Just profoundly weird to me that small manufacturers can’t make small phones because they’re small and can’t pay for it, and large manufacturers can’t make it because…(checks notes)…they’re large and don’t want to pay for it even if there’s demand.
In short: Apple can get away with ignoring what those customers want.
There is zero chance I could convince any of my in-laws to switch away from iOS. Data isn't what they care about. It's all about blue bubbles and a decade of familiarity with iOS (and it's irrelevant that the UX between Android and iOS have drifted to be so similar).
I don't understand why you're brining up your in-laws in your response if they don't care about data.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/120267
"Import to your Windows PC
1. Install the Apple Devices app from the Microsoft Store.
2. Connect your iPhone or iPad to your PC with a USB cable.
etc etc"
My whole digital life other than my iPhone works very well! Never better, really. Been Linux-exclusive for years after switching after the release of Windows 10.
Just a real pity that iOS doesn't provide something as simple as a proper export feature. A kicker is that the Photos app does allow you to "Export Unmodified Original" for multiple photos or even whole albums. But you can't do this to everything in Photos (what used to be called the camera roll). There's no "select all" button to work around this.
The point is, that since Apple is providing dedicated tools both for Mac and for Windows to get your photos off your phone, I don't think it's fair to accuse them of trying to lock in people to their devices.
Same with other stuff like bookmarks, passwords, etc.
Large and small companies sell smaller Android phones.
In this alternate history, there's a tiny design firm out of Carmel, south of Cupertino, doing bespoke runs of an iPhone 4 with A18s and eSIM capability and they're always sold out.
The first link I googled about it is https://tedium.co/2025/09/02/apple-macintosh-clones-history/
In this alternate history, who would have invested the billions of dollars in developing the processor line all the way up through the A18 if it's not available as a market differentiator?
I want an SE4 with touch ID and a 4 inch screen and an A18 processor in it, not the monstrosity that is the 16e. If things were more open; what I really want to see is what we almost get to see with Kickstarter. If I could find one million people to do a first run who're willing to pay $750 for a first run edition, just to simply break even, and then make money off subsequent runs as demand does or does not exist.
Five of these are race-to-the-bottom business models. One is use-the-legal-system-to-retain-your-customers. The last two don't make cell phone class parts, and probably wouldn't be interested in the margins.
I mention this to make a point -- the quality of the A18 that you (reasonably) want in a smaller, niche-market phone isn't a coincidence, it's a consequence of the designer being able to justify the investment because it acts as a market differentiator. PASemi would never have been able to do that on its own, any more than MediaTek has -- customers have no brand faithfulness to cell phone processor manufacturers, so as long as the OEM can freely move between them the distinction must be on price, at the cost of performance. There are upsides to the more open market you imagine in your alternate history, but it would come with the downside of the high end of the market being less developed, and flat out worse, due to less segmentation being possible.
Most customers have no brand faithfulness to desktop processor manufacturers. Why would this stagnate phone processor development when it did not stagnate desktop processor development?
Hasn't it? See the impact the M1 family made.
Isn't that the whole point of alternate history?
Just opining that it’s weird can’t possibly be convincing against a consensus amongst all the large smartphone manufacturers.
Large manufacturers can make them. But there isn't enough demand to make them profitable enough. It's not a question of whether they "want to pay for it", it's just simple economics. They're businesses, not charities. I like small phones, but I understand manufacturers are doing what's economically rational given market preferences and I don't blame them for it.
> However, a follow-up phantom model analysis using 10,000 bootstrap samples at 95% bias-corrected confidence intervals revealed that the overall magnitude of the hedonic path (i.e., LS→PAQ→AT→IU; B=0.14, SE=0.06, p<0.01) was larger than that of the utilitarian path (i.e., LS→PC→PEOU→PU→IU; B=0.07, SE=0.03, p<0.01) even though participants were given a task-oriented, rather than entertainment-oriented (e.g., gaming, movie watching), assignment during the experiment. This implies that users are likely to put greater emphasis on the affective dimension of the technology than on its utilitarian dimension, despite the practical, purposeful nature of the assigned task. Given that user affect (e.g., positive or negative feelings) toward a technology is typically attributed as the central characteristic of the technology (regardless of the accuracy of the attribution),55 the practical implication of this finding is that smartphone manufacturers ought to take full advantage of the positive effects of the large screen on PAQ when designing their products. However, the more challenging design implication is that the optimal level of screen size that does not jeopardize the anywhere–anytime mobility of smartphones should first be identified, since screen size cannot be indefinitely increased in the mobile context. Thus, the remaining question to be addressed in future research is the optimal size of the mobile screen.
But why are we needing a phone to be productive? And they were already a distraction from the world around us when they fit in a single hand.
I know I'm probably abnormal, but my phone is a phone first, camera second, and "work" device fifth.
As a society, our boundaries around communication and instant contact to anyone have collapsed. Now if you don't respond to a message within a few minutes, you get multiple follow ups. If you don't pick up the phone when a friend calls you, they don't leave a message, they text, then call again, then text again.
We've gone from being able to leave the house, and no one can contact us for a few hours, to no matter where we are people are trying to contact us. So they may be more "productive" with larger screens, but we never asked whether they SHOULD be more productive.
Being able to instantly communicate via photo and video makes a lot of people’s lives easier. For example, getting quotes for a house repair to save on travel time and energy getting estimates, showing before and after pictures to document performed work, and myriad more examples.
If someone is contacting you too much, that’s a problem solved by asking them not to harass you, not by putting limits on the device for everyone else.
My response was to these statements:
> But why are we needing a phone to be productive?
> So they may be more "productive" with larger screens, but we never asked whether they SHOULD be more productive.
I use my phone for web browsing 99% of the time. I don’t need it to have AI processors or loads of brand new tech. I want it to be cheap, functional, and expendable. So I definitely question whether a phone needs to be super “productive” in that sense too. But people who want their aircraft carrier phones that don’t fit in their pockets and cost over $1000 can have that too.
But this is because Google is a software / service company, so it keeps Android open.
Apple is a hardware company, and always has been. They have a relatively narrow lineup of devices which they support for a very long time, compared to Android devices. So Apple are not interested in fringe markets; they go for the well-off mainstream mostly.