Hacker News Reader

Comment by sxg | Hacker News Reader

The iPhone SE is essentially non-existent in the US. Its primary target is developing markets like India where the phone is made. Most people I know aren’t even aware the SE exists. If they see it in stores, they just assume it’s one of the older iPhones. Hacker News is the only place I see the SE getting any significant attention.

View on HN

Apple couldn't keep the SE in stock for months after it launched in the US. It released at the end of March, here's a thread complaining about it two months later:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/iphone-se-constantly-ou...

I got mine at the end of June, 3 months after it was released.

For the iPhone X, sure, blame stock constraints on new manufacturing and low part yields or something. This was basically an iPhone 5; Apple knew how to build it, they either severely underestimated how popular it would be or they couldn't keep up.

At this point it's 2.5 years old (more or less the guts of an iPhone 6s), so sxg's friends that assume it's one of the older phones aren't even wrong. If Apple had ever updated it I'm sure they'd have kept selling better.

> Apple couldn't keep the SE in stock for months after it launched in the US

Maybe they weren't trying to keep it in stock in the US.... it surely had lower margins than the other models

Apples been challenged about restricting supply on models before and always vehemently denied it, that it would be a self-defeating strategy, including ex-employees speaking retrospectively. Supply chain analysis seems to back them up. I’m sorry I can’t give references, there’s a long complicated history of this.

As another anecdote, I've had Android user friends borrow my phone and comment on how nice it is. But nobody's made a good 4" phone on that side of the market in a very long time.

I always thought that one of the reasons for the SE's success.

Smaller and cheaper Androids are generally terrible, the SE was a great performing phone in a small case. Which made it a good option for buying for the kids and those who don't want to spend absurd amounts.

My anecdote is I wanted to get off Android, and I've owned a couple of phablets and loathed them, so the SE seemed the only viable option.

> Smaller and cheaper Androids are generally terrible

Completely agree.

Most of the smaller Android phones are in the value band so the specs leave a lot to be desired. I'm still switching between my Lumia 950 (5.2) and my OnePlus 2 (5.5). The OnePlus even at 5.5 feels like a bulky brick phone compared to the Lumia.

I've been on the hunt for a smaller Android, but have yet to find a smaller form factor with decent specs that beats my Lumia.

That's the annoying thing - a tiny 0.5" increase in size makes all the difference between fits nicely and uncomfortably large.

i like the screen size (5.5-6"), but i really don't like extra weight.

i'd much rather have a 4" phone if it was ... 50-80g lighter. but if thats not possible, i'd rather stick with the bigger screen

btw, the 4" and 5.5" are often around the same size if you include the whole phone. there was just so much spacing around the display earlier

It's really quite a bit bigger. Here's a side-by-side of the 4" SE and 5.5" X

https://amp.businessinsider.com/images/59dcdd8c6d80adae008b5...

oh, i was talking about android phones, as the parent comment was looking for one

and if you're comparing the old ~4" phones, they're often very similar in size to the current 5.5" phones, as the chin is often gone (fingerprint sensor is often in the back)

I recently switched from a Lumia 950 to a Sony XZ1 Compact because I wanted something that would be more pocket-friendly.

Good:

- Speed-wise it is a huge upgrade. Everything is instant. The memory management is superb. I can open an app one day then come back to it a week later and have it sitting right where I left it.

- Build quality is great. Plastic back, so no case required -- that was one thing I also loved about my Lumia 950.

- Battery life is easily 2-3x that of my 950. On top of that it also charges faster.

- It has a great display, significantly brighter than the Lumia 950 display.

- The display does not scratch easily, unlike my Lumia 950, which required a screen protector or else it accumulates numerous fine scratches rapidly. This phone lives in my pockets without protection for 2 months and has acquired zero scratches.

- Developer-friendly, with monthly updates. They even have complete AOSP device trees on Github, with detailed instructions on their developer's website to go with. Other than Google, who else even does that? I was impressed.

Bad:

- The 720p display is noticeably pixely. Also not as easy on the eyes as an OLED display.

- There is no chance you'll find a good glass screen protector for this, thanks to how the display curves just a little bit into the sides.

- It has hard metal corners. This is not a phone that curls up comfy in your hand.

- The speakers are crap. Stereo front-facing speakers, yay! No, hush that, the speakers are crap. Even at their loudest I miss notifications. That was not something that happened with my 950, which was crazy loud.

