7 ms·

1163 Comment right now, ~800 Are about Size of Devices. I thought there was another important point. I'm surprised about 1100+ comments, since this is, you kno

1163 Comment right now, ~800 Are about Size of Devices. I thought there was another important point. I'm surprised about 1100+ comments, since this is, you know: just another phone

rl3 7y ago
>I'm surprised about 1100+ comments, since this is, you know: just another phone For as insightful as the HN crowd usually is, it's funny that we all just swarm a thread about a new phone that isn't terribly remarkable.
- goatherders 7y ago
  Agreed. I'm only here to see how worked up people can get about another phone that's 98% the same as all the other phones. As for it being faster than all Android phones. Ok. And? I dont look at my Galaxy and say "if only this was 1 or 2 or 5 or 6.7% faster." We are kind of past the "it should be faster!" for basically ALL smartphones in my view.
  - rodolphoarruda 7y ago
    I second this. I own a 2017 iPhone SE. Firefox, Gmail and Waze launch in a blink of an eye, and that's good enough speed for me. 1/2 blink of an eye speed won't make much of a difference. edit: iPhone year is actually 2017, not 2015.
  - dangus 7y ago
    This phone is a certified big fucking deal in terms of market impact. It takes the “iPhone most people should buy” from $750 to $399. It completely demolishes the Pixel 3A and makes that phone just about impossible to recommend. A load of Android OEMs selling at this price point should be terrified. And much more than the original iPhone SE, expect this phone or a $399 phone to finally stick around for Apple. The iPhone SE seemed like an experiment or a way to squeeze out more use out of some remaining machinery. But, I don’t know, this feels different. Apple is selling a price point and they’re going to keep that permanently. Look how much fanfare is on the home page of their site. This thing might even be updated every year. And honestly, the iPhone SE is too small for most people and had more downsides than this.
    - thdrdt 7y ago
      It heavily depends on the country. There are only a hand full of countries where iOS and Android almost have the same market share (US, UK, SE for example). In most countries this is not the case. Android share is still very dominant world wide (~80% vs ~20%). Switching to another OS / ecosystem is not something done easily. When you are an Android user and everyone around you is why switch to iOS? There are plenty of good Android devices available for $400-$750. Also: in a lot of countries people just prefer a very big screen size. So I think your comment is a little over the top. Yes it might attract some customers but I don't believe it will mean an exodus of Android users.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - skinnymuch 7y ago
        Doesn’t almost every country except a few possibly exceptions prefer larger phones?
    - goatherders 7y ago
      I'm sure the price point will induce some people to buy it. and I'm sure android users will be in that group. But I use Android and am looking for a new phone. I wont be considering anything Apple, even at a much lower price point. Agree that it will be interesting to see what happens to the sales of their higher priced phones.
  - oarsinsync 7y ago
    Some of us are using a four year old phone that is likely to be EOL in a little over a year, struggling with battery issues, camera issues, general stability issues, etc. Some of us continued to hold out in the hopes that there might be a new device announced that wouldn’t require spending $700+ on something that is effectively worse than what we already have. Some of us are pretty disappointed that we now need to spend money to maintain a device that is unlikely to receive security updates past IOS 14, or spend money on something that is explicitly against what we want. I’ll get over it myself, but it won’t stop me being frustrated in the immediate term, because you’re absolutely right. Instead of being anything new and useful (as price point isn’t a big differentiator on here, given average earnings), it is just another phone, and it’s just like all the other phones out on the market. It’s too damn big.
  - fiblye 7y ago
    The problem is the endless treadmill of software bloat. Every little bit helps when you're dealing with webpages today.
    - saiya-jin 7y ago
      If bloat is your true problem, having cpu say 5% faster won't solve anything at all. On Android, you can at least revert to clean Lionage/whatever Android installation for most devices, and all folks report remarkable improvement of overall speed of device, sometimes also battery life. Also, I don't get the phone 'workflow' where you heavily depend on computing power to render some web pages faster. Connection reliability is usually much bigger factor if that's what you really do (which is strange but maybe I am not a typical phone user).
