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Comment by mixedbit | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if we will finally go back to hardware design principles that prioritizes functionality over look.

The Design Of Everyday Things gives examples of great designs:

* Rotary dial phones were designed in such a way that when a phone felled on the floor it not only survived, but the ongoing phone-call was not hanged. Today countless users brake their smartphones glasses and yet the mainstream smartphones to do not incorporate any design elements that would make it harder to drop the phone or that would protect the glass from the impact. Such elements would make the designs less minimal, so are discarded.

* Cars, a complex machines that can easily hurt others, traditionally have controls designed in such a way that you can enter a car model that is totally new to you and comfortably operate it within minutes. You can operate most controls without a need of looking away from the road. Today, we are ditching this proven design in favor of a single touch screen, because it looks so much more elegant and modern.

View on HN

Smartphone design is downright terrible in terms of functionality, they might look nice, but I've had so many phones that were very slippery and didn't offer a firm grip as if the manufacturer says you should buy a case. And Apple is the top offender, think antennagate, headphone jack...

That includes software, responsive design was created with the goal of adapting websites to smaller screens, as phones got bigger I don't see many sites utilizing responsive design so that I can still use my phone with one hand.

Also, I loved the MagSafe charging port on the MacBook, that is an example of great functionality on design, then Apple throws that out of the window and makes a single port laptop.

The MagSafe cables, however, were terrible. I've burned through three so far (in almost as many years) from the cable sheathing failing near the connector. Other manufacturers have included strain relief at this critical junction in their cables for decades, but nooooo, that's too good for Apple. So instead I get this form-over-function cable that fails all too quickly and is expensive to replace to boot.

I much prefer USB-C, even if only because the cables themselves are better engineered.

I'm really curious what you're doing with your cables. I'm on year 6 with my MBP adapter and that includes a year of traveling through Southeast Asia where I was constantly spooling and unspooling it, not to mention the number of times it got wet. It still works flawlessly. I also had a work MBP adapter for a number of years without any issue despite being spooled and unspooled each morning and evening.

Meanwhile, I've tripped over the wire countless times and been saved by the magsafe's ability to automatically disconnect rather than sending my 30-times-the-price laptop flying. It happens so often that USB-C charging is a non-starter for me. I'm buying older, refurb Macs until they realize their error. Short of that, I'm buying a bargain-basement PC that I can replace for under $1k because I know that kind of accident is going to happen eventually.

My experience could not be more different from you. My cable started fraying badly after 1-2 years and finally died after 3.5 years. I have only used it at home and a handful of trips where it been packed most of the time. I tripped on a laptop cable exactly zero times in my life. I accidentally brushed off the cable almost every single fucking day. I love this laptop but I hate this adapter. The brick is way to big and falls of of most outlets. The extensions cable helps but makes it way too long and akward to roll up.

My point isn't to say that your experience is less valid but the benefit of an open charging standard is that we each can pick power adapters that we fit our use case.

Edit: Also, my and his cable probably died because of using it on our laps.

Completely disagree with your disagreement. The brick definitely does not "fall out of most outlets."

I've had the same macbook air since 2011 that I have now donated to another family member. I also gave them the original charging cable with it. I have taken at least 20 flights with it. You just need to be more careful with your things.

MagSafe was _amazing_ because if someone snags the wire your laptop doesn't fall off the desk.

Did you notice the hypocrisy of your comment? I need to be more careful because my cable frayed but MagSafe is amazing because of all these people are so clumsy that they are tripping over the cable and launching laptops onto the floor.

If was using the same argument form as you I would say: Who are all this people that don't notice they are tripping on a cable? If you are not in an infomercial you will stop before launching a laptop onto a floor. I know a ton of people with windows computers and exactly zero of them have died from people tripping on the cable. MagSafe fixes a non-issue and is constantly annoyingly falling out.

I don't actually believe this but it is a silly and borderline rude way to argue. For some reason, you are in situations that benefit from MagSafe. This is a valid request, but I don't think is close to as common as you think. Since USB-C is open, you can get an adapter with a magnetic rip away section.

I am not excessively rough with my laptop. I used a badly frayed cable for 2 years without it breaking. I guarantee that you are not taking off and putting in your adapter multiple times per day and you are not using your laptop on your lap. Look at other peoples power adapters. The thin cable is not build to last and frays at both ends if you actually use the stupid wrapping things

Edit: I misspoke with regards to the size of the plug. Most of the outlets I used results in a delicate balance for the plug to stay in. Slight movements of the cable results in the plug falling out. Also, the folding plug makes it pain to plug into some hard to reach outlets.

