessibility panel (like ++fontSize) let them participate in the digital world again.
Maybe i missing something but that is what i remain disappointed about in iPhone UX. I cannot find any setting that reliably makes all system font larger to point i can at least read it. Im long sighted and do not wish to reach for my glasses everytime i need to check my phone. And this issue also present on iPads as well - iOS is not friendly to those who are neither blind nor 20/20. Makes me wonder what will happen to Apples share price when they wake one day and realise that all the teenies have gotten old and buying other phones because they cant read iPhones any more.
I loved my SE (would buy another one if i could read the thing) while i had it in 2016-2017 but the screen made my eyes go downhill noticeably and the nuisance of carrying multiple pairs of glasses everywhere made me replace it for a Android phone + BigFont app and problem solved.
How can such a brilliant company(Im a mac fanboi since late 70s) still be so useless on the mobile device UX?
There have always been specialized phones for the elderly. Literally no reason why rest of the people should suffer too large devices and I know the struggle. My mother started loosing her eye sight in past 5 years and is not legally blind. At this point even my previous iPhone6+ with max font is of little help only saving feature is speech recognition.
In my experience its more about the screen real-estate more than the ability to use one hand to navigate a phone that drives people to upgrade their phones to the phablet sizes. People don't seem to care that they can't reach everything on their screen with just their thumb.
This is especially made clear by app designers who hide all the UI elements of the app in the corners of the screen. If they were truly concerned with ergonomics AT ALL, they would adopt accessibility models such as this - https://medium.com/@mibosc/mobile-ui-ergonomics-how-hard-is-...
iOS 13 makes improvements to this, with modal popups showing in a "card" style that can be swiped down to dismiss (as long as you're at the top of any scrolling content).
That the "Done" buttons in an upper toolbar have persisted for so long after they were reachable is a bit embarrassing. It was a great design for the original 3.5" iPhone screen, started to get iffy on the 4" iPhone 5 depending on how big your hands are, and has been stupid since the iPhone 6 in 2014.
There's still other buttons up there, but you can get away without them more often than before. I guess the concession is that phones are assumed to be two handed devices now, which I think is unfortunate. If I want to two-hand something I have an iPad for that. Give me a one-handed phone with the same camera as the flagship. RIP iPhone SE.
Don't people know you can double tap the home button and it will move the screen halfway down so you can reach the top buttons?
I have no problem using my iPhone 8 one handed using that:
I always forget my rarely-used magical gestures/presses. I've had a 7+ for a good long while but only ever trigger that by accident. Couldn't have told you how to do it. Ditto Apple Pay.
[EDIT] I think part of why I haven't made it part of my normal use of the phone is that the shift-from-normal-one-handed-grip-to-double-press-home-then-back-again maneuver is risky (of dropping it) enough I'd shy away from it and just use two hands.
True. I would imagine that people who use phones for gaming and video would really benefit from a bigger screen, but I don't do a ton of either of those on my phone anymore.
another iPhone SE user here.
I've got it after my Nexus 5X died the first time and I had sometime with a friend's backup iPhone 5.
I really wish to see iPhone SE2 with X like screen keeping same dimensions for my hands. :)
To be honest, I didn't find larger device more productive and usually when reading something I end up going on some Tablet or my laptop. but maybe that's just me...
> I'd imagine that this will only accelerate once the SE is the only 4" screen left.
one note though. Apple released new iPod Touch. so there's currently an active 4" product in the iOS eco-system.
The 4.7" screen is not the SE. The 4" screen is what's on the SE, 5C, 5S, and 5, and makes up just 11% of these users.
Yes, 17% of these users are using the 4.7" screen, which is what's in the 6, 6S, 7, and 8.
The iPhone X and XS have a larger screen dimension in inches but the physical size of the phone is roughly the same thanks to a better screen to body ratio.
When we see 5 and 6 inch phones, but with higher screen to body ratio, some of us seem to mistake this with a phone that is too large to hold.
So what I'm saying is, no, Apple isn't deprecating the 4.7" screen size. Not in any way shape or form. The iPhone 6, 6 Plus, and 5S are being dropped for architectural and performance reasons. The iPod touch just received a refresh and should indicate that Apple will still support the 4" screen size for at least some amount of time.
My final piece of advice is to just get a PopSocket, it makes your phone way easier for single hand usage. There's no need to be stuck using a phone as tiny as the iPhone SE. Customers do not prefer it, it was not popular, otherwise we would still see that form factor.
>Customers do not prefer it, it was not popular, otherwise we would still see that form factor.
This is not sufficient reasoning — industries can independently yet collectively decide what the next big thing is, and operate in tandem to produce a market where only that thing exists. Notably, the shift to large phone sizes occurred rapidly, suggesting this may have been the case. That the shift was not a reaction to consumer interest, but rather in anticipation of it.
The biggest recent example of this effect was the 5 years or so where every new tv was a 3D TV; its now been phased out in favor of SmartTVs, which I personally believe are shitty enough to likely have no real consumer support. Another example is car touchscreens, and their somehow consistent terribleness across all brands, even luxury ones.
> That the shift was not a reaction to consumer interest, but rather in anticipation of it.
When it comes to Apple, I believe it was not anticipation, but overreaction to the Galaxy Note. Phablets quickly became popular in East Asia[1], and "pocketability" turned out to be a complete non-issue for the many women who carry around a bag all day. But instead of just serving the phablet market, they've gone all-in on it.
That said, I absolutely agree that companies often converge on weird standards. I'm glad that the glossy screen hype seems to be mostly over, but now we're losing inverted-T arrow keys :(
Just my opinion, the fact that they had to make a commercial for this at all signifies their need to convince us to buy in on that sort of thing.
