Comment by fxtentacle
2 hours ago
Awww... I was so much hoping for an iPhone that will fit into my pocket. The 1st iPhone SE was the perfect form factor. But no, Apple's phones just had to grow and grow and grow like cancer ...
In my opinion, the fact that Apple is now selling a bag to carry your oversized phone around in, is an admission that they failed to make phones that are convenient to carry.
> they failed to make phones that are convenient to carry.
I loved the iPhone SE and small phones generally, but at the same time I realize Apple's not failing at anything. They're giving the market the size people actually want. The smaller phones don't sell nearly as well. Most people prefer a bigger phone even if carrying it is less convenient.
I've just accepted my phone will be bulky now, so I double down and attach a magnetic wallet to it, and carry it in my hand or jacket pocket or bag rather than my pants pocket like I used to. During meetings it lies on the table rather then in my pants pocket. C'est la vie.
> They're giving the market the size people actually want.
No - call it what it is. They are catering to the largest market segments and ignoring the smaller segments who desire smaller phones.
Reasoning as to why is another thing, but it doesn't negate the existence of the segment who does want one.
Maybe there's room in the world for a device people want, even if it's not the device the majority want? I mean I know Apple is just a small startup company with only a $4 trillion valuation, but maybe they could just do one thing that isn't maximally profitable once in a while.
>maybe they could just do one thing that isn't maximally profitable once in a while.
They tried that this year and called it iPhone Air
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They are making 5 different iPhone models of varying sizes, features, prices.
Shareholders would never ever be ok with a company not trying to be maximally profitable.
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I'm all for that when it comes to things like accessibility technology that allows people to do things they otherwise couldn't. But screen sizes? You can use a larger screen, you just prefer a smaller one.
What “the market wants” is a maximally addictive device. It’s a really low bar even if highly profitable. Bigger screens make it more exciting and addictive.
Just profoundly weird to me that small manufacturers can’t make small phones because they’re small and can’t pay for it, and large manufacturers can’t make it because…(checks notes)…they’re large and don’t want to pay for it even if there’s demand.
> Just profoundly weird to me that small manufacturers can’t make small phones because they’re small and can’t pay for it, and large manufacturers can’t make it because…(checks notes)…they’re large and don’t want to pay for it even if there’s demand.
Large and small companies sell smaller Android phones.
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Can Apple lock-in those people who definitely want small phones by some prepaid arrangements which the users can't back out? That would be market working. Is there a reason why they don't do this?
My guess would be that all those people that wanted small phones had an iPhone SE and now all their data is locked into Apple's walled garden and that's why they will begrudgingly buy a larger phone, even though they would have preferred a smaller one.
In short: Apple can get away with ignoring what those customers want.
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It's not that they can't. They want to make money. When given the choice between making more money and less money, they'll generally choose more. They think making a smaller device would make less money. The sales numbers for previous attempts back this up. There's an enormous fixed cost for developing a new model, and it's not worthwhile unless that results in enough additional sales. There's demand, for sure, but how much? They think not enough, and I suspect they know what they're doing here.
That's a weird take. Large screens aren't primarily more "addictive", they're primarily more productive. They work as a better e-reader, a better text editor, better for watching a movie on a plane, better for reading maps, I could go on and on. (And if a company were incentivized to truly make an "addicting" phone, it would be Meta that would benefit from the social media ads, or TikTok. Not Apple.)
Large manufacturers can make them. But there isn't enough demand to make them profitable enough. It's not a question of whether they "want to pay for it", it's just simple economics. They're businesses, not charities. I like small phones, but I understand manufacturers are doing what's economically rational given market preferences and I don't blame them for it.
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Can you write down the actual detailed argument?
Just opining that it’s weird can’t possibly be convincing against a consensus amongst all the large smartphone manufacturers.
"iPhone 16e Sales Lag Behind SE Models"
Ooops ?
https://www.macrumors.com/2025/06/03/iphone-16e-sales-lag-be...
Looks like the market did like the SE size.
>Looks like the market did like the SE size.
That's not a compelling argument when the same chart also shows the iPhone SE 2022 lagging behind iPhone SE 2020, even though they have identical form factors.
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> Unsurprisingly, the primary reason identified for the iPhone 16e 's weaker debut is its higher launch price.
Adjusting for inflation, the SE (€479 in 2020) was €588 and the SE2 (€519 in 2022) was €567. The 16e is 699, a 25% increase.
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While small iPhones don’t sell nearly as well as larger sizes, I suspect they are still a very profitable product as Apple keeps releasing them.
Not small like they used to be. Not like the original SE, nowhere even close. The options now are basically big, bigger and biggest.
The iPhone sales figures where probably a disappointment, for Apple. Had it been released by any other company it would have been viewed as a huge success. The sales numbers are just pretty poor, for an iPhone.
