According to [0], these "phones" are 5.4 and 6.2 inches tall (not diagonally). 5.4 inches should not be the "small" size phone. That's huge. I have reasonably large hands and I really hate this about my phone (I have a Nexus 5, which is around the same size as the iPhone 6S).
Please, let's make us some smartphones that are nice and compact and small. Or at least medium.
From what I see, Sony is the only manufacturer currently offering a high end phone at a smaller size with the Xperia Compact line. Still 5 inches tall though.
I went from a Nexus 5 to a Sony Z3 Compact and haven't looked back. The form factor is so much more convenient, I really hope more manufacturers look at it again.
The xperia compact series is an amazing line of phones, but also super fragile. I've destroyed two. both from "waist height" drops. Also, I couldn't find an otter box or other sufficiently protective case for it.
The touch screen is built in such a way that any small crack and half the screen or more stops accepting touch.
SHARP also makes compact high end phones. They seem to only sell them in Japan though - with the Aquos Crystal being the only time they tried in America recently. Unfortunately it's decidedly mid-range and tied to Sprint.
I still think of the scene in Zoolander where he takes the flip phone out of his pocket and it is about as big around as thumb. It was comedic at the time because manufacturers were trying to make smaller and smaller phones to differentiate themselves from the brick cell phones of the past, so this scene was mocking how far it could go. The irony is that now kids probably have no idea why it's funny because all phones are competing to offer larger and larger models.
I don't have a problem with the larger phones, personally, but I think it's interesting to see how quickly the industry has come full-circle.
I've recently switched back to an old Nokia feature phone and holy shit, it's incredible when I hold it up to my ear...I can actually grab the entire thing in the palm of my hand.
I've been hanging on to my iPhone 4S for this very reason. The battery is nearly shot after 4 years, but I would call that a pretty good run by today's standards (Take that, planned obsolescence!).
Another amazing thing about old Nokia phones is the sound when you hear another person talking. I wish they could bring "good telephone" back to these smartphones.
Yes, this is laugh-worthy. It's Apple's sneaky manner of building planned obsolescence into otherwise very competent devices. Just like my 4S, the brand spanking 6S+ will in a few years be choked by iOS updates's climbing RAM requirements. Not updating isn't an option either, as app updates demand the latest OS quickly afterward.
The iPad Pro is much more affected by this because it competes with Wintel devices. When you compare it to the Surface Pro, the later isn't considerably beefier except when it comes to RAM, which is enough on its own to give it double the life span...
I bought an iPhone 5S a while ago because of this, while I'd much rather have bought the iPhone 6. I really hope they come with a smaller model next time :-/. 3D Touch look useful.
(that said, I'm quite happy with the 5S. I don't have much need for what the 6 models offer.)
What's the line on force touch actually being useful vs. just hype? It's hard to resist the reality distortion field and not get excited from hearing about it, but I've been burned by the false promise of iPhone-S release cycles before ...
How would you fit an efficient antenna for pertinent and desired LTE frequencies bands in a frame too small to hold such an antenna? The speed of light is the speed of light, and so wavelengths of set frequencies are themselves set, and constrain the physical dimensions, no?
Well, they still sell a smaller phone, the 5S. I hope next year, when they no longer sell the 5S, they'll come with another model, maybe an iPhone Mini or 7C or whatever.
The dimensions are almost exactly the same as the current gen 6/6+, the only big difference is weight which is a good 10% higher according to the tech spec pages[0][1]
I hate the name, but the 3d touch is a nice interaction model. I really like peaking as a UI metaphor. It helps slice through layers of information without committing to the next layer.
edit and you have to be fucking kidding me with 16GB base models...
edit2 oh, I get it, it's a push for iCloud storage, lame
Its interesting to see Apple re-introduce 'modes' something that Jobs himself hated.
Things like right clicking, force/3D touching, or stylus's are specific modes that need to be activated and de-activated discreetly -- showing a separate set of otherwise non-discoverable features.
You're confusing modes with discoverability. Force touch isn't a mode but it is invisible if you don't know it's there. Jobs wanted discoverable, modeless user interfaces where possible (and he was right). Both the watch and force touch are horrible from a discoverability point of view.
It is not discoverable. It is a power-user feature that makes the UI less obvious for ordinary people.
