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Comment by dantillberg | Hacker News Reader

According to [0], these "phones" are 5.4 and 6.2 inches tall (not diagonally). 5.4 inches should not be the "small" size phone. That's huge. I have reasonably large hands and I really hate this about my phone (I have a Nexus 5, which is around the same size as the iPhone 6S).

Please, let's make us some smartphones that are nice and compact and small. Or at least medium.

[0]: http://www.apple.com/iphone-6s/specs/

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From what I see, Sony is the only manufacturer currently offering a high end phone at a smaller size with the Xperia Compact line. Still 5 inches tall though.

I went from a Nexus 5 to a Sony Z3 Compact and haven't looked back. The form factor is so much more convenient, I really hope more manufacturers look at it again.

I'm surprised Samsung doesn't try it, with their whole "let's throw it out there and see if it sticks" strategy and all.

I love my Z3 Compact as well. Am still pulling a solid 1.5+ days of battery life, and the dock charger is really nice.

My one complaint with my Z3c is actually my dock, the magnetic pedestal design sucks. I've had to RMA seveal docks form Sony just to get one that worked most of the time. And even then, the magnet disengages and the power pins drop = no charging, which is an unwelcomed surprise in the morning. I've since moved to a magnetic cable and I'm much happier.

the Z5c is pretty tempting, but I'll admit the 6s+ is also tempting. I'm growing tired of Play Services killing my battery on a whim

The xperia compact series is an amazing line of phones, but also super fragile. I've destroyed two. both from "waist height" drops. Also, I couldn't find an otter box or other sufficiently protective case for it.

The touch screen is built in such a way that any small crack and half the screen or more stops accepting touch.

I drop my Z3 Compact all the time and it does just fine, you just need to protect your investment with a case. Incipio's case works well for me.

you want the Incipio case for it. Best I've found, works great. I use the charging dock @ work, which requires taking the case on/off a couple times a day. I can attest to it not falling apart from use.

SHARP also makes compact high end phones. They seem to only sell them in Japan though - with the Aquos Crystal being the only time they tried in America recently. Unfortunately it's decidedly mid-range and tied to Sprint.

I love my Aquos SH-02F though.

Yeah, I can't wait for the backlash trend, where everything goes back to being smaller, but thinner this time.

I really wanted to sign up for Google Fi, but I want a phone, not a tablet.

Sadly thinner and smaller means cutting down the battery by a lot.

But smaller surface area means a smaller screen as well which works out rather well since the screen is the battery sink most of the time. This is one reason why tablets don't get better battery life than phones.

Yeah but it's not a 1:1.

i.e. a 50% smaller screen doesn't use 50% less battery for the screen, let alone cut 50% battery.

For one, part of the screen is powered by a controller that's pretty similar whether it's a 4 inch or 5 inch screen. So if you cut the screen in half, you save maybe 40% battery going towards powering the screen.

But then the screen is only a fraction of the power usage, let's call it half. So cutting the screen in half drops battery usage not by 40%, but 20%. And then the screen is off half of the time while the phone is still using battery, which is why it's even lower than that.

So half as big a screen might reduce total battery usage of the phone by say 20-30% tops. And that's without taking into account that a big chunk of a phone's internals are going to be non-battery (e.g. flash storage, cpu, ram) which don't get bigger (or at least anywhere near 2x as big) if the screen is twice as big, and so the battery-to-volume ratio on a bigger phone is bigger than on a smaller phone.

In short, while yes obviously smaller phones have smaller screens that use less energy, overall bigger phones have better battery life because they have comparatively bigger batteries.

As for tablets vs phones comparison, it's an apples/oranges comparison as they do different things but, no way.

If you want to make the comparison, top iPad has a 42 watthour battery, iPhone 6 has 6.9. About 6x battery difference, despite the fact the 9.7 inch vs a 4.7 inch screen. That iPad has 3x as many pixels to power but 6x the battery to do it.

But again, it's apples/oranges.

Compare the iPhone 6 to iPhone 6 Plus. According to you the reason tablets get worse battery life is because they're bigger and have bigger screens, which are the main battery sink. So the 6 Plus should have worse battery life, according to you under the same principle.

But it's wrong, the iPhone 6 Plus has 60% more watthours of battery, despite being 32% bigger. And if you look at Apple's references (usually pretty good), they rate for the Plus vs the standard iphone: 10 hours more talk time, 34 hours more standby, 2 hours more internet time on 3G or LTE, 1 hour more on wifi, 3 hours more video playback and 30 hours more audio playback. Note the video (where the screen is one of the biggest battery sinks you can imagine), it's got a battery lifetime of 27% more despite a 32% bigger phone, for all the above mentioned reasons that a percentage increase in screen size has a somewhat larger percentage increase in extra battery volume.

