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Comment by brianshaler | Hacker News Reader

I'd rather have flagship specs in a smaller package. The smallest in the iPhone (SE) and Pixel ("A"?) lines are still too big and tend to have previous-gen specs

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I've been hearing this sentiment for 10+ years, but it's been tried and each time it's tried it doesn't sell well enough.

It’s a package of devices Apple is selling. They sell under powered smaller screen macs. They sell iMacs. They sell small iPads. They sell smaller watches. Some of these just don’t sell as well as their other offerings.

They should sell small phones. Because the whole family will be in on the brand, features, and services. I’ve heard many family members and friends say that they won’t give up their older small phones because Apple no longer makes new ones.

The idea that they don’t sell well is not a good enough reason when you are trying to capture the whole market for not just hardware but the lock in for services, apps, games, music, etc.

How can you be confident in this when you don't even see their sales data?

Still, I would like to see a smaller regularly updated phone. Bonus points if there is a high-end version, because small shouldn't mean budget (like with iPhone SE).

The last small flagship (iPhone 13 mini) sold poorly, but it was much more expensive than the SE2. This was at the tail end of covid, but before faceid worked with masks, so the SE's touch id was a huge selling point.

Other than that and the camera, the only functional difference I can find are that the SE line is still missing the UWB antenna.

I'd happily upgrade to a newer small iPhone if they made one. As it is, it looks like the only option is repeatedly repairing my 13 mini (and dealing with the hilariously bad 5G battery drain forever) or downgrading to a newer SE3.

I know there are a lot of people in this boat. I predict they'll produce another small phone in a few years. It'll sell well due to pent up demand, and someone will be declared a genius for selling 100M's of extra phones that year.

> I predict they'll produce another small phone in a few years. It'll sell well due to pent up demand, and someone will be declared a genius for selling 100M's of extra phones that year.

I’d wish this too. I’m afraid that Apple over the next few year would become more risk averse then ever before. Also old Execs are leaving and retiring - so less people with hands on experience how to start new products VS keeping lights on.

They have repeatedly attempted to sell small phones. They don't sell in significant numbers, unfortunately.

Because the execution is usually borked... I was eyeig ZenFone 9 (or something around that) and what? It was reported that it had problem with overheating and build quality.

What's more, I would love something akin to my current Galaxy a52s 5G with a display around 5.2-5.5" (I first had LG G2, then OnePlus3 which was already a bit bulky and now a52 as compromise; https://www.gsmarena.com/compare.php3?idPhone1=5543&idPhone2...)...

I do have iPhone SE (2022) and it's the size of LG G2 and I find quite handy. Something of that size but with slightly bigger screen (better screen-to-body ratio). Specs doesn't have super-hiper-premium… and the price should be sane (usually compact phones are like 20-40% higher, sic)

iphone minis weren't particularly borked, and they didn't sell well enough, people apparently preferred the larger iphones (to my own dismay)

I'm using an iPhone 12 mini, and it's bigger than I'd ideally like.

Are you sure they bought different flavours because of the screen size or because of naming marketing "pro is better than regular" and "mini obviously has to be worse"?

In my case, they took so long to announce the iPhone 12 Mini that I gave up waiting and bought an SE even though it was slower than I wanted and had a poor camera. Four months later they announced the Mini, but I wasn't willing to replace a four-month-old phone. Then they discontinued the Mini line after 13.

When I was ready to buy a new phone, there were no iPhone Mini models for sale. It took more than a year, but I finally found an iPhone 13 Mini in stock on the Apple Refurbished store. Now I'm hoping to keep this phone alive until they finally release another small iPhone.

I agree, I think the iPhone mini sales were deeply affected by the iPhone SE. I came back a few months ago looking for an iPhone mini and didn't see any either.

I think apple didn’t wait long enough.

In my friends circle, iPhone Minis are the most popular smartphone model, it’s even peculiar how pronounced it is.

But they all bought iPhone Minis 2 or 3 years after they came out.

I’d like to see iPhone sales numbers per generation, over multiple years. Like „how did iPhone 12 models (minis, normal, pro…) sell in 2020, 2021, 2022, etc.

iphones are extremely expensive

> I've been hearing this sentiment for 10+ years, but it's been tried and each time it's tried it doesn't sell well enough.

The iPhone mini was a billion dollar device. Anyone other than Apple would have called that a success.

That’s one of the big problems with these dominant trillion dollar corporations. For them it’s not worth to pursue something as small as a billion dollar market but they still have enough market power to suppress any competitor who wants to deliver such a product. That’s why we are seeing less and less innovation and diversity compared to the 1980s to around 2000

> That’s why we are seeing less and less innovation and diversity compared to the 1980s to around 2000

You think the pace of innovation has stalled and the tech industry is less diverse than it was 20-50 years ago? Really?

Having cut my teeth on the tech of the late-seventies, that’s not a perspective I share. I have long been impressed with how fast new tech makes it into our grubby little hands. From my perspective, if we were stuck at the pace of innovation present during my early days, well, I think it’s not unlikely we’d still be using feature-phones and WAP gateways so we could tinker with that new mobile-internet stuff everyone’s raving about.

"Well enough" is doing a lot of work here. It's not that they aren't successful, it's that they aren't immediate, runaway hits, so the manufacturers conclude: why bother trying to build this market, let's just go back to the playbook. That's how you get mediocre products, which is where we are now.

I'm sorry to say this, but again just face the reality of the fact that not enough people truly want this size of phone.

There's a congregation of people on HN who do, I suspect they're also the type of people who'll run their phones for 5+ years where their bigger phone buying brethren are replacing every year or two at most.

The market for the "small" smartphone just isn't profitable enough to bother with for most manufacturers.