A lot depends on how developers use/abuse this feature. If only power-user features are hidden in the 3D-touch menu then it will be OK. But if ordinary features are only exposed via this menu then apps will become harder to use.
I don't think so. If the ordinary user doesn't know about it, they won't care. They'll still continue to press as normal. When they do discover it, they'll try it again to see if they like it, if they don't they'll forget about that too and continue on with regular presses.
Side note along with this thought, I feel like Apple is going through some kind of naming transition in its lineup:
Mac<thing>: e.g. Macbook, MacBook Pro, Mac Pro
i<thing>: iPod, iPhone, iPad, iSight
Apple <thing>: Apple watch, Apple pencil
I think the Apple one is the worst, because <thing> seems to be common non-trademarked words and has a weird marketing exec "let's get the branding out there!" strategy.
And now it kind of smells like they might be thinking about going to a "Smart <thing>" naming scheme.
It makes calling things kind of hard and schizophrenic, most people just default to i<thing> when they don't know what to call it. I hear iWatch at least once a week.
Often when a company has to switch to a less obvious name at the last minute, it's because of trademark issues. There is already a registration covering "ForceTouch" as an input method for computers.[1]
Because "Force Touch" is just waiting to turn into a PR nightmare: at some point, people are going to jokingly call it "Bad Touch", and it's going to turn into a widespread meme that embarrasses Apple.
I'm just reading the live blog, but can someone provide more details on how this works. To me it just appears to be a contextual menu based on long press of the app icon ? Is it something more than this ? I'm curious as to how this will effect when you want to move app icons.
Sometimes you don't want to have to worry about how long you're holding your finger down. It's much easier to control finger pressure than to guess how many seconds you have left before the screen changes fully into a new context.
It's not a long press, because a long press will usually start the rearranging-your-app-icons operation. So this is a distinct operation. I wonder how well it will work for non-techies?
It's a linear reaction to the amount of force you apply. So it seems to be implemented in a number of ways. They demonstrated contextual menus, as well as peaking (holding with a bit of force) where you could then push harder to "pop" into the content or relax to go back to what you were doing.
It seems highly similar to the Watch — including the haptic feedback (which to me is an important part of what makes the interaction work on the watch).
Sounds like it would be very difficult to get right. I can imagine a lot of false positives where I want to do a normal click, but I happen to press lighter than usual so it registers it as a "peek". Maybe they'll do it well enough that this doesn't happen, and maybe it's just something you'd get used to after a while, but to me it's a bit of "trying to be too clever", but then I'm the sort of person that disables things like auto-rotate for that reason.
That’s the biggest worry, certainly, but I think it’s very possible to get this right. We do not yet know how this feels, but one positive indication that they payed lots of attention, to exactly this, one of the two central riddles to solve to get this tech right (the other being the places in the UI you use it and to what end), is that implementation details in the UI also telegraph how they want to communicate this feature.
So, first of all, there are three levels and the first level is a peek, nothing serious and totally non-committal. Frequently accidentally engaging this would probably still be super annoying, but if it happens once in a while and is also super responsive then that’s not a big deal. Making this first step non-committal is probably a big part of making this all work.
Second, the peek seems to show off some direct input based on force (with the preview dynamically resizing based on it), so that you are not blindly guessing the pressure you have to apply. This direct feedback is probably also a big part of the puzzle.
If they get that right and given their implementation (distinct, few and pretty clear and consistent places to force touch, at least within their applications, that all do predictable and understandable things) I think this is a winner and will make using everything much more of a joy to use. It could also suck. We don’t know yet. I’m just really happy someone is trying stuff like that. The vocabulary on touch devices we have is nice, but it is still sparse. Maybe this extension will work out, maybe it won’t. Either way, I’m excited.
Though I think I'd like 3D touch just fine, I feel like it will be a difficulty to provide support for less tech centric family members. Something like the left and right mouse buttons and single vs double click, now touch lighter/harder. Touch the icon, is everything blurry except for a little menu, no press lighter now...
I remember when full-screen touch was a new concept. Blackberry tried to introduce a physical "click" with the BB Storm. It sounded like a good idea, but it practice it turned out to be unnecessary. Apple won the UI battle. Not sure if 3D touch is a step forward or step back.
