Comment by frosted-flakes
9 months ago
Folding phones don't solve the problem of oversized phones, which is that they are awkward and cumbersome to use.
9 months ago
Folding phones don't solve the problem of oversized phones, which is that they are awkward and cumbersome to use.
Some customers want a phone the size of iPhone Mini, rumored to be sold for $2K+ by Apple in 2026.
Hmmm, so there will be decent small screens produced in 2026, and it would be feasible to make small phones around them?
> they are awkward and cumbersome to use.
For you. As someone with large hands, I appreciate that phones grew in size and I swapped to larger devices as soon as I could.
For... well, most people. Half of people are women, so I don't know how they do it. I'm a man, with man hands, and modern phones are not one hand operable. You need two hands. Even if you can do a particular operation with one hand, the phone is unsteady and it's awkward.
I think people with large hands are definitely the minority. So, we're not optimizing for hand size. We're optimizing for engagement, I think.
It was observed a long time ago on HN that women, with their tiny hands, loved huge phones - since they were using small phones two-handed anyway - and it was the men who complained that small, one-handed phones stopped being sold.
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You can't operate a regular iPhone 16 (147.6 mm x 71.6 mm x 7.8 mm) in one hand? I think you're the exception.
> For... well, most people.
You don’t speak for most people. You can only speak for yourself. The feelings of “Most people” are clear as demonstrated by the market; they not only find large phones fine, they find them preferable.
> modern phones are not one hand operable
So? I mean for me they are so it’s irrelevant, but what should it matter if they are not? The market obviously does not share your interest in devices to be operated in such a manner as a priority or something of particular importance.
That being said, it’s of course unfortunate that if that is your preference, that nothing in the market caters for it. Your preferences and wants are obviously entirely valid and it’s a shame there is no interest even from a boutique vendor in meeting them.
I have plenty of preferences for products that are not catered too, as I am sure is true for us all and of course I don’t love it, but I must live in the reality that the larger market doesn’t always want what I do.
> We’re optimizing for engagement
The market is optimizing for what consumers asked for, which was larger devices. You say I am in a minority, I claim equally that you are in a minority as well.
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At 193 cm in height, I have large hands too. I currently use a Zenfone 10 and a Galaxy S10e before that, and I can grip them both just fine in one hand, but I can't also control them with that same hand without awkward contortions and a reliance on gravity.
The only phones I've had that I could comfortably use one-handed were my old BlackBerry Q10 (2013) and BlackBerry Classic (2014). The Q10 because it's short enough to hold between my thumb and ring finger such that I could use my index and middle fingers on the touch screen (slightly unorthodox but it worked really well), and the larger Classic because it has an optical thumbpad and excellent software support for it (it was so good I rarely used the touch screen at all). And both had physical keyboards.
I don't have especially small hands and I can't stand my Nokia XR20 (which isn't even close to the biggest phone out there). If I can't reach every corner of the screen with my thumb while holding the phone, it's uncomfortable and unpleasant to use. Sadly that is most phones these days.