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Comment by ksec | Hacker News Reader

1163 Comment right now, ~800 Are about Size of Devices. I thought there was another important point.

The current entry level iPhone; iPhone SE 2020 with A13 is now faster in Single Threaded performance than ALL current shipping Android, including Flagship Android. And judging by the Qualcomm roadmap, this will likely remain the same in 2021 as well.

This is important if you are doing or using Web Apps like Discourse which requires JS processing. The Cost of javascript is still huge. [1] [2]. And While Mobile Apps are well optimised to take advantage of multiple cores, it will still be bounded by Amdahl's law[3].

And a point on devices size.

Japan, the nation which prefer single handed usage and small size Smartphone, and has a hand size smaller than average, median or general US / EU population, has overwhelmingly voted with their pocket on the 4.7" Devices, and not the previous 4" iPhone SE. Even During the iPhone 7, iPhone 8 era.

So I do suggest before people writing off 4.7" as being large, please try and give it a go first.

Another Point worth pointing out, once the tech for FaceID Shrinks to small enough or could be done under display, a 4.7" Edge to Edge Face ID Design would be exactly the same size as the previous iPhone SE. I believe this could be the long term goal for Apple.

[1] https://medium.com/@addyosmani/the-cost-of-javascript-in-201...

[2] https://v8.dev/blog/cost-of-javascript-2019

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amdahl%27s_law

View on HN

I'm not sure why you cite Japan as an outlier regarding size preferences and smaller-than-average hand sizes, which I generally do not believe to be true and could not find any hard data to cite (source: I live there).

Regardless, the iPhone SE did not sell _as_ well in Japan due to a variety of factors, not the least of which being that the iPhone 7 introduced built-in Suica support.

Suica is a mobile cash card technology used at stations for transit, convenience stores and restaurants for purchasing, and vending machines -- among others. Given the lack of support by many credit cards for Apply Pay in Japan (for example, you cannot add a Visa card to your iPhone due to JP-specific Visa restrictions), it's no surprise that this was a major selling point of newer models.

In my opinion, manufacturers have not provided a high-end, small form factor device to sufficiently test the markets. Without doing so, it's too easy for people to make the claim that people have already voted with their wallets for larger phones. I sincerely hope the rumors of a 5.4" iPhone 12 are true (as it should be somewhere between iPhone 5 and 6 form factors, from what I gather).

People have been hoping that Google opts for global NFC capability but Pixel4 disappointed everyone on that regard.

Sony and NTT Docomo have a stranglehold on the Android ecosystem. No JP NFC supporting android phone ever has more than 3 LTE bands. The only unlocked Android phone that isn't crippled is Oppo's Reno A, and that's an expensive middle range Qualcomm SoC, which is slower than Apples 3 year old devices.

Apples iOS presence in Japan is VERY well executed.

For reference:

https://atadistance.net/

https://www.reddit.com/user/FelicaDude/comments/

EDIT: kinda curious why there are so many downvotes. There isn't anything factually wrong about this post.

There are many unlocked Android phones in Japan that supports more than 3 LTE bands/NFC&Felica. example: AQUOS sense3,

The few Sharp devices that are very expensive for lowrange SoC (QCM630 in late 2019) and one Oppo device isn't exactly the definition of "many".

But you're right I apologize:

The aquos sense3 is device supports 7 Bands. Compare that to most other android devices that have upwards of 20. B1,B2,B4,B8,B5,B9, B28. Personally I don't even understand how as a Japanese you're supposed to travel with these devices. The first device I saw with this kind of connectivity internationally was the Poco F1. Which was a flagship SoC for 300 bucks.

https://www.gsmchoice.com/en/catalogue/sharp/aquossense3plus...

AQUOS sense3 supports B1/3/5/8/12/17/18/19/39/41.

And You can find more examples via translate: https://kakakumag.com/pc-smartphone/?id=12153

In my time abroad in Japan, I found that bringing a small bag was almost an imperative compared to the US where it still seems taboo. This relaxes the pocketability constraint so bringing a larger phone isn't as big of a deal.

What? Why is it taboo to have a bag for your stuff?

Psycho mugs is probably referring to man-purses when he says bags. Very popular and something many men carry over here.

https://images.app.goo.gl/dWdwN4K1uwNe8DGX6

There is a US version too, you just have to put a pistol in it https://www.511tactical.com/lv6.html /s

I wear a jacket with big inside pockets. Works like a charm, frees up pocket space in the pants and I get to carry everything. Been doing that for years now. Way-too-big phones became uncomfortable when sitting in a car or other tight spaces a long time ago.

What do you do in the summer? I can't do cargo shorts ALL the time.

Well I grew up in a dry place that gets 42+ degrees celsius (over 108°F) so I absolutely don't mind wearing a light denim jacket in summer where I live now, where temperature barely reaches 30° C (86° F).

Cargo shorts can also be an alternative, though I understand in some contexts they might not be appropriate aparel.

