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Comment by user3939382 | Hacker News Reader

Remake the form factor of the 4S and we’ll talk. That’s the last phone that was comfortable to hold.

Apple listened. They made the 12 Mini and it sold poorly. But persevered and released the 13 Mini. Again, it sold poorly, so they gave up. Don’t blame Apple here, vast majority want gigantic phones.

I hear you and I agree on the surface but I really wish Apple better understood 2 things:

1. Not every device can be your best seller

2. Some product categories are important to fill even if sales are low (even very low)

Apple doesn’t release per-device breakdowns so it’s hard to have conversations on this topic but I’d bet money that the Mini (or another example: the Mac Pro) sold at levels that most companies would drool over.

But is a sale of a mini at the cost of a non-mini? Like if 3/4 of the mini buyer would have just gotten the next smallest form factor then you might not want the large time responsibility of another product.

I understand that, and obviously the line has to be drawn somewhere. I just think a company of Apple’s size/means is perfectly capable of maintaining and producing a mini for the people that want it. Then again, that’s easy for me to say I don’t run Apple.

Of course they're capable of doing it. Scarlet Johanson is also capable of dating me. They just don't want to.

They just didn't sell very well at all. I've seen estimates that the little phones represented just 5-6% of total iPhone sales while they were around. They're darling little devices, but they were simply not very popular.

Now, sure: You or I would probably love to have a product that "failed" by selling only as much as 5% of iPhone sales. We'd either be rolling in dough, or working our nuts off trying to figure out how to keep up production and sustain this beast, or both. "Only" five million units sold (or whatever), at ~$700 each? Fuck yeah!

But we're not Apple. Apple is already rolling in dough. They want product lines which work on a much bigger scale than that or it simply isn't worth their time -- those engineering and marketing expenses are more-profitably spent elsewhere, where they get 20x the return.

5-6% of sales ABSOLUTELY matters. The biggest question is really will the majority of these purchasers substitute the absent "Mini" model with another iPhone model? If 90% of those users will just buy a different model then there is little advantage to offering the mini, given the additional design/engineering costs of the smaller size.

Anecdotally, I'm a techie but a small phone die-hard. I help onto my original SE until they finally released a mini model and will likely do something similar with mini 13. They definitely lost some potential upgrade sales from me, but despite that Apple STILL has the best tiny phone offerings, they are still software and hardware supported by Apple, although you have to purchase refurbished. There just isn't a serious Android competitor, with any sort of long term commitment to small phones, that would justify the switching cost.

My opinion is that Apple botched their positioning with the mini. "Mini" is a diminutive term, it implies less than. It was the lowest pricing outside of their SE model. They released the 12 mini shortly after an SE release, leading to cannibalized sales. And they released it at the beginning of a period (ongoing) where Apple leaned into the messaging of "Bigger is Premium". The only people left to buy the mini were people obsessed with small phones.

I think a more successful product would have been to lean into their "Air" brand, leveraging Apple's known ability to engineer premium devices in the smallest, most-elegant packages; positioning it as a premium product orthogonal to their main iPhone line. And from the rumors, it sounds like this might be Apple's next move in a device market that is increasingly undifferentiated.

Air would have been a much better name. We will see if the rumored iPhone “Slim” (probably not what they would call it but it’s what I’ve seen some rumors call it) comes out in a smaller size as well.

Re: bigger is better

Yeah and it doesn’t help that they sometimes put features only on the Max phones (like the 5x zoom last year). I like the Max but I like it even better when the difference between the Pro and Pro Max is only size. I’m fairly certain that is due to other constraints (not product differentiation) but I hate it for the “normal”-size phone people when their options are “Go big or miss out on feature X”.

The iPhone 13 Mini has a 50% larger screen than the 4S. I have quite large hands, and it's still difficult to use it with one hand and it also isn't as well-balanced when holding it.

If Apple expected the Mini variants to be as successful as the others that's on them. It's clear that most people spend a lot of time on their phone consuming multimedia content and so for those a large screen makes sense. But there should be a choice and as an SE model it would still make sense imho.

Of course in the future small phones might become obsolete due to foldables, but as long as those are based on flimsy creased plastic and cost twice as much I'm not convinced.

uhhh… are you “holding it wrong”? how could the iphone 13 mini possibly be difficult to use with large hands? i have a 15 pro max, am not kareem abdul jabar, and have absolutely no problem with one-handed operation…

You can operate the 4S with one hand without shifting your grip. It still (barely) worked with the 5: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Af0gtsjfy7E (the diagonally opposite corner was already really stretching it)

It isn’t workable with larger screens (even the mini): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6K3lTwGxMTk

This is true. But the Switch has spoiled me on larger screens for handheld games, and telescoping game controllers turn the phone into a Switch-like handheld for my (non-f2p) mobile game collection.

In the same way that Gap should stop making small and medium sized t-shirts because L sells better ... ?

They released the 13 mini because their product lead time exceeds one year. They didn’t have a Plus model to replace it with in time. It still sold more units than many Android models.

In addition, the mini is significantly larger than the 4S, so it doesn’t really address GP’s point.

Exactly this. As much as I like the smaller factors, you can't go against the markets.

My current is a 12 mini and I hoping to find a new old stock 13 mini for my replacement model.

This is my favorite model I've had since the 5! Guess I'm in the minority

I like the 13 mini. Shame they stopped it. Quite a lot of "opened but not used" ones on ebay.

The 13 Mini was also a nice size. Impossible to find nowadays.

Apparently 95% of users want big phones.

I guess we're part of the 5% ?

5% checking in

I get that some people spend their lives on their phones, but myself, with desktop, laptop and big hands, I don't want to carry half a tablet in my pocket to text people and play music. I adore my 12 Mini. I just wish it felt as thin as the 8

It seems most who are not using tech professionally don't particularly want or habituate all the multiple devices, and as such, the phone becomes their "tablet" experience. No desktop, no laptop, if there's an ipad it's in a different room, the bigger screen of the phone means they only reach for the one thing.

I also only text and play music. I get the largest phone available because I'm old and eyesight. Older people tend to have money.

> I just wish it felt as thin as the 8

It's very close:

  12 mini -> 8 -> SE gen 1 (or iPhone 5)

  Height:  131.5 mm -> 138.4 mm -> 123.8 mm
  Width:    64.2 mm ->  67.3 mm ->  58.6 mm
  Depth:     7.4 mm ->   7.3 mm ->   7.6 mm
  Weight: 135 grams -> 148 grams -> 113 grams

https://www.apple.com/iphone/compare/?modelList=iphone-12-mi...

True, but the 8 was rounded at the sides, so even if technically close in size, the square edges of the recent models make the phone feel bulkier.

SE's seem to have problems with many websites that blithely assume larger form factors. Not a blocker tho.

It's the other way around: websites have problems with small browser windows. And not just on phones, just yesterday an online shop's product images were invisible and glitchy unless the browser took up at least 2/3 of my 28" screen.

What issue did you have with iPhone 5s and iPhone SE 2016? They were better than the 4S.

The SE is rounded and larger. The 4S’ size and shape made it very secure in my hand.

How was the form factor of 4S different than 4? I think the ridges on the sides were placed differently but that can’t honestly be something you care about?

The way I read it, it's just because the 4S came later, hence being the last phone of that form factor.

The 4s married both the design refresh and a generational internals upgrade, arguably Apple's first "perfect" (for its time) iPhone.

https://everymac.com/systems/apple/iphone/iphone-faq/differe...

The 4 series was also plain beautiful

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