He is pulling at the cable when unplugging, not the metal dongle. This friction plus sweat/dirt dissolves the cable.

My cables stay pristine over years of heavy travel, my co-workers are all in pieces - so I wanted to know why.

I have an original 2011MBP MagSafe charger and a 2015MBP MagSafe 2 charger. The cable on the newer is stiffer has yellowed at the neck and feels gummier. It has been replaced by Apple twice.

My old MagSafe charger is still the original. The cable feels very flexible, and the only discoloration it has is from being dragged around and stepped on.

Whatever formulation Apple has changed in manufacturing the new MagSafe has shortened its lifespan.

I have the newer stiffer yellowing one that degrades and literally falls apart in pieces. I think they cheaped out on materials or something.

I similarly am using a charger right now that's maybe 8 years old and has no fraying. The first models were notoriously bad, but they got better over time.

It's possible they improved their production over the years without updating model numbers.'

Personally, I put a circle of electrical tape over each end to provide strain relief.

Nothing. I barely ever bring my laptop (and thus charging cables) anywhere. And yet I've had several failures.

Apple cables are too thin and grossly overpriced.

Family probably went through at least half a dozen.

Never had a plain USB cable disintegrate on me IIRC.

So the MagSage concept is good, but Apple's implementation isn't.

I use a somewhat similar concept for some of my mobile devices (Magsafe-like adapter) to charge and transfer data. I'm not sure how frowned upon it is to link to a specific manufacturer here, but I assume a USB-C adapter could be attractive to someone on a new MacBook Pro that miss the MagSafe connector.

Is the strain relief not good enough, or is it not present? Isn't that strain relief below the MagSafe connector shown here?

https://imgur.com/ZCt8R5g

Of course it’s a strain relief.

It really bugs me when people complain about Apple cables not having strain reliefs. They don’t have huge ugly strain reliefs, and maybe that means they aren’t good enough, but they definitely exist.

Why even have a strain relief if it's not good enough.

And a not good-enough strain relief is no relief at all.

Because this isn’t true. A moderate strain relief is far better than none.

The strain reliefs Apple uses work fine for a lot of people. I used to use an MBP with a MagSafe connector and never had any strain relief problems.

The design is function of the market. People wanted magic not function so they produced magic looking things (thin, shiny).

Now people have grown a bit, they'll ask for other values and the production will realign.

Waves and spirals

Plato's cave comes to my mind... Also, whomever I talk to, from the most techy to least (and I'm a humanities student so nearly all my usual contacts are non-techies), I hear they want sturdier phones. Most people use protective side products like cases and films, even though the latter reduces the touch sensitivity. About half of the phones I see people use have cracks here and there. The industry thinks that people prefer thinner and cuter over sturdier and functional because most people just try to make the best use of what's available and don't bother providing feedback, public or otherwise; and those who are vocal about these new innovations are the tech-geeks and the like. (edited to add:) The market researchers probably confound the people trying to extract value from what's available on the market with their actual preferences. People can't buy what's not available, so, certainly, if all you see is sales data, you will never know that there's a public that wants a decently sized, sturdy, yet nice looking phone with decent hardware, that does not break when somebody farts close by and runs their favourite apps.

> Plato's cave comes to my mind

Do you mind elaborating on this? I'm familiar with Plato's cave and I don't see the relevance.

I'm not gkya (the parent poster) but I believe what he means is that the prisoners in the cave only understand reality as presented to them through the shadows. Likewise, we as consumers have only been offered minimalist, breaky phones with modern hardware/software, so we have grown to live inside that awful reality, and not realize the true scope of what is possible/better.

Thanks, this is half if what I meant; the other half being the inverse: the producers and the marketers have present a very remote, inorganic knowledge of their customers' preferences, only a shadow of their ideas. If they were set free from their echo chambers and cubicles, they'd see that the numbers they based their decisions are not really representative of preferences, but of choices that their clientele had to do.

And then those people go and throw theor brand new phones right into giant sturdy cases. Maybe it's time to ignore the voices that pretend people want shiny when really that's what the bloggers want to crow about.

I don't think it's true. Some manufacturers did produce less thin phones, both for better resistance and longer battery life. Nobody bought them. Maybe you're right and it's the web that influences people into buying these or maybe people just want to buy the latest and "most bestest" (whatever the metric is, nowadays its thin and pixel density ... people are into 4K now, 8K is coming too)

> Nobody bought them.