I'm concerned about durability. Is 3D touch passive sensing, or is the screen/glass actually moving? IIRC, Force Touch physically depresses (which explains why they didn't call it Force Touch).
I suspect 3D touch will cause more cases of iPhone induced tennis elbow. Matt Bonner (San Antonio Spurs) and I are two victims. Forcing us to press harder will trigger more cases.
Would someone explain to me why there's so much hate towards the base model? I really, truly don't understand what's wrong with offering an entry level device? I carry a 16GB 6+ and am quite happy with it.
Its easy to blow through 16GB when you take 12MP live pictures of every cute thing your cat does. Removing pictures off of iPhone is way harder than it should be.
Is control over your own data dead? Even if I use all cloud services I don't see 16GB being remotely reasonable for an age of HD photos, videos, unlimited music libraries (my spotify cache takes up 6GB alone). Even androids with microSD cards only go so big. If apple is serious about this push to using iCloud storage for everything I don't see myself using their products for much longer (and I've been a fanboi forever). Problem is I don't see a good alternative.
Absolutely it's dead as the default. Storage is for app repositories, i.e. software which tunes into the cloud which hosts actual data.
Note that's the default. It's still optional (e.g. pay $100-200 more for more storage, or buy seemingly increasingly more niche phones that offer SD card slots).
And of course the age old alternative, which is making a compromise. i.e. not store all and any music, video, photo etc on your insta-use phone. Instead keep old albums on an external drive in your home, just like movies you've already seen or movies you won't get to anytime soon. Or albums you rarely listen to. Compromise.
It's 2015, they just added 4K recording and a higher megapixel camera and the base model is STILL 16GB? Is this a joke? I just can't understand that at all. That space is going to get used up so fast. Android manufacturers have the same issue so it's not like it's an Apple only problem.
They've lowered the prices for iCloud storage, so you _could_ argue that keeping the base size at 16GB is a means to get more people to sign up for iCloud.
A close friend has a 16gb iPhone 5 with no available storage. Where is all the storage used? Message history. I'm not kidding - zero non-default apps, very few photos, message history for presumably the entire time she has had an iOS device which consumes (according to iTunes) over 14gb.
The real kicker is Apple has provided no first-party way to extract images from message history.
(EDIT: I am aware of the "keep entire message history"/"keep 1 year message history" setting - we are trying to extract photos from backup using 3rd party software so we can flip that switch. This is very non-intuitive and requires the use of an external device)
That's fine except, at least anecdotally, I've only seen photos and videos take up the majority of the space. I'm not sure what's typical of the average person but everyone I know with kids takes gigabytes and gigabytes of photos and videos every year with their phone.
It's fine for lots of people, but those aren't the people that Apple wants to target. The last thing Apple wants is people who find they can't download more apps and music (putting money into Apple's pockets) because they don't have enough space.
I need to keep a separate iPod because there's not enough room on my iPhone for much of my music collection. (I only have a handful of apps). And for what? An extra sixteen gigs of flash memory costs a few bucks nowadays.
Speak for yourself. I don't install anything or take any photos with my phone. I just use it to make calls and browse the web so I very much doubt I will ever use up 16GB.
Okay? I'm not sure what your specific usage really added to the discussion especially considering the camera phone is typically people's only camera nowadays so I feel like you'd be an outlier if anything. Photos and video already take up a huge amount of space on the phone; I don't even take a ton of pictures of my kids (my SO usually does) but even my phone, after 6 months of usage, has 3 gigabytes taken up in photos and videos. It goes really, really quick.
With 4K and 12 megapixels? It's going to go by so fast...
It's basically what they said in during the presentation: it's a 7000 alloy as used in aerospace industries[0], and it's a new alloy (proprietary, not a standard spec). The apple watch also uses a proprietary 7000 alloy (whether it's the same alloy is unknown at this point)
[0] not solely, they're also used in bike frames. Basically 7000 is zinc alloys, and have the highest available tensile strength, rivalling low-level steels at a third the density.
Apple is going to make bank by turning into a bank. The installment plan with free upgrades each year is brilliant. The user lock-in is going to be unsurpassed and no competing phone maker has the mountains of cash required to match it.
I wouldn't really call an installment plan a very innovative financial product. And it's not like they'll stop making iPhones and focus on financing. It's just a power move to dominate the phone market and cement their lock on customers.