They were absolutely nervous about losing sales to larger phones that customers liked. Turns out reaching everything with one thumb isn't really as important as having a big screen to view content on.
We know the rest of the story, the next year the next iPhone became larger...
I bought one not too long ago on clearance, it's a great phone.
I love the size, the headphone jack, the price, and I get iOS and don't have to worry about the security and update issues of Android. What's not to like? :)
TBH, I probably would have upgraded to an iPhone XR had I not grabbed the SE on clearance but I ended up saving ~$500 so I'm happy how it turned out.
There's definitely a market for phones that are affordable, that can fit in your hand and run iOS. /shrug
Customers who bought it loved it. It's an excellent phone.
But it was not popular in terms of volume. If you need any evidence of this, just look for Android phones with a screen under 4.5" containing a Qualcomm 825 CPU or better.
Actually, try and find any Android phone sold by any US cellular carrier under 5", never mind 4.5". This is not just an Apple-style opinionated decision, the whole market has spoken on this.
My honest belief is that people stopped buying small phones when the screen size trade-off didn't save them any significant money. I also believe that some portion of people who are vocal about the inevitable, eventual disappearance of the 4" screen aren't necessarily even using these small phones, but aren't happy about their disappearance out of some kind of principal or nostalgia.
I don't know that any of us would agree to use a 15" 1024x768 display again, even if it was free. I think it's the same concept.
If "the market has spoken", it seems like its words were dictated by the manufacturers.
As a consumer I don't remember even being given the option of buying any small phones (besides the now discontinued iPhone SE) for the last handful of years.
> I also believe that some portion of people who are vocal about the inevitable, eventual disappearance of the 4" screen aren't necessarily even using these small phones
I'm using my SEs as much as possible, but due to the limitations of iOS it's not feasible for me to use them as my primary work phone. This means I can choose between carrying two phones, carrying one that's too large, or significantly reducing my access to work resources on the go.
For me it's a feature combo that's missing. Make a new SE, bump the price up $100, but give it a camera close to as good as the Plus phones, and that's my next phone, for sure. I only got the 7+ over the 7 for the camera, and if there'd been an SE-sized phone with the same camera I'd have bought that instead of either bigger option.
[EDIT] actually I suspect this is a common reason for purchasing larger phones and the phone makers know this, and are using the large-size-better-camera pairing to charge me $300-500 more for the better camera, instead of $100.
No company since at least 2016 has made a flagship Android phone under 4.5". The iPhone SE made news for being the only small phone with up-to-date internals. It's not surprising small Android phones have seen limited success.
That's like observing that small cars don't do well with luxury buyers. Well, true -- because carmakers have chosen not to make small high-end cars. I've had friends tell me they wanted to buy a smaller car but the interior wasn't nearly as nice so they bought a bigger model. They'd rather have a car that's too big than get a second-rate dashboard and seats.
So I'm not sure why you're pointing to supply and claiming that it's indicative of demand of one particular attribute. Even more than with cars, the history of cell phones is companies making the wrong thing, and then having their lunch eaten by some other company. 15 years ago, all my friends had Blackberrys or Palms, but today nobody would say "The market had spoken" and everybody wanted hardware QWERTY keyboards and styluses. People didn't have a choice. These companies were seeing exponential growth, right up until a better choice was available.
Also, the desktop display comparison is out of left field. My desk is plenty big enough for two big displays, while my pants pockets aren't big enough for even one 'phablet'. I don't have to move my fingers across every pixel of my desktop displays to use them. It's completely different -- ergonomics, use cases, hardware, OS, apps, and so on.
Whenever there are fewer companies C than the exponent 2^R of the number of relevant attributes R, consumers don't have a sufficient number of axes of control to communicate to product designers purely through market forces.
(There's a name for that law, in the context of systems control theory, but I can never remember what it is.)
look for Android phones with a screen under 4.5" containing a Qualcomm 825 CPU or better.
As a happy user of mid- to low-end phones, I don't need anything in the 800 range. Decent 600s works for me. However, I'd love to have a site that allowed searching and comparisons based on maximum screen size. 'Nothing smaller than X' seems to be a near universally available filter, but good luck with 'Nothing larger than X.'
And I don't know if this is common or special to Huawei but my 5.2" Honor 8 also has a nice "drag across the home button bar" that shrinks the screen down to the bottom left or right in a roughly 4" screen size area. Very convenient for one hand use.
It was so popular that Apple was supply constrained for quite awhile. Then it started to languish without updates, possibly because it was less profitable for Apple compared to selling newer, larger models.
Anecdotally the SE seems to be a popular phone for companies (in Germany) to equip their employees with. Soon people will have to carry two phablets around all day.
Even Apple isn't perfect at determining what people actually want. They dropped the tower workstation form factor entirely for over 5 years before bringing it back.
I don't believe that iPhones moving to a slightly larger screen size for a couple years (and without offering any new smaller models with the same performance) is evidence that people dislike smaller phones.
What would I expect to see if a sizable number of people did actually like the iPhone SE? Perhaps something similar to when Apple discontinued the cheesegrater: some people buying the new model, and some people clinging to the old one, and many people complaining online about having to make this choice and begging for an upgrade of the old design. In fact, that's pretty much what I've seen happening with the iPhone SE.
Apple famously has many future versions of their products in their design pipeline, so a missed prediction can cause a bubble that will takes years to clear.
Some people is not enough to support massive economies of scale required for major cellphone companies. This means you eventually need to pay more for a smaller screen, and that’s really unpopular.