Because those phones lacked many other features that people ALSO wanted.

Indeed. This was the same fallacy that killed keyboard slider phones. Sure, their sales were poor... but the reason why is because they generally came out 8 months later than the non-keyboard version without improved hardware. So by the time each keyboard phone generation came out, there was already newer hardware with newer features on the market.

Fair point maybe they were cut from other features. I'm only quoting a few thin articles about the massive sales of thin but fragile devices.

I'd love to see different proportions and design decisions, I'm sure there are sweet spots

I remember when the Motorola Droid took this strategy... at the time, Android (and in particular Motorola's Android skin) was quite a bit behind iOS UX-wise. Although I guess you could ask why it didn't dominate among Android users.

The thing is, everyone wants to protect their $600 “investment”. So if you make the phone bigger so that it’s more rugged, people will still put it in a case to protect the housing. So now the rugged phone is just massive and no one wants to carry it.

Now, if the rugged bits of the phone were easily and cheaply swapped, that would probably make it more appealing. But I can buy a new case for my phone for $10, so it’s hard for the rugged version to compete effectively.

If you want decent software support, you have to go with whatever the manufacturers consider fashionable.

They're not equivalent. A case can often fit many phones, so they're cheaper to repair and offer more design variety. In the early 2000s, you could find cases for the 3310 everywhere, but I found very little choice for my 3410.

Yeah, it's not like advertising has any effect on consumer desire.

Or, more optimistically, sometimes people dont know that they wanted something until it was given to them.

> Waves and spirals

Like "swings and roundabouts"? I've never come across this variation.

I never saw yours either (is it a common saying ? I'm not a native english speaker anyway, that would explain that).

Common in Britain and Ireland, at least - in context it just seemed like it might be a variation on the same idiom!

Mine just come from seeing predator/prey graphs https://duckduckgo.com/?q=predator+prey+graph&t=ffsb&iax=ima...

and a really weird feeling that, indeed things do roundabouts, but it's not a perfect back-to-start revolution, the soil was raised but the people on it not so much (but they do feel they progressed). A circle that doesn't close properly is a bit a spiral.

</math-envy>

I really like your expression, although maybe not everybody would appreciate the distinction.

Or, put it on a case and have it not break when it falls to the ground

It's fashion and about styling, not usage and design. Most schools where you learn design are actually about styling.

Since the word has changed meaning, we need a new one. Usability has a different meaning again.

I liked the MagSafe, too, but I like the USB Type-C ports better. Only one cable for a docking station (instead of two), and it (in theory) works for non-Apple docks/chargers (and non-Mac laptops in turn can use Apple docks/chargers).

USB 3.1 over a MagSafe-like reversible connector would be ideal.

Smartphone design is downright terrible in terms of functionality

I disagree. It seems obvioous to me that smartphones are optimized for easy insertion into and retrieval from tight front pockets in pants. That’s why they are shaped the way they are. It’s also partly why the headphone jack had to go. Wired headphones are a pain in the ass when you have to route the wires through layers of clothes and into a pocket or a handbag.

> as phones got bigger I don't see many sites utilizing responsive design so that I can still use my phone with one hand.

Is 6.5" or 7" a phone such as the Galaxy Note, to be used with one hand?

Or is it a Nexus 7, to be used with two hands?

If you buy a tablet or phablet — a device larger than 5" — you'll have to expext that you'll have to use it with two hands.

You can always buy a smaller device if you prefer to use something else.

How about phones below 6"? The Nexus 6P or 5X for instance, a common use case I see is people trying to do quick things on their phone with one hand using the thumb for interacting with the screen, which if you have a phone in the 5-6" ballpark it is not easy to reach the top edges.

This is where solid design comes into play, Tinder's ease of motion and placement of control buttons makes it easy to use with a single hand which means increased usage, thus creating a habit-forming loop, this is critical to Tinder's success.

The best software can’t fix broken hardware.

Any phone above 4.5, maybe 5" device diagonal (not screen diagonal) is basically unusable single-handed.

And this means that on such devices, people interact entirely different with UI. Which results in different UI paradigms.

I’d have to either compromise my UI for users of smaller devices, or for users of larger devices. But in either case, users of larger devices will never get a truly awesome UI, as that’s simply not possible. (Either you waste space, or parts of the UI are just not reachable).

Making part of the UI display-only is not wasting space.

The problem with these phones is the insistence to push UI elements to the corners on touch screens even though original the UX motivation for putting important things in corners was that they're the easiest mouse targets.