- The camera is inferior to the Lumia 950's camera in almost every situation other than handheld in low light. I was comparing the 950's camera to a Pixel 2 before I bought this XZ1 Compact, and it held its own against that as well, with its greater resolution offering a big advantage -- except handheld in low light. The camera on the 950 is something special. Also: no RAW on the XZ1 Compact. No RAW on any Sony phone, pretty sure. The XZ1 Compact's camera isn't bad, its pretty good, actually, it's just not superb like the 950 or Pixel 2. The noise reduction applied to its JPEGs is too harsh, that's its biggest problem. Not a camera you'll want to make prints from.

For a small Android, I don't think there's really any other choice than Sony compacts. The nearest competitor [in the US] would be a Pixel 2, which is much larger.

All-in-all, the only major things I miss about the 950 is its camera and its super loud and clear speaker.

Thanks for this great rundown on the XZ1. It was one of the phones I was eyeing up as a possible upgrade from my 950.

I'm going to hold off getting it now, so thanks for saving me some future pain, I appreciate it!

That is also something I worry about. There's been a bit of talk of a potential update to the SE but I hope they will keep making a 4" phone. I have gone from an iPhone 6 to an SE and I seriously enjoyed the experience of having a smaller phone I can operate with one hand again.

If they keep the casing the same size and go no-bezel on it, it'd still be reasonably usable, but you'll need Reachability to get the top of the screen one handed. 4" diagonal is about the max my thumbs can cover.

Maybe time to move to a watch? ;-)

Seriously, if the watch had a camera, I would leave my phone at home.

Agreed

When I went to finally get my SE a few months after release all stock but the 64gb rose gold were sold. I’m a dude but I wanted the phone so bad that I didn’t mind the colour.

Dude, I love my Rose Gold SE. I got it because it was cheaper used, but it's such a nice color. Own it!

>> "I’m a dude but I wanted the phone so bad that I didn’t mind the colour."

That's such a strange qualification. Guys who aren't afraid of pink ("rose gold") are about 10x more attractive. It's a strong signal that they might not be a toxic jerk.

IMO Space Gray was the best option on the SE because it's the only one that had black bezels on the front. The white glass with a thin black border around the screen area always looked disjointed to me on the other colors.

For some reason I don't mind it on my iPad, but iPhones I think the black bezels look a lot better ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

iPhone XR with colored cases and black bezel is looking good though!

The iPhone SE is very popular with many women I know due to its size and ability to fit into women’s pockets. Women’s pockets are terrible in general. Many further refuse to buy a new iphone until another smaller one comes out.

Happy to provide links to articles on the topic, but <insert search engine of choice> will easily find them too.

Weird. I've seen the exact opposite. The only people I know who own the SE are men who care about owning the right thing for their life, and not a social signaling device (usually high income, high net worth, or very well-educated).

For most of us, we would gladly pay $1000 for a small version of the XS, but the market for people who like big phones vastly outweighs our niche preferences.

Indeed. IF they made an XS Mini with a good enough camera I’d probably buy it even at the Max price point.

To add some anecdata, all the women I know love their iPhone plusses because they spend so much time looking at their phones. Women also tend to have some sort of purse or bag, so the large phone ends up being less of an issue.

Once you give up on pocket-ability, you may have well go whole-hog and go Plus. Neither the regular or the Plus will fit in a women's pocket, so why settle.

The SE still remains hugely popular amongst women, including my wife who doesn't know if she's going to stay with iOS when her SE gets old (due to size).

I keep reading these statements wondering what kind of women’s jeans I own. My plus has no problem fitting in any of them, I just prefer to put it in my purse.

There's a lot of variety in people's physical size and shape. Smaller women have smaller pockets.

I’m not the one who downvoted you, but I don’t see how a woman’s body size has a significant impact on their pocket size. Are you saying men’s pockets are a lot different in size when the waist size is 44” than the ones on a 30” waist?

> Are you saying men’s pockets are a lot different in size when the waist size is 44” than the ones on a 30” waist?

Yes? Have you held pants up next to one another, pants that use more material have larger pockets to stay proportionate. If pockets remained the same size as the pants grew they'd visually shrink and look terrible, no item of clothing does this.

I've gained and lost weight, I know first hand this to be true.

https://pudding.cool/2018/08/pockets/

This article has some great numbers on pocket size variation between men's and women's pants.

I guess, just annoyed it's always thrown as the defacto complaint about the "Plus-sized" phones when it's really not true across the board.

Nobody said it’s true across the board. As the OP, I clearly said “many women”, not “all” or even “most”.

