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Comment by danielvaughn | Hacker News Reader

People make fun of me but I'll never skip a chance to complain about how large these phones are. I hate it so much. I have a standard iPhone, not a max, and it causes real pain in my wrist if I use it too much. Was honestly thinking about downgrading to the last SE model even though it's several years out of date.

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I want to +1 every comment in this thread. Phones are too big now. I don't understand Apple's weird obsessions, first trying to make all the phone so thin you cut your hand holding it, and then making it too big to fit comfortably in your pocket unless you are walking around in camo pants.

You know what I would like? When I tap on the search and type the first few letters of an app on my phone, and the app appears, and I click on that -- I would like the app to open. Only happens about half the time now. UI is getting worse with every release.

I loved the size of my iPhone 6, and very iPhone that I’ve used after that has been too big.

Why do almost all phones have to be in that narrow band of 6.5 to 6.9 inches?

I wish there were more size choices on both ends of the spectrum. While most people prefer more choice below 6", I would like some choice above 7", since I keep my phone in my belly pouch, and never use it one-handed. My current Huawei Mate20X is actually ok at 7.2" (but worse than the Mediapad X1 I had before which at 7" was actually wider) but is way behind on Android updates, and will soon stop running my banking app.

Quick reality check that

- 7" used to be tablet category, e.g the Nexus 7

- anything above 6" would be considered phablet

Phones are really just like cars now, size inflation included.

While I agree with the spirit of the thread and dearly love my mini, I think this reasoning doesn’t account for a substantial reduction in bezels: my iPhone 5S had more than a centimetre of black bars above and below its 4" display (altogether it was 5.4" in diagonal), I bet those phablets you mentioned had even bigger bezels and were closer to modern 8.5" phones.

Many people used low iPhone mini sales to point at the idea that small phones aren't popular anymore.

They might be right, but the "Mini" was more like a return to the size of the 6 & 8; not the same size as the 5 or prior SE. So for me it was still too large.

https://imgur.com/a/iphone-mini-vs-iphone-5-vs-iphone-6-case...

The "usable screen" is where my thumb can reach, not whatever idea people have in their heads about the total size of the phone or anything, truthfully.

Anyway; hit recognition of the keyboard is so far behind where it was in the iPhone 4/5 generation that I doubt modern iOS would even be functional; even if you excused the padding issues that would inevitably be an issue.

> Anyway; hit recognition of the keyboard is so far behind where it was in the iPhone 4/5 generation that I doubt modern iOS would even be functional; even if you excused the padding issues that would inevitably be an issue

Right?? It is worse than I remember right? I'm not crazy.

Using the iOS 26 keyboard on an iPhone SE 2/3 is a truly miserable experience now. Upgrading from 18 was a terrible mistake

Luckily, hearing all the complains early adopters of 26 had, I disabled auto updates on my SE. Since you can't go back to previous iOS version, leaving it on is a bit risky in general.

POS Apple just made me upgrade my iPhone Mini to 26 so that I could pair my new Apple Watch, because I just broke the old one.

I wasn't sure I wanted another Apple Watch, but it was the easiest thing to buy, and I don't have to figure out how to transfer all the data and set it up somewhere else.

But I definitely regret going the "easy" way; iOS 26 is truly awful, what the fuck.

I'm going to figure out what fitness/sport watch I really want to use next because I doubt I'll be sticking to iPhone with what they have on offer these days...

> The "usable screen" is where my thumb can reach, not whatever idea people have in their heads about the total size of the phone or anything, truthfully.

In the early days of the phablets I had an observation that has mostly held true all these years later. At the time I noticed you could accurately predict whether someone wanted the large or small form factor based on their usage patterns. Did they tend to use their device while sitting down? Or did they tend to use their device while on the move? This indicated whether or not they typically used 2 hands vs 1 hand.

It turned out the 2 handers dominated the market, unfortunately for people like you & I.

I recently switched from an iPhone 16 to an Air and my experience is the opposite. I type way more accurate on the Air (even when both dictionaries are reset and have no screen protector what could make the touch less sensitive). I do not know why.

It's not an obsession. Its calculation. They noticed bigger phones lead to customers buying more services and apps.