So I'd say that the notion that bigger phones have better battery life, in general, is true. And when choosing the plus version on the iPhone, the battery life is a benefit. While choosing say the mini version on android phones (even as they're often underpowered, such as the Galaxy S mini series), tends to diminish battery life.

don't you ever suggest that manufacturers make things thinner.

They already have an inexplicable obsession with it. I'd rather have a slightly thicker phone and more battery

I'd rather have both. Are there a fundamental laws of physics that we're hitting with battery thickness and/or component efficiency? If not, I'd rather people keep chugging away on the engineering problem, supported by my willingness to pay them for any progress they make.

I still think of the scene in Zoolander where he takes the flip phone out of his pocket and it is about as big around as thumb. It was comedic at the time because manufacturers were trying to make smaller and smaller phones to differentiate themselves from the brick cell phones of the past, so this scene was mocking how far it could go. The irony is that now kids probably have no idea why it's funny because all phones are competing to offer larger and larger models.

I don't have a problem with the larger phones, personally, but I think it's interesting to see how quickly the industry has come full-circle.

I've recently switched back to an old Nokia feature phone and holy shit, it's incredible when I hold it up to my ear...I can actually grab the entire thing in the palm of my hand.

Another amazing thing about old Nokia phones is the sound when you hear another person talking. I wish they could bring "good telephone" back to these smartphones.

Voice calls over VoLTE or Wi-Fi sound great. It's just a matter of carriers rolling it out (and building interoperability amongst themselves).

Facetime Voice also sounds great. (Though it only works when you're calling another iDevice.)

if i know the other person has an iPhone, i make them facetime me, using voice over my service sucks.

fuck it i don't want calling minutes anymore, just gimme data.

Older phones (the ones designed by phone manufacturers, not computer companies) had sidetone [0], making it a lot easier to talk on the phone when it's windy. They where better phones than today's portable computers with a phone app.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidetone

HTC is actually bringing back Sidetone as an option:

http://blog.htc.com/2015/09/re-instating-the-sidetone-option...

I've been hanging on to my iPhone 4S for this very reason. The battery is nearly shot after 4 years, but I would call that a pretty good run by today's standards (Take that, planned obsolescence!).

You can replace the battery. The removal is a bit frightening (there's a shit-ton of glue so you're tearing the battery apart to get it out), but aside from that it's a 10mn~15mn job (first time, being careful), did that on my own 4S. Biggest annoyance (aside from fear of piercing the battery while you're tearing it out) is some sort of pressure/spring-loaded contact inside which is a pain to get back in place.

ifixit sells complete replacement kits (battery + plastic forcing tool + pentalobe driver + replacement philips screws) for $25, or just the battery for $20, you can probably find even cheaper parts elsewhere.

Phone resurrected, money well spent.

I believe they're using removable adhesive strips these days, similar (if not identical) to 3M's Command line. Long story short, if you're "tearing" anything, you're doing it wrong. Pull on the exposed end of the strip and the adhesive will detach cleanly, leaving no residue.

Good luck with that, the pulltab was a useless piece of junk and it most definitely did not detach anything (let alone cleanly). I very much would have liked it to work, it would have been significantly less stressful than having to leverage the plastic tool on the metal sides of the phone to tear out the battery.

Yeah, the pulltab is less than useful. It took a worryingly large amount of force to get the battery unstuck and pulling the tab folded it into a neat U shape. Having seen plenty of exploding battery videos I was expecting the thing to go up at any second.

I've changed my battery twice already on 4S. There isn't shit ton of glue, but two strips that remove fairly easily.

I would keep the device and wait for iPhone 7, but lack of RAM makes the use beyond basic a pain. Even some basic stuff lags ridiculously (opening Music and navigating to your playlists now takes up to a minute). Forget multitasking beyond 3 apps. With two are always gaming whether app will come back from memory or storage.

Apple is really evil in this sense. The sub par amounts of RAM are forcing us to upgrade quicker than it should be. And so many people (even tech) are rejecting the idea that RAM is needed on iOS.

The biggest problem for me hasn't been the battery but the sluggishness of iOS8 on a 4S. There are times when it simply won't react to touch input anymore for a while. Some bugs have accumulated as well - my alarm clock won't go off anymore (timer still always works, even over night, strangely enough), sound output is sometimes broken until I open up "Music" to sort of reinitialize it, the lockscreen is sometimes frozen etc. It's been barely usable but I've held on. Sad there is no iPhone mini.

I guess you could upgrade to the 5S.

http://www.apple.com/shop/buy-iphone/iphone5s

"it's incredible when I hold it up to my ear"

Why would you hold a phone up to your ear? Trying to take a photo of your ear canal or something?

Probably misplaced his ear-buds.

That could be it. I just turn mine up to listen to music without earbuds when I'm alone, but that would probably upset neighbors in a crowded place.