They're not handling the financing. It appears to be going through Citizens Bank, and is an installment loan. [1]
And, if you were hoping to use someone cheap like Cricket instead of Verizon, no such luck there either:
"1. The iPhone Upgrade Program is available to qualified customers only with a valid U.S. personal credit card. Requires a 24-month installment loan with Citizens Bank, N.A. and iPhone activation with a national carrier — AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, or Verizon. "
Yeah that was the biggest thing for me too. We knew what was coming with the iPhone, Apple TV and iPad Pro. That upgrade program is going to be a big thing in my opinion.
One thing I wasn't sure about though was do you own the phone or are you just leasing it? When you upgrade after a year do you have to return your old phone?
For the same price, a video (or a still from a video) doesn't look nearly as good as a photo. The development here is packaging a high-quality still inside a video and doing compression in a way that doesn't kill the photo.
Think about it - why do professional photographers bother with shutters or try to time the perfect shots? Why not just constantly shoot video and pull frames out of it later? Because it would look like crap.
This wouldn't be hard to imitate. Record the live preview into a 3 second buffer. When the user presses the shutter, switch into still mode, take a real photo, wait 1.5 seconds, and then write both the buffer and the photo into the same archive. On playback, by default show the normal photo, but on whatever UI gesture, play the first 1.5 seconds of the video, then the photo for one frame, then the next 1.5 seconds of the video.
Only barrier I could see to re-implementing this on other phones is long wait times while the camera switches modes, during which information is lost.
>[W]hy do professional photographers bother with shutters or try to time the perfect shots? Why not just constantly shoot video and pull frames out of it later?
I'm not suggesting people should take videos instead of photos. It was just ridiculous the way they trotted it out as a brand new and of course revolutionary idea, considering it has been done before and also is just video taken simultaneously with stills, something camcorders have done for a decade.
I assume, by their explanation, that it's actually a normal 12MP still image, jpg/raw, and the "live photo" is an additional video along side the picture that opens seamlessly when you activate it.
tldr: My mom has no idea what force touch is. She'd not going to get 3d touch.
I love all of this, but it seems to me that there is really becoming a divide in the type of people who can fully appreciate/employ the UI nuances? I'm not a photographer, and basically only use photoshop to crop and do bullish things. But I know there's a whole universe of things I could do, if I appreciated the power set tools.
I think that's where many "smart" products are going, but because they are distributed to the masses (unlike PS for instance), that divide means something else.
For some people this is going to make their "daily lives" more enjoyable. For another set of folks, perhaps equal in size even, I think a lot of this stuff will just go over their heads.
My mom also has no idea what right-click is. I showed it to her once and it blew her mind. Then she promptly forgot about it.
I figure as long as you don't hide essential functionality in your app's 3d-touch interface, and primarily use it for short cuts, you are probably okay...
Is that necessarily a problem? Things still work as they always have in iOS, and now users have more interaction options without compromising the old simplicity.
Interested to hear whether people think the fragmentation/differentiation of the iPhone line is a good strategy or not. Where there used to be 1 flagship phone, there are now 4 different models, possibly 5 if they make a (c) version.
What made the iPhone iconic was that there was one powerful and curated model, and that you trusted Apple to make design choices for you. You paid extra because you knew you were getting a quality phone, not the low-tier/hard to compare versions of the multitude of Android-based phone. Why move away from simplicity and curation?
Yeah, I understand the naming conventions (S = same case, different internals, C = cheap case, Plus = large) but my point is: why? Apple is supposed to think these design choices through and give the user whatever is best. That's what they've done in the past, and that's why they have such a strong brand.
If you have a product called the Widget v6, and the Widget v6 Plus, then you introduce the Widget v6X and the Widget v6X Plus, it's natural to think that these 4 different product are all versions of one flagship model: Widget v6.
Readit News
Please, let's make us some smartphones that are nice and compact and small. Or at least medium.
[0]: http://www.apple.com/iphone-6s/specs/
The touch screen is built in such a way that any small crack and half the screen or more stops accepting touch.
I love my Aquos SH-02F though.
I really wanted to sign up for Google Fi, but I want a phone, not a tablet.
They already have an inexplicable obsession with it. I'd rather have a slightly thicker phone and more battery
I don't have a problem with the larger phones, personally, but I think it's interesting to see how quickly the industry has come full-circle.