Before I transitioned, I used to carry my stuff around in a camera bag. It was really roomy and didn't carry any of the social stigma messenger bags had at the time.

(and not having to deal with that social stigma anymore was a nice benefit of transitioning...)

It's not cool and many people prefer to be like everyone rather than using what's convenient for them.

For example using short dress for men probably is more convenient as it allows better cooling for their genitalia which is important for reproductive function and generally for health. Yet outside of Scotland dresses are not considered an appropriate for men and nobody even dares to use them.

Nobody in Scotland wears them either TBH! It's cold up there.

Some would say drafty. Especially without underwear.

A good kilt is heavy and warm and if you wear one to a social gathering, it's a hot thing to wear. But wearing it outside is a brave thing to do, particularly in the damp cold air of autumn/winter.

Probably why they have long socks/hose to stop your legs freezing.

What sort of low temperature is a kilt still comfortable outside without long socks etc?

I am not brave enough to try it. I am not sure where you are but the UK has a lot of moisture in the air so low temperatures feel a lot colder than equivalent temperatures elsewhere in the world. eg. a 5°C day will feel a lot colder here than Iceland.

I don't think many Scots go around wearing kilts all the time. Whereas in walmer climes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mundu and variants exist.

> Yet outside of Scotland dresses are not considered an appropriate for men and nobody even dares to use them.

This may be true of most modern western cultures, but is quite wrong in general: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men's_skirts

Behold! You want us guys to wear man-purses and mini skirts?

Never, ever, call a kilt a 'dress' in the presence of a Scotsman.

People usually think 80s/90s fanny packs, which look dorky.

Now you have lunatics who feel the need to walk around with loaded pistols, but don't want to have a holster to effectively use it. So you see gun fanny packs in some places.

Looking like a dork or a nut isn't appealing to everyone.

I get what you're saying because I'm in SE Asia now. Here a lot of men carry small bags. In places like the Philippines men even carry small shoulder bags that are purse size. That's why it's a bit different from the West (especially USA) where most men either carry a bigger bag like a backpack and messenger bag or else no bag at all. The fact that the iPhone SE slips easily into a front jeans pocket is a major convenience in the West.

Sony Xperia compact series are the best versions of this.

> I'm not sure why you cite Japan as an outlier regarding size preferences and smaller-than-average hand sizes, which I generally do not believe to be true and could not find any hard data to cite (source: I live there).

Human hand size is proportional to height across races, and average height in Japan for male and female is several centimeters shorter than in other markets like the US and Europe. So it would be surprising if the average Japanese hand size was not smaller than the average hand size in US or Europe.

Of course, I have no idea whether that difference would be enough to affect smartphone size preferences.

I think people are missing the point. I know that most SE owners liked it because of its compact size but from company side this product was never about the size. Its focus is to be cheapest, most affordable entry level iPhone and the way it is achieved is by optimising production and reusing same components. Apple tried to make cheap iPhone with 5c in 2013. SE was continuation of same idea just better executed and it become much more successful. I never had any illusions that Apple will make completely new design just for SE. They have done exactly the same cost effective product as previously so no surprises here.

1163 Comment right now, ~800 Are about Size of Devices. I thought there was another important point.

I'm surprised about 1100+ comments, since this is, you know: just another phone

>I'm surprised about 1100+ comments, since this is, you know: just another phone

For as insightful as the HN crowd usually is, it's funny that we all just swarm a thread about a new phone that isn't terribly remarkable.

Agreed. I'm only here to see how worked up people can get about another phone that's 98% the same as all the other phones.

As for it being faster than all Android phones. Ok. And? I dont look at my Galaxy and say "if only this was 1 or 2 or 5 or 6.7% faster." We are kind of past the "it should be faster!" for basically ALL smartphones in my view.

I second this. I own a 2017 iPhone SE. Firefox, Gmail and Waze launch in a blink of an eye, and that's good enough speed for me. 1/2 blink of an eye speed won't make much of a difference.

edit: iPhone year is actually 2017, not 2015.

This phone is a certified big fucking deal in terms of market impact.

It takes the “iPhone most people should buy” from $750 to $399.

It completely demolishes the Pixel 3A and makes that phone just about impossible to recommend. A load of Android OEMs selling at this price point should be terrified.

And much more than the original iPhone SE, expect this phone or a $399 phone to finally stick around for Apple. The iPhone SE seemed like an experiment or a way to squeeze out more use out of some remaining machinery. But, I don’t know, this feels different. Apple is selling a price point and they’re going to keep that permanently. Look how much fanfare is on the home page of their site. This thing might even be updated every year.

And honestly, the iPhone SE is too small for most people and had more downsides than this.

It heavily depends on the country. There are only a hand full of countries where iOS and Android almost have the same market share (US, UK, SE for example). In most countries this is not the case. Android share is still very dominant world wide (~80% vs ~20%).

