Tap enough sacrificial indulgences on a neutered iPad or Watch, and it will software-unlock obvious convergence functionality, whose artificial absence now proliferates physical devices and environmental expense.
I will say that the folding screen seems like a gimmick on the "2.5 phones taped together" size. For compact flip phones it makes sense tho.
I agree, we should only talk about individual anecdotes. After all, we are special little snowflakes, each and one of us.
Based on that, I would expect half the men to be able to use even the biggest non-fold phones one handed without any problem.
I understand that we have found some kind of an optimum, that it is the form that sells the best and what most people want, but with so many manufacturers and models, there should be room for some niches. Where is the craziness from the early days? All the gadgets Samsung was known for, the physical keyboards, the small phones, the huge phones, the styluses, etc...
It seems the only exceptions you can find are overpriced folding phones, and some rugged phones. You may get a few more options from brands most people never heard of, usually only available online, often directly from China. But even with that, if you want something that doesn't have the iPhone form factor, your options are very limited.
If 100 different phones are available, it would be nice if one of them was for 1% of the people who want something different.
I could replace it with another mini but have been holding out hope for another updated version. I love the small form factor, even at the expense of battery life and camera quality. I just want a reasonable phone with solid hardware that fits in my pocket.
Then there was a huge, neverending push to make phones as large as possible, or larger. Sometimes smaller phones have been offered as an unpopular option, but more often "enormous" is the minimum size.
And as long as that's been going on, people have been complaining that they want their phone to fit in their hand.
Stipulate that a majority seems to feel that there's no need for a phone to fit in your hand. Why are the manufacturers so insistent on not providing small phones? Shirts come in all different sizes. How much does it cost to design an additional size of phone?
(Related: ever since the switch to 16:9 laptop screens, everyone has been complaining to no avail about the inferior dimensions of the screen. Why are manufacturers still cramming them down our throats? This one isn't even a case where people prefer 16:9 to 16:10.)
The best form factor of any smartphone I've owned is the first one, the Nexus S: 63mm wide, 124mm tall, and the back popped off to make replacing the battery convenient.
Phones have gotten steadily worse, as far as usability goes, ever since. There's more computing power, but I have trouble believing that's what's driving the shape.
They don't sell.
Apple killed the iPhone mini due to low sales. Asus replaced the universally lauded Zenfone 10 with a very large Zenfone 11. Google increased the size of the Pixel 6 when compared to its predecessor. Sales also increased.
I wonder if to some extent they're not different enough. The iPhone mini has a 5.4" screen. Not so long ago we managed well enough with 4" iPhone screens. I wonder how a 4.5" version would sell - call it the iPhone Nano.
Unfortunately a lot of apps don't support those smaller screen sizes so well anymore. But people who want a small phone that's easy to carry around, who won't be using it for hours a day, don't always need many apps.
Somewhere there's gotta be numbers that show "there are people who buy minis, but they only buy a phone every few years, so let's make a mini every third model year" or something.
This isn't an answer, unless you believe it's impossible to make more than one size of phone at a time.
I specifically asked what might be pushing manufacturers toward such a viewpoint. How does the existence of an iPhone mini reduce total iPhone sales?
If you're an Apple user, would you switch to Android just to get a smaller phone? Or would you just bite the bullet and get the larger iPhone after the mini is discontinued? Apple knows that 99.99% of Apple users are in the second group.
I would never be an Apple user.
And that's relevant here, because this argument doesn't apply to Android users, and yet Android phone manufacturers are just as insistent on not making smaller phones.
> It costs a lot of money to make multiple versions of something, compared to having just one version.
Oh? Ballpark it for me.
> In 2011, Bennie Budler, product manager of IT products at Samsung South Africa, confirmed that monitors with a native resolution of 1920 × 1200 were not being manufactured anymore. "It is all about reducing manufacturing costs. The new 16:9 aspect ratio panels are more cost-effective to manufacture locally than the previous 16:10 panels".