Why would you hold a phone up to your ear? Trying to take a photo of your ear canal or something?
I tried out the Moto X for about 3 months, like it a lot, display was just a little too big.
Now my wife has small hands and small fingers. She can't handle the N5 comfortable even.
I don't know the averages though.
Deleted Comment
I'm just glad I can still laugh at Apple users for only having 1GB RAM.
and they can still laugh at me for even needing more than 1GB RAM.
The iPad Pro is much more affected by this because it competes with Wintel devices. When you compare it to the Surface Pro, the later isn't considerably beefier except when it comes to RAM, which is enough on its own to give it double the life span...
I thought it usually was known once ifixit or similar did a teardown of the device.
(that said, I'm quite happy with the 5S. I don't have much need for what the 6 models offer.)
iPhone 6: 5.44" x 2.64" x 0.27"; 4.55 ounces
iPhone 6S: 5.44" x 2.64" x 0.28"; 5.05 ounces
iPhone 6+: 6.22" x 3.06" x 0.28"; 6.07 ounces
iPhone 6S+: 6.23" x 3.07" x 0.29"; 6.77 ounces
[0] http://www.apple.com/iphone-6/specs/
[1] http://www.apple.com/iphone-6s/specs/
edit and you have to be fucking kidding me with 16GB base models...
edit2 oh, I get it, it's a push for iCloud storage, lame
Things like right clicking, force/3D touching, or stylus's are specific modes that need to be activated and de-activated discreetly -- showing a separate set of otherwise non-discoverable features.
When something is usable, that doesn't necessarily make it useful.
A lot depends on how developers use/abuse this feature. If only power-user features are hidden in the 3D-touch menu then it will be OK. But if ordinary features are only exposed via this menu then apps will become harder to use.
Mac<thing>: e.g. Macbook, MacBook Pro, Mac Pro
i<thing>: iPod, iPhone, iPad, iSight
Apple <thing>: Apple watch, Apple pencil
I think the Apple one is the worst, because <thing> seems to be common non-trademarked words and has a weird marketing exec "let's get the branding out there!" strategy.
And now it kind of smells like they might be thinking about going to a "Smart <thing>" naming scheme.
It makes calling things kind of hard and schizophrenic, most people just default to i<thing> when they don't know what to call it. I hear iWatch at least once a week.
I liked the name Force Touch. A little creepy, sure, but it made sense, and basically told you what to do.
[1] https://tsdr.uspto.gov/#caseNumber=85616589&caseType=SERIAL_...
It seems highly similar to the Watch — including the haptic feedback (which to me is an important part of what makes the interaction work on the watch).
http://p.events-delivery.apple.com.edgesuite.net/1509pijnedf... [1]
[1] From a previous HN post:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10192594
So, first of all, there are three levels and the first level is a peek, nothing serious and totally non-committal. Frequently accidentally engaging this would probably still be super annoying, but if it happens once in a while and is also super responsive then that’s not a big deal. Making this first step non-committal is probably a big part of making this all work.
Second, the peek seems to show off some direct input based on force (with the preview dynamically resizing based on it), so that you are not blindly guessing the pressure you have to apply. This direct feedback is probably also a big part of the puzzle.
If they get that right and given their implementation (distinct, few and pretty clear and consistent places to force touch, at least within their applications, that all do predictable and understandable things) I think this is a winner and will make using everything much more of a joy to use. It could also suck. We don’t know yet. I’m just really happy someone is trying stuff like that. The vocabulary on touch devices we have is nice, but it is still sparse. Maybe this extension will work out, maybe it won’t. Either way, I’m excited.
/5c with 16GB and 0 free space... even with "optimize storage on phone" for photos enabled they still take up all my space
I have several gigs taken up by whatsapp alone and I do not want to delete my history.
And to handle the backups yourself, import your own photos, store them wherever you like. None of this has changed as far as I can see.
Note that's the default. It's still optional (e.g. pay $100-200 more for more storage, or buy seemingly increasingly more niche phones that offer SD card slots).
And of course the age old alternative, which is making a compromise. i.e. not store all and any music, video, photo etc on your insta-use phone. Instead keep old albums on an external drive in your home, just like movies you've already seen or movies you won't get to anytime soon. Or albums you rarely listen to. Compromise.