It’s not that simple.

The usable space on a screen doesn’t grow much between a 4" and a 6" phone, because you hold your thumb further over the screen, and more parts are unreachable.

And while one could move the content into the top-left or top-right (depending on handedness of the user), the result is so ugly users preferred a UI with less real estate over it in tests.

With a 4" phone, the best reachable areas are the top and the left. Which is why Android 4.0 – which was right around the time when 4-5" phones became popular – moved all these actions into the top and left edges with the Action Bar and Navigation Drawer.

With a 6" phone, those areas are unreachable, the bottom and the right are obscured by your hand, and the only area left for controls is the center – but you can’t really break up content around the controls either.

The only solution that works partially are gestures, but those are very limited in what you can do, and are very inaccurate.

If you have a better solution for a chat client in which a user might have 400+ channels open than using a navigation drawer (with search) on the left, content in the middle, and input at the bottom, then please present some.

But currently, only for a small handful of apps the 6" problem is solved, and I believe that for many apps, it might never be solved.

what are you talking about? I have a Samsung S4, which the sort of "4-5 inch" (translation: 10-13 cm) phone you're talking about, yes?

If I'm holding it in my right hand, about the only part I can't reach with my thumb is the top-left and the very top. Which is about the opposite of what you describe. I'm really confused about just about any statements you made following that, can you explain?

Also, how do you imagine the hand obscuring any parts of the screen without firing touch events all over the place? Placing your hand on the screen will make any app go haywire (yea and we should fix that, challenging but not impossible).

BTW I'm not talking about text-input, just about accessing larger elements of a touch UI. I have kind of shaky hands, I've tried a lot of different ways to hold it and I think that I just can't do the two-thumb typing cause I'm unable to hold it steady in that position, or at least not in a way that's healthy to keep your hands in for frequent stretches.

Also, what is your background in UX? I don't mean a formal education, but any introductory background reading? I often wonder this in discussions like these. Similar to -say- typography, it's not a really hard topic to grasp the basics of. But just reading some intro stuff about it will provide you with: terminology, fundamental concepts, and a few rules of thumb (hahaha did you get that I'm hilarious). Things that you won't be able to intuit or figure out by just being smart-thinking and opinionated.

I'm asking because not only do you not point out any potential solutions, you even assume these might never be solved by anyone else either, for no good reason (and yet write a rather long and authorative-sounding post about it).

> Also, what is your background in UX?

I’m studying compsci, took several classes on the topic, and have previously also participated in courses outside of university where we did UX work more practically.

> what are you talking about? I have a Samsung S4, which the sort of "4-5 inch" (translation: 10-13 cm) phone you're talking about, yes?

Scott Hurf made this helpful graphic: http://scotthurff.com/images/posts/thumb-zone-2/thumb-zones-...

> I'm asking because not only do you not point out any potential solutions, you even assume these might never be solved by anyone else either, for no good reason

I’m saying it’s very problematic to solve this, because the real estate that is reachable and therefore usable for controls on modern devices has significantly shifted to an area where it’s hard to place controls.

The unreachable zone at the top is the reason why Google has started moving all their controls to the bottom of the screen, with bottom navigation and bottom search bar – except, now you get into the bottom-right problematic zone.

Of course you can solve it – but, as I mentioned above, with current UI paradigms you’d need to waste more space. And by the time we might have solved our current UX problem, our phones will have changed already again, so the solution is irrelevant. Just like today’s top bar and left navigation started to become popular right before today’s oversized phones got popular.

> best reachable areas are the top and the left.

Which makes it pretty much impossible to use _in_ your right hand while manipulating UI elements with your thumb.

On a 4" phone, it’s perfectly possible.

I have relatively small hands, but here’s a few photos: https://imgur.com/a/YIRAj – 100% of the screen is reachable, and on all below 4.9" also with a firm grip.

In contrast, on the 5.2" Nexus 5X, only with a loose grip is the left or upper part reachable, and the action bar’s up button is generally unreachable while holding the phone in a firm grip.

On larger devices, such as the Nexus 6P (currently none here, so I can’t take photos), it gets far worse.

Phone UI is designed for 4-5" devices, if you use larger, you have to live with that, but that’s your decision.

Your hands are not that small. My hands are not that small, and they're smaller than yours.

I'm a woman with about average or small hands compared to my friends and colleagues, so compared to the average man hand, they should be quite small.

