Comment by danielvaughn
8 hours ago
People make fun of me but I'll never skip a chance to complain about how large these phones are. I hate it so much. I have a standard iPhone, not a max, and it causes real pain in my wrist if I use it too much. Was honestly thinking about downgrading to the last SE model even though it's several years out of date.
I dived into a niche world of small phones recently while looking for replacement to malfunctioning Pixel 4a (which is apparently now considered compact phone). There's a few small manufacturers in China making some, with 4 inch or 5 inch screen, like Aiphor or Unihertz. And by "small" I mean "they use kickstarter to fund their R&D" small.
Other than that... Nobody's really bothering with compact phones anymore, in the US or in the rest of the world. Bummer.
> Nobody's really bothering with compact phones anymore, in the US or in the rest of the world. Bummer.
And the worst thing is that app developers do not bother with testing their apps on small phones. So even if someone would produce small phone, many apps would be broken on that UI. So there's no way back.
PS 4 inch is not a small phone. iPhone 4S had 3.5" display and it wasn't small, it was normal. Small is something like 2" screen I suppose. All modern phones including these "iPhone Minis" are egregiously huge.
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 30 second task can be done in just 20 on a device with a larger display, that's absolutely worth it for me.
Also larger device tends to imply longer battery life too.
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.
> 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.
1 reply →
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.
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?
1 reply →
I have my phone with me all of the time and it has an always on connection. My laptop has neither trait
36 replies →
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.
I'm typing this on an iPhone SE (2020).
It runs the latest iOS, although it's likely missing some of the new bits.
I prefer the size, although the screen that spans the entire front surface would be the superior device; I like the iPhone 13 Mini.
I switched from a pixel 3 to a pixel 9 pro over a year ago, and I still miss the smaller form factor. the pixel 3 really was the perfect size for me and I am sad I can no longer get a smallish phone with a high end processor.
I switched from Pixel 4a to Unihertz Max (5G phone with 5 inch screen from a small Chinese startup). Love the form factor, I can keep the phone in my front pants pocket again, next to my keys or wallet. I'm somewhat reluctant to put anything sensitive on that phone (like my email), but happy overall.
I still have my Pixel3. I use it without a SIM for random stuff, and miss the small form factor. It is half the thickness of a Pixel 10, my current phone!
I have found the iPhone Air much easier to hold than the iPhone 13 Pro it replaced because of how light it is, even though the iPhone Air has a bigger screen.
The 17e weighs roughly the same at a smaller size, and the mini weighs significantly less. Not to mention the first SE, compared to which even the mini is heavy. Yes the Air is lightweight compared to the Pro, but that’s a low bar.
The other thing with the Air is that you can’t really use it one-handed, which is what most people who like small phones are after, besides pockability.
The first SE was the best form factor I've ever owned.
Incredibly small. Incredibly light. Pretty thin, even in a case. Had a headphone jack, Lightning and Touch ID.
The only thing I like about the new iPhone designs is the action button. Having an automation which automatically turns silent mode off or on based on whether I'm home or not is pretty cool. You can't do that with a physical switch.
1 reply →
The phones get larger and the UI gets less information dense every release. More padding, more offsets, more dead space.
Apple needs all that space so that the aesthetic can fit in.
I'd pay good money for a small phone with nothing but a unix terminal
Termux on Android. Lots of hardware choices.
Completely agree. And to make matters worse, I can't even switch to android without losing the ability to reliably send quality video to iPhone users.
Apple suffered for decades from Microsoft's anticompetitive OS monopoly, and turned around and did the same thing to the android ecosystem.
I have no idea why this sub is full of Apple fanboys. I was an Apple fan 10 years ago, but these days they no longer deserve your support.
> the ability to reliably send quality video to iPhone users.
Just curious but why? Is it iMessage lock in?
Yes exactly. RCS exists but unless an iPhone user goes and turns it on it won't work. Which means no one has it turned on.
We made fun of phablets, only for them to become the default.
well we have galaxy fold tablet-as-phone, so... maybe not all is lost?
I don’t think anyone should make fun of you for it but I’m in the opposite boat. I’m so glad that they make the pro max variants because most smartphones are so small that it hurts my fingers to bend them in the unnaturally inward way it requires to hold and interact with them.
For me it's not the fingers, it's the eyesight.
It wouldn't be so bad if both options were available. By all means, have your giant pro max or whatever if you want, but that shouldn't be the only reasonable option.
Boban Marjanovic posts on HN? Would never have guessed.
Great reference. It's a shame most people seeing this comment won't get it.