Yeah, hopefully! Nobody is asking for paper thin phones, and this needless obsession with THIN is we have to thank for gems such as:
- the phone no longer sitting flat
- the headphone port being removed
- the phone being impossible to get a good grip on without a bulky case
- "nearly one day of battery" life being the bar for "what good battery life is"
Who trades a couple of millimeters of thickness in exchange for the above? I hope someone in Apple is listening and can convince themselves and others inside that thickness is not the enemy.
iPhone 6 (Plus) was when it was realized that people care a lot about the camera. Folks bought iPhone 6 Plus phones they didn’t want for stabilization.
Apple prioritized camera over thickness at that point. Battery is lower on the list and is mostly addressed by CPU improvements.
IMO it’s frustrating that they are so conservative with a mature product. We waited over a decade for basic waterproofing. Apple has an incredible supply chain, but Samsung can deliver better/more diverse form factors. Example: ruggedish phones.
Apple’s focus is both amazing and frustrating to me. They had and lost an opportunity to break Microsoft clients in business.
Basically why I bought a Moto G⁷ Power: it's about the same size as all the other phones these days, and it actually has two to three days of battery life. It's about the thickness of an iPhone 5, which was fine.
I personally think the iPhone 4S's display was a good size and resolution, and the form factor is good for human hands. If they could close in the bezels a bit, cut off a tiny bit of chin and forehead, and make the shell like the iPhone 5C... and make it run Android... I'd probably be game.
They could probably procure a really nice display in terms of colour, switching speed, sustained brightness, and black levels, maybe even increase the refresh rate to 120Hz for the interaction latency benefit. At 960x640, the quality of each of those pixels could be spectacular, and it'd further help with the end-to-end latency.
For the last couple of years I didn't ever bring a smartphone with me, just my trusty Nokia 106, which itself gets about a month of standby time per charge. I still carry the 106 because I'm still not used to having to charge a device so often.
- the phone no longer sitting flat
- the headphone port being removed
- the phone being impossible to get a good grip on without a bulky case
- "nearly one day of battery" life being the bar for "what good battery life is"
Who trades a couple of millimeters of thickness in exchange for the above? I hope someone in Apple is listening and can convince themselves and others inside that thickness is not the enemy.