I think Apple has such high expectation to sales figures that even if a smaller iPhone comes in, even as the 10th best selling phone, that's maybe only 5% of all iPhone sales. Massively successful as a phone, millions of people bought it, but to Apple, the SE is a side hustle at best.
My daughters friends made fun of my iPhone SE3, they had never seen a phone that small.
> They're giving the market the size people actually want.
Some people clear still want those small phones, just not enough for Apple's profit margins.
Mind that there is also a feedback loop: applications only work correctly on bigger phone screens.
Is it too big as a phone/SMS device? Yes. But as long as it's smaller than an equivalent digital camera or handheld gaming device or portable GPS it's still appropriately sized for how I mostly use it.
Can’t really want a smaller modern iPhone if no one is selling it.
Foldables…
Reading this on a first gen SE. Still works great.
Since it can’t get the lastest OS many apps don’t install, effectively making it the type of dumb phone I always wanted.
This is solving an entirely different problem than you imagine. This is solving the problem of “no one can tell I use an iPhone when it’s in my purse/pocket”. This is a conspicuous bag that loudly announces “I’m carrying an iPhone”. That’s what it’s for.
Also, can you actually not fit a phone in your pocket? I can fit the biggest iPhone in my pocket just fine in all of my pants. Conversely my wife cannot, but that’s because women’s pockets are vestigial. She couldn’t fit the 3GS in most of her pockets either.
This isn't a pragmatic item though. It's a fashion item. Similar to when Apple made the real gold Apple Watch. It's not a statement on the broader market, it's Apple associating its brand name with high fashion and prestige. They've done this for many years.
I too was expecting a small iPhone. But this giant sock is hilarious. What are they thinking.
I wish the iPhone 12/13 mini had been a few mm thicker for a bigger battery, and had been in the Pro class of devices. As it stands they didn't have a good enough battery to last a day, and most people interested in smaller devices had probably just picked up the new SE that was released just half a year earlier.
I believe the issue is that with Jobs gone, Apple's design team is now apparently unable to continue their job. Instead of developing their own UI paradigm for small screens, they keep copying from Google Pixel both the UI ideas and the screen size. And now that they ran out of useful ideas, they turned everything transparent. Why make the iPhone look more like Apple Vision when people so obviously hate the latter? [1]
My prediction is that the age of AI and LLM assistance will make tiny devices the norm. Like those AI pins. Like Siri inside AirPods. Like Meta's AR glasses. But it seems that Apple is losing the race here. They lost their edge when it comes to developing new user interface paradigms.
EDIT: [1] Bloomberg claims 10-15% return rate, which would be massive: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2024-02-18/apple-... (for comparison, Galaxus reports 2% as normal for Smartphones and <5% for Meta's Quest)
>Apple's design team is now apparently unable to continue their job
Honestly id say this is a mix of both Jobs and Ive being gone.
Now under the operational maximalist that is Tim Cook, they just revert to old designs every few years and call it revolutionary. See: edges on the iPhone. First, rounded edges. WOW, revolutionary! Then a few years later, hard edges. WOW, revolutionary! Then a few years later, rounded edges. WOW, revolutionary! Then a few years later, hard edges. WOW, revolutionary!
All the while stripping actual functionality out of the devices and removing useful features like headphone jacks. There hasn't been real product innovation at Apple in over a decade.
But I digress.
The most important thing Jobs did (and he mentioned this) is to say No to great ideas. Like this, like iPhone Air, like Apple Vision Pro, etc.. Apple without Jobs is now much like it was before Jobs in the 90s, only this time it has a lot more momentum than it had before. Still though Apple is back to throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks.
> Why make the iPhone look more like Apple Vision when people so obviously hate the latter
They are normalizing Apple Vision look so it looks less weird when you switch.
> In my opinion, the fact that Apple is now selling a bag to carry your oversized phone around in, is an admission that they failed to make phones that are convenient to carry.
Marketing 101: Create a customer. Even if phones were small enough that there was no need for such a product, Apple's marketing team would convince you that you needed this product for [reasons].
> In my opinion, the fact that Apple is now selling a bag to carry your oversized phone around in, is an admission that they failed to make phones that are convenient to carry.
Can any woman with a purse or man with a fanny pack chime and let us know if they've ever thought about putting their phones in their bags before?
Is this supposed to dispute the claim? A man putting his phone in his fanny pack would also signify apple's phones are inconvenient to carry. Apple releasing a 'solution' is them admitting it
No, it's supposed to point out that there exists an entire set of people who have been putting their phones in bags for as long as phones have existed. We mostly don't hear from women here on HN thanks to old gender biases in tech.
> Apple releasing a 'solution' is them admitting it
Apple released a collaboration with a fashion brand.
