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Comment by sparrish | Hacker News Reader

That camera bump is huge. I guess that's how you get the great zoom?

Phone cases are doing heavy lifting to smooth out the back of this phone.

On the other hand I much prefer the full-width bump than a corner bump. It helps when holding your phone (a ledge for your fingers) and means that the phone doesn't rock around when used on a table.

I made a leather pouch with a belt loop for my Pixel 6. Great when travelling or hiking. The camera band sits above the edge of the front of the pouch with the 'lid' covering that when the pouch is closed with a tuck lock.

The full-width band is just perfect for grabbing the phone and lifting it out of the form-fitting pouch, and doubles as a sort of safety preventing it from slipping from your grip.

Atleast these type of bumps don't cause the phones to wobble.

I'd be curious to know if they did any surveys/research on how many people use a case or not. If the vast majority do (my anecdata-based hunch), why not just thicken the phone to add battery and use a thinner case rather than just having the case space the back of the phone out to be flat?

My partner got a Pixel 9a and it's nice that they went completely flat on that one, though it's obviously almost a straight rip-off of the recent non-pro iPhones aesthetically (not a bad thing imo).

> why not just thicken the phone to add battery

Weight. Many people already don't like how heavy their phones are.

Good point. Even my regular iPhone 13 is the heaviest phone I've ever owned and it's kind of annoying in that it actually hurts to drop on your face if you're vegging out watching a video while laying down.

Too bad it can't be smoothed out (with more battery or something) to start with.

That bump is more than 1/4 of the phone's total thickness. This is becoming comical.

The camera bump (rather than a full-size thickness increase) makes the phone feel less massive, especially in your pocket.

I don't need it to "feel" less massive. Most wallets are thicker and I don't hear anyone complain.

not sure if you mean clip-on cell phone wallets (I assume that people that don't want a thick cell phone don't add a wallet since it makes their cell phone too thick), or actual wallets... plenty of people complain about those:

https://lifehacker.com/how-can-i-downsize-my-ridiculously-la... https://veryexcellenthabits.com/downsize-ridiculously-enormo... https://www.reddit.com/r/onebag/comments/5blfkt/my_wallet_is...

And a thick wallet causes enough health problems for it to be called "Fat Wallet Syndrome".

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fat_Wallet_Syndro...

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