4 ms·
Every now and then some phone manufacturer mistakes online sentiment for actual demand and gets burned making a mini phone that won’t sell
by nikanj 11mo ago
Every now and then some phone manufacturer mistakes online sentiment for actual demand and gets burned making a mini phone that won’t sell
- Telaneo 11mo agoWhat 5-ish inch screen phone has even been released within the past 5 years? The only ones I can think of are the Unihertz phones, and those don't get a single update after getting shoved out the door, not to mention that they're probably full of Chinese backdoors. I'd buy that exact phone in a heartbeat if it didn't have those problems, and all the other ones I've seen have similar dealbreakers.
- hxtk 11mo agoiPhone had the 12 and 13 mini, but they didn't sell, so there was no iPhone 14 mini and hasn't been one since. That was a 5.4" display.
- maelito 11mo ago> but they didn't sell What do you call "didn't sell" ? In numbers.
- nebula8804 11mo agoHow about 3% of sales: https://www.macrumors.com/2022/04/21/iphone-13-mini-unpopular-march-quarter/ https://www.macrumors.com/2022/04/21/iphone-13-mini-unpopula...
- MBCook 11mo agoIt’s a hell of a lot of phones.
- maelito 11mo agoIn march of that year, but was higher before, no ? Anyway, that's ~ 3 million phones. It's a lot.
- hxtk 11mo agoI'm making this distinction post-hoc, so I already know how it turned out: they ultimately decided to stop making those smaller devices. I assume that means it wasn't enough sales to be a financially viable product, and to me, selling "enough" would mean that Apple found it profitable to maintain the supply chains and assembly lines for those smaller devices and continued to invest in the product. Arguing against myself, Apple could be discontinuing the smaller models because they did market research and found that most buyers of smaller, cheaper devices could be converted to buyers of larger, more expensive devices if those smaller devices didn't exist. Auto manufacturers are doing just that, discontinuing or enlarging smaller light trucks in favor of larger models that are subject to less regulation and therefore can be designed and manufactured more cheaply and might offer even more profit. If Apple has or had that strategy, then my assumptions are flawed because no matter how many mini iPhones they sell, they would still want to get rid of the line as long as most of those customers could be converted to full-size iPhone customers.
- Wistar 11mo agoI cherish my iPhone 12 Mini and treat it with great care as it is the form factor I want and I want it to last as long as possible.
- teekert 10mo agoSame here. Battery is a bit bad though. But I carry a battery pack. I do notice the charging port is also getting worse recently. I don't know what I'll buy after this...
- Telaneo 11mo agoI skipped that one because my SE 2 was less than a year old and I didn't want to go up a size.
- cluckindan 11mo agoiPhone SE 3 was released in 2022
- Telaneo 11mo agoVery fair. I skipped it because my SE 2 was still going strong when that came out, which I kind of regret now, since I can't get a new SE 3 anymore.
- seba_dos1 11mo agoIf 5-ish includes 5.7", then the Librem 5 that I'm typing this on would qualify. It's still borderline too big for my tastes though.
- Borealid 11mo agoThe Phonemax R4 GT uses a 4.3" screen and was released this year. There are not many, but there are not zero either.
- maelito 11mo agoSmall phones are also way less addictive. It's not in the interest of the mobile ecosystem.
- nebula8804 11mo agoHow do you assess that? I'd imagine it would be more along the lines of is the phone frictionless to use? This is just an anecdote but I owned every Google Nexus phone they made up to Nexus 5. A series of bugs caused priceless videos to get ruined and I decided to try iPhone after that. I didn't realize just how much I unconsciously hated using the Nexus phone and that contributed to me not actually adopting smartphone software until I got the iPhone. When the phone and the OS were a burden it led to the phone being avoided. I dont know which was better. I appreciate the battery life, camera and general stability but I hate the new addictions to social media it has caused.
- maelito 11mo agoJust evaluating my dependency. Was way lower with a small phone than with my 6 inch. It could be assessed by a study, I have opinions until then.
- nebula8804 11mo agoYeah...like Apple: https://www.macrumors.com/2022/04/21/iphone-13-mini-unpopular-march-quarter/ https://www.macrumors.com/2022/04/21/iphone-13-mini-unpopula... As someone holding onto their iPhone mini 13 for dear life, I hope they will release a one off in a few years once support for the 13 mini ends.
- Lord-Jobo 11mo agoYeah I feel like putting it closer to the SE lifecycle is must be a better decision than fully axing the mini lineup. If we get a mini 13, then a mini 19 or 20? I can live with that.
- thesuitonym 11mo agoI've been IT operations for years, and when I order laptops I sometimes do a little experiment. If I ask people if they want a 15.6" laptop or a 13" laptop, they always say 15.6. If I don't give them a choice and just start buying 13" laptops, everybody tells me how much they love the smaller laptop, and people still on the 15.6" models start looking around asking when they can get the smaller one. People don't know what they want unless you give it to them.
- aerique 10mo agoMy eyes want a 19" laptop these days.
- lproven 10mo agoExactly. I rather miss the 15.6" Toshiba Satellite Pro A300 I had when I emigrated, a decade back. It wasn't very portable, no, but around the house, it was great. Good sized full-travel keyboard, numeric keypad, lots of ports, and a nice big clear comfortable eye-friendly screen. Two SATA bays, so I could have the affordable combination (a dozen years ago) of a small fast SSD for the OS and a huge big cheap HDD for the data. Tiny trackpad, but I used a mouse. There is a 17" classic Thinkpad before they went to nasty thin fashion-follower keyboards, but they only seem to be available in the USA and even given my fondness for old Thinkpads, I am not willing to pay £1000 for a second-hand decade-old one.
- teekert 10mo agoI never understood big laptops (at least for work, where you walk around with them), there's always a screen to plug into. At home, ok, at the kitchen table it can be handy to have some more real-estate, but again just for "light work" and entertainment I'd say.
- boznz 11mo agoOnly Apple would consider selling millions, but not tens of millions a failure.
- MBCook 11mo agoRight. We don’t know that Apple didn’t make money. Only that they didn’t make enough money. By whatever definition they used.
- port11 11mo agoMake a smaller phone with good battery life, not smaller AND thinner. The iPhone minis barely got me through the workday, let alone a full day.