The New iPhone Is Ugly | Hacker News Reader

The New iPhone Is Ugly

techcrunch.com

48 pointstmlee47 comments

I think most smartphones look the same and have for a while.

Meanwhile the tech related media's obsession with dramatically overstating the importance of small aesthetic differences like millimeters of bezel strikes me as lazy and annoying.

As far as smartphones go all I want to know is if it works, how new features work, and the impossible to find... good app recommendations (I've stopped looking for those).

Something weird is happening with this.

I understand the author gets paid based on writing articles, so maybe it makes sense for him to squeeze out 2000 words on the minute differences between cell phones.

But certain people at my work will talk to each other about the differences in their cell phones for hours each day. Differences that I think 90% of humanity wouldn't even notice, let alone have the motivation to mention.

I don't know what's going on with average people's brains where they can pour so much attention and energy into something as fundamentally boring and unimportant as the row of black pixels on a phone.

They just found a way to play Top Trumps or Pokemon without a pack of the cards. :)

Ars Technica do it in their phone reviews too - the only measure of a phone over there is thinness of bezel. Doesn't matter about anything else.

It's because -- especially since the iPhone, but even before (cf. Sidekick) -- the phone is a consumer fashion item as much as a tool. So it's the same as people talking about whether a pattern in a dress is hand-stitched or machine-stitched etc.

This makes me think of "risk management". Most big capital movies today are more or less the same (think superhero movies), most cars look pretty much the same, and phones too, like you point out. I think that because these products carry significant investment risk (because they're expensive to develop), producers end up making very similar products, so as to minimize the risk. If you were to do the opposite and innovate or stand out, you would stand to reap large rewards if the market recognized your product, but also the chances for the worst-case scenario would increase accordingly as well.

Someone once told me that "risk management" is the worst branch of management. I'm still working out what he meant by that, but by now I have a few guesses.

> and the impossible to find... good app recommendations

Why not just ask for a pony? It would be easier.

Speaking of ugly; that consent form which forces my language to be region locked to my geoip'd location (instead of taking my language from my Accept-Language headers) and offering no way to opt out than I can find is quite ugly.

Why would you consent to this? Can you opt out?

I'm using uMatrix and don't see it, so that's one way.

Between the shady interface choices and the questionable content quality I have to wonder how Techcrunch and such articles end up on the front page especially on a site like HN (a community that appreciates high quality content and good UI/UX).

This is an incredibly silly article.

> And amazingly, due to being made of actual metal, the more drops an SE survives, the cooler it looks

Is steel not real metal anymore?

>Is steel not real metal anymore?

Cyclists like to debate whether or not steel is real.

naturally it is and anyone who disagrees with me just hasn’t yet enjoyed the laterally stiff yet vertically compliant joys of a real steed. Preferably with toe clips and downtube shifters.

Probably referring to the glass back.

article not silly, it’s just a promo ad for googles pixel. Taking this article seriously - that IS silly.

The author bemoans the notch on the iPhone saying we'd all like to be rid of it and that edge to edge screens are frustrating. He then goes on to complain that the Samsung has bezels.

Probably this would seem less silly as a more objective contrast between the SE and 11 Pro.

Weird thing is, I actually kind of want to carry both my SE and 11 Pro around. The SE really is just as much phone real estate as needed for 80% of the time. The pro camera, glass case, OLED display, and other new features are pretty cool, though. I mean, my SE would have never gotten that photo of my cat this morning in the twilight.

I had to go look up what “the notch” was. I never even noticed it.

>If they removed the notch, literally no one would want the version with the notch, because it’s so plainly and universally undesirable.

Are we talking about a magical scenario where they have figured out how the minimise all of the hardware in the notch so that there's virtually no bezel on top? Or about a scenario where they take away the notch and all of the hardware in it? Because I'm not exactly sure how the sales pitch for an iPhone 11 without Face ID, proximity sensor, ambient light sensor, speaker or front-facing camera would go. And if they just deleted the notch by making it a regular bezel, I don't think that would be a sales hit either. "The all new iPhone 11 - now without selfies!"

