>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.
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.)
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:
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.
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.
> 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.
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 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 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.
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.
Readit News
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.
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)
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.
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.)
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.
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!
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.
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.
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?
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.
More on the popover cards here (EDIT better link): https://medium.com/@hacknicity/view-controller-presentation-...
https://www.iphonefaq.org/archives/973834
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.
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.
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.
Customers loved iPhone SE, both because it was cheap and because of its size.
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.
Why is it so hard to believe that some people DO prefer smaller phones?
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.
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.
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.
People quickly forget that prior to the 6, Apple was getting criticized by not 'innovating' and making larger screen iPhones.
I believe bigger phones are first computers for a lot of people, and they never graduate to owning a PC.
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.
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).
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.
That's why I have an SE.
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.
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).
It doesn't solve the unlock delay, but it would make most other things people use FaceID for much quicker.
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.
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.
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.
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.
On a larger screen, it works well. On a small screen, it’s way too cramped.
I can use the XS single handed with no issues. I think most of the difference comes from the way you hold the phone.
I rest it on my little finger, and type with the thumb. I can reach the left top (I’m right handed) by just sliding the phone
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Apple seems to believe its cost that keeps the SE relevant, and tried to tap the market with the XR... but very few budged it seems.
I loved my 7 and almost had it for 3 years. It would’ve lasted 4-5 years.
At least in the US. Maybe it’s different else where?
You’re not wrong that $1000 for a phone is crazy though. I’m still on my iPhone 7+.
Dead Comment
This strategy will work but will eventually require me to stop receiving os/security updates which is a real problem.
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.
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.
I even use Air Pods while it charges wireless at times, all depending on how much mobility I need at the time.
Pinnacle of industrial design. Even the bottom speaker holes are symmetrical.
( Note: The iPhone SE is 4", not 4.7" )
4" - 11%
4.7" - 47%
5.8 / 6.1 " - 18%
6.5" - 23%
But it it important to note this is iPhone distribution for Pedometer++ [1]
If we look at other source of Data, Such as MixPanel [2] which has a much wider collection of Data. Their Size Distribution.
4" - 6%
4.7" - 39%
5.8 / 6.1 " - 25%
6.5" - 30%
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.
[1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pedometer/id712286167
[2] https://mixpanel.com/trends/#report/iphone_models/from_date:...
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.
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.
EDIT: correction to first para.
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 hope they change some things soon.