7 ms·

4 inches

47 points by relation 14y ago

bicknergseng 14y ago
I would just like to point out that this is a highly subjective argument. The iPhone 5 might be too large for Dustin's hand, but I'm quite comfortable using a 4.3 or even 4.5 inch phone. I naturally hold phones with the bottom right corner in pushing the bottom of my hand like the second image on the page, and my hand quite naturally wraps a phone up to ~4.5". For me, emphasis me, any phone over 4.5 becomes a problem because my index finger will have a hard time hitting a power switch on the top right of the phone, but overall I'm able to reach any point of the screen with my thumb and small muscle movements in my hand. But again, this is all subjective to the size of my hand.
- saurik 14y ago
  Exactly: an iPhone 4 is to my girlfriend's hand nearly exactly as a Galaxy Note is to mine. The idea that people make these reachability arguments as if hand size is universal down to silly half-inch increments is downright insane.
  - gms 14y ago
    Have you ever heard the phrase 'optimise for the common case'?
    - saurik 14y ago
      "Have you ever heard of 'variance'?" The "common case" makes sense when you are dealing with a discrete variable that has a mode (a single highly common value): it does not make as much sense for a continuous one like hand span. Put simply, the issue is that no one actually has the "common case": the probability that someone's hand span exactly matches the "average" or "mean" of the distribution is approximately 0. Instead, we have to first discretize the variable into a histogram and then assign a common case afterwards. The way you normally might do that is with standard deviations. However, now you have to ask "what is the variance". With hand size, it is quite obviously very large: again, my girlfriend's hand is to an iPhone 4 as my hand is to a Galaxy Note, and people generally do not go around calling either of us freaks of nature with regards to our hands (I actually have fairly effeminate hands ;P). I will therefore repeat with emphasis: the idea that people make these reachability arguments as if hand size is universal down to silly half-inch increments is downright insane. However, I will now show some data. http://www.steinbuhler.com/assets/images/HandSizeChartNewWeb.jpg http://www.steinbuhler.com/assets/images/HandSizeChartNewWeb... This chart comes from a piano company measuring hand span for purposes of optimal piano sizing (concentrating on people whose hands have already finished growing). (Their conclusion, btw, was that they needed to sell a few more piano sizes.) Now, this is full hand span; however, as your hand is fixed in the middle by the thing you are holding, you won't get this full spread, but I would easily argue that you will get at least half of this spread in that case. The result, as you can see, is that there is a very very large range of reasonable values: hands are really not that common; you might think you have a common hand, but you really don't: hand span varies by numerous inches. (There are multiple factors for this, of course: it isn't just hand size; you also have to take into account flexibility of joints, muscle strength, etc.; even if everyone's hands were the same size, the ability to reach the upper-corner of a device would vary a lot.) I will then argue that even if you want to just attack a lot of people, and still fail for numerous others, you need to at least be making a device for women and a device for men: the difference between genders is really striking in that chart. However, most people don't argue things like this: they accept that there are massive variations in the size of peoples' feet, hands, torsos, and pretty much every other body part, and this is why we don't just sell one-size-fits-all clothing. Apple, FWIW, would not only be selling a single size of jeans, they would claim that they had optimized the size of the jeans to fit some optimal size, and their user community would then defend them with diagrams that show variances of less than half an inch for how perfect the fit is.
      - gms 14y ago
        A large hand can still comfortably use a small phone. A small hand cannot use a large phone.
  - MatthewPhillips 14y ago
    I have normal man sized hands and I can't reach the corner of a 3.5 inch phone without straining my thumb a little.
- fudged71 14y ago
  Exactly. There is no one perfect phone as there is no one perfect glove.
dmauro 14y ago