I'm a man whose hands are about 1/8" shorter than the average, and with your 5" phone, you're able to hit more with your tight grip than I can hit with my loose grip. With my loose grip, I can only comfortably hit about 1/4 of the screen. Maybe it has to do with the relative size of the palm to the fingers. It's actually one of the reasons that I'm a fan of big bezels on the top and bottom - it gives me something to grip if I need to use the top or bottom of the screen.

Yes. Phones that are switched off are easily reachable almost anywhere.

They also happen to have no active UI elements on the screen. Or visual feedback.If you'd switch it on, on that photo you you'd be long-pressing the (bottom-right) "back" key, and possibly generating word salad in any focused text input field.

Almost nobody has issues holding a phone with the active display switched off.

I can also hold them for you while switched on without issue. I photographed them switched off because it was faster to do it this way, as otherwise I’d first have to power them on and set them up.

But notice the Moto G (2014) in the album, which is on, and doesn’t show interference.

Or,look at this helpful graphic Scott Hurf made http://scotthurff.com/images/posts/thumb-zone-2/thumb-zones-...

> You can always buy a smaller device if you prefer to use something else.

I'd love to. One-handed phones have gotten thin on the ground.

If you find someone who works on phone design for a modern phone manufacturer, I imagine they can tell you about hundreds of tiny unnoticed design elements which serve to make the phone more robust against falls. I am amazed at how well modern phones withstand falls, e.g. continuing to work after being dropped 6 feet and landing on one corner on a tile floor.

I have seen a rotary phone in a thrift store with plastic bits chipped off from a fall, and I imagine there are other phones which never made it to the thrift store because their mechanisms broke after falling. I suspect that given equivalent falls the modern high-end smartphones will withstand them better on average than old Bell phones (especially if you drop the full phone and not just the handset). It would be an interesting test though.

But telephone falls weren’t too common 40–100 years ago because they were enormous, attached by a robust cord, and didn’t get carried around in a pocket or purse all the time, held across the fingers while being manipulated with a thumb, or used to take selfies.

The best way to make smartphones more robust without compromising other essential attributes is to use stronger materials and a slightly grippier surface finish. The newer Apple phones have reportedly improved along these lines (the one I have is a few years old, so who knows..). For a customer who cares deeply about protection from falls, it’s always possible to wrap one of these things in a thick rubber shell.

Extra physical protrusions etc. are discarded from smartphones because they make them much less pleasant to hold in a pocket.

Never had a Nokia 3310 or another mobile of the same period? Those were sturdy phones, capable of surviving a motorbike accident literally dividing in several pieces and they were working perfectly after being reassembled. Modern phones are simply ridiculous from the robustness point of view, I have seen mobiles completely shattered from a simple fall from 1 meter of height.

A Nokia 3310 didn't have an 8 inch piece of glass on the front of it.

Also the rotary phones that the parent comment mentioned don't have it, so?

> I am amazed at how well modern phones withstand falls, e.g. continuing to work after being dropped 6 feet and landing on one corner on a tile floor.

wait that's 1.80 metres, right? if you drop 10 modern smartphones from that height, making sure they hit with the corner on a stone tile floor outside, I'd be very surprised if more than one of them would show no more damage than a scratch or a dent in the side.

I've seen displays shattered dropped ~30 cm by sliding from an armchair, hitting merely the side and back on stone tiles (certainly the corners are most vulnerable, no?).

My phone has actually survived worse, but having witnessed the brittleness of other people's phones, I think I'm just oddly lucky.

I dunno what people are doing to their phones. As a pretty clumsy person who generally hasn't used a case, the most that has ever happened (across 4 Android flagships, an N900, an iPhone 6 and now an iPhone 8) when I dropped a phone is scratching and dinging. The G1, N900, and Galaxy S2 would often disassemble themselves upon dropping, but never damaged a screen or reduced any functionality. This includes many drops (clumsy, see above) for each of those (except the iPhone 8), from heights between 0.5m and 1.5m, onto carpet, wood, tile, concrete and asphalt.

I don't see many cracked screens when I'm out, but when I do, it's always in a case. I've wondered if some of these cases actually exacerbate the problem.

Just bought a Moto C. Its body is made of the slipperiest substance known to man. Only phone I've had to put a case around because I can't use it without sliding out my hand.

They're leaving a lot on the table.

I remember kids breaking other things using rotary phones, and then those phones still working fine. Those big hard pieces of plastic were super tough. Maybe if you dropped the base of the phone on its dial or something...

Rotary phones are much, much better at surviving the expected hazards of their intended environment than smartphones. The exact frequency of falls is irrelevant.