True - exactly why my wife chose one earlier this year. Her main criteria was "it has to fit in my back pocket" - which meant 4.5" screen. There's so few of those devices in the modern smartphone market - and yet I wonder why? I'd happily keep my phone small if it didn't mean compromising on performance...

Performance gets mentioned a lot, and I'm curious what people are doing with their phones that demands so much of it.

Is the iPhone suddenly everyone's preferred device for playing Fortnite or something?

I think the things people notice most are fast fingerprint recognition for unlock, app launch times particularly the camera, and visual effects and post-processing in photography. Face unlock on the X also takes a lot of horsepower.

It will be interesting to see how noticeable the performance improvements fit older models in OSX 12 will be. My 6s is very noticeably faster than my wife’s 6+ so I’m hoping hers gets a bit of a speed bump.

While I haven't owned a statistically significant number of different smartphones, the lower-end Android devices I've owned have seemed poorly tested - especially for problems that skirt the dividing line between the phone developer's responsibility and the app developer's responsibility.

For example, I once had a device where Skype would only use the rear-facing camera. Another device received a software update which couldn't be installed as the internal storage had been consumed by updates to apps like Facebook that were _impossible to uninstall_.

Flagship products seem to receive marginally more testing; I speculate phone companies' employees mostly dogfood the flagship models.

considering how popular "webapps" (monstrosities with 5M+ of compressed javascript) are, you need a powerful CPU even if all you're doing is browsing.

The A9 seems to still be up to the task, despite being nowhere near as powerful as what's in these newer phones.

It may not always be that way, I admit. But I'm not sure that my Stockholm syndrome with respect to the ad industry has developed to the point that I'm willing to spend hundreds of extra dollars on additional hardware and data plan to solve a problem that I could solve for free with an ad blocker.

True, but Apple likes to keep products around for a long time, unlike other phone makers. Their latest and greatest high end monstrosity comes with premium performance and a premium price tag. Meanwhile Apple is plenty happy to sell you their flagship from two or three years ago a more budget-oriented option.

I also wonder. I play Hearthstone on my phone, and I plan on playing other resource-intensive (or poorly programmed) Unity games (Magic Arena when it goes out).

I do know of people that play Fortnite, but they have to be in the minority... (actually 3 million reviews means it's not a small minority!)

Do you not use the modern web?

I used a Moto G 2015 until earlier this year. With Firefox and uBlock Origin, browsing didn't seem slow to me at all. I browse a lot of sites but not a lot of webapps. I used native apps (Slide and Materialistic) for this site and for reddit.

I haven’t noticed lag in Safari or apps in general on my iPod Touch from 2015

> There's so few of those devices in the modern smartphone market - and yet I wonder why

Battery life. Physically, phones are mostly battery. Smaller phone = smaller battery.

Smaller phone = smaller screen = doesn't need as large a battery. The SE has a smaller battery than the 6S, yet equal or better battery life in every category.

Same here.

The iPhone SE is very popular with many women I know due to its size and ability to fit into women’s pockets.

And purses. My wife chose the XS over the Max simply because when she had a 6 Plus it didn't fit in any the the brands of purses she would buy.

> The iPhone SE is essentially non-existent in the US.

It supposedly represents (based on an article I'm not going to try and dig up again) about 10% of iPhones. iPhones are about 50% of the US market, so that implies about 1 in 20 smartphones in the US is an iPhone SE.

Certainly not a market leader like the Galaxy or the marquee iPhone models, but "essentially non-existent" is overstating the case a bit.

I've heard it's around 5% of iPhones in the US based on app user data.

Which may be a biased way of estimating total share of the phone market, if SE users have different app consumption habits from users of other models.

Which is a plausible hypothesis. Choosing a phone that's got a markedly smaller screen than anything else on the market seems like the kind of thing you'd be more likely to do if you don't intend to spend a whole lot of time looking at said screen. Whereas, if you're going to be spending a lot of time Facebooking or playing games on your phone, then yeah, having more screen real estate is going to matter relatively more to you.

It might also explain why Apple's not demonstrating too much concern about servicing the SE camp - they (OK, I should come clean here - we) might just not be a particularly profitable segment of Apple's user base.

I think, instead, they know people like me will have to pay more for a device that doesn't meet my needs very well. They can leverage the fact that I need iOS, and can proceed to force people like me to pay more and more because we're locked into the ecosystem, even if there aren't any phones that are compact.