Switching to another OS / ecosystem is not something done easily. When you are an Android user and everyone around you is why switch to iOS? There are plenty of good Android devices available for $400-$750. Also: in a lot of countries people just prefer a very big screen size.

So I think your comment is a little over the top. Yes it might attract some customers but I don't believe it will mean an exodus of Android users.

Doesn’t almost every country except a few possibly exceptions prefer larger phones?

I'm sure the price point will induce some people to buy it. and I'm sure android users will be in that group. But I use Android and am looking for a new phone. I wont be considering anything Apple, even at a much lower price point. Agree that it will be interesting to see what happens to the sales of their higher priced phones.

Some of us are using a four year old phone that is likely to be EOL in a little over a year, struggling with battery issues, camera issues, general stability issues, etc.

Some of us continued to hold out in the hopes that there might be a new device announced that wouldn’t require spending $700+ on something that is effectively worse than what we already have.

Some of us are pretty disappointed that we now need to spend money to maintain a device that is unlikely to receive security updates past IOS 14, or spend money on something that is explicitly against what we want.

I’ll get over it myself, but it won’t stop me being frustrated in the immediate term, because you’re absolutely right. Instead of being anything new and useful (as price point isn’t a big differentiator on here, given average earnings), it is just another phone, and it’s just like all the other phones out on the market.

It’s too damn big.

The problem is the endless treadmill of software bloat. Every little bit helps when you're dealing with webpages today.

If bloat is your true problem, having cpu say 5% faster won't solve anything at all. On Android, you can at least revert to clean Lionage/whatever Android installation for most devices, and all folks report remarkable improvement of overall speed of device, sometimes also battery life.

Also, I don't get the phone 'workflow' where you heavily depend on computing power to render some web pages faster. Connection reliability is usually much bigger factor if that's what you really do (which is strange but maybe I am not a typical phone user).

JavaScript these days is incredibly heavy. Most phones this year don’t have any trouble, but you can feel a huge difference between, say, a typical 2018 phone and a 2017 phone in rendering speed. If you’re planning on keeping your phone for a few years, you’ll notice.

Every phone apple have released since the 5S has been faster than every other phone by a laughable amount, especially in JS benchmarks & web performance. The SE is nothing new.

For a long time, Apple's 2 gen old phones were still faster (based on Geekbench) than the fastest android phone.

No it's not. The HN crowd has a vocal group of people who advocate for phones like the iPhone SE. The main complaint of this group is that other phones are too big. So a new release of the SE brings a lot of hope for extending that experience.

The fact that this phone is bigger doesn't sit well with this vocal minority, because they want a small smartphone and now see that medium is the only available in stock.

Expectation, expectation, expectation. It's being shattered, that leads to emotions and that leads to comments.

I'm also not too happy about the new SE, if you search my comment history I don't think you see me talking about it, but I'm in the same camp. I think other phones are preposterously big, and the SE is the only normal one.

Alas, the new SE is not normal for me. Going back to a dumber phone is now something I have to consider more seriously. I don't want my pockets to bulge out and I want to handle my phone with one hand without straining it. The old iPhone SE was perfect for that. I have pretty tall hands but with the iPhone 8, it didn't strain but felt clumsy (and I use the device quite often in order to help my grandparents with their iPhone 8).

I hope I gave you some insight into the marketing persona of people who want the old iPhone SE to come back and how that persona is well represented on HN.

See also:

Search on HN Algolia for iPhone SE to see these sentiments repeated. Example: the top comment in the this thread [1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22878515

This comment is really the perfect summation of the issue.

For what it's worth, I'm also a firm believer of "it should be useable with one hand without akwardness". 4.5" would be my perfect size; just slightly smaller than the current small offerings on the market. I currently have an iphone X and really dislike the form factor - it's just too large, and the rounded corners lend themselves to slipping out of the hand. The square edge design really was the easiest the grip - I hope it makes a return on the next iphone pro. The ipad pro has gone back to the square edge design already, so there's some small hope in this regard.

Get a popsocket, give it a chance for a week.

All this time you’ve been spending with phones slipping out of hands has been wasted.

OnePlus 7 Pro here. Just too big for one thumb to get to all the corners it needs to go to. Not a deal breaker for me, but slightly smaller would be great. Not sure how the pop socket would fix that.

It alleviates that problem because your hand doesn’t have to grip the corners of the phone to be able to hold the phone with one hand anymore. You can pivot the phone from the center without dropping it or having to shift your grip.

If you can’t imagine it, seriously, it’s a $10 thing. Just try it. Give it a week for you to get used to it. If you hate it you’re not out a lot of time, money, or effort.

Have to agree here, after putting one of my OnePlus the comfortability and ease of holding the phone is so much nicer.

I can also almost move my thumb to all four corners (top right is a little off)

I think they’re an ugly hack :(

Function over form in this case.

You can also get them in colors that closely match your phone so they’re less conspicuous. The black aluminum one goes very well with the space grey iPhone.