      - fiblye 7y ago
        JavaScript these days is incredibly heavy. Most phones this year don’t have any trouble, but you can feel a huge difference between, say, a typical 2018 phone and a 2017 phone in rendering speed. If you’re planning on keeping your phone for a few years, you’ll notice.
  - wooger 7y ago
    Every phone apple have released since the 5S has been faster than every other phone by a laughable amount, especially in JS benchmarks & web performance. The SE is nothing new. For a long time, Apple's 2 gen old phones were still faster (based on Geekbench) than the fastest android phone.
mettamage 7y ago
No it's not. The HN crowd has a vocal group of people who advocate for phones like the iPhone SE. The main complaint of this group is that other phones are too big. So a new release of the SE brings a lot of hope for extending that experience. The fact that this phone is bigger doesn't sit well with this vocal minority, because they want a small smartphone and now see that medium is the only available in stock. Expectation, expectation, expectation. It's being shattered, that leads to emotions and that leads to comments. I'm also not too happy about the new SE, if you search my comment history I don't think you see me talking about it, but I'm in the same camp. I think other phones are preposterously big, and the SE is the only normal one. Alas, the new SE is not normal for me. Going back to a dumber phone is now something I have to consider more seriously. I don't want my pockets to bulge out and I want to handle my phone with one hand without straining it. The old iPhone SE was perfect for that. I have pretty tall hands but with the iPhone 8, it didn't strain but felt clumsy (and I use the device quite often in order to help my grandparents with their iPhone 8). I hope I gave you some insight into the marketing persona of people who want the old iPhone SE to come back and how that persona is well represented on HN. See also: Search on HN Algolia for iPhone SE to see these sentiments repeated. Example: the top comment in the this thread [1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22878515 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22878515
- Daneel_ 7y ago
  This comment is really the perfect summation of the issue. For what it's worth, I'm also a firm believer of "it should be useable with one hand without akwardness". 4.5" would be my perfect size; just slightly smaller than the current small offerings on the market. I currently have an iphone X and really dislike the form factor - it's just too large, and the rounded corners lend themselves to slipping out of the hand. The square edge design really was the easiest the grip - I hope it makes a return on the next iphone pro. The ipad pro has gone back to the square edge design already, so there's some small hope in this regard.
  - dangus 7y ago
    Get a popsocket, give it a chance for a week. All this time you’ve been spending with phones slipping out of hands has been wasted.
sundvor 7y ago
Yeah the Samsung S20 Ultra barely scored a mention. My 512GB model features 16GB of memory, and a staggeringly beautiful display. Not to mention that camera.. But hey, it's Apple, so everyone is going nuts.
- hellotomyrars 7y ago
  You didn't pay $399 for it. Apples to oranges.
  - jermaustin1 7y ago
    Apples to Samsungs
    - sundvor 7y ago
      Exactly. You going to compare a premium Apple device, compare it a premium Android. I believe mine is pretty much the highest end available on *any" platform - it's pretty insane. Apple has a lot of catching up to do.
- pythonaut_16 7y ago
  Real talk though, what are you doing on your phone that actually uses 16GB of memory?
  - sundvor 7y ago
    As a random snapshot, my present memory usage is 9.6GB. Previous phone had 8GB, so this is part of why it's so much faster - although storage as well as CPU is also significantly better. (The regular model had 12GB which would suffice, but 128GB storage was a bit of a joke - I take a lot of pictures, and am familiar with Samsung slow downs unless plenty of free space.) What I use? Slack, multiple email accounts, Discord, life 360, signal, WhatsApp, Facebook, Messenger, Hangouts, Instagram, .. nothing special, just a lot of different messaging platforms + apps. The extra memory allows them to stay loaded and ready when swapping. I locked myself into a salary sacrificed tax free pre order in February (before realising just how bad C19 would get), so not paying the full sticker price. Also rotated my old S10 5G device to wife and sold her old for good coin. I for one absolutely love the big display in these times of home iso; whether for videos or reading technical books on Kindle. Wife also embraces the nearly as big S10 5G - she wouldn't go back to a smaller phone now.