PS: I have average sized hands and without a case I can easily use an regular iPhone 7/8/X with one hand. Cases make this far more difficult, but imo that’s why phones seem to converge on that size.
> When we see 5 and 6 inch phones, but with higher screen to body ratio, some of us seem to mistake this with a phone that is too large to hold.
That's true. However, it'd still be harder (or impossible) to reach every corner of the display with my thumb, which I think makes it tedious to use.
I don't have a problem with that on my SE.
If it were up to me, they'd just make the SE even smaller by removing the bezels.
Not only that. But developers still need to support the 4 inch screen resolution because when you enable zoom on the 4.7 inch iPhones, you get a resolution that’s the same as the SE.
>Yes, 17% of these users are using the 4.7" screen, which is what's in the 6, 6S, 7, and 8.
Of which users? Of all the users in the set, 47% are on 4.7" phones, if I counted correctly.
Definitely agree the popsocket helps manage a larger phone. Though I think total screen size matters are much as case size. It affects where your thumb has to reach.
Total case size matters more for the pocket than for holding it, as users never grip the whole of the phone at once.
Good catch! As I’ve been reading all these comments about small screens and cheaper prices I haven’t seen much discussion of the newest market for this: wearables. Now that apple has said you can buy a fully decoupled watch with cell service I may save $600 and just buy the next version of that instead of a new phone that I think is too large and expensive.
I can't tell me if you're being sarcastic or not, but I'd also challenge anyone to find literally any Android phone at any price currently for sale at a US carrier or MVNO with a screen size at or under 4.8 inches.
The average consumer likes a bigger screen, but I get a (truthy) feeling that production doesn't match demand.
- Smartphone design goals are to cram as much into a phone as possible, so engineers prefer having more space to work with.
- If I'm a designer for a smartphone, I'm probably pushing for more screen real estate to work with
- If you can only pick 2-3 form factors to build with massive economies of scale (as Apple in particular has to do), the demand for a smaller screen might not align with the relative cost to produce
- I wouldn't be surprised if the "it's smaller so it should be cheaper" mindset that people have in other markets (cars come to mind) plays a factor here. The reverse would be true true: A company can charge more for a bigger phone because it's bigger.
So if, say, 20% of the market wants a smaller screen size but wants it done cheaply, there might not be enough incentives to mass-produce such a device in a way that makes enough money to be worth it.
The small phones usually have much worse cameras than the big ones. Sometimes the mid-sized ones also have worse cameras than the really big ones. I'd love an SE-sized phone with a great camera, but that wasn't an option, so I bought a Plus, solely for the better camera, not for the screen size.
Agree; the only reason I own a Pixel 3 is that the camera in it was so much better than the competition's. Otherwise I would be using a $100 chinese brand phone. Google now sells a second phone that is cheaper but with the same camera; I'd buy that if this one broke.
The only thing impacting my phone purchases these days is the camera, which like you said, the good ones only come in 5"+ screen sizes.
The Palm phone?
It’s crazy what you get when you search. I must have bigger hands than normal (I’m 195cm tall) and can’t reach across an iPhone 8 single handed. This phone is repeated called small in reviews.
> Here are some of the problems with the Palm phone: the camera is terrible, the operating system doesn’t have the latest Digital Wellbeing features that are ostensibly the whole point of getting this phone, the face unlock feature is likely insecure, there are no physical volume buttons, its custom software only occasionally helps with its tiny screen, it’s preloaded with a fair bit of bloatware, it’s terrifically slow, and (most of all) the battery life is downright atrocious.
Ironically, back when all iPhones were small, I longed for a larger screen, in order to more easily browse websites designed for desktops. This is a large reason why I temporarily switched to Android.
Now I have a large iPhone, but almost all websites are responsive, so I’ve been thinking I’d like to go back to a smaller phone.
Funnily enough the SE my friends have is the exact reason I always test mobile CSS on the Chrome iPhone SE simulation, since if it fits that screen, it will probably fit the others as well.
The only benefit I’ve ever found of a small phone is that it fits better in a pocket. The things I do one-handed on a phone are already well provided for; mostly just scrolling and swiping. For most activities I’m two-handing my phone anyway, and a larger phone makes that easier and faster.
When using the phone as, well, a phone, I find smaller phones annoying. I’m never quite sure if the mic can pick up my voice if the earpiece is near my ear. I’m also much more likely to drop the smaller phone.
I’ve been this way for a long time. An early phone of mine was the LG Env which opened up and had a large-for-the-time QWERTY keyboard. It required two hands even way back in 200x.
I doubt that I’m representative of the average person in this regard. But I doubt you are either. I suspect for most people one-handedness is a desirable trait in a phone, but not as strongly desirable in the average person as it appears to be for you, so it just gets eaten by trade offs.
But fitting in a pocket is a pretty huge feature. If it doesn't fit in my pocket, I cann't carry it around, and if I can't carry it around, I won't buy it.
An iPhone 7 is already tall enough to stick out of some rear pockets. And the width is pretty close to the max that will fit. I'm a 5'7" male, 30" waist, wearing average cut/fit pants (not skinny jeans).
> I find smaller phones annoying. I’m never quite sure if the mic can pick up my voice if the earpiece is near my ear. I’m also much more likely to drop the smaller phone.
This is funny because I feel like mic quality has only gotten worse since the days of the Nokia candy bar phone where the mic fell about mid cheek.
Maybe it has something to do with the way you had to hold those phones and your hand naturally cupped from the mic around to your mouth.
Or the miniature mics in modern phones and thier reliance on noise cancelling with multiple mic arrays.