I got my SE for $100. I think y'all are unsatisfied with that revenue, and at this point, the XS is my next best option. So, I doubt they are discontinuing because they don't care about us. It's just a calculated bet that they won't actually lose us.

>they (OK, I should come clean here - we) might just not be a particularly profitable segment of Apple's user base.

I think this is a bad way to think of it, though. I know that's the way a McKinsey analyst might think of product, but it doesn't have long term focus. It's a lot like how Facebook quit caring about unprofitable people (the well-educated crowd), in order to cater to the consumerist suckers. But as the interesting people who created the content that built facebook into what it is today have fled, that content has gone with, and consumerist suckers are no longer entertained. The people I know with SEs are kind of like that crowd. If you start putting Androids into their hand, the rest of the people will take notice and follow.

Probably well-calculated. As many others have observed, with the iPhone SE leaving the market, the only remaining options for small phones are underpowered and low-quality Android models, and feature phones.

As still others have observed, this duopoly situation in the smartphone market is maybe not the best thing ever.

I have one and I love it. I got it from a T-Mobile promotion where they gave away a free SE with the purchase of an iPhone (including another SE). So I got my wife and I matching phones.

The SE does everything I need, fits comfortably in my pocket (unlike my previous phone, a Nexus 5X), and was a great deal. (I am over my desire to have the latest tech that I had in my youth. I'm 55 and I'm just interested in accomplishing other goals that are less ephemeral.)

I love my SE but as an iOS developer I'm ready for an upgrade. I went into this year sure I'd be upgrading to something new, but they've offered me nothing.

The March and June events came and went without anything interesting, and now everything is a variant of the same phone with no headphone jack, oversized and overpriced.

I'm 31 and I think I'm reaching that point, at least regarding smartphones. I bought the iPhone X and I think it'll be the last flagship phone I'll buy, unless a real great innovations appears in the horizon. Phones are getting expensive and kind of boring, they're increasing their price without offering any real innovation. I just don't see the value added to my daily life when I pay for the top phone in the market.

35 here. Can confirm. I can't say my iPhone X has been worth what it cost, and I'm unlikely to replace it until it dies.

Are you SURE about that? I know a LOT of folks who have stayed with that form factor. Some are women with small hands, but not all of them -- and virtually none of them are HN-nerdy-types.

I'm not a woman (although my hands may be on the small side for a male) and I still like the SE because of the form factor. One handed use, folks.

I would even pay XS prices for the same form factor, if only Apple bothered to make one...

To continue with the anecdote-is-not-data theme though, my wife is hanging on to her 5C for dear life because ... it's BLUE. So at least they got some part of the female demographic with the XR.

I mainly know (and am) the nerdy type that wears skinny jeans. The "bigger is better, why would you want such a small thing" crowd is alien and bewildering to me ;). Humans seem to optimize for echo chambers.

I agree, as a guy who wears jeans that are not baggy, the big phones have serious usage issues. Put them in your front pocket, and they're jamming themselves into your hipbone when you try to sit. I owned a 6+ and was happy to upgrade to a smaller 8 later. I wish I could have a smaller phone that that was somewhat current.

I don't understand how women deal with it, with jeans that are tighter fitting and have smaller pockets. I think most women wearing form fitting jeans put it in their back pocket while walking and then have to put it on a table or something while sitting. Or they put it in their purse, where the size isn't a problem.

My parents have them. Despite that (or maybe because) whenever I see them I ask them WTF they're thinking keeping a phone with such a limited screen, they insist that they "don't like" modern phablets, though they've never even used one. Go figure. Apple sells enough for their stores to carry the SE, so it's not really a developing-nation-only phone.

I had one and love it. I’m able to use it without limitation one handed (often while carrying something or otherwise unable to use both hands), something I struggle with on my X. I also don’t like having things in my pockets so the small size was fantastic.

I was gifted an Apple Watch and that has helped with a lot of things I would do single handed on the SE previously, like quick reply text messages and getting directions.

There’s a market for small high end phones. It’s likely just not big enough for Apple (or anyone really) to care about.

A friend and his wife both have iPhones X (do you pluralize that as iPhone Xs even through that's the new model?) and they both gripe about the size.

He commented that it's a nice iPad Mini, but not great to carry around like a smartphone.

Apparently Apple disagrees.

> do you pluralize that as iPhone Xs even through that's the new model?

I'd have to go digging, but there was a Twitter thread in which I participated about this that Phil Schiller chimed in on. Apple's official(?) stance is that you never pluralize iPhone; instead, you use the word "devices".