Is that the direction of causality or it's the other way around? Maybe people buy larger screens because they want to watch Netflix or TikTok on their phone more comfortably than on smaller screens. I do love small and light phones (an A40 right now) but I watch movies on a tablet. If I were often on the move or sharing home with many people, maybe I would use a larger phone.

That’s an entertaining construction of “people are more likely to buy things they get more utility from” that somehow removes agency from consumers.

Yes. It's the Apple's product first philosophy that Steve Jobs repeated again and again:

"A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them."

"Some people say, 'Give the customers what they want.' But that's not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they're going to want before they do."

"You can't just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they'll want something new."

"If I had asked customers what they wanted, they would have said 'a faster horse."

Until you hit 'Search' at the bottom right it shows you a preview result set - that can differ completely from the one you get then. Because two are not enough, they added a third with 'Siri suggestions' as top row. Which is not in the Search settings but in the ones for Siri. The iOS docs[1] misname it as 'Suggest App' when it is called 'Suggest Apps Before Searching' which only the iPadOS docs [2] get right. Did I mention they cut useful info from the iOSv26 version[3] and changed the URL?

[1]: https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/about-siri-suggestion...

[2]: https://support.apple.com/guide/ipad/about-siri-suggestions-...

[3]: https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/turn-siri-suggestions...

woah

The silver lining if ai takes all of our jobs will hopefully be that the people responsible for all of this become destitute as well

> first trying to make all the phone so thin you cut your hand holding it,

Except the cameras that stick out. Why do I want a phone thinner than the camera lenses?

> I don't understand Apple's weird obsessions

Selling you Apple Watch ?

Apple follows the market. There just aren’t many people who want small phones, HN notwithstanding. If they sold like hotcakes they’d have a full lineup.

And I kind of get it. Philosophically I want a small phone. Realities of age and eyesight forbid.

The market is basically people who don’t read or watch videos on their phone, and who have excellent eyesight, and who don’t care about having the best cameras. 100% legit market segment, but that Venn intersection is too small to be worth it.

The iphone air isn’t popular either and yet here we are. They preferred releasing a huge thin phone than a tiny thin phone. Even if the % of clients is small, there are still millions of potential mini clients

I interpret the same facts differently: I see Apple realizing that the SE form factor doesn’t sell enough to be worth it, and trying something different with the Air. It sounds like the Air will likely go the way of the SE, with occasional updates but not every year.

Apple is very good at market research and understanding users… but not perfect. I think they genuinely believed the Air would sell a lot more than it did.

And “millions” is not necessarily a lot. Apple sells 250 million phones a year. A SKU that sells 3 million is a distraction with much lower ROI against R&D than a mainline phone. It takes just as much engineering to create and as much manufacturing to produce, so fixed costs are spread among many fewer units.

> Realities of age and eyesight forbid

Am old. Am experiencing presbyopia. Am still very much tied to my mini on the default font size. When I can't read something I just pinch/zoom. Meanwhile it's easy to hold & use in one hand while walking down the street, and fits into normal sized pockets.

I don't agree with this. In my view, there are plenty of cases where the product changes are shoved down our throats.

I think the problem is that the product folks don't actually listen to the market. They read Jobs' biography and are convinced that they will tell their users what product they will like and that they will see the light later on.

The sad reality is: they are not Jobs (and even he was not faultless). So, we get Mac like Windows interfaces, we get mail clients losing features, we get AI in every single app you see, etc.

Just my 2c.

Why do you buy things you don’t like?

And if you’re convinced that most people don’t like most products… why don’t you make a fortune building what people actually want?

> Why do you buy things you don’t like?

In my case, because it's the only option in some situations.

For eg, I wanted a phone that has an unlockable bootloader and a decent/Qualcomm CPU.

I'm immediately down to Motorola and OnePlus.

If I want future proof performance, I'm down to the OP 15 only.

Yes, I have RSI today, but with any luck that can go away. However, a Vivo will not get a BL unlock tomorrow magically.

I dived into a niche world of small phones recently while looking for replacement to malfunctioning Pixel 4a (which is apparently now considered compact phone). There's a few small manufacturers in China making some, with 4 inch or 5 inch screen, like Aiphor or Unihertz. And by "small" I mean "they use kickstarter to fund their R&D" small.