I don't think he would be so quick to say it's worth the extra screen space if he weren't left-handed. Reaching the back button with only your right hand, even on the 3.5" screen is difficult. After switching to an iPhone 4s earlier this year I found that to be the major failing of the device: http://dmaurolizer.com/post/18478902007/ioss-major-flaw-reaching-for-the-back-button http://dmaurolizer.com/post/18478902007/ioss-major-flaw-reac...
- majormajor 14y ago
  Huh, that's interesting, I'm right handed and generally hold my phone in my left hand, so that my more dextrous hand is free to either touch the screen or do other things (like open doors). I wonder what's more common: holding the phone in your off hand or your dominant hand?
gfodor 14y ago
The elephant in the room is that unlike on android phones, there is no hardware 'back' button on iPhone. Where is it instead (by convention)? The top left corner of the screen, ie, the most unreachable place on the new iPhone. I'm still amazed this thing was produced by Apple given that oversight.
- lovamova 14y ago
  You can swipe right to get back in Music app and a few more apps. Apple also considered the use of the "Home" button for some "back" actions — back to home screen, back to a recent opened app.
  - watty 14y ago
    This would be great if it were all apps, not just a select few.
    - lovamova 14y ago
      It's Apple's fault for not including it in the iOS HIG. This might be because developers prefer to use swipe gestures for something else entirely.
- zbowling 14y ago
  There is no more hardware back button on any recent android phone either and every time you rotate the screen it's in a different locations (and a different location if it's on landscape vs portrait on tablets vs phones.) It's widely inconstant on Android too. And what happens when you press also is not very consistant when what you are working isn't inherently stack based. Also having different UI contentions doesn't mean someone else is doing something wrong. We port games from iOS to Android at Apportable (YC2011) so we deal with converting concepts every day. Neither is better or worse.
  - jrajav 14y ago
    It might not be hardware anymore, but there is still a ubiquitous back button. And depending on how you look at it, the rotation change could be a good thing - the intention is to keep the ubiquitous button set closest to where your hands will be resting.
jopt 14y ago
502, or is that just me?
- joeblau 14y ago
  This is usually what I check if I think a site is down -- http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/http://dcurt.is/ http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/http://dcurt.is/
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
dylanrw 14y ago
Dustin neglects in either post to mention what size his hands are. Subjectively some people will like the new size for this reason, and as he points out others will not. I personally like the format but I have abnormally large hands (I can palm a basketball). His thoughts on hand placement are spot on though.
antidaily 14y ago
Even so, the benefits vastly outweigh the downsides.
siglesias 14y ago
Point of correction, Dustin. Navigation Bars are top anchored in iOS. You might be thinking Tab Bars. As such, Tab Bars are being replaced increasingly with Dive Bars, the ones that live under the app, a la Facebook and Path. This makes the reaching problem worse because the common elements are in the top left. I suspect that we might see swipe-based gestures increasingly handle back button behavior and maybe a bottom oriented "under-menu" for placing compose and add elements. Edit: Appears to have been corrected, but point still stands.
ilija139 14y ago
"Even so, the benefits vastly outweigh the downsides." I found this a bit hypocritical. Why wasn't this the case for the Android phones in his "3.5 Inches" blog post? And as gfodor noted, this can only be worse for the iPhone, considering the location of the back button.
- viseztrance 14y ago
  Apple gets a free pass.
- gburt 14y ago
  Apple made it though, man.
soccerdave 14y ago
I had surgery on my right wrist a number of years ago and I still don't have great flexibility in it. About 3 days after getting the iPhone 5 I started getting some pain in my wrist and was actually able to equate it to the odd reach down by my thumb to hit the home button. After being conscious of this, I started holding the phone a bit lower in my hand and the pain went away within a day and I haven't had it come back. It's definitely a little more difficult to reach spots on the phone, but I'm still torn on it cause I do like the bigger screen. I actually wish there was a button on the side of the phone that I could use as an alternate home button.