A smaller phone is less expensive to buy. A smaller phone gets mishandled and dropped less often. Moreover, a smaller phone is less expensive to repair when that happens.
I interact with my phone regularly throughout the day. It’s usually the last item I interact with at night (aside from bed, blankets, etc.) and it’s the first item I interact with in the morning. It’s the one item that consistently travels with me wherever I go, whether that means room to room in my own house or state to state on an airplane. So it’s an item I don’t mind spending a little extra on. The cost difference with smaller phones just really doesn’t matter to me; never mind the fact that the larger phones often have better specs in other areas as well.
As for dropping, I disagree. I’m way more likely to drop a smaller phone.
I also have bigger hands than just about everybody down here in SE Asia (I'm from the Anglosphere) and I prefer the iPhone SE/4" form factor.
I think Jobs was onto something when he insisted that users should be able to operate the device with one hand, meaning able to reach all the icons on the screen with their thumb.
If I can't one handed text and not have to slide the phone up and down in my hand to text I don't want any such phone!
My two and coming up on 3 year old iPhone 8 suits me fine. It also has Touch ID, which is a better UX then Face ID (grab phone with primary text hand and boom it's unlocked before seeing your face).
I worry about this as my 6 is on its second battery and slowly dying. Apple Pay really needs to make the Express Transit feature - where confirmation is already "done" for your selected (read: default) card - available for all transaction types by default.
It doesn't solve the unlock delay, but it would make most other things people use FaceID for much quicker.
> My hands are probably bigger than 95% of all humans,
As a bunch of other people have said in different ways, it's not about hand size. Using my phone (other than scrolling or pressing play / pause) with one hand is a minor convenience, and I don't care about dramatically expanding the number of situations in which I can use it one handed.
On the other hand, I have an iPhone 8 Plus right now, and I wish the screen was bigger almost every day. There's just not enough room for readably-sized content.
"I don't get it! My hands are probably bigger than 95% of all humans, and I don't think a phone needs to be much bigger than the SE."
May be mentioned elsewhere in this thread but it likely is diminishing eyesight that drives the bigger displays and not hand size. My wife has small hands but isn't able to see the smaller screens (4") so choses the bigger screen phones. I suspect that's the same choice for a lot of people in their 40s and beyond.
> don't think a phone needs to be much bigger than the SE.
The thing is, a phone (to most people) is not just a phone anymore, it's an entertainment machine and for that screen real estate is crutial. E.g. During commute times, most people watch movies, read or play games on their phone but doing that with a small screen is not confortable.
HN demographic is an exception to the rule, mostly males (use phone on pocket) and less prone to use the phone as an entertainment source.
Conversely, I can palm a basketball and used to own an SE. I had to use a version of swype to even be able to text because doing that fine of a motion over and over again with my phone make my thumb hurt.
I've switched to an essential phone which I find to be a better size for a one handed phone for myself.
I also hated the SE because I found it to be super buggy at the time with the iOS upgrade and it was too small to be used effectively as a GPS and awful compared to slightly bigger phones(think standard iPhone size now, i guess) for media consumption.
I am a light user of a phone for someone my age(mid twenties). Phone use is texting, gps, occasional HN and reddit, and occasional discord and youtube.
My girlfriend on the other hand has tiny hands and would benefit from a phone the size of an SE, but she's constantly consuming youtube, instagram, pintrest, and other things that rely on media and images that I think are much more suited to a bigger screen despite the need to two hand the phone.
I've been an Android user since day one but the iPhone 5/SE is my ideal phone size. I currently have the Pixel 2. I don't want a bigger phone. Hopefully in the future a screen that can bend will improve and we can go back to flip phones.
There is a swipe down gesture that cuts the screen size in half making one handed operation extremely easy
Its like vertical video complaints: 90% of the people are conflating several UX issues to express their disdain, and the remaining 10% have a valid complaint
I had an SE and thought the same thing. I bought an X last year and now I could never go back. I think the saying "Don't knock it till you've tried" probably prevails here.
I’ve had a larger android phone and went to the SE. I’ll hold on to the SE as long as I can, in fact I wish the 3.5 inch form factor was still an option.
I've had an X, 6S, SE, and Pixel 3a. Used the X/6S/3A for 13 days, 7 months, and 13 days, respectively. Each time I went back to the SE because I didn't think the size was worth the inconvenience while walking/running/using public transit/laying in bed/etc. And this even though each of those devices has nicer specs, a better quality screen, better vibration motor, much better camera, etc... those pros just weren't worth the huge con that is the unwieldy size (to me).
So at this point I'm just going to say that not everyone likes the larger size even if they give it a solid try and it comes with other benefits. This applies to other things too: even if a great sandwich is cheaper and more filling than a good salad, some people prefer the salad. Some people like smaller, more spread-out cities where they can drive everywhere; other prefer living in a closet-sized space just so they can walk everywhere. Some people like sedans, others like trucks. Some people like Great Danes, others like Corgis.
I just wish smartphone manufacturers would make corgis again.
Have you tried a larger phone? I have long fingers and found a 5" screen to be the best balance between size and screen real estate. I tried a 6" phone but it was too big.
I'm in exactly the same boat. 6" was too big, and my current phone (Moto x4) is just slightly too big at 5.2". I just want a 5" phone with decent specs, but it seems that phone manufacturers want me to buy a huge screen.
I have pretty big hands (L men's gloves are usually just perfect, maybe a little small), and I just can't figure out how all of these small handed people are using phones bigger than mine. I refuse to buy one of those add-on grips since they essentially double the size of the phone, and I don't want to have to use two hands to type.