Other than that... Nobody's really bothering with compact phones anymore, in the US or in the rest of the world. Bummer.

> Nobody's really bothering with compact phones anymore, in the US or in the rest of the world. Bummer.

And the worst thing is that app developers do not bother with testing their apps on small phones. So even if someone would produce small phone, many apps would be broken on that UI. So there's no way back.

PS 4 inch is not a small phone. iPhone 4S had 3.5" display and it wasn't small, it was normal. Small is something like 2" screen I suppose. All modern phones including these "iPhone Minis" are egregiously huge.

> All modern phones including these "iPhone Minis" are egregiously huge.

Agreed - going from the original SE to the mini meant a big downgrade in usability for me, as it's now hard to reach the top of the screen.

My assumption is that very few people who like Dom Joly sized phones use them one handed

I don't give a stuff about the vast majority of "apps". Webpages work fine.

Built in ones work fine - mail, safari, music, maps, photos

Major ones work fine - bbc sounds, slack+teams, whatsapp, various authenticator programs

We do, and it is a pain. It is incredibly easy to defeat any kind of design or in fact HID guidelines by cranking text size to the max on these smaller devices.

I would not go as far as calling the iPhone Minis "egregiously huge", keep in mind that screen size is not a great measure for phone sizes across different generations. You could easily fit a 4+ inch display into the form factor of the 4S with modern technology, the bezels on those phones were huge. Unless my math is off, the housing of the 4S has a diagonal of just over 5 inches.

Yep. Aiphor's BlueFox NX1 with 4 inch screen is roughly the same size as original iPhone, but has a larger screen (iPhone had bigger bezels and the home button underneath). To me it feels a bit too small for things like typing/texting for example.

Unihertz Jelly Star has 3 inch screen, that's way too small for me.

But they exist and so do people who buy them.

> Nobody's really bothering with compact phones anymore,

They need to show all that ad somewhere right?

The phones get larger and the UI gets less information dense every release. More padding, more offsets, more dead space.

I'd pay good money for a small phone with nothing but a unix terminal

Termux on Android. Lots of hardware choices.

Apple needs all that space so that the aesthetic can fit in.

Yeah, this is what bothers too much. Retina displays for low density content? We could've remained at 800x600.

I have a pet theory about increasing phone sizes

> Screen size is area (x^2) and battery size is volume (x^3). As battery life is a critical feature, a bigger screen supports (a nonlinear) better battery life.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44588733

I think it’s even better than that. Your cellular modem (on all the time) scales at O(1) with phone size. Same for on-board tasks that do not involve the screen. Powering your RAM (also on all the time) is similar, but larger (more expensive) phones may tend to have more RAM.

This does not square with especially Apple's unending obsession to make phones as thin as possible. Which is doubly stupid when it makes them so fragile that the first thing you do after taking it out of the box is to wrap it in a thick rubber shell.

What obsession about making thin phones? iPhones are pretty thick and have been that way for years. The Air being an outlier, of course, but it's an intentionally thin phone in a lineup of thick and heavy ones.

I had a Sony Xperia Z1 mini, that was close to the size of a SE but had double the battery lifetime.

We made fun of phablets, only for them to become the default.

well we have galaxy fold tablet-as-phone, so... maybe not all is lost?

I have found the iPhone Air much easier to hold than the iPhone 13 Pro it replaced because of how light it is, even though the iPhone Air has a bigger screen.

The 17e weighs roughly the same at a smaller size, and the mini weighs significantly less. Not to mention the first SE, compared to which even the mini is heavy. Yes the Air is lightweight compared to the Pro, but that’s a low bar.

The other thing with the Air is that you can’t really use it one-handed, which is what most people who like small phones are after, besides pockability.

The first SE was the best form factor I've ever owned.

Incredibly small. Incredibly light. Pretty thin, even in a case. Had a headphone jack, Lightning and Touch ID.

The only thing I like about the new iPhone designs is the action button. Having an automation which automatically turns silent mode off or on based on whether I'm home or not is pretty cool. You can't do that with a physical switch.

Agreed about the SE. I’m still depressed anytime I take it in hand that we don’t have something like it anymore.