> since a 16:9 is narrower than a 16:10 panel of the same length, more panels can be created per sheet of glass
This is why people complain. "We've decided to charge the same amount for a worse product" isn't a winning message.
It also does some weird editorializing:
> By July 2022, 16:9 resolutions are preferred by 77% of users (1920 × 1080 with 67%; 2560 × 1440 with 10%). [In the Steam Hardware Survey]
Steam's hardware survey, of course, doesn't even address the question of what users prefer.
Shipping with new battery for extra (...unsure if I'd trust that battery though).
That one I can still use for phonecalls and occasional practical things I need when away from desk and computer.
And the irony about decent hardware is that all have decent hardware from the past 10-15 years, only the software that is crap on garbage and can't use hardware that could have been excellent mainframes some decades ago in some secret nuclear research laboratory. Need a powerstation now to present and scroll bitmaps and some text.
15 Pro has been dropped many more times, can’t be operated with one hand at all. It’s the first time I had to have a replacement screen actually- after owning iPhones for 15 years.
Anyway… I’m considering going back to the 5s. I would only miss wireless charging and apple wallet I think. (and apps are now made for the larger screen and will have elements that are inaccessible due to going passed the edges of the display).
Looks like they've gotten the Pixel 9 a bit smaller than the 7 but still the same weight. It's still larger than the Pixel 5 too.
https://www.phonearena.com/phones/size/Google-Pixel-9,Google...
The iPhone, to be fair, is closer to the Pixel 9 in size/weight than the Pixel 5 too.
Just set up a new Android with 6.5" size and I am in a particularly bad mood now. Wasting my hours on ...this! The process itself is infuriating, zillions of 'features' just wasting my time reading how über-user-focused are so set it up NOW! while tap-tap-tap-tap-tap for seemingly into eternity, beyond comfortable by an ocean plus a half, but watch for this and accept that and log in and register here and connect that and you will be amazed, allow us to take your data, don't worry, we care, we say it repeatedly so it must be like that, right?, here are two dozens of icons be amazed about, wow how many icons are there it is amazing, amazing multiplied, word-editor-assistant-presentation-maker-tv-communication-console-education-news-pretty-sleepwithme-and-tap-me-tap-me-day-and-nigh-oh-yes, into eternity, but first allow this and allow that, just one more, read that, we improve your experience so do it do it, do it again and again, soon we get there, oh wait, camera MUST have discovery of nerby devices otherwise closes itself, hmmm, not something on my old Pentax, that's new kind of development in the history of photography, watching for nearby bicycle or toaster or whatever...
Users have no self respect nowadays, none!, and swallow whatever manufacturers stomp down their throats in the dozen, repeatedly. It is good this thing was the cheapest, I did not dare discovering past 8 years' development on high price, and will only be used as a small tablet at home apart from being a guinea pig, not good for anything else (without satisfying its attention hungry distracting barrage of time wasting functional nothingness). Maybe navigation from time to time, but unsure, heavier than some travel books!
At 309 CAD on Amazon, I'm tempted to give it a try.
I guess only Apple can pull that, but they're not interested either. Their latest "Mini" model is still huge.
They're catering to people liking big and shiny.
I read that they need to use gigantic manly man hands for the gigantic phones, because otherwise people would realize that it's a "two-handed" phone for most of us mere mortals, that's impossible to use with one hand for anything but the most basic tasks.
Marketing for phones is forcibly (over) diverse and carefully not balanced but constructed than for any other product category.
They do not market objectively to the customers. They market by emotion and political correctness.
Just try to find a straight, white male, dare I say, two white male friends in a Google ad.
How can that be true when there's only 2 phone OSes of note and one single company sells half the phones in the US? There's not enough diversity in the market to create the conditions for diverse marketing.
If anything it's a race to the middle. When there are 2 shops in town, they tend to become more similar not more diverse.
And note that this was a serious criticism a few years ago where it was a complaint that all things are designed for 6' men by default. I don't know if that is still the general belief, but it got a ton of traction for at least a short while. I would be surprised if there aren't a fair number of folks that still think that.