That’s fine, but there’s a significant trade-off. You can still use a Bell phone from 1950 if you want to, but few people are willing to make that sacrifice in other features. Or if you prefer you are welcome to securely strap a rubberized feature phone to your wrist and never worry about dropping it again.

For that matter, a toy phone made out of a block of wood is much better at surviving the expected hazards of its intended environment than either of them, but it’s hardly a reasonable substitute.

I know which of the two we stand more chance of resurrecting after a nuclear war.

Apparently "post-apocalypse survivability" is not a selling point with consumers.

> the expected hazards of their intended environment

I bet if you attached a smartphone to a desk with an elastic cord it would survive a very long time.

A car that's kept indoors and never driven can last for decades, but that doesn't mean it's an exceptionally well-made car.

Mainstream smartphones are that way because that's what the mainstream market demands. There are smartphones that put function over design (typically marketed as outdoor smartphones). You can absolutely get smartphones that survive falls, have replaceable batteries and sacrifice thinness and screen resolution for better battery life. But thin, magic rectangles that are all screen on every surface sell a lot better.

I don’t know. Isn’t that a matter of trade-offs? Sure smartphones used to have a very long battery life and were more robust in the “good old days”, but they had tiny screens and real keyboards.

Even though it never broke when I let it slip, I don’t miss my old blackberry. I can so do so much more with my iPhone today that I am ok with it being less sturdy.

It's always about trade-offs, the question is what are the sides of those trade-off and whether consumers really care about the things being traded in.

For instance, I don't believe that durability and large screens are mutually exclusive. Consider a popular phone accessory that is a rubber case. I've been using one to protect my (then) $800 glass piece, and it's totally fine after many drops. In fact, I don't know of people who use such cases and have problems with screen damages. All because it adds an extra impact-absorbing bevel on each side, including above the screen (so the screen isn't hitting the floor even if the phone falls face-first). What's the problem for manufacturers to add such a padding layer? Everyone is dropping battery replaceability anyway.

(Also: rubber cases improve grip, so the phone won't slip out of your hand or your pocket that easily.)

I feel it's like there is some influential person in the industry who strongly believes that what the customers really want is to get intimate with their phones, to caress their glass surface - that's why there should be no bevel, and if you can't make it all from glass, then make the rest from aluminium. Well, I for one don't want to get touchy-feely with my phone, I want it to stand a decent chance of not breaking when it hits something.

Designing for customization with readily available third party accessories is a design choice, and one that reflects a different consumer products ecosystem than existed in the mid 20th century. I don’t mind starting with a minimalist phone and then adding my own splash of color or protective bevels. And a benefit of this system isn’t just mass customization. I can give a used phone to my mother or my son and they can re-customize it with a new case appropriate to their needs. I have no desire for someone at Apple to take away my choice of case.

If you make the phone without the built-in elbow pads, then both the people who prefer it to be thin and attractive and the people who prefer it to be enormous and grippy and bouncy can both be satisfied. Moreover, the latter group can choose from dozens of colors and styles.

There exist phones with fat rubberized shells. They sell terribly and have mostly been driven out of the market.

Still, the choice should be there for those who prefer the rubber shell phones.

And no, devices like the Cat S60 don't really count. They are abandoned basically the moment they leave the factory. It's questionable if you'll see a software update on that device, like ever.

That's the point. There's not enough money to be made catering to a niche market when add-ons can solve the problem.

Some of us would like a bulky rubber phone when we're hiking along a rocky stream and a svelte phone when it's in our pocket every day. I can add a protective case to a thin phone much more easily than I can disassemble a bulky phone.

That's correct and I agree.

My pet peeve is casual usage at home. I want to admire my phone's design sometimes without risking to shatter it on my tiled floor. <sighs>

Guess every one of us has that "spoiled consumer" part in them.

Indubitably.

> What's the problem for manufacturers to add such a padding layer?

Customization! Users can customize the color of the padding layer. Personally, I do not see any advantage of phone manufacturers providing it over users buying it from third party manufacturers. Most of the shops (in US at least) would also stock the cases along with the phones.

> I want it to stand a decent chance of not breaking when it hits something. Very simple. Get a case.

> I do not see any advantage of phone manufacturers providing it over users buying it from third party manufacturers.

Sooooo many people whose display gets wrecked or walk around for years with ever increasing shattered lines and therefore severely decreased robustness and lifetime, just because they didn't get the rubber thing in the first week after they got it[0]. As long as you got yours, right?