The minimum at this point should be 32GB.
The real kicker is Apple has provided no first-party way to extract images from message history.
(EDIT: I am aware of the "keep entire message history"/"keep 1 year message history" setting - we are trying to extract photos from backup using 3rd party software so we can flip that switch. This is very non-intuitive and requires the use of an external device)
I need to keep a separate iPod because there's not enough room on my iPhone for much of my music collection. (I only have a handful of apps). And for what? An extra sixteen gigs of flash memory costs a few bucks nowadays.
Would you care to expand on this? Thanks.
With 4K and 12 megapixels? It's going to go by so fast...
"Brand New" and "Same as used in X" - choose one. (I think this is just standard TechCrunch, not from Apple, but still rather irritating)
http://leancrew.com/all-this/2015/08/aluminum-and-strength/
[0] not solely, they're also used in bike frames. Basically 7000 is zinc alloys, and have the highest available tensile strength, rivalling low-level steels at a third the density.
Except for Berkshire Hathaway moving from textiles to being Warren Buffet's investment vehicle -- that was a good move...
http://priceonomics.com/porsche-the-hedge-fund-that-also-mad...
And, if you were hoping to use someone cheap like Cricket instead of Verizon, no such luck there either:
"1. The iPhone Upgrade Program is available to qualified customers only with a valid U.S. personal credit card. Requires a 24-month installment loan with Citizens Bank, N.A. and iPhone activation with a national carrier — AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, or Verizon. "
[1] http://www.apple.com/shop/iphone/iphone-upgrade-program
One thing I wasn't sure about though was do you own the phone or are you just leasing it? When you upgrade after a year do you have to return your old phone?
EDIT: "Just trade in your current iPhone for a new one, and your new program begins."
Source: http://www.apple.com/shop/iphone/iphone-upgrade-program
Deleted Comment
Think about it - why do professional photographers bother with shutters or try to time the perfect shots? Why not just constantly shoot video and pull frames out of it later? Because it would look like crap.
This wouldn't be hard to imitate. Record the live preview into a 3 second buffer. When the user presses the shutter, switch into still mode, take a real photo, wait 1.5 seconds, and then write both the buffer and the photo into the same archive. On playback, by default show the normal photo, but on whatever UI gesture, play the first 1.5 seconds of the video, then the photo for one frame, then the next 1.5 seconds of the video.
Only barrier I could see to re-implementing this on other phones is long wait times while the camera switches modes, during which information is lost.
Photographers are doing this.
https://news.creativecow.net/story/879117
>"RED cameras allow Inez and Vinoodh to simultaneously capture high-resolution images for their photographs along with their artistic videos"
Two separate files tied together by the UI.
That "Live Photo" will still be a normal jpg
I love all of this, but it seems to me that there is really becoming a divide in the type of people who can fully appreciate/employ the UI nuances? I'm not a photographer, and basically only use photoshop to crop and do bullish things. But I know there's a whole universe of things I could do, if I appreciated the power set tools.
I think that's where many "smart" products are going, but because they are distributed to the masses (unlike PS for instance), that divide means something else.
For some people this is going to make their "daily lives" more enjoyable. For another set of folks, perhaps equal in size even, I think a lot of this stuff will just go over their heads.
I figure as long as you don't hide essential functionality in your app's 3d-touch interface, and primarily use it for short cuts, you are probably okay...
How discoverable is Siri? It’s super obscure, nowhere to be found in the UI, you can only activate it via an obscure long-press.
She'll get it if she uses it. It's not any more difficult than using the current touch gestures.
If she means to use it. Not difficult to imagine people triggering this by accident.
> iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, iPhone 6S, iPhone 6S Plus, iPhone 6c
What made the iPhone iconic was that there was one powerful and curated model, and that you trusted Apple to make design choices for you. You paid extra because you knew you were getting a quality phone, not the low-tier/hard to compare versions of the multitude of Android-based phone. Why move away from simplicity and curation?
Just two flagships. And they are differentiated on size, that's all.
This is no different to the 5/5C situation really (in fact, a clearer differentiation tbh).
The previous years models have always been available since the 3GS was released.
Seems like you're running about 6 years behind the times...?
Maybe this sort of taxonomy only confuses me?