Mine is custom and has a picture of my cat on it.

Unfortunately, the form isn't functional in the first place, and the recommendation to spend more money on making the form worse to provide a workaround for the lack of functionality out of the box? I can't stomach that personally.

I remain a resentful Apple customer. I hope a new phone comes out this year that is right sized, so I can actually become a happy customer, rather than an even more resentful customer a year from now when I am forced into an upgrade due to lack of security updates.

If you are resenting Apple for making larger phones and not having a long enough security update support period, wait until you find out what everyone else makes!

I’m painfully aware that the rest of the market is worse.

Apple is the best practical option, making me a resentful Apple customer since ~2018. I was a resentful Microsoft customer back in the early 2000s as well, for similar reasons.

If there was a better alternative, I would “vote with my wallet”, but unfortunately there isn’t.

I feel it’s important to note, primarily because Microsoft never claimed their customers were filled with joy and delight from their magical products, while Apple continues to do so.

I have no joy, or delight, from using my Apple products. I get even less joy and delight each time I give them more money. If there was some other product range that solved my needs at a similar price point, I would already be there.

Not even remotely viable - this prevents slipping it into a pocket easily, or sitting flat on a desk. Plus it's dead ugly.

I have no problems slipping it into my pocket. But if you have tighter pants or smaller pockets I could understand that complaint.

It actually makes the phone sit more flat on the desk. Without it, the camera bump makes the phone wobble (I don’t use a case).

Plus, it stops the phone from being scratched by being placed or slid across a horizontal surface.

Like I said, try it before you knock it. It’s only a $10 investment and they probably take returns.

A solid summary, and here is one other point that helps explain the passion:

2006: Smartphones were boring.

2007-2010: Smartphones become magical. The pinnacle, or close to, of the 3.5 inch phone is developed in the iPhone 4.

2010+: Phones smaller than 4.5 inches disappear; by the same magic that they used to appear.

For the people who want a 3.5 to 4 inch phone, such as myself, paradise was basically snatched away. I know they can make them, I know they run every app I care about, and they are no longer available for purchase. I want an iPhone 4. I'd settle for an iPhone 5 or similar form factor. Instead they've disappeared and best-case is maybe there is some Android phone that has the right dimensions and is probably poorly fabricated because it is targeting people on a budget.

The issue isn't even entitlement, it that the form factor situation is backsliding from where it was when I was happiest. It is infuriating.

100% agree. I had hopes for the 5.4" iPhone 12 changing this trend by being a high end device with a close to OG iPhone SE size. But it now looks like it will not be given the "Pro" title after all, and will instead be the budget option. I hate that "small" has become synonymous with "budget" in the eyes of the manufacturers.

Ah, for a return to the (early?) 90s when the smallest phones were the "pro" models, and priced accordingly. And people would be amazed: "it's so tiny! Don't want to ask what it must have cost, though."

Yes! To me, the iPhone 4 was the pinnacle of phone design and useability. I'd love to have a modern phone with a decent camera in this form factor. AR, NFC, wireless charging are cool, but I don't really NEED them. A decent camera, a small form factor so it fits in my front pocket and battery life are much more important to me.

I own a iPhone 8 plus now, thinking I could get used to the size. I can't, even after almost 2 years it's still annoying. I love the screen, I love the screen size for viewing videos and playing games, but I loathe the size of the thing itself. I wouldn't mind giving up screen real estate for a smaller form factor phone.

This is why I still use my Sony Experia Z3 Compact. It has a 4.7" screen, which is the maximum I am willing to take. I feel like you.

Talked about how much I hated my iPhone XS since sept 2018. I hated it so much I returned it the next day ..too big and no Touch ID.

My comments were downvoted a lot then... yet glad to see there's demand for iPhone 8 size(my current device since 2017) iPhones. It Looks like potentially many others weren't upgrading either.

Sorry, I meant to link this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20880686

(I can't edit the post anymore)

You might want to look at Palm Phone — https://palm.com/?gclid=CjwKCAjwhOD0BRAQEiwAK7JHmGrU18EVG1ha...

Wow didn’t know palm still made smartphones, I just think about early 00s PDA. But that phone looks amazing, I hope they bring it to the EU market as well. I’d prefer an iPhone but I’d consider to switch for that formfactor. Honestly though, I’m fine with 4” but the iPhone XS I have today is so clumsy, very hard to use with one hand.

Phones like the SE are mostly about corporate customers and people who don't want to pay a premium. Nobody gives a hoot about the small phone crowd, as shrink introduces other design issues.

The SE is a replacement for the iPhone 7/8, which is a huge seller as it's near zero cost for big corporate accounts. It's also cheap enough to undermine the resale market for many customers. Apple will setup a production line somewhere and churn these things out for years at low cost -- I wouldn't be surprised if this is also tied to a factory-in-a-can model where production can be ramped up in places like India.