Using a 6.7" phone now (S10 5G), with size L hands (when buying bike gloves) it's surprising how fine it is to use one handed in general. For typing I do need two hands, but the same was the case for my older smaller phones.
I do love the real estate the 6.7" provides me, and am quickly getting used to this as the new standard for myself going forward.
I had an iPhone 6 for awhile, and though I could manage it with one hand, I found it hurt my thumb a bit more, it was harder to grip with the round edges, and bigger in my pocket.
I did have a case on it! But I'm pretty sure I dropped it more than my SE. Maybe the overall size contributed to that, but I've gotta think the rounded edges play a factor, even when a cast gives a bit more grip/thickness.
(I assume you mean 3.7" 320x screen; 4" is the 6/7/8 375px)
Where do you see this? 320x is still a necessary design goal for 4" screens (6/7/8), as they use 320x layouts for the basis of zoomed/vision-impaired display.
From the initial comments here it seems like some of us are mistaking the 4.7" iPhone screen size as one found in the iPhone SE.
That is not the case. The 4.7" screen refers to the iPhone 6, 6s, 7, and 8.
The iPhone 5, 5S 5C, and SE have the 4" screen and represents 11% of these users.
The 4.7" screen most definitely lives on and is essentially the same general dimensions as the iPhone X and XS, with extra inches attributed to increased screen to body ratio.
Prices is a big deal these days. Most iPhones X derivitives are hitting $1000 real fast. For those of us that don’t want to pay $29.99/mo just to rent a phone for 2 years and would prefer to buy outright that’s cost prohibitive.
Also all the big phones barely fit in pants pockets. For males, maybe, but for females, forget about it - 50% of the phone sticks out of the back pocket.
5.5” and more phones are too big to be a phone, and too small to be a useable tablet.
I took the dive into the medium Xs with Apple Care. My hobbies can be rough on things and I lost my 7 kayaking. Lately I’ve been thinking what the hell did I spend almost $1500 on a phone for. I’ve bought spec-ed out laptops and home built computers for that price.
I loved my 7 and almost had it for 3 years. It would’ve lasted 4-5 years.
To be fair, I use my phone significantly more than the laptop I have at home. $1500 is a bit insane, pretty sure $500 dollar phone and $1000 for other stuff is better value for me personally.
I own 2 iPhone SE, that I rotate whenever I break a screen. Yesterday I also had the battery replaced on both of them. I don't do this for cost reasons, I do it because I much prefer that size device and Apple won't sell it to me anymore.
This strategy will work but will eventually require me to stop receiving os/security updates which is a real problem.
I have the iPhone 7. At work, everyday, there comes a point when I can’t listen to and charge the phone at the same time. And I curse Apple for it everyday.
I finally got my mom an iPhone 7 and took her iPhone SE. I use the iPhone SE with a hotspot off the iPhone 7 and listen and charge it at the same time. I pick up the phone and I admire it every time. Its just the perfect machine. Almost reminds me of the last non-touchbar MacBook Pro. It’s like beating a dead horse at this point, but looking at how they went from the SE form factor to the 7, I always say to myself “what were they thinking?”. Maybe we’ve come to expect too much from Apple. They have been making life easy for a while but when they go the other way, I think the criticism is warranted.
> I have the iPhone 7. At work, everyday, there comes a point when I can’t listen to and charge the phone at the same time. And I curse Apple for it everyday.
It's been over 4 years, and there are literally hundreds* of ways you can accomplish this. That you have chosen to not spend $30 to fix something that apparently causes you such great distress, and instead choose to carry anger over it is kinda curious to me.
the reason I went to the 8 series was the wireless charging simply because I wanted to be able to use my wired headset while charging the phone. it has never lost more power than the charger added back even while on a call.
I even use Air Pods while it charges wireless at times, all depending on how much mobility I need at the time.
Oh I have. I used to sell those. I was anti-iPhone back then but I admired the design. Sigh. I hope they release something that cool again. Imagine a 4s expanded to a SE. dreams.
I don't doubt that some portion of the iPhone user base really loves the 4.7" iPhone, but I think the author's premise is based on the assumption that the device that people use is the device that people love/want. Note that if this assumption is incorrect, it could be wrong in either direction: there may be a lot of people who are using 5.5" devices and would prefer a 4.7" device, but there could easily be more people who own/use a 4.7" device and would prefer a 5.5" device and simply haven't upgraded yet.
And unless the App or Mixpanel is extremely popular in Asia ( Excluding Japan which we are known for preferring iPhone 4.7" Size ), this is excluding vast amount of people in that region where Sales Data suggest they vastly prefer iPhone 5.8"+ Size.
And given the 3+ years lengthy iPhone replacement circle, the data doesn't really shows or suggest whether the 4.7" user are holding out because they have no newer 4.7" iPhone to choose from, waiting to make the jump into 5.8/6.1" iPhone, or my guess would be iOS 12 with i6s up are good enough for vast majority of our daily task, and they are holding it for even longer.
Note: Apple currently has 900M Active iPhone User base, and is trending towards 1 B sometime in 2020. Even a 10% usage base prefer 4" is an 100M unit opportunity. Of course that is assuming those users really want a SE Size phone and not buying it because of its price.
The MixPanel stats reveal the disconnect between the SE fans who always flood these threads and the rest of the world.
David Smith is a well known dev in tech circles and his audience would skew more toward "tech nerds". Look at the wider stats and suddenly you see the 4" audience sliced in half.
Good analysis. Any idea why mixpanel leaves off everything earlier than a 6s though? For the more recent data, at least as display on my mobile browser.
