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> That and a belief that they didn't want to be glued to their phone all the time. This made me think of another reason they are cutting smaller form factor ph
by frenchie4111 7y ago
> That and a belief that they didn't want to be glued to their phone all the time.
This made me think of another reason they are cutting smaller form factor phones, maybe not valid.
It could be that manufacturers of mobile phones are optimizing for engagement (see: apple switching revenue to services), and the engagement metrics on smaller form factor phones are lower, so they want people using less of them. They only want you to be able to buy a larger phone, because they want you to engage with your phone more.
- tomaskafka 7y agoThey absolutely do, services are a larger and larger part of Apple's income. I believe that's a reason why Screen Time is so bad - it's not a feature, it's just marketing's objection killer.
- scarface74 7y agoWhy would any phone manufacturer beside Apple care about engagement? No other (non Chinese) OEM makes money from services after the phone is sold.
- frenchie4111 7y agoYeah, that's fair.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- duncanawoods 7y agoDo the bundled bloatware deals depend on engagement?
- cmrdporcupine 7y agoThe bigger the phone, the larger the surface area for the battery that they can put on it. I suspect that's the primary engineering concern driving it, and it just so happens that customers either like, or haven't balked, at large screens.
- tspike 7y agoWouldn't a smaller screen with a thicker phone last longer? Less screen area to light up. I'm curious what the tradeoff is on increased energy consumption is with the larger screen / larger battery / thin phone setup.
- akiselev 7y agoYep. A screen's power consumption grows with the surface area of the screen (w * h) whereas a battery's capacity grows with the volume of the battery (w * h * d). I think the dominant market pressures so far has been practical concerns like phone thickness and battery life so manufacturers - who are all also competing with their past products - are forced to sacrifice screen size options to compete. Now screen size is becoming unwieldy and screens/batteries have steadily improved so we might swing back the other way.
- bscphil 7y agoYou could double up on gains on a smaller phone by reducing the screen resolution, which reduces the power demand on the chip managing the display, and so on. Back when I had the Nexus 4, at 720p, I never felt it was pixelated or annoying. Then again, I don't watch movies on my phone either.
- derefr 7y agoOn the other hand, given an OLED screen, where energy cost only grows proportionally to the number of pixels receiving power, you could slap a big screen on the phone "for watching movies" but have the phone display a smaller screen centered on it (with black bars around) most of the time. I have a feeling this is the direction the industry would go, if battery life truly became a concern.
- Ididntdothis 7y agoI would be happy if they added 1mm thickness to my SE and left the rest. That would allow for quite a bit more battery.