Yeah the Samsung S20 Ultra barely scored a mention. My 512GB model features 16GB of memory, and a staggeringly beautiful display. Not to mention that camera..

But hey, it's Apple, so everyone is going nuts.

You didn't pay $399 for it.

Apples to oranges.

Apples to Samsungs

Exactly. You going to compare a premium Apple device, compare it a premium Android.

I believe mine is pretty much the highest end available on *any" platform - it's pretty insane. Apple has a lot of catching up to do.

Real talk though, what are you doing on your phone that actually uses 16GB of memory?

As a random snapshot, my present memory usage is 9.6GB. Previous phone had 8GB, so this is part of why it's so much faster - although storage as well as CPU is also significantly better.

(The regular model had 12GB which would suffice, but 128GB storage was a bit of a joke - I take a lot of pictures, and am familiar with Samsung slow downs unless plenty of free space.)

What I use? Slack, multiple email accounts, Discord, life 360, signal, WhatsApp, Facebook, Messenger, Hangouts, Instagram, .. nothing special, just a lot of different messaging platforms + apps. The extra memory allows them to stay loaded and ready when swapping.

I locked myself into a salary sacrificed tax free pre order in February (before realising just how bad C19 would get), so not paying the full sticker price. Also rotated my old S10 5G device to wife and sold her old for good coin.

I for one absolutely love the big display in these times of home iso; whether for videos or reading technical books on Kindle. Wife also embraces the nearly as big S10 5G - she wouldn't go back to a smaller phone now.

That makes sense. The extra RAM is basically just an extra caching layer.

I was just curious, because even on my desktop I rarely fill 16gb of RAM for day to day use.

Yes, I was pleased to see the phone actually use it efficiently for caching.

My desktop has 32GB and it does the same thing; a larger size is reserved for caching than on the 16GB work laptop (both Win10). I use Docker a lot which probably "helps" in making use of the memory. :)

16GB of RAM and still it will stop receiving major SW updates within a couple of years. This is where iPhones really shines, even Google is crap in comparison, and I say this as an Android user (never owned an iPhone)

I've been on iPhone 7 for 3 years now and I still miss the smaller form factors. IMHO, the 3GS has the perfect form factor for a phone.

When you are weighing iPhone 7 against a first iteration iPhone SE, there's a lot of things to consider beyond form factor. I've been holding out waiting for the smaller phones to come back. I guess I'll just keep on waiting.

> Japan, the nation which prefer single handed usage and small size Smartphone

Do you have a source for that, or do you just expect them to want small phones because of small hands?

The rest of Asia are the front runners of large smart phones, so I don't see the small hands thing being relevant to phone sizes.

To my recollection, phones have always been pretty big in Japan. When I first visited in 2006 I asked my Japanese friends why all the phones where so big, and they just said "It's fashionable, nobody wants a small phone", but I've never noticed a trend towards small devices, just more features and bling.

Moreover, given that Japan sees relatively little usage of computers, but historically has been extremely cellphone oriented, it actually makes sense that you want a large screen as your primary screen.

Lastly, I've noticed that young people on variety shows, when doing a gesture for "typing", swipes the air with their index finger over the palm of the imposing hand, suggesting that the primary mode of text-input is on (1) your phone, and (2) this is done with 2 hands. I don't think Japan has a special affection for one handed usage, at least not since they moved to touch screens.

"Large" phones in 2006 is too small in 2020.

Most Japanese people uses Flick input rather than Qwerty. Flick input is not getting benefits(or getting bad) from larger screen, unlike Qwerty.

I very much don't have smaller hands, and still think 4.7" is the best phone size I've ever used. I currently use an 11 Pro for the features, but still think the 4.7" 8 is the best form factor they've ever made.

> I very much don't have smaller hands, and still think 4.7" is the best phone size I've ever used.

I don’t know what normal size hands are, but I’m quite tall, 195cm ish, and the iPhone 8 is too big for me to use single handed. The iPhone 5s was excellent size wise for me.

> This is important if you are doing or using Web Apps like Discourse which requires JS processing.

I'm not sure this is impacted by the CPU speed really for many reasons.

1. For a popular app, you can't target the latest / the best model. We already cycle through the phones less often than a few years ago. By the time this gets to become popular, other phones will have comparable speed.

2. Developers will work both ways: To speed up the current code, (positive impact) and to add more features (negative impact).

If JS is required, people will find solutions. If JS is not enough, we'll get native apps. Current speedups in raw CPU are meh.

> 163 Comment right now, ~800 Are about Size of Devices. I thought there was another important point.

It makes sense that size is the most talked point in the HN crowd. But I think the headlining feature for most people would be the price.

I was just about to buy the new Pixel but at this price point this is going to be my next phone. Hoping I can get an order in Friday morning.

Honest question: every time I must debug my mother or a friend on an Apple device, I have to go through a Windows-Vista amount of confirmations of multiple-FA steps and it never seems to stop or remember my agreement to this or that feature.