As someone who very recently went from an iPhone SE - which I treasured since it came out (and which I nursed through one battery replacement and two screen replacements) - to an iPhone XR (triggered by a another digitiser failure), I can honestly say that I’m loving the performance boost, the massive battery life, the better camera and the brighter screen. However it’s taking some time to adjust to the size (150.9mm x 75.7mm x 8.3mm, versus the SE’s 123.8mm x 58.6mm x 7.6mm).
I used to be able to slip my SE comfortably into the front pocket of my pants or jeans, and it’s size coupled with its rigidity meant I never worried that sitting or bending would damage it or discomfort me. I could even put it in a shirt pocket, where it’s relatively light weight (113g vs the XR’s 196gm), wouldn’t cause undue sag in my shirt.
For me it’s definitely been a trade off. Having gotten mostly used to it though, (meaning I now carry my phone in my hands much more than I ever did), I don’t think I would go back unless I could get significantly better specs than the original SE (performance, batter, brightness, camer) in the smaller form factor.
I’m still using my trusty 6s. About a month ago I took my phone in to get the battery replaced. Curious, I asked the Apple rep about a 10s and after some hemming and getting $200 trade-in for my 6s I made the switch.
I regretted it immediately. I was stuck in the Apple store for over an hour trying to setup the new phone while it slowly downloaded an update before I could even finish getting it into a minimal user state, meaning I couldn’t go home and continue setting up later.
The faceid was interesting at first but really annoying pretty quickly. TouchID is really useful since I don’t always want to have to look into the phone.
ApplePay as a convenience is ruined by the lack of a TouchID sensor. With FaceId you have to look at the phone and then double press a button on the side of the phone. My brain boggled at how they’ve ruined the entire ApplePay usage process.
Final straw was the lack of a headphone jack, which has been my primary holdout reason. Turns out, the dongle is just annoying.
Combined with my immediate experience and second thoughts, I went back into the store (since I was still stuck there setting up the new one) and got my old phone back and paid the difference. It was a bit unusual for the Apple staff but they were super nice and got my 6s back.
At that point I left with both phones since I wanted to try the new one over night to give it a shot. Next day, I had enough and went back to the store and returned the 10.
I’m still quite happy with my 6s and honestly may have to consider an Android phone when this one dies.
I’ve been a loyal Apple customer for over 30 years and have just been disappointed with them for the choices they’ve been making in the last few years. At work I returned the 2018 MacBook Pro and got a 2015 one because of the terrible oversized trackpad and useless Touch Bar.
I'm on the same boat: a year ago, I bought a first-gen Pixel. Back then, Pixel 2 was already out and even Pixel 3 was on the horizon, but 5" is the absolute maximum size I can comfortably operate using one hand. Hell, I would even take a 4.5" phone with decent specs. My old Moto G was incredibly comfortable.
If it's just about the fact that larger phones generally also have very high dpi (text is too small and hard to read), you can use Android's native dpi scaling to make the phone screen "smaller". I personally can not use newer M-XL size phones on factory settings because the text is too small to read. But then I just scale the display to lower the dpi to a comfortable level in Settings.
This is an important thing to note and I'm not sure designers take it into account often enough. I know I'm guilty of designing an interface that looks good on an iPhone 5s, SE, 6, 6+, and X with default settings, only to watch someone with an 8+ have their scaling turned way up and blow my user interface out of the water.
Alternatively I had an app that worked well on all screen sizes, but one of my friends showed me it wasn't working because they had increased the size of their keyboard and the extra-large keyboard was covering one of the buttons.
Exactly.
I had high hopes for the sharp r2 compact, which has current high performance specs in a small form factor, but sadly it won't be available in western market. It looks like there is also a demand for small size smartphone on the asian market, so we might see some new ones soon ?
I suspect that's largely from age of phones and price rather than true screen size preference. The bigger iPhone are hideously expensive if you're not in a high CoL 1st world place
I upgraded to the latest iphone XS this year after my iphone 7s had a cellular antenna failure which Apple would not fix even with my apple care plan. After about 4 months with this new phone I still prefer the older phone. I do not really notice better clarity or colors in this OLED screen and I miss the home button. Wouldn't mind that headphone jack back either. :) I also do not like the location of the "utility menu" now. I have to swipe down from the upper right-hand corner which is a big stretch for me, I often use 2 hands. This is an action I have to do often and I am not sure why apple moved it to that location. In the end, I will stay with this phone as I like the faster processor and more RAM but the design and execution seems to have been a step back. I've owned a 5s, 6s, 7s and Xs and I would choose the 4.7" as my preferred form factor.
Every time I increase the size of my phone screen, I experience a large step up in the extent to which I am addicted to my phone.
It might just be the increased responsiveness of a new phone, but I also think there is a direct relation between personal attachment to a screen-object and the field-of-vision % occupied by that screen object.
Squinting might give you eye wrinkles, but I think it is an important check on how much overall screen time you spend in a day.
I've had iPhones exclusively since the 3G, buying basically every other year.
My happiness peaked with the 5. The 6 was "fine", the 7 was a downgrade, and I then I didn't like any of its replacements and finally got an XR, which I don't like nearly as much as the 7 or 6.
I recently bought iPhone 8 after using 4S for many years. That screen is too huge! I would switch it to SE if not for better tech inside (better fingerprint reader is the main selling point for me, but better CPU is nice too). I'm using iPhone 8 for almost a year now and I can't get accustomed to it. I loved when I could use phone with one hand. Also my hands are huge, so I have no idea how could one use it with one hand (without that gimmick with double-tapping home button).