I mean, really you should be arguing the disadvantage of the manufacturer including a €1 piece of molded rubber with a €600 purchase. They also put a plastic screen protector on it, right? (at least my S4 came with one, already applied, just below another more loose sticky packaging foil that came off after a day or two).

Make it boring black, just for protection until someone picks their cute custom case.

A great analogy is another fragile fashion item worn daily are glasses. Ignoring the cheaper below-€100 models (nothing wrong with those, just not for this example), but if you get a model over, say, €350 (let alone approaching the price of a smartphone), you expect it to come with a damn case. I might honestly get up and leave if they had the nerve to charge me for it (boy, do I ever hate upselling) And glasses don't even break if you drop them (because they're not made of glass, in case those of you blessed with perfect eyesight were wondering).

I also find it weird how most laptops don't come with a basic reinforced cloth+zipper bag.

One time it didn't make sense was a small frying pan that came with a cloth bag. Still not sure what was the point of that. But if a manufacturer of €40 frying pans can do it, even if there's no real reason for it ...

Seriously, benefit of the doubt is over.

They do all of this because don't want smartphones to last very long and try their hardest to put the blame on the owner (which they want to be "consumers", but you don't "consume" cooking utensils and eyewear either), trying to hide that they're manufactured this way.

It's wasteful and frankly I have heard enough of the idea that buyers don't want to pay for quality. Because the non-quality is overpriced and the quality is unavailable to choose for. Why wouldn't I pay 3x the price for something that lasts 4x as long (or usually much better even), and the nerve to push that on the consumer instead of the manufacturer even daring to offer this planned obsolescence shit.

[0] I tend to default to "no" if someone tries to upsell to me after an large purchase. Because my smart-decision-making juice is usually depleted for the day and I'm out of spoons. The times I give in, I end up with suboptimal useless crap. Even the smartphone case I got the very same day turned out to be all manners of "just wrong".

The amazing thing about making phones thin and light is that people who want that can have it and people who don’t can throw on a rugged case pretty cheaply, so everyone wins. If Apple started shipping phones smothered in rubber, some of their customers would be delighted, but a bunch would buy a different phone because they don’t want that.

Despite having better internals, none of my smart phones have felt as well designed as the original Droid, that had the sliding keyboard, solid metal case, and bevel that did a lot to stop fall damage. My current phone even has a similar size screen to it -- the only feature difference is that my current phone is thinner and every other feature is worse.

If anyone knows a smartphone with that style of physical keyboard, rugged style, and good battery please tell me.

I'll trash my cheap, thin piece of plastic and buy one instantly!

> Even though it never broke when I let it slip, I don’t miss my old blackberry. I can so do so much more with my iPhone today that I am ok with it being less sturdy.

Point us to a design principle (or anything), that proves these two are mutually exclusive. Defeatist attitude brings nothing to this discussion. What are you looking for, commiseration?

Tbh, while this article talks about design, it is really just about color.

Making keys green instead of black don't change the way they operate.

There are some practical reasons for using certain colors, red grabs attention, orange is highly visible, white reflects light and black absorbs and radiates it. However most of it is just a matter of style.

It's not only color. Can you imagine any of the latest Apple products in colors other than variations of white and black (ok, and "gold")?

Sure, I can imagine it in red.

The iPhone 5C models with colorful plastic backs were on the market less than 5 years ago. They also make a rose gold iPhone now which isn’t my cup of tea but Apple seems to be opening up to exploring more color options these days.

The Apple Watch bands are pretty diverse in their coloration.

> Today, we are ditching this proven design in favor of a single touch screen, because it looks so much more elegant and modern.

Tell me about it. I realised this had gone too far when Volkswagen moved the headlight angle adjust and dashboard backlight controls to the touchscreen, about 3 levels deep, with a slider. If you are driving at dawn/dusk and suddenly the backlight seems too dim/bright, you need to pull over and do it via the touchscreen. Moronic

For me it was when VW made a huge marketing push about a "hand-waving" feature in their cars. Basically instead of pressing a perfectly serviceable button on your steering wheel, you take your hand off of it and stard waving your fingers in front of the car screen to change volume or similar features.

At that point I kinda lost all trust in those people having the faintest clue of what makes for a good UX.

whaaat? hand-waving is reserved for communicating with other people and vehicles in traffic!! how did this idea even get past road safety, in particular in jurisdictions where using a phone is illegal

I guess those of us who are less resistant to groupthink (i.e. have working faculties) have to be responsible to get into positions of power so we can say, "fuck off" when designers want to take a line of technology and change it because "trend" without additional evidence.