cookingrobot 14y ago
Does no one remember what Johnnie Cochran taught us? "If the glove does not fit, you must acquit". People have different sized hands - there's no such thing as a perfect sized phone.
Lockyy 14y ago
I've never really had an issue with any sort of ability to reach all of the screen on my galaxy nexus, which he seems to imply I should have horrible problems with. I think this is down to the way I actually use both my hands for almost all tasks. Holding it in my left hand and operating the screen with my right. I'm fairly sure, but uncertain, that I did this with my iPhone 3g prior to getting the nexus. With everyone discussing single handed use of a phone I wonder if I'm in a minority of people who use their phone this way. It just strikes me that using my phone one handed would only really happen when my other hand is occupied carrying something, and in that case the reduced ability to reach corners of the screen seems to be a side-effect of using the phone sub-optimally.
- ConstantineXVI 14y ago
  Of course this is all anecdotal, but I recently switched from T-Mobile to VZ; and I went "down" from my 4.65" SGN to a 4.3" Razr M. I wouldn't say the extra size of the SGN gave me "horrible problems", but the size aggravated me enough to where I was willing to give up the extra DPI to have a smaller phone again. Likewise, I always found the 3.5" iPhones too cramped to use comfortably. Screens are not one-size-fits-all.
majormajor 14y ago
So a while back the benefits didn't outweigh the "huge downside" that he found the screen size of the Galaxy SII, but now that Apple increases their screen size "the software benefits that come from that extra half an inch hugely improve the experience of using the phone." The continually disappointing thing about the iPhone coverage has been people who dismiss things as not needed until Apple gets around to implementing them. Personally, I guess my hands are bigger than Curtis's, since I've been using 4.3" phones since 2010, and it's really not a big downside at all -- but rather, the iPhone's screen size is, honestly, still too small for me to consider. Thinner/lighter/smaller isn't always better for everyone. One size fits all doesn't. EDIT: the other oft-overlooked part of this discussion is te frequency of one-handed use. For me, at least, I'm usually already using both hands if I'm doing something more than passively reading/watching something. I'd be interested to know if this is different for others, so that any inconvenience to one-handed use is actually a major inconvenience to your primary use of the phone. Additionally, Apple recognizes the need for different form factors with pretty much every other portable device they make, from the iPod to the MacBook lines and, reportedly, soon even the iPad. So why not the iPhone?
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
- ceejayoz 14y ago
  Did you read the post? He says it's only "barely acceptable" at 4 inches - hardly glowing praise, and the S3 has a 4.8 inch screen.
  - esolyt 14y ago
    He says: "Every area of the screen is reachable, after all (unlike many Android phones with 4-inch+ screens)"
    - 14y ago
cargo8 14y ago
Also want to point out that Android typically focuses most of the content towards the bottom of the screen (e.g. most people put icons on the bottom half of their home screen on Android, vs. iPhones that default to Top-Left). Dustin talks about how iPhones have their tab bars at the bottom vs. Android at the top, making the tabs easier to reach, but really the bigger problem is what he points out that ALL of the iPhones real action buttons are at the top, and out of reach.
- esolyt 14y ago
  Besides, on most apps, you change tabs by swiping left and right.
parbo 14y ago
The 3.7" 858x480 (240 ppi) 16:9 screen of my Motorola Defy pretty much hits the sweet spot for me.
backprojection 14y ago
This is getting ridiculous. Guys, it's a smartphone, not a religious/ceremonial artifact; it doesn't warrant endless circlejerk blog posts about some frivolous 'perfect size'. This is quickly turning into a "How many angels can sit on the head of a pin?" discussion. _Clearly_ people get along just fine either not reaching the whole screen with their thumbs, and otherwise using two hands. Big Android phones are selling very well...