Speaking for myself, I 100% would have bought an iPhone Mini, but I purchase new phones on a 5-6 year cycle. My iPhones were the 4S and the XS.

Now that I'm ready to buy a new iPhone, the Mini has been discontinued! I think the Mini would have been and in fact was successful, but it's not successful "enough" to justify a separate model – they must have observed that people "like me" would still buy a flagship iPhone, even though we aren't 100% satisfied with the form factor.

Apple would rather have us buying a higher-margin flagship model and have an NPS of 65+ than a lower-margin mini model with an NPS of 80+.

My friend with similar instincts as me recently got a refurbished 13 Mini instead of the latest flagship. I'll probably get the flagship, because I value the satcom a little bit more than the form factor.

Don’t produce it in the same volumes then?

Did you know that factories make less big-sized and small-sized shoes than average-sized ones? Because (surprise) buyers size distribution is not uniform.

“We tried to make big shoes many times and it doesn’t sell well enough”. Oh, really. I guess I’ll just cut holes for my fingers then.

Maybe the fixed costs of a shoe factory production line, in 2024, with centuries of production experience, are lower than those of a top of the line smartphone.

> fingers

Lol

Don't know the op's language, but in Portuguese there's a single word for toes and fingers. So I did not notice the issue until you pointed out!

Ah, cringe. In my defense, https://www.reddit.com/r/LinguisticMaps/comments/pyrli2/whic...

Well, speaking as someone with US 14 men's feet, a fair number of manufacturers do just refuse. Many shoes top out at 13, and many socks at 12!

Just because the sentiment is a minority doesn't mean it's not an honest sentiment.

I also would love a smaller flagship spec'd phone.

I know it wont be popular, but I still want it.

Its the worst of both worlds. Not popular and harder to engineer. So it makes it hard to pitch to business.

By "it has been tried" you mean that they sold some crappy phone for almost the same price as a way better one?

Well that's also an issue, the audience that wants a smaller phone is also spread across all the price points that the regular audience is. So it's even less viable for manufacturers to make small phones.

I’ve got an appointment with Apple to replace the battery in my iPhone 13 mini.

I would love the new features (especially the camera and sat comm) but I’m not willing to get a bigger form factor device.

there are dozens of us! dozens!!! i’m also keeping my 13 mini until it’s dead

I’ll upgrade the second a new mini comes out…but I’m keeping it for now.

> I’ve got an appointment with Apple to replace the battery in my iPhone 13 mini.

I literally was in the Apple store yesterday for the same purpose (with a 12 mini). I'd also love the new features and hardware, but after trying all the available sizes in the store, they're all too big.

My wife on the other hand(s), loves to have a phone she needs to hold with two hands to even be able to use, so obviously she has the Pro Max. I don't understand how people are OK with that, but to each and their own...

To each their own, except apple's not making new mini form-factor iphones anymore so us mini preferrers will at some point not have our own.

There still are people using tablets for calling, taking selfies and whatever else. I think it was a more common sight earlier (the times of the first iPads) but they are definitely still around. I can explain this even less...

I need a new battery in my 2020 SE as well, I wasn't aware that the last mini was a 13. Bring 'em back!

Good luck. I’ve tried to replace battery in mine 12 mini last week - with no success. I had to leave my phone for 4 hours or several days (if they brake screen during battery replacement, they will wait for replacement phone to be shipped overnight). Also representative was convincing me to buy a new phone - saying that battery replacement won’t help much because new ios versions has features which high battery usages, while newer iphones has larger battery and hardware optimizations for these new features. I’m thinking about iPhone 16 now while keeping iPhone 12 mini as backup phone.

So do the swap yourself.

Part and kit: https://www.ifixit.com/products/iphone-12-mini-replacement-b...

Steps: https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iPhone+12+mini+Battery+Replacem...

I've successfully have replaced batteries and displays in older iphones (mainly iphone 6). But with newer iphones opening the phone is more complex.

I've read online and heard from Apple Store representative that iPhone 12 (all models) has tendency to crack the screen when phone is opened for repair or battery replacement and in that case Apple Store would replace the hole phone (this is were multi day repair process). So I would rather pay $90 to Apple that guarantees that I'll get a phone replacement in case when screen is broken during battery replacement. Without the phone I sill would be able to answer the cell calls from Apple Watch and with ipad over WiFi.

Oh boy I hope that doesn’t happen to me. It took them a week to get iPhone 13 mini battery in.

They would tell you and you would notice if your phone was replaced - it would have new serial and 2FA apps won't work on a new phone without reregistration.

Most likely it took them a week to get a new battery for replacement shipped.

I recently brought an SE2 in for a screen + battery swap, which basically means they'd just give me a new SE2 at a steep discount.

They didn't try to upsell me at all, but I ended up getting an SE3 anyway (I didn't realize there even was a newer SE).

This is nice of them. I think this is because screen replacement was required and them not having SE2 in stock.

I just replaced the battery in my iPhone SE 2nd gen last month. Somehow I didn't know that that was possible. Best 80 € spent ever.

Unfortunately, people don't buy small phones as much.

https://youtu.be/iR9zBsKELVs?si=3o1qD-4R7lyezZwt

There are a lot of different phones. People don't buy Sony as much as Samsung.

I feel like many of the commenters in this thread are asking (sometimes demanding) that their devices offer a duality that can’t be met; do you want smaller phones or do you want longer battery life with more compute? At the moment, those are mutually exclusive goals. Thermodynamics can be a PITA but we’re doing (almost) the best we can.

Smaller components cost more than bigger ones and the mini users (me included) also want to spend less, not more.

Same boat. 'upgraded' my iphone mini to a 15 and hate it. Far far to big.

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