A hypothetical either-or scenario where the other scenario has literally no drawback is a pretty dumb one. And as far as I can tell, that's exactly what this argument is. It's like saying that no one would buy an iPhone with a 3000 mAh battery if they could get a 6000 mAh in the same packaging. But if you introduce another variable, like the iPhone being as thick as the Nokia 3310, or 5% of shipped phones catching on fire, then someone might actually go for the 3000 mAh.

If you keep reading, the author goes on to describe how they think the screens which stretch to the edges are a bit unnecessary. So it’s not that they want to remove the notch and have the screen stretch to the top ... but to remove the notch by having the screen stop just below it (like the SE, and all pre-Notch iPhones)

But I don't think there's actually a market for that. The display on the sides of the notch have things in them that you want to have visible anyways. Why not have a bit more screen? It's not like the iPhone 11 would be any cheaper without it.

Some people have used wallpaper trickery to make the notch less visible while still getting the benefit of the time and status indicators being out of the main display area.

http://osxdaily.com/2017/11/06/hide-iphone-x-notch-wallpaper...

Again, you should read the article. These are things the raised and discussed there - the wallpaper trickery particularly

“That’s probably enough about Apple. They forgot about good design a long time ago”

A few years ago it was anathema to say this, even as a designer yourself — how could you even think of beginning to criticize Apple?! But now people and the press are coming to terms with reality.

I honestly don't understand how they can fail so badly with the bazillion dollars at their disposal (MacBook keyboards, phone notches and bumps, mouse charging port underneath, the power pack for phones... etc., etc., not to mention software issues). It's mind-numbing and such a disappointment that they greenlight blatant mistakes and proceed on to selling them for an embarrassing premium.

Apple made a huge ton of cash since <insert major event>, coasting on their hard-won reputation's inertia; but there's a reckoning coming if they don't sort their internal mess. Virtually any major tech is miles and leaps beyond in almost every respect, except profitability. For how long, though?

The looks of recent iPhones/Pixels/Samsungs are what make me even more of a fan of Sony's smartphone designs than I already am.

The Xperia 1 for example: https://www.sonymobile.com/global-en/products/phones/xperia-...

It has a clean, simple look. Three cameras, but they're understated in positioning. No notch, just a small balanced bezel on the top and bottom. A side-mounted fingerprint scanner (where your thumb/ring finger/middle finger naturally rests). A simple, flat display with only very slightly rounded corners.

Sony has been acing smartphone design for years, by simply doing their own thing and not jumping head first into every trend. I wish they did better on marketing and software, because hardware-wise they're killing it. They deserve to be more popular.

The iPhone SE that the author discusses reminds me a bit of classic sony design, particularly the flat sides and the volume buttons. It's probably my favourite iPhone from a design perspective. But the Sony phone you link to just looks like the current round of generic looking smartphones with horrible curved/rounded edges - not only do those look worse, imo, but they make a phone much more awkward to hold.

Funnily enough, Apple did a design thing where they tried 'what would Sony do', and that design turned into the iPhone 4: https://www.theverge.com/2012/7/26/3189309/apple-sony-iphone...

Sony needs to become a software platform company. They have all the parts and they need to tie them together. Their speakers, phones, headphones, playstation, tv, camera, laptops, and vue need full integration. Sony would be very wise to drop VueOS/Shell that runs on all its devices. Sony is in the best position of any company in the world, probably even ahead of Samsung, to outplay Apple and Microsoft at the hardware/software integration game.

I feel like if we wouldn't obsess over aesthetics, the gadget market would be a better place. Something similar goes for software too, in my opinion.

However, I'm slowly learning that wishful thinking and complaining detracts from the reality of things, like current needs that people have, and the subtle trends that lead to this phenomenon: things that you can easily render yourself blind to if you go around rejecting what you don't like.