cheald 14y ago
I do apologize for the low-content comment, but somehow, all I can think of in reading this is this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C89uOeDL9Gw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C89uOeDL9Gw
bryanlarsen 14y ago
Take at look at the last picture in the post, where the base of the iPhone is cupped in the hand and the thumb is using the keyboard. From that picture it really appears to me that Apple would have been better off making the iPhone wider rather than taller...
rayiner 14y ago
My wife is miffed about the iPhone 5's larger screen, because the 3.5" screen model was at the edge of what was comfortable for her to deal with one-handed. The "size hasn't been a problem for me!" posts in this thread are hilarious. I'm quite certain the iPhone's target demographic includes a lot more women and girls than are represented on Hacker News.
bitcartel 14y ago
The notion that Apple or anybody else can design the perfect sized screen based upon holding the phone in one hand and thumb reach is silly, because in this scenario many apps are rendered useless without multi-touch! It's obvious that people hold phones differently, use phones differently, and have different sized hands. It's also obvious that some people like buying phones with bigger screens. Why does everything Apple do have to be justified or rationalized as some kind of great and insightful design choice?
esolyt 14y ago
"Every area of the screen is reachable, after all (unlike many Android phones with 4-inch+ screens)" Because 4-inch is the upper limit and Apple got it right again.
MatthewPhillips 14y ago
> iOS’s tab bars are anchored to the bottom of the screen, where your thumb more naturally rests, so it remains easy to change app sections (contrast this with Android’s tab bars, which are usually located at the top of the screen, and sometimes out of reach). I disagree with this, I think navigation should be at the top because you use them infrequently. What you do do frequently is scroll, and navigation being on the bottom gets in the way of trying to scroll. However, this is just my own personal observation. I'm not going to write a blog post on how it is a scientific fact that navigation is better when on the top.
JimmaDaRustla 14y ago
Is it me, or are people just dancing to Apple's fiddle? I've seen this same type of post several times, but it doesn't apply to me...or most people I know most likely. I hold a phone across my fingers, tucked nicely under the top of my palm. I can reach across a 4" screen without a problem. Also, when I'm holding a phone vertically, I don't typically only use my thumb - I use my other, more dexterous, and more "free", hand. Wait...maybe the people this applies to are busy with their other hand?
- niggler 14y ago
  One-handed use is important for circumstances where you are carrying a bag with the other hand (like when you have to deal with luggage at the airport). After seeing some of my friends struggle with the 5, I'm not going to upgrade (my 4S works just fine :)
ktizo 14y ago
"To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself – that was the ultimate subtlety; consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed." 4 inch telescreen bellyfeel doubleplusgood
dasil003 14y ago
I greatly respect Dustin Curtis as a designer but the precision with which he treats this subject is entirely derived from the flawed assumption that the perfect phone size can be narrowed down to half-inch increments. I have a Galaxy Nexus with a 4.65" in screen and I use it one-handed all the time in both my left and right hands, sometimes even while cycling in central London. It comes out of the pocket easily, I've never dropped it, ergonomics are great. I don't know what kind of pixie hands some of these pundits have, but I am 6' tall with a slender frame and pretty average hands. I can't help but feel that a lot of people making this point about optimal size are drinking a bit too much of the Apple koolaid. Hey, I love Apple stuff in general, but that doesn't mean I subscribe to the view that their way is the one true path to perfection and everything else automatically falls short. People put this stuff up on a pedestal and then start justifying every aspect retroactively. Did anyone ever stop to think that maybe the iPhone originally had a 3.5" screen because that's what was economical at the time rather than that god handed specs down to Johnny Ive on Mount Sinai?