1163 Comment right now, ~800 Are about Size of Devices. I thought there was another important point. I'm surprised about 1100+ comments, since this is, you know: just another phone

rl3 7y ago

>I'm surprised about 1100+ comments, since this is, you know: just another phone For as insightful as the HN crowd usually is, it's funny that we all just swarm a thread about a new phone that isn't terribly remarkable.

goatherders 7y ago
Agreed. I'm only here to see how worked up people can get about another phone that's 98% the same as all the other phones. As for it being faster than all Android phones. Ok. And? I dont look at my Galaxy and say "if only this was 1 or 2 or 5 or 6.7% faster." We are kind of past the "it should be faster!" for basically ALL smartphones in my view.
- rodolphoarruda 7y ago
  I second this. I own a 2017 iPhone SE. Firefox, Gmail and Waze launch in a blink of an eye, and that's good enough speed for me. 1/2 blink of an eye speed won't make much of a difference. edit: iPhone year is actually 2017, not 2015.
- dangus 7y ago
  This phone is a certified big fucking deal in terms of market impact. It takes the “iPhone most people should buy” from $750 to $399. It completely demolishes the Pixel 3A and makes that phone just about impossible to recommend. A load of Android OEMs selling at this price point should be terrified. And much more than the original iPhone SE, expect this phone or a $399 phone to finally stick around for Apple. The iPhone SE seemed like an experiment or a way to squeeze out more use out of some remaining machinery. But, I don’t know, this feels different. Apple is selling a price point and they’re going to keep that permanently. Look how much fanfare is on the home page of their site. This thing might even be updated every year. And honestly, the iPhone SE is too small for most people and had more downsides than this.
  - thdrdt 7y ago
    It heavily depends on the country. There are only a hand full of countries where iOS and Android almost have the same market share (US, UK, SE for example). In most countries this is not the case. Android share is still very dominant world wide (~80% vs ~20%). Switching to another OS / ecosystem is not something done easily. When you are an Android user and everyone around you is why switch to iOS? There are plenty of good Android devices available for $400-$750. Also: in a lot of countries people just prefer a very big screen size. So I think your comment is a little over the top. Yes it might attract some customers but I don't believe it will mean an exodus of Android users.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - skinnymuch 7y ago
      Doesn’t almost every country except a few possibly exceptions prefer larger phones?
  - goatherders 7y ago
    I'm sure the price point will induce some people to buy it. and I'm sure android users will be in that group. But I use Android and am looking for a new phone. I wont be considering anything Apple, even at a much lower price point. Agree that it will be interesting to see what happens to the sales of their higher priced phones.
- oarsinsync 7y ago
  Some of us are using a four year old phone that is likely to be EOL in a little over a year, struggling with battery issues, camera issues, general stability issues, etc. Some of us continued to hold out in the hopes that there might be a new device announced that wouldn’t require spending $700+ on something that is effectively worse than what we already have. Some of us are pretty disappointed that we now need to spend money to maintain a device that is unlikely to receive security updates past IOS 14, or spend money on something that is explicitly against what we want. I’ll get over it myself, but it won’t stop me being frustrated in the immediate term, because you’re absolutely right. Instead of being anything new and useful (as price point isn’t a big differentiator on here, given average earnings), it is just another phone, and it’s just like all the other phones out on the market. It’s too damn big.
- fiblye 7y ago
  The problem is the endless treadmill of software bloat. Every little bit helps when you're dealing with webpages today.
  - saiya-jin 7y ago
    If bloat is your true problem, having cpu say 5% faster won't solve anything at all. On Android, you can at least revert to clean Lionage/whatever Android installation for most devices, and all folks report remarkable improvement of overall speed of device, sometimes also battery life. Also, I don't get the phone 'workflow' where you heavily depend on computing power to render some web pages faster. Connection reliability is usually much bigger factor if that's what you really do (which is strange but maybe I am not a typical phone user).
    - fiblye 7y ago
      JavaScript these days is incredibly heavy. Most phones this year don’t have any trouble, but you can feel a huge difference between, say, a typical 2018 phone and a 2017 phone in rendering speed. If you’re planning on keeping your phone for a few years, you’ll notice.
- wooger 7y ago
  Every phone apple have released since the 5S has been faster than every other phone by a laughable amount, especially in JS benchmarks & web performance. The SE is nothing new. For a long time, Apple's 2 gen old phones were still faster (based on Geekbench) than the fastest android phone.

