6 ms·
Phones have grown, but people are the same size as ever. It's as if the industry has collectively forgotten what ergonomics is. It's especially frustrating for
by grishka 11mo ago
Phones have grown, but people are the same size as ever. It's as if the industry has collectively forgotten what ergonomics is. It's especially frustrating for me as someone who is a comparatively compact person and who still considers the phone a secondary device mostly for use outside.
- stetrain 11mo agoThe industry has given consumers the choice, and they overwhelmingly prefer to spend their money on the larger phones.
- grishka 11mo agoThe choice in the form of the iPhone mini that sold by millions but is somehow still considered a failed product by Apple, yeah. And nothing comparable in the Android world, where all manufacturers pretty much move in lockstep.
- stetrain 11mo agoThe choice has happened over many years. Incrementally consumers were offered the choice of the same size phone or larger, and they kept choosing larger. If the smaller iPhones and Android phones of 10+ years ago had continued to sell well as larger models were introduced alongside them, they'd still be selling phones that size today.
- dpark 11mo agoI wonder what percentage of people who complain about not being able to buy smaller phones actually ever bought the smaller phones when they were available. Are these people carrying 3rd gen iPhone SEs right now? I suspect no. It’s not as if Apple dislikes money. If they believed the market for small phones was large enough, they’d still be selling small phones.
- grishka 11mo agoI did! As much as I could as someone who can't stand iOS, anyway. I used the Pixel 1 and then the Pixel 4a, for 4 years each.
- dpark 11mo agoI have sympathy for folks who want a small phone and legitimately would buy it if available. Unfortunately the set of people who will actually buy a smaller phone seems to be very small, which is why all the manufacturers have just stopped. Apple with their two sizes seems to be trying harder than most manufacturers.
- throwforfeds 11mo agoI was still using my iPhone 13 mini until last week when I bought an Air. As a city dweller without a car, I'm constantly in situations where I'm carrying something in one hand and need to pull out my phone for something. Now with this huge form factor I can't comfortably do that. For example, I was traveling internationally and was carrying my duffel bag in one hand and needed to get information out of the Airbnb app on my phone, and I almost dropped it. The mini would have been (and was always) fine in these circumstances. The Air doesn't even fit in my jeans comfortably, I have to carry it in my jacket now (what do I do in summer?). I'm considering returning it and switching back to my mini until it just can't run anymore. Apple needs to realize the user base that wants a portable, one handed phone isn't the same market that wants a cheap phone. I paid more for a worse spec'd phone (Air vs 17), solely hoping it would be easier to use as a mobile, out in the world device. It's not. If they launched the same exact mini with a processor bump at $1k or more I'd be fine paying it.
- dpark 11mo ago> Apple needs to realize the user base that wants a portable, one handed phone isn't the same market that wants a cheap phone. The reality is that “I want a small phone” for most seems to mean “I would prefer that the phone is small but this is actually the least important factor for my purchase decision”. The set of people who bought the mini was quite small, estimated around 3% of sales. You didn’t even buy the smallest phone. You got seduced by the thin phone but the 17 and 17 pro are both physically smaller devices corner to corner and would fit in your pocket better.
- grishka 11mo agoYou seem to have missed my point about manufacturers moving in lockstep. Most people use a phone for at least two years. The way it happened in the 2010s, by the time someone is looking at buying a new one, all available phones on the market have already grown larger compared to their current one. So, they get sad and buy whatever is available.
- stetrain 11mo agoWhich is perhaps why Apple tried the iPhone Mini, to go back and see if they were missing a large market segment. Their answer was that some people bought it, but not enough to justify the product at Apple's scale. There isn't a grand conspiracy to make everyone sad with big phones they don't want.
- dpark 11mo ago> Their answer was that some people bought it, but not enough to justify the product at Apple's scale. This is the key thing. It’s not that no one wants it. But it’s a lot of engineering to produce another distinct hardware model and the market is tiny compared to the larger models.
- grishka 11mo agoAnecdotally, I, personally, know several people who bought the iPhone mini, some of them still using it. I still blame Apple for considering that 3% of total iPhone sales is a failure. And then launching the iPhone air, as if it will do any better...
- dpark 11mo agoEstimates are that the mini was only about 3% of total iPhone sales.