47 points by relation 14y ago

I would just like to point out that this is a highly subjective argument. The iPhone 5 might be too large for Dustin's hand, but I'm quite comfortable using a 4.3 or even 4.5 inch phone. I naturally hold phones with the bottom right corner in pushing the bottom of my hand like the second image on the page, and my hand quite naturally wraps a phone up to ~4.5". For me, emphasis me, any phone over 4.5 becomes a problem because my index finger will have a hard time hitting a power switch on the top right of the phone, but overall I'm able to reach any point of the screen with my thumb and small muscle movements in my hand. But again, this is all subjective to the size of my hand.

saurik 14y ago
Exactly: an iPhone 4 is to my girlfriend's hand nearly exactly as a Galaxy Note is to mine. The idea that people make these reachability arguments as if hand size is universal down to silly half-inch increments is downright insane.
- gms 14y ago
  Have you ever heard the phrase 'optimise for the common case'?
  - saurik 14y ago
    "Have you ever heard of 'variance'?" The "common case" makes sense when you are dealing with a discrete variable that has a mode (a single highly common value): it does not make as much sense for a continuous one like hand span. Put simply, the issue is that no one actually has the "common case": the probability that someone's hand span exactly matches the "average" or "mean" of the distribution is approximately 0. Instead, we have to first discretize the variable into a histogram and then assign a common case afterwards. The way you normally might do that is with standard deviations. However, now you have to ask "what is the variance". With hand size, it is quite obviously very large: again, my girlfriend's hand is to an iPhone 4 as my hand is to a Galaxy Note, and people generally do not go around calling either of us freaks of nature with regards to our hands (I actually have fairly effeminate hands ;P). I will therefore repeat with emphasis: the idea that people make these reachability arguments as if hand size is universal down to silly half-inch increments is downright insane. However, I will now show some data. http://www.steinbuhler.com/assets/images/HandSizeChartNewWeb.jpg http://www.steinbuhler.com/assets/images/HandSizeChartNewWeb... This chart comes from a piano company measuring hand span for purposes of optimal piano sizing (concentrating on people whose hands have already finished growing). (Their conclusion, btw, was that they needed to sell a few more piano sizes.) Now, this is full hand span; however, as your hand is fixed in the middle by the thing you are holding, you won't get this full spread, but I would easily argue that you will get at least half of this spread in that case. The result, as you can see, is that there is a very very large range of reasonable values: hands are really not that common; you might think you have a common hand, but you really don't: hand span varies by numerous inches. (There are multiple factors for this, of course: it isn't just hand size; you also have to take into account flexibility of joints, muscle strength, etc.; even if everyone's hands were the same size, the ability to reach the upper-corner of a device would vary a lot.) I will then argue that even if you want to just attack a lot of people, and still fail for numerous others, you need to at least be making a device for women and a device for men: the difference between genders is really striking in that chart. However, most people don't argue things like this: they accept that there are massive variations in the size of peoples' feet, hands, torsos, and pretty much every other body part, and this is why we don't just sell one-size-fits-all clothing. Apple, FWIW, would not only be selling a single size of jeans, they would claim that they had optimized the size of the jeans to fit some optimal size, and their user community would then defend them with diagrams that show variances of less than half an inch for how perfect the fit is.
    - gms 14y ago
      A large hand can still comfortably use a small phone. A small hand cannot use a large phone.
- MatthewPhillips 14y ago
  I have normal man sized hands and I can't reach the corner of a 3.5 inch phone without straining my thumb a little.
fudged71 14y ago
Exactly. There is no one perfect phone as there is no one perfect glove.

dmauro 14y ago

I don't think he would be so quick to say it's worth the extra screen space if he weren't left-handed. Reaching the back button with only your right hand, even on the 3.5" screen is difficult. After switching to an iPhone 4s earlier this year I found that to be the major failing of the device: http://dmaurolizer.com/post/18478902007/ioss-major-flaw-reaching-for-the-back-button http://dmaurolizer.com/post/18478902007/ioss-major-flaw-reac...

majormajor 14y ago
Huh, that's interesting, I'm right handed and generally hold my phone in my left hand, so that my more dextrous hand is free to either touch the screen or do other things (like open doors). I wonder what's more common: holding the phone in your off hand or your dominant hand?

gfodor 14y ago

The elephant in the room is that unlike on android phones, there is no hardware 'back' button on iPhone. Where is it instead (by convention)? The top left corner of the screen, ie, the most unreachable place on the new iPhone. I'm still amazed this thing was produced by Apple given that oversight.

lovamova 14y ago
You can swipe right to get back in Music app and a few more apps. Apple also considered the use of the "Home" button for some "back" actions — back to home screen, back to a recent opened app.
- watty 14y ago
  This would be great if it were all apps, not just a select few.
  - lovamova 14y ago
    It's Apple's fault for not including it in the iOS HIG. This might be because developers prefer to use swipe gestures for something else entirely.
zbowling 14y ago
There is no more hardware back button on any recent android phone either and every time you rotate the screen it's in a different locations (and a different location if it's on landscape vs portrait on tablets vs phones.) It's widely inconstant on Android too. And what happens when you press also is not very consistant when what you are working isn't inherently stack based. Also having different UI contentions doesn't mean someone else is doing something wrong. We port games from iOS to Android at Apportable (YC2011) so we deal with converting concepts every day. Neither is better or worse.
- jrajav 14y ago
  It might not be hardware anymore, but there is still a ubiquitous back button. And depending on how you look at it, the rotation change could be a good thing - the intention is to keep the ubiquitous button set closest to where your hands will be resting.

jopt 14y ago

502, or is that just me?

joeblau 14y ago
This is usually what I check if I think a site is down -- http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/http://dcurt.is/ http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/http://dcurt.is/

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

dylanrw 14y ago

Dustin neglects in either post to mention what size his hands are. Subjectively some people will like the new size for this reason, and as he points out others will not. I personally like the format but I have abnormally large hands (I can palm a basketball). His thoughts on hand placement are spot on though.

antidaily 14y ago

Even so, the benefits vastly outweigh the downsides.