Now recent iPhone models are just not appealing to me at all. I don't want to use face recognition and they no longer use fingerprint readers.
Honestly, give me tiny iPhone with 3'5" display, put latest tech inside and you'll have my $300 immediately.
Apple has very little interest in your $300. They want to make big, premium, high-margin devices that sell for $800+.
It's the same reason they will never make a modular, upgradable desktop (no, the new MacPro does not count), the margins just aren't there. Apple only competes in spaces where they can make a lot of profit
It's funny because I am usually not interested in those types of products, but I still admire their commitment to their strategy.
Give me tiny iphone with 3.5" display and I'll give you my $1000. There is literally no competition in this space and enough people hanging on to SEs and complaining about pocketability that I'm positive it would still sell well. When I pull out my SE when hanging out with someone new, the most common reaction is "wow! I wish my phone was still that small" and a lot of complaints about big phones.
There is a huge untapped market here. I'm not suggesting it's bigger than the market for the XS Plus Max 7" behemoth... but it's certainly not negligible. There is a reason the iPod Nano and the iPod Classic were both popular.
in accessibility I also set "reduce motion" and "on/off labels" and disable the feature you are using "Reachability" because I double-click to manage my open apps.
All this does is make the large display doubly useless: not only does it take up too much space and make the phone difficult to pocket/handle/type on, you're suggesting I should also make it only contain as much information as the 4" SE screen! That's not really a solution.
iPhone 6 and 6s still make 21% of the pie chart. I wonder how many of these people are still holding on to the phone due to the headphone jack and the charger.
I hold onto my SE and 6s plus for that reason. I do own AirPods, and I like them... but they don't have quite enough battery life for a whole day worth of conference calls, audiobooks and podcasts. And they definitely cannot compete with standard headphones for music. A headphone jack easily accommodates any headset device I want to use, and I'm not willing to regress back to using an adapter dongle.
Same here. I have a good set of headphone that are not wireless. I use an SE at work as an iPod touch (hotspot with my 7). I like being able to charge the phone and still be able to listen to stuff on my headphones. I like my AirPods at the gym and gym only.
I'm a 6s+ holdout. That's among the reasons, but the real reason is that the phone still does everything I want it to do. There's just nothing remotely compelling about an Xs for me. I probably wouldn't bother upgrading for $100, certainly not for ~$1000.
Fingerprint scanner and charger.
I really don't want FaceID; and, since I have cables throughout my apartment, I don't want to have to buy 10 new cables :(
Since these always-on pedometers are built into newer models it seems to make the statistics less relevant, you don't need an app to tell you exactly what Health is able to tell you.
That said, you see a lot of Uber drivers using the iPhone SE, while rocking some Android phone for other things. I'm guessing it has something to do with compatibility of the Uber app, or that they're driving for more than just Uber.
Pedometer++ has a nice interface and it lets you set goals etc. You don't need it to get the raw stats but it's a more pleasant experience than delving through the health app.
I gave up on the SE this year. I bought it when I was new. I switched back to a pixel 3a, but I hate it. I'll probably switch back to a flip phone. I just want a headphone jack, decent battery, and a working phone
It's not really just about size, not many people want to pay $1000 for a smartphone, when you can get nearly all the features for half or thrid that price.
I guess analyzing this data for Android would yield better results about size preference.
I'm in the 0% of users still holding on to their iPhone 5. Yeah, I know, I should get a new phone, but I was really hoping 5G would be sorted before I did that. And when I do, I'll buy the smallest phone I can get.
I used to have a 7, but was always too awkwardly big to hold or to put in my pocket. SE is the perfect size. It also has the benefit of helping me manage screen time -- i don't really wanna get sucked into long content on this screen-size, and can save it to consume later on the laptop (or never, which is most often just fine).
Well, isn't the reason simply the timelag? The iPhone 6–8 are mid-lifecycle, the larger ones are relatively new, and the smaller ones rather at the end of their life cycle? After all iPhones seem to have a 5+ year lifespan [0]. Also the larger X phones come with a crazy price tag.
I imagine it will be again. Once the huge phone cycle wanes (and it may already be doing so), we'll start seeing smaller phones pitched as a hot new development. Then again, with Apple beefing up the functionality of their watch, it may be that watch + AirPods takes the place of the tiny phone. Shrug.
What makes you think the trend will reverse or that this is part of a cycle?
Small phones were popular when all they could do was make calls and even texting was sort of cumbersome and rare. Of course you'd want that sort of single use device to be as small as possible.
I fail to see how YouTube, Fornite, and Instagram users (to name a few) will want a smaller screen.
I also think the market has settled on rather standard phone body sizes that have not changed significantly since 2014 or so.
>I fail to see how YouTube, Fornite, and Instagram users (to name a few) will want a smaller screen.
I can't comment on what those users want; I don't use any of those things on my phone. I'm not claiming that large phones will cease to exist; I'm guessing that there will be a new trend promoting smaller phones. Some folks will jump on the bandwagon, some will stick with their phablets. Apple in particular will probably make a big marketing push that tries to portray small phones as some kind of cutting-edge innovation.
It certainly doesn’t have to be Fortnite in particular, which has over 80 million monthly logins, but if you are on a bus or subway count the number of people who aren’t reading, playing, or watching content on their phone during the journey.
As another example, Nintendo completely discontinued the non-XL 3DS models in the USA.
I think you aren’t wrong, there are enough people somewhere to buy a small screen smartphone, but apparently that number is small enough to not even open up a single assembly line for.