That said, I do feel confused and at odds with the state of things in this time and place. I can't say that I have a firm understanding of the average consumer who is targeted by these products. I'd like to feel more connected with the different segments of the market. I suspect that a lot of people feel this way, but we may not be the most vocal of groups.

Except that obsessing over aesthetics is a key part of the iPhone's history (and Apple's history overall). The iPhone's history is one filled with "function follows form" (or, sometimes, does not follow at all), so an article that points out some of the more glaring aesthetic flaws of the newer iPhones is more than appropriate for this specific device.

I agree with the author that the iPhone is "ugly." Rather, I think that the iPhone's aesthetic solutions for its technical challenges are inelegant. In particular, the notch is so big it may as well function as a thick bezel and the square camera arrangement and placement seems like it was dictated by a specific technical solution without any influence from the design team.

In the past, I feel like Apple would have argued that their elegant solutions were "better" and thus commanded a premium for it. Now they are happy to compromise their aesthetics for technical capabilities. I cannot think of a product released during the second coming of Jobs that made that compromise so obviously. Still, Apple commands the same premium, so that leads people to obsess over the aesthetics.

I think about this how I think about insects: you can call them ugly, but it's the best form for the job (ecological niche).

So yeah, today's phones aren't what you'd call "conventionally beautiful industrial design", but I'd rather have an ugly phone than one which compromises on features.

Here on HN, lots of people complain how Apple sacrifices ports and battery life on their laptops to make them "prettier", but apparently ugly Apple phones which don't compromise aren't loved either. You can't win whatever you do.

Isn’t that the very problem with the iPhone, though? Apple has sacrificed a 'better design' (no camera bump, better battery life) for one that is a fraction of a millimetre thinner.

If you want a flush back and more battery life you can buy a battery case.

But you can't do the opposite, if you like thinness and don't care that much about battery, you can't thin a bulky phone.

True, but if the iPhone is already “ugly”, strapping a big case onto the back is going to require some superlatives... Note that I’m talking about literally the camera bump, just a few millimetres (the extra battery life would be nominal), rather than doubling the thickness.

Sometimes form just has to follow function and there's nothing any industrial designer can do about it. Look at the Red cameras that revolutionised digital cinema. Many would claim they are ugly.

But what about laptops? That’s a better analogy

What functionality benefits does the camera layout on the new iPhone have over the layout on the Pixel 4? The author of the article seems to have found none, which was one of their main points as far as I could tell.

I believe it is something to do with having the centre point on all three lenses very close so switching between them is a smooth transition.

There are a bunch of things that designers could do in this case; the iPhones 1 though 5S were all magnificent and functional.

I suspect that Apple has identified that the phone will be kept in a case so the visual aspects can be ignored. Many of the uglier choices (like the uneven back surface) make sense once there is a case around the body of the phone.

Red cameras are funky all functional beautiful. I don’t feel the same at all about the phones in this article. They try to make the rest of the phone slick and then tack on janky cameras and notches. I’d love a phone that had the Red aesthetic.

That's just like your opinion, man

I’ve never liked the iPhone 6-style curved edges. Fortunately the rumor mill suggests next year’s models will adopt a style similar to the 4/5/SE series, like the current iPads Pro.

I had not made that connection yet. Yes, the iPad Pro is back to the iPhone SE edges. Looking forward to that possibility in the next generation.

Also - whatever happened to all the iPhone SE 2 leakage from last year?

Still loving the simplicity of my SE.

Most phones are terrible. Why does a user expect anything other? Just use a computer and leave the personal tracking device at home.

you mean the new Philips shaver?

https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2019/09/20/12/18714154-7485701-...

https://youtu.be/nUBtKNzoKZ4

It is, but then I put a case on it and it looks like every other phone on the market from the front.

He ain't wrong. These things are specialized beasts now, of both tech and fashion.

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