siglesias 14y ago

Point of correction, Dustin. Navigation Bars are top anchored in iOS. You might be thinking Tab Bars. As such, Tab Bars are being replaced increasingly with Dive Bars, the ones that live under the app, a la Facebook and Path. This makes the reaching problem worse because the common elements are in the top left. I suspect that we might see swipe-based gestures increasingly handle back button behavior and maybe a bottom oriented "under-menu" for placing compose and add elements. Edit: Appears to have been corrected, but point still stands.

ilija139 14y ago

"Even so, the benefits vastly outweigh the downsides." I found this a bit hypocritical. Why wasn't this the case for the Android phones in his "3.5 Inches" blog post? And as gfodor noted, this can only be worse for the iPhone, considering the location of the back button.

viseztrance 14y ago
Apple gets a free pass.
gburt 14y ago
Apple made it though, man.

soccerdave 14y ago

I had surgery on my right wrist a number of years ago and I still don't have great flexibility in it. About 3 days after getting the iPhone 5 I started getting some pain in my wrist and was actually able to equate it to the odd reach down by my thumb to hit the home button. After being conscious of this, I started holding the phone a bit lower in my hand and the pain went away within a day and I haven't had it come back. It's definitely a little more difficult to reach spots on the phone, but I'm still torn on it cause I do like the bigger screen. I actually wish there was a button on the side of the phone that I could use as an alternate home button.

cookingrobot 14y ago

Does no one remember what Johnnie Cochran taught us? "If the glove does not fit, you must acquit". People have different sized hands - there's no such thing as a perfect sized phone.

Lockyy 14y ago

I've never really had an issue with any sort of ability to reach all of the screen on my galaxy nexus, which he seems to imply I should have horrible problems with. I think this is down to the way I actually use both my hands for almost all tasks. Holding it in my left hand and operating the screen with my right. I'm fairly sure, but uncertain, that I did this with my iPhone 3g prior to getting the nexus. With everyone discussing single handed use of a phone I wonder if I'm in a minority of people who use their phone this way. It just strikes me that using my phone one handed would only really happen when my other hand is occupied carrying something, and in that case the reduced ability to reach corners of the screen seems to be a side-effect of using the phone sub-optimally.

ConstantineXVI 14y ago
Of course this is all anecdotal, but I recently switched from T-Mobile to VZ; and I went "down" from my 4.65" SGN to a 4.3" Razr M. I wouldn't say the extra size of the SGN gave me "horrible problems", but the size aggravated me enough to where I was willing to give up the extra DPI to have a smaller phone again. Likewise, I always found the 3.5" iPhones too cramped to use comfortably. Screens are not one-size-fits-all.

majormajor 14y ago

So a while back the benefits didn't outweigh the "huge downside" that he found the screen size of the Galaxy SII, but now that Apple increases their screen size "the software benefits that come from that extra half an inch hugely improve the experience of using the phone." The continually disappointing thing about the iPhone coverage has been people who dismiss things as not needed until Apple gets around to implementing them. Personally, I guess my hands are bigger than Curtis's, since I've been using 4.3" phones since 2010, and it's really not a big downside at all -- but rather, the iPhone's screen size is, honestly, still too small for me to consider. Thinner/lighter/smaller isn't always better for everyone. One size fits all doesn't. EDIT: the other oft-overlooked part of this discussion is te frequency of one-handed use. For me, at least, I'm usually already using both hands if I'm doing something more than passively reading/watching something. I'd be interested to know if this is different for others, so that any inconvenience to one-handed use is actually a major inconvenience to your primary use of the phone. Additionally, Apple recognizes the need for different form factors with pretty much every other portable device they make, from the iPod to the MacBook lines and, reportedly, soon even the iPad. So why not the iPhone?

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
ceejayoz 14y ago
Did you read the post? He says it's only "barely acceptable" at 4 inches - hardly glowing praise, and the S3 has a 4.8 inch screen.
- esolyt 14y ago
  He says: "Every area of the screen is reachable, after all (unlike many Android phones with 4-inch+ screens)"
  - 14y ago

cargo8 14y ago

Also want to point out that Android typically focuses most of the content towards the bottom of the screen (e.g. most people put icons on the bottom half of their home screen on Android, vs. iPhones that default to Top-Left). Dustin talks about how iPhones have their tab bars at the bottom vs. Android at the top, making the tabs easier to reach, but really the bigger problem is what he points out that ALL of the iPhones real action buttons are at the top, and out of reach.

