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Comment by roughly | Hacker News Reader

I'm an iPhone guy, but - there _are_ other designs for phones, right? The squircle corners, the shiny metal band surrounding the matte back, the aqua-pill-shaped buttons, the colors - Google is a $2T company, there's gotta be an industrial designer somewhere in the building or some process for phone design that doesn't take place in Cupertino, right?

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That phone isn't a squircle, it is a rounded square. Those rounded edges seem to be inspired by google material design. Also phones have converged to the metal band, glass back before the iphone did it. Mobile phones are a mature technology and their designs have converged to the designs people are buying.

I really wonder if consumers have any influence on phone designs. People generally buy phones for completely different reasons, the design just has to be "not bad" which generally means just take whatevers available that meets your actual criteria (OS, camera quality, etc). After all you'll probably have to slap a case on it anyways.

I very much miss the halcyon days of the feature phone - Nokia got _weird_ with it for a bit:

https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/2...

I really like the design of this red magic phone.

https://global.redmagic.gg/pages/redmagic-9-pro

I just wish thered be an option to omit the freaking fan. Really not a fan of fans...

I have 5 year old Note9, and recently broke my display where small part of it is just black. I have been searching for a phone to replace it with, with very few criteria: modern SOC, non-folding, not ugly looking.

Its breathtaking how many phones just go nuts on their backside, stuff Id be ashamed to pull out in public (oneplus 12, oneplus open, xiaomi 14 ultra). When theres finally some normal lens housing that isnt protruding on a side making the phone wobble while laid flat on a table (like almost every remaining phone), it almost doubles the phone width.

And then when theres finally a phone Id like to buy thanks to its big battery, sleek design and no front camera cutout (Nubia Redmagic 9 Pro), the must fuck it up by adding a freaking fan to it. And ofc their Z60 Ultra has again huge and uneven camera housing with red accent around main camera.

Its as if every manufacturer is either conforming to herd, or going batshit crazy.

The reason people are buying those phone is because theres no choice. Not that theres no choice because people are buying it.

Its super frustrating how the entire industry follows Apple; incapable of original thought. The Pixel 8 had somewhat rounded edges, which is fantastic for a comfortable grip. Apple killed rounded corners and converted to the squared-off design with the iPhone 12; and everyone has followed suit since. Galaxy phones used to have curved edge displays; now they're squared off, because Apple. Samsung's watches are generally circular, but they had to go squircle with their Ultra variant, because Apple. Apple does Titanium; Samsung has to do Titanium; no one gives a flying shit about titanium!

I would bet every dollar in my pocket that Apple is intending to convert back to a more rounded design with the iPhone 17, and the S26 and Pixel 11 will follow suit.

Begging+pleading for the googung corpodrones to have just one original idea, even if its only "we're gonna do it this way simply to spite Apple" (they won't).

Their original idea is the folding phone.

Apple will drop a folding phone one day and then we'll all be talking about how Android copied it.

The front of the phones are all screen and the back looks nothing like an iPhone but somehow people think they copied Apple. Go figure.

There is a vibrant Chinese Android scene, with their own fairly stand-out design trends. One design that's pretty popular right now is the "large circle", as exemplified by Xiaomi 14 Ultra. My favorites in this theme are the ZTE Z50s Pro (IMHO just a gorgeous phone) and the Honor Magic6 Pro.

Huawei released a phone with a retractable lens and 1 inch main sensor, fairly unique for a phone first type of device.

photography nerds rejoice

> ZTE Z50s Pro (IMHO just a gorgeous phone)

Woah that is a nice looking phone. Too bad the thing is massive.

I know people like to claim Apple designs and everyone else copy, but that's not what's happening.

Everyone is converging to the same design, Apple like the others. They all borrow from each other until they all look the same.

Pixel 9 design language is iPhone 4 design language from 2010 -- which was original iPhone design language from 2005, that didn't ship!

Apple calling back to what was considered their most iconic design language for the iPhone (and now iPads) long before others imitated it, doesn't mean Apple is now copying the imitators.

https://www.core77.com/posts/16817/core77-speaks-with-jonath...

This remains widely regarded as the most significant design since dropping the keyboard.

The plot on that design thickens, Samsung claimed Apple copied Sony:

https://www.theverge.com/2012/7/26/3189309/apple-sony-iphone...

But those were Apple having fun with Sony fanfiction applied to an earlier Apple design ... turns out the iPhone 4 language was in their design repertoire in 2005, before even the original iphone shipped:

https://www.theverge.com/2012/7/30/3201162/apple-refutes-cla...

I seem to recall they couldn't do the design earlier due to fabrication and materials constraints.

Profitable products attract copycat designs. Samsung copied no removable battery and the metal used. The first Google phone was a Blackberry style layout until Apple popularized the all touchscreen design.

Apple copied bigger screens and Android’s notifications.

It could be worse, it could be TV where back rarely seen and only gimmick after maximum bezel thinness is display thinness until samsung decided to add a frame. At some point design gets optimized to death. Have to look towards niche segments like gaming phones with extra buttons, ventilation, ports etc.

That said, I just want a phone with a modernized 5 way switch rocker to scroll with thumb.

Rounded rectangle clearly won the form factor wars.

My favorite phone design is the Meizu 16 series, especially its white variant (search for Meizu 16s Pro unicorn, it's just gorgeous). The 16 series is the last series before Meizu also succumbed to the "mainstream" designs such as big screen size, punched-hole screens, and weird camera layouts.

Mobile phone design peaked with the Nokia 3110 and the Motorola MicroTAC, and it's been downhill ever since.

My fav iconic Nokia design was the 7600: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_7600 ;)

mind blown

Don't forget the 7280! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_7280

No problem, no one will use squares with rounded corners as long as iphones go back to the "perfect" design with a small phone and small screen that apple forever insisted was the perfect phone design, instead of larger screens that android had and apple now uses.

They literally made a phone that folds in half, what exactly are you talking about?

I like the small radius corners of my Pixel 6a. I hope it will last because I can't see myself switching to a recent Pixel with those huge squircle corners.

Rounded corners is a mechanical design thing, mostly.

HMD devices are doing a Windows-phone-esque throwback, so... there is _some_ variety out there. Ish.

No there is not

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