4 ms·

Funnily, the large display is the most important thing for me. I find my efficiency directly proportional to display size (which holds for laptops too). If a 3

• mattnewton 8mo ago
  If the task can’t be done in a few taps I feel I’m better off opening a laptop anyways. However the market agrees with you so I must be missing something. I used to think it was driven by media consumption on phones, and that I try to avoid, but this isn’t the first time I have heard people tout phone productivity gains from a slightly larger screen.
  • nomilk 8mo ago
    > I must be missing something I wouldn't assume that. The expression 'fat fingers' concerns the phenomena where users (including myself) lack the eyesight and finer motor skills required to type accurately on a small keyboard, so a slightly larger display makes all the difference. Perhaps you simply have those fine motor skills (and good eye sight) so a larger device isn't necessary to prevent typos and remain productive.
    • deleted 8mo ago
      [deleted]
    • pinnochio 8mo ago
      I was able to thumb type at high speed and accuracy on the 3.5 inch iPhones. On modern iPhones, I produce more typos than ever, because apparently Apple thinks it knows which key I meant to hit better than I do, even with all the autocorrect and suggestions turned off. I've banned social and don't use my phone much anymore, so it's less of an issue than it used to be, but it's really frustrating when I'm clearly hitting the right key and it insists on pretending I hit an adjacent key.
      • brookst 8mo ago
        It’s so strange. Like, the obviously correct thing is to have a small ML model that learns the user’s typing patterns, which of their own typos they fix, which auto- and suggested fixes they reject, what rare, made-up, and jargon words they use, what acronyms they use, etc. Instead, after 20 years of iPhone usage, I am not allowed to type the names of projects I use all the time without fixing the autocorrect every time, or (as you say) carefully hitting the left side of the F key because dead center will produce a G.
  • MrDOS 8mo ago
    My preferred conspiracy theory is that larger, brighter screens hold attention better, so everyone involved in the whole “user experience” (phone manufacturer, application developers, advertisers, etc.) prefers (whether they consciously realize it or not!) phones to have a larger screen. Smaller phones make fewer demands; who would want to make a device like that?
    • mc3301 8mo ago
      I believe you are correct.
  • raw_anon_1111 8mo ago
    I have my phone with me all of the time and it has an always on connection. My laptop has neither trait
    • parl_match 8mo ago
      > I have my phone with me all of the time and it has an always on connection That's a bug, not a feature. You don't need to be able to do every task all the time. In fact, it's nice to be able to separate that aspect.
      • raw_anon_1111 8mo ago
        Yes I can just print out directions on Mapquest before I leave home, tell people to page me and I will call them back from the nearest pay phone, carry around my Walkman and my Polaroid camera with me. Have you ever thought that with 80% of web traffic coming from mobile, you might be the outlier? What next? The old Slashdot meme “I haven’t watched TV in 20 years. Do people still watch TV?”
        • derefr 8mo ago
          I believe the GP was talking about trying to do “real work” on a phone, which is something many people try to do — but which many others find a repugnant idea, as they currently use the excuse of the impracticality of doing work on a phone as a lever to push back on letting work intrude on their personal life.
          • raw_anon_1111 8mo ago
            Have you thought that a lot people work remotely and don’t sit at their desk all day? I have deliverables and deadlines to meet like everyone else. But sometime I would rather go for a swim in the middle of the day in the heated pool when the sun is still out - benefit of living in Florida in the winter - and work late and be contactable (wearing my watch) or go to the gym during the day (downstairs). Business traveling is also a thing (much less than I use to), working with people in different time zones where I’m not going to refuse to answer a message from a coworker in India if they need me. It’s a fair trade off. My company gives me a lot of leeway during the day and I am flexible about time zones.
  • TeMPOraL 8mo ago
    At least for me, the effect is real, and is driven not by media consumption but ergonomics of use. But at the same time, I'd say you're not missing that much. I always preferred large screens because of productivity gains[2], but even as screens kept getting larger, the set of things that "I feel I’m better off opening a laptop" for remained the same for me. That is, until I switched to a foldable phone (Galaxy Z Fold 7) half a year ago, and - I kid you not - I haven't used my personal laptop since that day. FWIW, I still have a proper desktop PC; In the past decade+, I've been using a PC at home, and a "sidearm" on the go / away from home: always a 2-in-1 Windows laptop with top specs[0]. Being always with me, this laptop often replaced use of PC at home too, because of convenience & portability. So by amount of productive use, for past 10+ years it was sidearm >> PC >> smartphone. But getting a foldable flipped it around. Having twice the screen size of a regular (large) phone is a big productivity win[1], but it's folding that makes the actual qualitative difference. Folded, the device becomes a regular smartphone - i.e. something that fits in my pocket, meaning it's always on me, in my hands, or less than 1 second away. Contrast that with tablets, whose form factor makes them basically just shitty laptops (same logistic as ultraportable, but toy OS of a phone). I didn't expect this. I didn't even feel this change - I only noticed two months later that my laptop has been sitting unused on my desk, covered by a pile of stuff. Doing "laptop tasks" on a mobile device is still annoying (no keyboard, toy OS), but combining tablet-sized screen with portability of a phone makes them less annoying than logistics overhead of a laptop - and at least in my case, this eliminated the entire[3] space between "smartphone" and "PC". -- [0] - Think Microsoft Surface, except I could get better specs at half the price if I bought an off-lease but pristine Dell or Lenovo. [1] - It's not immediately obvious to people, but as things are today, a foldable phone isn't any better at media consumption than regular one, because almost all cinema, TV, videogames, etc. are all produced for widescreen - meanwhile, the inner screen of my Fold is approximately square, so e.g. for most TV, half or more of it is black at all times. However, all that extra space allows to effectively use multiple (3+) apps on screen, not to mention makes spreadsheets actually usable. [2] - Bigger screen = less scrolling and tapping in menus, but also with text size scaled to minimum, my previous phone (S22) had a big enough screen that running two apps in split-screen became useful on a regular basis. [3] - Well, almost. There are some tasks I really like physical keyboard and larger screen for - but for those, I just plug the phone into the screen via USB-C, and volia, it turns into a regular desktop. A shitty one, but good enough for occasional use.
• BLKNSLVR 8mo ago
  What, ummm, efficiency benefits are you finding on a smart phone? Is it related directly to the keyboard size when typing? That's kind of all I can think of, other than a really tiny display + big fingers being an issue. I find my efficiency directly proportional to the distance from my smart phone.
• PacificSpecific 8mo ago
  You could put a sim card in a tablet in that case. Might look a little funny when doing a phone call though.