Yes, I do this because when I'm using my bike to get into work as it often involves more than one set of clothes and swapping everything between different pockets is annoying so I have a big 'unipocket' fanny pack, my 6.7" phone is still cumbersome in there making digging out other items annoying. And when I'm wearing some pairs of pants and the phone isn't angled just right it will dig into my hip while walking up stairs until it's adjusted. (and that's with a relatively budget android phone, smaller devices are a tiny niche of old less powerful devices that barely have support)
I'm surprised trouser pocket sizes have not adapted to the larger phones.
> In my opinion, the fact that Apple is now selling a bag to carry your oversized phone around in, is an admission that they failed to make phones that are convenient to carry.
I think it's an admission that consumers prefer phones that are large enough that they have become inconvenient to carry in a pocket.
Some people have never had pockets big enough to comfortably fit even a smaller smartphone and have been carrying them in bags this whole time.
Same. I got so excited by the thought of a new iPhone that would fit in my pocket, but clicked on the link to see… phone socks?
Apple can pry my iPhone 13 Mini from my cold, dead, normal-sized hands.
This is not any kind of admission about phone sizes. This is an "exclusive" tie-in with a high fashion brand, nothing more.
Phones have grown, but people are the same size as ever. It's as if the industry has collectively forgotten what ergonomics is. It's especially frustrating for me as someone who is a comparatively compact person and who still considers the phone a secondary device mostly for use outside.
The industry has given consumers the choice, and they overwhelmingly prefer to spend their money on the larger phones.
The choice in the form of the iPhone mini that sold by millions but is somehow still considered a failed product by Apple, yeah. And nothing comparable in the Android world, where all manufacturers pretty much move in lockstep.
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> I was so much hoping for an iPhone that will fit into my pocket
Yes, and I was about to write "so some Android manufacturer will copy Apple and deliver a phone of the size that was common 10 years ago."
Almost all of them are too large and they weight too much. 200 grams, why?
I was also hoping it was a small phone announcement but it not being part of a keynote didn't give me high hopes.
I've been on Android since day 1 but I'm thinking about switching to iPhone. If they ever made foldable (clamshell style, not book style) phone I would buy it immediately. I just want a small phone.
Yes I could get an Android foldable that already exists but I like to stick with Pixels and they don't have one yet and I'm kinda of done with Pixels. They are crap quality.
I remember there was the iphone12 mini but it failed as people didn't want it. It was quite good honestly.
One of the subtext reasons is that women’s’ clothing lacks proper pockets for whatever sexist reason, so a pocket you wear on the outside can seem like a great idea.
Why sell someone a small phone when you could sell them a large phone and a watch?
I was hoping for a zfold
I had a look for covers, and I could only find silicone (?) or plastic sleeves and the 'handbag straps'. I think / suppose a lot of people just have their phone in their hand or on a table all the time, so why make it pocket sized?
When I had to buy an iPhone 13 because support for the 5s ended, my hands hurt from the big phone...
Literally this.
I'm typing this on an iPhone SE 2022 (the last one with a home button). I'm done with iPhone as soon as I am no longer able to use this model. I don't like the new, oversized pieces of junk, and I also like the home button as opposed to the new Face ID/swipe up workflow.
For people that have good visual acuity, the smaller screen is ideal; it's such high resolution that you can fit a lot of things in a small area. For people that turn the font size up to 600, the bigger screen is obviously ideal, but nobody really wants to have to hold something that is bigger if they don't need it for the screen size. That's the market I fit in and Apple has abandoned at market, along with all common sense (re: liquid glass, the recent Apple/Google Gemini deal, etc.).
I share the frustration. But apparently small phones don't sell.
> small phones don't sell
It's all relative.
If Google sold five million iPhones Mini it would be considered a smash hit. But because it's Apple it's considered a flop because of the ridiculous sales numbers of their other models.
Apple sold 10-15 million of the minis each year, with a marketing budget of approximately zero.
The problem is that everyone believed Tim Cook when he claimed that this is a failure.
How much did it cost Apple to make those minis? Do we know?
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opens cupboard
iPhone 3GS
Galaxy S3
Sony XZ1 Compact
iPhone SE 2016
iPhone SE 2020
iPhone SE 2022
Unihertz Atom
There's one data point. I would bet, though, that Apple, Sony and Samsung have plenty more data points of devices that didn't move and thus they stop making smaller devices.
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The Unihertz Atom is probably too small but it really fits the niche its web site targets. I might consider it for my bike.
Stop hogging the mineral resources and recycle them already!
Pixel 5 is a nice size. I like smallies too.
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The current form factors are what people are buying. Even the Apple design team is surprised. I think even iPhone Air sales aren’t as good as they projected
The worst part of this is the UI bloat that came along with it. Since there's no longer a need to consider smaller phones, everything got bigger and more padded also worsening the information density on larger phones.
It’s a fancy colostomy bag for all your digital shit
In Soviet Russia, pocket fit phone.
> speaks to the bond between iPhone and its user
With this phrasing, does it feel like iPhone owns its user?