"A friend and his wife both have iPhone X devices" (or, more likely, "A friend and his wife both own the iPhone X").

Found it via MacRumors https://www.macrumors.com/2016/04/29/phil-schiller-dont-plur...

Interesting to know, but nobody's gonna do that. Like how you're "supposed" to say "LEGO bricks" insteado of "LEGOs."

I often see sticklers for the "official" Apple terminology fighting losing battles on forums and comment sections trying to tell everyone to pronounce it "iPhone Ten" rather than "iPhone eX".

Also, I think Apple prefers it to be called "iPhone" rather than "the iPhone". Who knows.

Related thing, I remember some people (probably me included) making fun of Microsoft for skipping Windows 9, and now here we are with iPhones.

I find the X small. It's tall, but certainly not large. And the iPad mini comparison is obviously a joke, but really:

https://www.phonearena.com/phones/Apple-iPad-mini_id7523/siz...

Can you hold securely in one hand and pull down Control Center from the top right corner with your thumb? It's one of my most commonly used features and when I tried one in the store it was impossible for me. (EDIT - try this left handed, it's even worse)

    Walk outside
    Glance at my phone
    Want to turn the brightness up because the sun's out
    Set down whatever I'm carrying in my other hand
    Turn up the screen brightness

is not how I want to use my phone. I guess you get used to not being able to do that, or you get one of those adhesive grip nubs on the back of it, but "Can not be used effectively one handed" is basically my threshold for whether a phone is large or not.

I guess the workaround for this is

    Homescreen
    Launch Settings app
    Display & Brightness
    Increase slider
    Change back to the app you were using

Works, but that sounds like a huge nuisance.

> Can you hold securely in one hand and pull down Control Center from the top right corner with your thumb?

I can, but usually I swipe down inside the launcher bar which pulls the top of the phone down. Then I can perform all the normal actions. Admittedly that shortcut is not very discoverable.

https://mashable.com/2017/10/31/how-to-use-iphone-x-reachabi...

I actually tried that in the store (the employee didn't know what reachability was, I had to google the gesture) and still couldn't reach it.

That might be because I use phones left handed, but I'm sure I'm not the only one. I'm left handed and my car keys live on the right side where my car's ignition is.

I have huge hands, and have no problem - but a left handed gesture mode sounds like an awesome idea.

Controls are swiped from the bottom. Also, the automatic brightness obviates the whole scenario.

I do at times find myself trying to increase the brightess on a sunny day, only to find the iPhone already at maximum.

On the iPhone X they moved Control Center to the top right corner, swipe down from the battery/wifi icons. They had to move it because the bottom swipe was repurposed to do the home button's job.

In iOS 12 they're pushing this change out to iPads as well, instead of keeping Control Center in with the app switcher. I don't mind this because I'm not trying to 1-hand my iPad while I'm walking around, so there's always a finger that can reach the top corner.

I'm not sure about existing iPhones w/ home buttons in iOS 12, I've only been running the beta on my iPad.

That's a mistake I think, I use that gesture a lot, and can't reach the top right of my phone easily without two hands.

Agreed. The only phone it works on is the SE and they just killed it. Maybe all of Apple’s designers are right handed and have long thumbs.

Hmm, I'm right handed, but hold the phone in the left.

on the iPhone X, its the top right corner.

Try the large version, it's screen is the same height, but it's just ~2 inches more narrow.

https://www.phonearena.com/phones/Apple-iPad-mini_id7523/siz...

The poster I responded to said the current X.

Sure, I am just saying they keep getting closer to tablet territory. So, IMO it was interesting to check out.

They sell 7 different phones though. I have a hard time believing that if one of them were small to cater to folks like me, 6 remaining large phones would not be enough to cover the "mainstream" market? Most of their phone models are barely differentiated from one another. What's the compelling use case for buying an iPhone 7 Plus right now?

Price. It’s big phone someone is happy to pay for. I believe the 7 and 8 use the same exact screen and case so there’s some savings to be had with parts commonalities v.s. another form factor for the “cheap phone”.

I sold quite well when it was launched: https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/apple-iphone-se-markets...

Of course now it's old, but would sell better if it received some love from Apple.

My coworkers were talking about how good iPhone SE is yesterday in our company social chat. Just a datapoint, from Boston, MA. I didn't know of iPhone SE but I never used iPhone before.

My (20 yo) kid has an 8 and still grouses that he misses his SE.

Happy with my SE

Reply on news.ycombinator.com