They killed the SE! Now we're stuck with screens too big to use with one hand. I really really dislike this.
You'll have to remove my SE from my cold, dead hands. It's not just one handed operation, it's simply a much better size and I'm yet to see any reason I'd want a bigger one.
Many of us on HN are probably in the first group. I look at my phone as a portable computer that's a big compromise for portability; as soon as I am within range of an actual PC, I will switch to using that. (Example, my phone is great for checking when the train is going to arrive. But before I leave for the station, I've already checked the schedule on my computer.)
That usage pattern probably places us in the minority. Many people are using their phone to do things that they can't do on a computer; Snapchat, Instagram, games, etc. Those simply don't run on computers. But they suffer from the same ergonomics complaints that we do, so they make a good market for computer-shaped phones. And that is what Apple is releasing today.
https://www.sonymobile.com/us/products/phones/#filter= (ctrl+F for "compact").
There's also unofficial support for the more recent XZ1 Compact.
Sony had really improved on this aspect of late (actually kinda got rid of that questionable design and form factor that was ubiquitous in Sony phones). It seems they figured they need it back for some reason.
Could realistically be a holiday release or 1q 2019, especially since they won't have a Red phone to release then.
There will be a thriving SE market on eBay.
Secondary actions may still require a second hand, but most primary actions should not.
Apparently I would think wrong, but what's the issue? Is it just not possible to manufacture a high-quality small phone for a mere 1% of the world market? Plenty of Android manufacturers are making decent phones for much smaller market segments than that...
You do that in an indirect manner, by requiring NFC, thus eliminating 4-inch phones, which don't have NFC: https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/De... (Cmd-F nfc). If Apple had updated the iPhone SE with NFC, this trick wouldn't work any more, and I'd be forced to do UX design for 4-inch phones.
Till I find product-market fit, I don't want to be distracted by overhead like this.
Not bashing on your decision, just generally curious. If so, that sounds like a lot of work to make custom interface layouts for a half dozen devices.
Taking your example of expand/collapse, when you implement it, it's more complex than it appears when watching a Youtube video: you now have to handle three states: a collapsed state on small screens, an expanded state on small screens, and big screens, which don't have expand/collapse. This imposes more work on the designer to design for these states and make sure they're all usable and look good, perhaps with animated transitions between them. On the engineers, who have to deal with multiple code paths and edge cases. On QA, to spend more time trying to test more scenarios on different devices. Everything sounds simple till you code it up :)
Now, if you could eliminate this complexity by not having to collapse the control in the first place, that would be simpler. Maybe there's enough space on the 4.7-inch screen for that.
UIs scale up better than down. I prefer to do UI design for the smallest supported screen size. If we choose to support 4-inch screens, we may have to choose a UI design that's not optimal for 4.7-inch and bigger screens, which the majority of our users actually use. Whereas if 4.7 was the baseline, we may be able to come up with a better design for most of our users.
All these problems are, of course, solvable, but if they take X amount of time to solve, is there something more beneficial you can do in that time?
Guess what's worse than an app that doesn't support your particular model of iPhone? An app that supports all possible devices and configurations, but that doesn't solve a problem users care about. Then all the time and resources that went into it go down the drain.
Not being able to replace my current distract-o-phone with another comfortably-sized one might be the thing that convinces me to give the new Nokia bananaphone a try.
In stark contrast is my Moto X2, after 2 years of heavy daily use before my current phone, and one screen replacement is still chugging along pretty well on its archaic version of Android.
The argument that iPhones have superior hardware and build quality resulting in longer usage is negated by this constant push for upgrades. I think I know where I am headed for my next phone.
I do admit however I would have liked to see an X in the same size as a base 8.