6 ms·

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 l

• rsynnott 11y ago
  I was quite disappointed there was not iPhone 5S sized device. Will hold off on upgrading for a bit, then...
  • droidist2 11y ago
    Same here, but will next year be any better?
• jfoutz 11y ago
  They must have needed a bigger battery to drive the faster A9 and the always on coprocessor. (M something?)
  • masklinn 11y ago
    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] 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/ http://www.apple.com/iphone-6/specs/ [1] http://www.apple.com/iphone-6s/specs/ http://www.apple.com/iphone-6s/specs/
    • jfoutz 11y ago
      I completely misunderstood this graphic: https://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/0342.jpg https://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/0342.jp... It looks like 6+ and 6s are the same size, with 6s+ being huge.
      • masklinn 11y ago
        They're not to scale, the 6 and 6S are the same size (there's a fraction of a millimetre difference), so are the 6+ and 6S+. I have no idea what they did with that slide, I guess somebody didn't want to overshadow the new phones and thought extra color was not sufficient.
      • artursapek 11y ago
        The increase in size in that photo is dramatized by the vanishing point.
    • graeme 11y ago
      Interesting. Do you know why it's heavier? I'd have to hold one to be sure, but I really like how light the 6 is. I'm not sure I'd like a heavier phone - the 6's specs are already great.
      • masklinn 11y ago
        No idea, my guess would be the force touch gizmos, the trackpads tack on a fair bit of hardware[0] though I've no idea how much it weighs and in the "disassembly" pics the feedback thingy ("taptic engine") seemed fairly large and mostly metallic: http://live.arstechnica.com/give-us-a-hint-apples-september-9-event/images/DSC00147.JPG http://live.arstechnica.com/give-us-a-hint-apples-september-... (that's the big gray block in front of the battery, you can read "taptic" on the far side of the picture) The different aluminium alloy might be a few % heavier, but it wouldn't increase the whole phone's weight by 10% (replacing aluminium by steel might) [0] https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Retina+Macbook+2015+Teardown/39841#s89855 https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Retina+Macbook+2015+Teardown...
• puranjay 11y ago
  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.
  • jpkeisala 11y ago
    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.
    • glhaynes 11y ago
      Voice calls over VoLTE or Wi-Fi sound great. It's just a matter of carriers rolling it out (and building interoperability amongst themselves).
      • matthewmcg 11y ago
        Facetime Voice also sounds great. (Though it only works when you're calling another iDevice.)
        • roflchoppa 11y ago
          if i know the other person has an iPhone, i make them facetime me, using voice over my service sucks. fuck it i don't want calling minutes anymore, just gimme data.
    • sorenjan 11y ago
      Older phones (the ones designed by phone manufacturers, not computer companies) had sidetone [0], making it a lot easier to talk on the phone when it's windy. They where better phones than today's portable computers with a phone app. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidetone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidetone
      • jonknee 11y ago
• Numberwang 11y ago
  But if you had a small screen you would not buy any apps from apples store? You have not thought this trough.
• ihowlatthemoon 11y ago
  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.
  • untog 11y ago
    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.
    • mtgx 11y ago
      I'm surprised Samsung doesn't try it, with their whole "let's throw it out there and see if it sticks" strategy and all.
    • reustle 11y ago
      I love my Z3 Compact as well. Am still pulling a solid 1.5+ days of battery life, and the dock charger is really nice.
      • aroch 11y ago
        My one complaint with my Z3c is actually my dock, the magnetic pedestal design sucks. I've had to RMA seveal docks form Sony just to get one that worked most of the time. And even then, the magnet disengages and the power pins drop = no charging, which is an unwelcomed surprise in the morning. I've since moved to a magnetic cable and I'm much happier. the Z5c is pretty tempting, but I'll admit the 6s+ is also tempting. I'm growing tired of Play Services killing my battery on a whim
  • jscahefer 11y ago
    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.
• sanderjd 11y ago
  Yeah, I can't wait for the backlash trend, where everything goes back to being smaller, but thinner this time. I really wanted to sign up for Google Fi, but I want a phone, not a tablet.
  • masklinn 11y ago
    Sadly thinner and smaller means cutting down the battery by a lot.