mettamage 7y ago

No it's not. The HN crowd has a vocal group of people who advocate for phones like the iPhone SE. The main complaint of this group is that other phones are too big. So a new release of the SE brings a lot of hope for extending that experience. The fact that this phone is bigger doesn't sit well with this vocal minority, because they want a small smartphone and now see that medium is the only available in stock. Expectation, expectation, expectation. It's being shattered, that leads to emotions and that leads to comments. I'm also not too happy about the new SE, if you search my comment history I don't think you see me talking about it, but I'm in the same camp. I think other phones are preposterously big, and the SE is the only normal one. Alas, the new SE is not normal for me. Going back to a dumber phone is now something I have to consider more seriously. I don't want my pockets to bulge out and I want to handle my phone with one hand without straining it. The old iPhone SE was perfect for that. I have pretty tall hands but with the iPhone 8, it didn't strain but felt clumsy (and I use the device quite often in order to help my grandparents with their iPhone 8). I hope I gave you some insight into the marketing persona of people who want the old iPhone SE to come back and how that persona is well represented on HN. See also: Search on HN Algolia for iPhone SE to see these sentiments repeated. Example: the top comment in the this thread [1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22878515 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22878515

Daneel_ 7y ago
This comment is really the perfect summation of the issue. For what it's worth, I'm also a firm believer of "it should be useable with one hand without akwardness". 4.5" would be my perfect size; just slightly smaller than the current small offerings on the market. I currently have an iphone X and really dislike the form factor - it's just too large, and the rounded corners lend themselves to slipping out of the hand. The square edge design really was the easiest the grip - I hope it makes a return on the next iphone pro. The ipad pro has gone back to the square edge design already, so there's some small hope in this regard.
- dangus 7y ago
  Get a popsocket, give it a chance for a week. All this time you’ve been spending with phones slipping out of hands has been wasted.

sundvor 7y ago

Yeah the Samsung S20 Ultra barely scored a mention. My 512GB model features 16GB of memory, and a staggeringly beautiful display. Not to mention that camera.. But hey, it's Apple, so everyone is going nuts.

hellotomyrars 7y ago
You didn't pay $399 for it. Apples to oranges.
- jermaustin1 7y ago
  Apples to Samsungs
  - sundvor 7y ago
    Exactly. You going to compare a premium Apple device, compare it a premium Android. I believe mine is pretty much the highest end available on *any" platform - it's pretty insane. Apple has a lot of catching up to do.
pythonaut_16 7y ago
Real talk though, what are you doing on your phone that actually uses 16GB of memory?
- sundvor 7y ago
  As a random snapshot, my present memory usage is 9.6GB. Previous phone had 8GB, so this is part of why it's so much faster - although storage as well as CPU is also significantly better. (The regular model had 12GB which would suffice, but 128GB storage was a bit of a joke - I take a lot of pictures, and am familiar with Samsung slow downs unless plenty of free space.) What I use? Slack, multiple email accounts, Discord, life 360, signal, WhatsApp, Facebook, Messenger, Hangouts, Instagram, .. nothing special, just a lot of different messaging platforms + apps. The extra memory allows them to stay loaded and ready when swapping. I locked myself into a salary sacrificed tax free pre order in February (before realising just how bad C19 would get), so not paying the full sticker price. Also rotated my old S10 5G device to wife and sold her old for good coin. I for one absolutely love the big display in these times of home iso; whether for videos or reading technical books on Kindle. Wife also embraces the nearly as big S10 5G - she wouldn't go back to a smaller phone now.