I'll be holding on to my iPhone 5 until it bricks at this rate.

ok, so in the next software update when it slows way way down

Haha, you nailed it. Good old planned obsolescence :)

Agreed, I have an N5 and it's about as large as my hands can go. It could have a better display, but not a larger one.

I tried out the Moto X for about 3 months, like it a lot, display was just a little too big.

Now my wife has small hands and small fingers. She can't handle the N5 comfortable even.

I don't know the averages though.

>specs

I'm just glad I can still laugh at Apple users for only having 1GB RAM.

and they can still laugh at me for even needing more than 1GB RAM.

iOS doesn't run in RAM, it's only bloated OSes like Android that need RAM. /s

lol

Yes, this is laugh-worthy. It's Apple's sneaky manner of building planned obsolescence into otherwise very competent devices. Just like my 4S, the brand spanking 6S+ will in a few years be choked by iOS updates's climbing RAM requirements. Not updating isn't an option either, as app updates demand the latest OS quickly afterward.

The iPad Pro is much more affected by this because it competes with Wintel devices. When you compare it to the Surface Pro, the later isn't considerably beefier except when it comes to RAM, which is enough on its own to give it double the life span...

Has the amount of RAM been confirmed?

I thought it usually was known once ifixit or similar did a teardown of the device.

hey would have sold it as a memory upgrade if it had one. additionally, the phone has enough other features to get people to upgrade that more RAM would be giving something away for nothing. When they run out of ideas, they'll add more RAM

I was quite disappointed there was not iPhone 5S sized device. Will hold off on upgrading for a bit, then...

Same here, but will next year be any better?

I bought an iPhone 5S a while ago because of this, while I'd much rather have bought the iPhone 6. I really hope they come with a smaller model next time :-/. 3D Touch look useful.

(that said, I'm quite happy with the 5S. I don't have much need for what the 6 models offer.)

What's the line on force touch actually being useful vs. just hype? It's hard to resist the reality distortion field and not get excited from hearing about it, but I've been burned by the false promise of iPhone-S release cycles before ...

It's hard to say without using it, but the gut feeling I get from 3D Touch is that it will be very useful.

It strikes me as an innovation in the same category as the finger-no-stylus approach of the initial iPhone and, more recently, Touch ID. These features initially seem overhyped because they're such 'little' things, but because they affect your interaction with the device constantly, it'll be hard to live without once you're used to them.

How would you fit an efficient antenna for pertinent and desired LTE frequencies bands in a frame too small to hold such an antenna? The speed of light is the speed of light, and so wavelengths of set frequencies are themselves set, and constrain the physical dimensions, no?

Well, they still sell a smaller phone, the 5S. I hope next year, when they no longer sell the 5S, they'll come with another model, maybe an iPhone Mini or 7C or whatever.

They must have needed a bigger battery to drive the faster A9 and the always on coprocessor. (M something?)

The dimensions are almost exactly the same as the current gen 6/6+, the only big difference is weight which is a good 10% higher according to the tech spec pages[0][1]

iPhone 6: 5.44" x 2.64" x 0.27"; 4.55 ounces

iPhone 6S: 5.44" x 2.64" x 0.28"; 5.05 ounces

iPhone 6+: 6.22" x 3.06" x 0.28"; 6.07 ounces

iPhone 6S+: 6.23" x 3.07" x 0.29"; 6.77 ounces

[0] http://www.apple.com/iphone-6/specs/

[1] http://www.apple.com/iphone-6s/specs/

I completely misunderstood this graphic:

https://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/0342.jp...

It looks like 6+ and 6s are the same size, with 6s+ being huge.

They're not to scale, the 6 and 6S are the same size (there's a fraction of a millimetre difference), so are the 6+ and 6S+.

I have no idea what they did with that slide, I guess somebody didn't want to overshadow the new phones and thought extra color was not sufficient.

The increase in size in that photo is dramatized by the vanishing point.

Interesting. Do you know why it's heavier?

I'd have to hold one to be sure, but I really like how light the 6 is. I'm not sure I'd like a heavier phone - the 6's specs are already great.

No idea, my guess would be the force touch gizmos, the trackpads tack on a fair bit of hardware[0] though I've no idea how much it weighs and in the "disassembly" pics the feedback thingy ("taptic engine") seemed fairly large and mostly metallic: http://live.arstechnica.com/give-us-a-hint-apples-september-... (that's the big gray block in front of the battery, you can read "taptic" on the far side of the picture)

The different aluminium alloy might be a few % heavier, but it wouldn't increase the whole phone's weight by 10% (replacing aluminium by steel might)

[0] https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Retina+Macbook+2015+Teardown...

But if you had a small screen you would not buy any apps from apples store? You have not thought this trough.

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