esolyt 14y ago
Besides, on most apps, you change tabs by swiping left and right.

parbo 14y ago

The 3.7" 858x480 (240 ppi) 16:9 screen of my Motorola Defy pretty much hits the sweet spot for me.

backprojection 14y ago

This is getting ridiculous. Guys, it's a smartphone, not a religious/ceremonial artifact; it doesn't warrant endless circlejerk blog posts about some frivolous 'perfect size'. This is quickly turning into a "How many angels can sit on the head of a pin?" discussion. _Clearly_ people get along just fine either not reaching the whole screen with their thumbs, and otherwise using two hands. Big Android phones are selling very well...

cheald 14y ago

I do apologize for the low-content comment, but somehow, all I can think of in reading this is this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C89uOeDL9Gw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C89uOeDL9Gw

bryanlarsen 14y ago

Take at look at the last picture in the post, where the base of the iPhone is cupped in the hand and the thumb is using the keyboard. From that picture it really appears to me that Apple would have been better off making the iPhone wider rather than taller...

rayiner 14y ago

My wife is miffed about the iPhone 5's larger screen, because the 3.5" screen model was at the edge of what was comfortable for her to deal with one-handed. The "size hasn't been a problem for me!" posts in this thread are hilarious. I'm quite certain the iPhone's target demographic includes a lot more women and girls than are represented on Hacker News.

bitcartel 14y ago

The notion that Apple or anybody else can design the perfect sized screen based upon holding the phone in one hand and thumb reach is silly, because in this scenario many apps are rendered useless without multi-touch! It's obvious that people hold phones differently, use phones differently, and have different sized hands. It's also obvious that some people like buying phones with bigger screens. Why does everything Apple do have to be justified or rationalized as some kind of great and insightful design choice?

esolyt 14y ago

"Every area of the screen is reachable, after all (unlike many Android phones with 4-inch+ screens)" Because 4-inch is the upper limit and Apple got it right again.

MatthewPhillips 14y ago

> iOS’s tab bars are anchored to the bottom of the screen, where your thumb more naturally rests, so it remains easy to change app sections (contrast this with Android’s tab bars, which are usually located at the top of the screen, and sometimes out of reach). I disagree with this, I think navigation should be at the top because you use them infrequently. What you do do frequently is scroll, and navigation being on the bottom gets in the way of trying to scroll. However, this is just my own personal observation. I'm not going to write a blog post on how it is a scientific fact that navigation is better when on the top.

JimmaDaRustla 14y ago

Is it me, or are people just dancing to Apple's fiddle? I've seen this same type of post several times, but it doesn't apply to me...or most people I know most likely. I hold a phone across my fingers, tucked nicely under the top of my palm. I can reach across a 4" screen without a problem. Also, when I'm holding a phone vertically, I don't typically only use my thumb - I use my other, more dexterous, and more "free", hand. Wait...maybe the people this applies to are busy with their other hand?

niggler 14y ago
One-handed use is important for circumstances where you are carrying a bag with the other hand (like when you have to deal with luggage at the airport). After seeing some of my friends struggle with the 5, I'm not going to upgrade (my 4S works just fine :)

ktizo 14y ago

"To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself – that was the ultimate subtlety; consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed." 4 inch telescreen bellyfeel doubleplusgood

dasil003 14y ago

I greatly respect Dustin Curtis as a designer but the precision with which he treats this subject is entirely derived from the flawed assumption that the perfect phone size can be narrowed down to half-inch increments. I have a Galaxy Nexus with a 4.65" in screen and I use it one-handed all the time in both my left and right hands, sometimes even while cycling in central London. It comes out of the pocket easily, I've never dropped it, ergonomics are great. I don't know what kind of pixie hands some of these pundits have, but I am 6' tall with a slender frame and pretty average hands. I can't help but feel that a lot of people making this point about optimal size are drinking a bit too much of the Apple koolaid. Hey, I love Apple stuff in general, but that doesn't mean I subscribe to the view that their way is the one true path to perfection and everything else automatically falls short. People put this stuff up on a pedestal and then start justifying every aspect retroactively. Did anyone ever stop to think that maybe the iPhone originally had a 3.5" screen because that's what was economical at the time rather than that god handed specs down to Johnny Ive on Mount Sinai?