If you want an old style cell phone buy one. I personally think new smart phones are fantastic. Sure it would be nice if battery lasted longer, but I have learned to adapt. Charge your phone every night, carry a back-up battery for long stays away from home.

I drop my phone all the time, and it hardly gets a scratch, and this is with no case at all. I personally think they are wonders of modern design.

As for design, maybe you have no feel for how far they have come in 10 years.

Most design in tech hardware prioritizes functionality over look.

Just because some colors pop doesn't mean the opposite.

The simpler explanation is just that we aren't very good (as an industry) at hardware design look or functionality design right now. We need to get better at both.

But making an all-gray phone with no stylistic touches isn't going to re-prioritize functionality, promise you that. Different problem entirely.

> You can operate most controls without a need of looking away from the road. Today, we are ditching this proven design in favor of a single touch screen, because it looks so much more elegant and modern.

I really don't get this. It's like everyone just forgot that when you're driving a car, you need to be looking through the windshield.

We Know SUV Design Kills Pedestrians, But We Still Let Carmakers Sell Them

https://usa.streetsblog.org/2017/10/19/we-know-suv-design-ki...

Phones were owned by the phone companies and leased out to people, so of course they wanted to make the most durable phones sets.

Smartphones let you customize your protection with cases. If the manufacturer put in awkward bumpers, then you would be stuck with those bumpers.

If you haven't seen it already, you might find this submission about redesigning the smartphone dial pad [1] interesting, which was posted the other week and goes into the history of the dial pad design a bit.

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15418832

That's true for some rotary dial phones. Alas, in my house, I had a more ornate model which did away with the plastic guard to prevent phone calls from being cut off[1]. Instead any fall, would depress the place where you hung the phone up, and instantly cut off the on going call. As I remember, even accidentally jostling it by leaning too far onto the desk, could potentially cut off a call.

To me, that speaks a timeless truth---expensive and ornate tools are often less functional than their inexpensive peers. Today, expensive smartphones break instantly, but inexpensive ones which thick bezel on 'cheap' glass is resistant to accidental impact.

[1]

But pretty sells more. And broken even more.

I wonder if we will finally go back to hardware design principles that prioritizes functionality over look.

As soon as we go back to renting our equipment from the telcos, we will get ugly handsets that last forever.

Cars, a complex machines that can easily hurt others, traditionally have controls designed in such a way that you can enter a car model that is totally new to you and comfortably operate it within minutes

You mean after you’ve received mandatory training and has been certified to operate them?

> I wonder if we will finally go back to hardware design principles that prioritizes functionality over look.

It's actually going the other direction. The fabric phone cover on the Google Daydream causes massive overheating problems. So this is a case of appearance over functionality.

> yet the mainstream smartphones to do not incorporate any design elements that would make it harder to drop the phone

I agree with most of your post, but I don't remember the last phone I had that didn't have a strap loop on it (and I use it). Maybe the iPhone 4?

If things were made to avoid breaking, it would reduce the need for people to replace them every 1-2 years. This is what you get if you make maximizing profit margin the only goal of society.

Apple has started moving slightly in this direction, by creating a plastic cushion layer around the edges of the screen. It probably doesn't help a whole lot, but probably still better than nothing. On the other hand, they decided to make the back out of glass again, so I guess that cancels out that plastic cushion feature.

https://youtu.be/n2wJLnNJRHI?t=2m12s

> I wonder if we will finally go back to hardware design principles that prioritizes functionality over look.

Probably not. The article praises the Google Home "flannel hockey puck," which Google had to remotely cripple because it would randomly wake up and send audio to Google.

When friends talk about their new phone costing say €250 I promptly reply: "What? Only 250? You forgot to add the smartphone tax, didn't you?". Now this usually drags immediately their attention, so I can continue: "You should have considered the replacement of a new screen almost every year and a new battery replacement service after 2 or 3 years. ...this is going to cost you over twice that figure if you keep it for say 5 years", while a dumb phone will probably need just one easily replaceable €25 battery after some years.

Weird, I've never done either of those things.

It's not just weird, it's super weird. But the fact is that modern smartphones are so much more fragile than their predecessors that this "tax" must be taken into consideration, especially when phones become awfully expensive like nearly everything made by Apple and Samsung in the recent years. Moreover, If I had a minor crash with the car my dumb phone would very likely still be functional for an emergency call (it survived intact a motorcycle accident months ago) while a smartphone would probably become inoperable with a broken screen after the first hit.

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