    • hajile 11y ago
      But smaller surface area means a smaller screen as well which works out rather well since the screen is the battery sink most of the time. This is one reason why tablets don't get better battery life than phones.
      • IkmoIkmo 11y ago
        Yeah but it's not a 1:1. i.e. a 50% smaller screen doesn't use 50% less battery for the screen, let alone cut 50% battery. For one, part of the screen is powered by a controller that's pretty similar whether it's a 4 inch or 5 inch screen. So if you cut the screen in half, you save maybe 40% battery going towards powering the screen. But then the screen is only a fraction of the power usage, let's call it half. So cutting the screen in half drops battery usage not by 40%, but 20%. And then the screen is off half of the time while the phone is still using battery, which is why it's even lower than that. So half as big a screen might reduce total battery usage of the phone by say 20-30% tops. And that's without taking into account that a big chunk of a phone's internals are going to be non-battery (e.g. flash storage, cpu, ram) which don't get bigger (or at least anywhere near 2x as big) if the screen is twice as big, and so the battery-to-volume ratio on a bigger phone is bigger than on a smaller phone. In short, while yes obviously smaller phones have smaller screens that use less energy, overall bigger phones have better battery life because they have comparatively bigger batteries. As for tablets vs phones comparison, it's an apples/oranges comparison as they do different things but, no way. If you want to make the comparison, top iPad has a 42 watthour battery, iPhone 6 has 6.9. About 6x battery difference, despite the fact the 9.7 inch vs a 4.7 inch screen. That iPad has 3x as many pixels to power but 6x the battery to do it. But again, it's apples/oranges. Compare the iPhone 6 to iPhone 6 Plus. According to you the reason tablets get worse battery life is because they're bigger and have bigger screens, which are the main battery sink. So the 6 Plus should have worse battery life, according to you under the same principle. But it's wrong, the iPhone 6 Plus has 60% more watthours of battery, despite being 32% bigger. And if you look at Apple's references (usually pretty good), they rate for the Plus vs the standard iphone: 10 hours more talk time, 34 hours more standby, 2 hours more internet time on 3G or LTE, 1 hour more on wifi, 3 hours more video playback and 30 hours more audio playback. Note the video (where the screen is one of the biggest battery sinks you can imagine), it's got a battery lifetime of 27% more despite a 32% bigger phone, for all the above mentioned reasons that a percentage increase in screen size has a somewhat larger percentage increase in extra battery volume. So I'd say that the notion that bigger phones have better battery life, in general, is true. And when choosing the plus version on the iPhone, the battery life is a benefit. While choosing say the mini version on android phones (even as they're often underpowered, such as the Galaxy S mini series), tends to diminish battery life.
• tertius 11y ago
  Agreed, I have an N5 and it's about as large as my hands can go. It could have a better display, but not a larger one. 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.
• roymurdock 11y ago
  I'll be holding on to my iPhone 5 until it bricks at this rate.
  • rancur 11y ago
    ok, so in the next software update when it slows way way down
    • roymurdock 11y ago
      Haha, you nailed it. Good old planned obsolescence :)
• deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
• rancur 11y ago
  >specs 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.
  • _broody 11y ago
    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...
  • unprepare 11y ago
    Has the amount of RAM been confirmed? I thought it usually was known once ifixit or similar did a teardown of the device.
    • rancur 11y ago
      hey would have sold it as a memory upgrade if it had one. additionally, the phone has enough other features to get people to upgrade that more RAM would be giving something away for nothing. When they run out of ideas, they'll add more RAM
  • dzhiurgis 11y ago
    iOS doesn't run in RAM, it's only bloated OSes like Android that need RAM. /s
    • rancur 11y ago
      lol
• jjtheblunt 11y ago
  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?
• mercer 11y ago
  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.)
  • rajacombinator 11y ago
    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 ...
    • mercer 11y ago
      It's hard to say without using it, but the gut feeling I get from 3D Touch is that it will be very useful. It strikes me as an innovation in the same category as the finger-no-stylus approach of the initial iPhone and, more recently, Touch ID. These features initially seem overhyped because they're such 'little' things, but because they affect your interaction with the device constantly, it'll be hard to live without once you're used to them.
• amatheus 11y ago
  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.