I've been using Apple devices exclusively for 10 years until 2016 or so but I reckon it's become incredibly bloated UX on iOS devices, at least from my very anecdotal perspective.

Meanwhile Android seems much more 'sane' for me as a user, but more so software developer aware of the cost of bad UX.

So I'm wondering, in making this choice to go for SE rather than 4a, I'm assuming you're familiar with both OS, how do you think they compare?

I really like what I hear about the iPhone SE but immediately I remember how dreadful my experience is every time I have to use an iOS device, they're just so unnatural to me, just so weird UI/UX choices. I feel like they're maybe great for seniors but as a 37 nerd/geek I feel lost with iOS. It's just not doing what I want it to. Like Windows 10. Like Gnome. I tolerate KDE because it's great but it's not without big issues yet.

Am I too demanding? Have I been spoiled by the best products during 30 years of computing, such that 'average' in 2020 doesn't cut it for me, or did UI/UX really get worse as I suspect?

Please, someone, in this highly popular thread, help me make sense of this perception, and see where I fit in a large 'nerdy' crowd.

I own an iPad Pro 11.

I don't think it's just you - there's a lot of basic everyday functionality that is pointlessly difficult and cumbersome in iOS.

E.g. data management is still the worst of any modern OS by a huge margin, and data sharing between apps is still a half-broken mess. Even things that _should_ work with straightforward data types often don't - e.g. you can't share audiobooks to iBooks even though it can play them, or trying to share an image to an art app might simply open the app with no indication of where the image went or what went wrong. Lack of default apps means you often have to open files the long way around through a convoluted series of download/share steps. These are all things that work fine on Android, and were never a problem on desktop OSes to begin with.

That's exactly how I remember it. It was bad.

I had heard that there was a file exploring app now however, doesn't that make everything easier? My idea was to just use SyncThing¹ as I do on Android, and I was thinking I could just open things from there in any app.

Thanks a lot for this account, it really helped confirming my personal bias regarding this (I mean 'bias' neutrally, neither good nor bad just mine).

____

1: Actually I just checked, there is no iOS client for SyncThing... And no plan to either. (I assume it's a limitation of the system and so is true for all such apps like Seafile, NextCloud...)

So yeah, nope. That's a showstopper for me. My entire information system (like any IS worth its salt) is based on having plain access to files... I honestly though that was long solved on iOS. Misinformation from the media, I guess.

Am I too demanding?

I went from iPhone (4 years) -> Android (3 years) -> iPhone (4 years), plus I used a stock Android phone for a month a while ago when I soaked my iPhone SE. I don't really see that point. For me they are about equal in interface complexity. The only thing that annoyed me in Android were the hamburger menus that were on top, which becomes painful on a large phone screen. The primary annoyance with the iPhone is that the removal of the home button introduced more gesture-driven interaction (though I like the edge to edge screen).

Apart from that, UI rendering has always been much smoother for me on iOS than Android. On Android it's generally fast, but then there are some weird hiccups.

At any rate, even if iOS was ten times more complex (which I don't believe), Android has become an unacceptable option for me due to grave violations of privacy and the amount of malware pushed through the Play Store.

You’re not being too demanding. You have established a set of expectations about interactivity and UI/UX affordances that iOS might not provide.

My opinion: With any phone, you are going to spend most of your time in a small set of apps. As long as the OS enables those apps to perform smoothly without being intrusive, you should be good to go. There are certain platform differences that can seem like paper cuts when making a switch -> share screen, default app settings, where settings are housed (centralized in the Settings app or hamburger menu in each app), default permissions, text manipulation, and the Home Screen. There is nothing like using the device to overcome the pain of these changes. also, the good apps out there have homogenized the platforms to some extent.

I’m speaking from experience. As someone who has had iPhones since the 1st OG iPhone, I used an android device for work email for almost a year. It wasn’t easy; there were some annoyances when I switched from work to personal, regardless of direction, but I found a way to ease the cognitive load: I used 3rd party apps for most of my tasks. For example, Chrome or Firefox, Overcast for Podcasts, Pandora or Spotify, Outlook for Email, Kindle for books, etc. The good app developers do a fantastic job of smoothing over the differences between Android and iOS.

Edit: Fixed a typo

I hear your point on third-party apps loud and clear.

Sometime in the 2000s I became a self-proclaimed "platform agnostic" (no OS church, a desire to be productive on any of them).

This lead to a long journey in cross-platform-land, third-party apps, and naturally the open source of it all (ideally). My threshold of acceptability for any app is now "give me data files" so I can just use CLI mojo and tools like SyncThing to sysadmin the hell out of my digital life.

SyncThing, as I've just found out, is not available on iOS. So clearly (assuming this is a limitation of the system itself regarding filesystem access), that platform cannot fit my IS paradigm.