I think in the 5-10 year time period, people who value using the phone as more of a productivity tool and dislike the distraction will have only a wearable and perhaps not even use a phone.
But those who like content consumption (probably most people) will still be walking around with a rectangle in 10 years, if I had to guess.
It depends on how one plans to use it. I personally don't want to carry one device for reading, one for watching videos in addition to a phone. (It's very unweildy, I have done that for some time so I know)
Large screen phone for me is a catch all device. When commuting, I can catch up on Netflix or read books comfortably on iPhone 8+
Landscape orientation and continusous scrolling in Kindle or Apple Books works pretty good. The screen is just about right size for watching video content as well without much strain.
I say this as I invariably carry a laptop as I do get uncontrollable urges to write code at any random time of the day. If that happens while I am commuting and lucky enough to have a seat, I have my personal Thinkpad (or a work MacBook) to that end.
Have been trying Pythonista+WorkingCopy recently, seems OK on an iPad, hopefully if I get in the flow of using it on iPhone 8+... happy days. Maybe I will consider getting Xs Max (cost and lack of physical home button are keeping me away from it for now)
It makes sense, though. Back then, phones couldn't do anything except make calls, so the smaller it was, the better.
Those who needed PDA functionality got a standalone device like a Palm Pilot or Dell Axim, which had much bigger screens to support the intended workflows.
I was last looking for a new phone around the time the iPhone X came out, but I decided on an iPhone 8 instead of an X. The X was not only more expensive, but also felt heavy and chunky in a way that I hadn't experienced since the original iPhone. It put me off. I decided that I'd wait until my next phone upgrade to get on the screen-to-body-ratio bandwagon.
I'm guessing a lot of people are in the same boat. It normally takes at least four generations before an old model of phone starts feeling slow running modern versions of apps, so we're not yet at the point where anyone who had to make that decision (small-screen light cheap phone, or big-screen expensive heavy phone) has felt the need to upgrade again, and so had the chance to re-evaluate the landscape.
The author's app is Pedometer++. My guess is that smaller phones are over represented in his data because people who value step counters probably also value less cumbersome phones to run/walk with. I, for one, chose an SE because I can carry it in my hand comfortably while running.
Reading through this thread I keep encountering more reasons to hang onto my SE, such as this (I run with it) and weight as it affects the possibility of RSI. I really hope there's an SE 2 with the same form factor. I'm optimistic because of the recent 4" iPod Touch.
It could also be the other way around: iPhone SE users don't "live" on their phone and are less likely to download third-party apps beyond the bare necessities, so there are more of us than show up in these statistics.
I wish one of the big players like WhatsApp or Google Maps would publish their statistics (or Apple itself, of course).
I recently upgraded from an iPhone 6 to an iPhone XR. I love the new phone, however I still miss the size of the 6. I was able to hold and operate the phone in one hand. Using two hands for the XR is a pain in the ass, but using one hand feels like I could drop it at any moment.
I think one factor that caused this phenomenon is the lack of innovative growth in the mobile device industry. Phone companies need to sell more units... however there are no industry-shaking improvements to be made. Therefore they default to upgrading the most obvious ones, namely screen size/resolution and camera quality. Therefore our phones get bigger for the sake of advancement.
Hoping for Sony to release the ACE for international markets:
Sony Mobile recently announced the Xperia Ace (SO-02L) for the Japanese market. This is Sony’s smallest handset released in 2019, with a 5-inch FHD+ display, a water resistant body, Snapdragon 630 chipset, 4GB RAM and 64GB storage.
https://www.xperiablog.net/2019/06/20/xperia-ace-is-an-inter...
I'm I reading this right? A person who sells an app called "Pedometer" (which tracks your steps) sees iPhones that fit easily in your pocket as the most common size for people who buy the App? If so I'd guess people who measure their steps correlates strongly with people who don't like to carry extra carry bags.
I have a Pixel 2 XL, and I like its width, but its length is totally pointless. I don't get why they don't make phones with less enongated aspect ratio. 9:16 is ought to be enough for everyone, why would anyone want a vertical screen that is taller than that.
Interesting--and I carry a 4.7" iPhone, and I do like the form factor. But I suspect it's thrown off a bit by the rise in ASP across the line recently--the newer phones are quite a bit more expensive, and I know I'm not the only one who's delayed the upgrade a bit.
There are at least two other variables which will lead to the same pattern - the weight of the phone and its price. Larger phones are heavier and more expensive. Thus, saying 4.7" phones are popular is like saying:
100% agree. I went into an Apple Store for the first time in a long while just a few weeks ago, and I couldn't believe how heavy the phones have gotten I have an iPhone 6 now and just don't see a good reason to upgrade. Even if I can't upgrade to iOS 13, I'll probably wait another year or two.
Rumor has it Apple will put a 5.4 inch screen in a iPhone 8 size body. I hope it's true because the Android manufacturers will definitely copy them and I'll be able to get a phone under 68mm wide again.
Is this information biased by app? Are people more likely to strap a smaller phone to their arm? I’d be curious to know if this device distribution is similar for different apps.
my only reason for upgrade to 6s plus and then 7 plus was better camera - optical image stabilization on 6s plus and dual camera with portrait mode on iphone 7 plus.
small iphones (6S and 7) do not have the best cameras.
A shame to see. I like my SE and will own one for as long as Apple allows, but designers are already forgetting to account for the 320 screen width. I see it with increasing regularity, in apps and on the web. I'd imagine that this will only accelerate once the SE is the only 4" screen left.
I don't get it! My hands are probably bigger than 95% of all humans, and I don't think a phone needs to be much bigger than the SE.