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Comment by wlesieutre | Hacker News Reader

Compared to the iPhone XS, the iPhone SE:

    - Costs $650 less
    - Does everything I need it to
    - Does it one-handed

I'm sure the new camera and OLED screen and everything are very nice but I just don't care enough to spend 3x as much money on fancy phone with a huge screen when I'm already trying to stare at my phone less, not more.

Maybe the goal is to make phones so uncomfortable to use that you won't want to take them out of your pocket.

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And they were talking about wanting to make devices last longer to use less materials and reduce waste! The solution to that is apparently:

    - Use more materials to make larger phones
    - Make the phone more difficult to grip securely
    - Wrap glass around the edges so it can always land on glass no matter how you drop it
    - Move control center so far away that you have to let go of the phone to reach it

iPhone SE 2 please.

The Watch might be the SEs spiritual successor, or they let the small form factor (pocket watch) die to sell more wrist watches..

They've already started making the watch bigger. How many generations of "now 25% bigger" watches until you can no longer wear it on your wrist?

I guess I'll buy the iWatch XXXL in a few years and cut out the strap to have a iPhone 5 form factor phone with updated specs...

The watch is smaller. The watch screen is bigger.

Great comment.

2 thoughts: web browsing is a bit grim and the need for using 2 hands seems irritating, especially as you’ll be scrolling a lot on a small screen.

Take off the band and use it as a phone? We could all put them on chains again instead and walk around like 19thC gents with their chained pocket watches?

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B078HXGXYX/

Obviously you lose the heart rate monitoring, but apparently people do this.

Actually, that's a far more appealing form factor for the watch than wrist as I still find smart watches too bulky for my taste.

Edit: Someone did it nicely already - I could quite happily use this. https://twitter.com/MatthewSchneier/status/61039642844413132...

That's my plan. No joke.

I have half a mind to do this as soon as it gets big enough (as that seems to be the trend for the watch too) to use for browsing and maps.

Tho... how much functionality does the watch have if you don’t pair it with a phone?

It really is that simple. Phone makers are ignoring the basics. The ~60mm width of the original iPhone was not an arbitrary design decision - it's how wide it needs to be to get your thumb across the screen without having to shift your grip.

Something Apple even highlighted in their advertisements at the time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O99m7lebirE

i can get my thumb across a pixel 2 xl just fine. however, i cant get even 50% up it on the left side and 90% up it on the right side. i can reach the top of a 5/se no problem. height is the problem, not just width.

The width is almost exactly the width of a pack of cigarettes. If those marketing folks know anything it’s what to make something feel good in your hand.

The "marketing folks" had nothing to do with it, of course. "Marketing folks" make zero design decisions for Apple. Design folks make those.

So don't compare it to the XS, compare it to their cheapest phone in the line (which the SE was), the iPhone 7 at $449. The price difference is $50.

A bunch of reasons:

1) Because the iPhone SE was a new phone with flagship quality 6S guts, and I'm commenting on the apparent direction of Apple's new phone development.

2) The iPhone SE was price dropped to $350, so with the 7's new price drop it's $100 more expensive, not $50.

3) Everything I said about the XS applies to the 7 too, if not as strongly. It’s been a continuing trend.

4) I’m looking from the perspective of an existing SE customer, many of which will be looking to replace their phones this year or next. No current SE users are interested in replacing a 2.5 year old SE with a 2 year old 7 for $450.

    - Will lay flat on a surface without requiring a case to do so

Agree, though everybody with an SE had better put a case on it as they become increasingly irreplacable :(

This is why my iPad Pro has a hard case instead of just a smart cover. The whole reason I got the damn thing is that you can write on it with a stylus, but somebody at Apple decided "Let's make this not lay flat on a table because people are buying a tablet to use it as a camera."

The only thing I've ever taken a picture of with it is probably a whiteboard.

With "Continuity Camera" or whatever it's called (1-click to take a photo with your camera and automatically import it into a program on your Mac), this becomes even stupider. Take the camera bump off and do that with phone to iPad. Everyone has a good camera on their phone already.

> why my iPad Pro has a hard case instead of just a smart cover. The whole reason I got the damn thing is that you can write on it with a stylus, but somebody at Apple decided "Let's make this not lay flat on a table because people are buying a tablet to use it as a camera."

A more likely reason is that it‘s easier to pick it up from a table if it isn‘t flat.

The sides of the iPad are tapered, you can grab under the edge even if it’s flat. If you needed it to not sit flat my case would have made it harder to pick up.

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