It seems like it could be an "edge" device but even that is pushing it... (sync my flows through some ad-hoc proprietary clouds per app; and then sync from those clouds back to my IS, i.e. one custom path per file type probably... maybe have to resort to IFTTT for some... yeah no that's too much work).

Thanks a lot for the perspective. It really helped my see where I fit based on my needs and former experience (I can relate to a lot of what you said).

> Meanwhile Android seems much more 'sane' for me as a user

In my view it's devolving into an awkward, less and less usable system. I run a phone with stock Android 9, and it does not let me set notifications to "vibrate only". I only have a choice between muting the phone(which makes me miss calls etc. because it basically plays dead) or letting it annoy me with a notification sound every couple minutes. There is no inbetween.

Also, it does not have a way to toggle automatic screen brightness aside from the switch buried in the settings.

This is, to put it mildly, insane and near unusable in my opinion.

The last 5 years I've used exclusively Windows Phone 8 and Blackberry 10 OS, and both of those are still years ahead of Android's usability even though they're both not being actively developed anymore for almost the same period. I still don't see a current smartphone on the market that comes close.

I would most certainly not peg Android as the promised land for users.

It's indeed "devolving" slightly as of late, after a peak UX around 7-8 imho (still not perfect but it was smoother back then I feel, less clutter).

Note that my screen brightness control, manual (slider) or auto (toggle), is right there in the notification menu.

Android seems to be the least of two evils for me, as I've just found out in these comments, insofar as I have more access (filesystem etc) to do 'enterprise-y stuff' like data sync to personal infrastructure, remote flow management, etc. But it's evil, like iOS :)

Oh let's define "evil", because this is not r/conspiracy. I mean:

- not user-centric but vendor-centric (this is true of all commercial OS, which is why I use Linux whenever I can, or FreeBSD when it applies)

- feels less like your "home" (as a desktop does) and more like some project housing or hotel room (all identical, like appliances in dev terms). Think not "wallpaper" but "GPOs", what a sysadmin can do (or should be able to).

- tons of hidden 'features' and otherwise magic triggers that are poor in the way of discoverability, let alone transparency if we're gonna get there. Obfuscated, silent, opt-out, the whole dark side of tech is concentrated in mobile platforms.

Lol, I am so jaded with UX these days. Why can't we have nice things. I mean, user-centric UX paradigms. How hard can it be to make money by selling great(er) products?

Yes. I've long been impressed with the single core performance and power efficiency of apple's mobile SoCs. Same-generation SoCs used on a variety of androids can't even compare. Google Maps for example was running like total shit on my old Galaxy S6, switched to iPhone SE (2016) and never looked back.

Really exciting times where an A9-based quality handset can be had for ~$60 on eBay. I expect prices will fall a bit further with this new SE model. And yes, the A9 is completely viable in 2020. Planning on holding onto it for as long as reasonably possible.

> So I do suggest before people writing off 4.7" as being large, please try and give it a go first.

I was actually planning on grabbing a larger phone when iPhone SE inevitably lost software support, but then I got an old iPhone 6 to use casually and I just couldn’t use it at all with one hand without invoking Reachability all the time. Plus I can’t wrap my hand around it so it feels a bit less secure…I’m not sure I’d be happy to lose the form factor.

FWIW the iPhone 5s received iOS 12, and has had a patch as recently as March 24th (2020).

It was released Fall 2013.

It was also the first 64-bit smartphone, and remained that way for more than a year from what I can tell. It also has the first Secure Enclave; i.e. a fingerprint authentication system that had any hope of being secure, and a decent FDE system.

> The current entry level iPhone; iPhone SE 2020 with A13 is now faster in Single Threaded performance than ALL current shipping Android, including Flagship Android. And judging by the Qualcomm roadmap, this will likely remain the same in 2021 as well.

Citation please?

Qualcomm uses off-the-shelf Arm Cortex-A series cores. Arm has promised between 15-25% CAGR for next generation high end cores [0]. The A13 has ~35% better fp perf and ~50% better int perf than the Qualcomm’s latest flagship, the Snapdragon 865, which uses Arm Cortex-A77 cores [1].

So assuming best case scenario for Arm perf growth and Apple remaining completely stagnant, Qualcomm would catch up in 2 years.

More realistically though, the A14 is rumored to be quite the upgrade. At least more significant a change than the A13. And Arm won’t have a very competitive design until they release their Matterhorn core 2 generations from now, where they’re rumored to finally scale up the physical size.

[0]: https://www.anandtech.com/show/13226/arm-unveils-client-cpu-...

[1]: https://www.anandtech.com/show/15603/the-samsung-galaxy-s20-...

20% faster single threaded doesn't matter. Websites aren't magically targeting the exact cpu power of your phone. Websites are 2x-10x too slow (and bloated, using up RAM and swapping), not 10%. this is a software problem not a hardware problem.

Even a tiny site like HN has problems on a phone when the comment count gets large

Really? I'd argue that if any number of comments on HN bog down your phone, there's something wrong with it. The Axx processors even have JavaScript-specific instructions to accelerate web apps. iOS does not have swap. Compare the Speedometer 2.0 benchmark results between an iPhone 11 and a Pixel 4 in the middle of this page: https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/10/22/iphone-11-versus-...

There, the difference between the iPhone and Pixel is about 3x on that particular JavaScript and web benchmark.

It's important that we can't buy smaller good smartphones even if we want. In addition, recently smartphone's screen is getting bigger without expanding the body. AQUOS R2 compact is smaller device but has 5.2 inch screen.

This makes it sound like you're complaining that the screens are still getting larger even if the devices aren't?

Thanks for this! I know A certain portion of HN/twitter/reddit etc user base who comment are super anti bigger phone sizes. Which I don’t care about. Happy there’s some bigger threads to read not just about the size.

Also 4.7” (I believe) is a diagonal, the actual dimensions are closer to 4” long because the screen comes nearly to the edge.

> judging by the Qualcomm roadmap, this will likely remain the same in 2021 as well.

Google and Samsung might have something to say about this, with rumours of their own chip in the works:

https://www.axios.com/scoop-google-readies-its-own-chip-for-...

$399 isn't really entry-level.

In iPhone line of products - it is. It's a cheapest entry level iPhone now.

My current phone cost half as much and is by far the best-performing smartphone I've ever owned.

No, I don't get why I'm supposed to pay double for iOS. Then again I don't see any smartphone on the market that I'd actually pay a premium price for. They're all not quite convincing to me.

Also, $399 is not entry level compared to the first generations of the iPhone, which was already not considered cheap. I'm not a fan of this severe price drift.

The first iPhone cost $499 in 2007.

Which is $621 in today's money (after inflation).

Huh. you're right. I remembered the price drop fiasco-- turns out the entry level 4GB was $499 and the 8GB was $599 at end-of-june 2007 launch, but the price for the 8GB dropped from $599 to $399 when they discontinued the 4GB in September, just over 2 months after both products were released.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_iPhones#Price_drop_...

I agree. I look at it as the price of a phone, not price of an iPhone and the new iPhone SE as of today is too costly for what it offers.

I switched to iPhone (older SE) from Android. Size and privacy were two reasons. Then my SE broke down after 3 years (I hadn't put any protective gear). I bought 7 as I needed another phone immediately and I was going away for two months.

The last one year I have been using 7 the lack of a headphone jack is so frustrating I would never buy the new SE.

The next time I have to buy a phone I will buy the smartphone that will provide at least 2-3 years of guaranteed OS upgrades (or there's Lineage support) and has a headphone jack.

>> The Cost of javascript is still huge. [1] [2]

The article is almost is an year old. Nonetheless, a great read to understand the techniques of profiling. There have been 4 more releases of V8 in chromium based browsers which improved the speed and memory. Other browsers like Firefox also follow the suit.

Powerful JS processing unfortunately coupled with Safari

Only because there is only the WebKit engine available on iOS, it's not like the processor does anything special with regards to JS, if Apple opened up to using additional HTML/JS engines in iOS 14 it would be powerful for all the alternative engines as well.

FaceID is dead until a coronavirus vaccine is developed.

Apple the new Intel (no that is not a good thing).

> The current entry level iPhone; iPhone SE 2020 with A13 is now faster in Single Threaded performance than ALL current shipping Android, including Flagship Android.

I stopped to look at Single Thread performance long time ago when comparing phones. I now look for AI coprocessor performances, new sensor types and wireless charging performance

> I stopped to look at Single Thread performance long time ago when comparing phones. I now look for AI coprocessor performances, new sensor types and wireless charging performance

The amount of daily time the average person spends doing tasks affected by single core performance versus the amount of time people spend doing AI related tasks or using exotic sensors makes you an outlier.

Do you have any source showing global apps usage to support your claims?

Just by guessing, I would say whatsapp/FB/instagram/Snapchat/youtube are the most browsed apps. All those apps use Neural Networks in the background, for text translation, automatic subtitles, picture and video filters, encoding, decoding, upscaling video, ...

Neural networks will run constantly in the background to analyze phone sensors data and adjust the device energy usage, infer location, etc

Even games will use them massively (see the RTX application from Nvdia)

A performant single threaded CPU can probably run those AI applications fine, but an AI coprocessor (or neural processor or DSP or whatever the marketing named it) runs those applications by using 10 times less energy (easily)

I recommend to everyone to take a look at http://ai-benchmark.com/ . The improvement in this domain is massive, like an order magnitude bigger over the last 2 years, to the contrary of CPU and single threaded performance

Edit : oh I also forgot mandatory usage of NN for facial recognition and pose recognition. Regarding sensor, the new radar in the Pixel cannot work without neural network : https://ai.googleblog.com/2020/03/soli-radar-based-perceptio...

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