I don’t think anyone should make fun of you for it but I’m in the opposite boat. I’m so glad that they make the pro max variants because most smartphones are so small that it hurts my fingers to bend them in the unnaturally inward way it requires to hold and interact with them.

For me it's not the fingers, it's the eyesight.

It wouldn't be so bad if both options were available. By all means, have your giant pro max or whatever if you want, but that shouldn't be the only reasonable option.

I agree, and ideally neither should be tied to the phone’s technical specs.

Boban Marjanovic posts on HN? Would never have guessed.

Great reference. It's a shame most people seeing this comment won't get it.

I switched from a pixel 3 to a pixel 9 pro over a year ago, and I still miss the smaller form factor. the pixel 3 really was the perfect size for me and I am sad I can no longer get a smallish phone with a high end processor.

I still have my Pixel3. I use it without a SIM for random stuff, and miss the small form factor. It is half the thickness of a Pixel 10, my current phone!

I switched from Pixel 4a to Unihertz Max (5G phone with 5 inch screen from a small Chinese startup). Love the form factor, I can keep the phone in my front pants pocket again, next to my keys or wallet. I'm somewhat reluctant to put anything sensitive on that phone (like my email), but happy overall.

I’m still running an SE2020. I was expecting the latest update (with liquid) to be the death of it. But performance has actually improved significantly! Very unexpected.

It’s been a great phone!

Same. I'll probably try to run it out for another year and end up with the 18e. Its been a great phone, but its days have to be numbered.

I just bought a refurbished SE. It works great with newest iOS, Liquid Glass, etc. Do it!

Which gen of SE?

3rd is the only one still supported.

Both se 2 and 3 support iOS 26

https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/iphone-models-compati...

Funnily, the large display is the most important thing for me. I find my efficiency directly proportional to display size (which holds for laptops too).

If a 30 second task can be done in just 20 on a device with a larger display, that's absolutely worth it for me.

Also larger device tends to imply longer battery life too.

If the task can’t be done in a few taps I feel I’m better off opening a laptop anyways.

However the market agrees with you so I must be missing something. I used to think it was driven by media consumption on phones, and that I try to avoid, but this isn’t the first time I have heard people tout phone productivity gains from a slightly larger screen.

> I must be missing something

I wouldn't assume that.

The expression 'fat fingers' concerns the phenomena where users (including myself) lack the eyesight and finer motor skills required to type accurately on a small keyboard, so a slightly larger display makes all the difference.

Perhaps you simply have those fine motor skills (and good eye sight) so a larger device isn't necessary to prevent typos and remain productive.

I was able to thumb type at high speed and accuracy on the 3.5 inch iPhones. On modern iPhones, I produce more typos than ever, because apparently Apple thinks it knows which key I meant to hit better than I do, even with all the autocorrect and suggestions turned off.

I've banned social and don't use my phone much anymore, so it's less of an issue than it used to be, but it's really frustrating when I'm clearly hitting the right key and it insists on pretending I hit an adjacent key.

It’s so strange. Like, the obviously correct thing is to have a small ML model that learns the user’s typing patterns, which of their own typos they fix, which auto- and suggested fixes they reject, what rare, made-up, and jargon words they use, what acronyms they use, etc.

Instead, after 20 years of iPhone usage, I am not allowed to type the names of projects I use all the time without fixing the autocorrect every time, or (as you say) carefully hitting the left side of the F key because dead center will produce a G.

My preferred conspiracy theory is that larger, brighter screens hold attention better, so everyone involved in the whole “user experience” (phone manufacturer, application developers, advertisers, etc.) prefers (whether they consciously realize it or not!) phones to have a larger screen. Smaller phones make fewer demands; who would want to make a device like that?

I believe you are correct.

I have my phone with me all of the time and it has an always on connection. My laptop has neither trait

> I have my phone with me all of the time and it has an always on connection

That's a bug, not a feature. You don't need to be able to do every task all the time. In fact, it's nice to be able to separate that aspect.

Yes I can just print out directions on Mapquest before I leave home, tell people to page me and I will call them back from the nearest pay phone, carry around my Walkman and my Polaroid camera with me.

Have you ever thought that with 80% of web traffic coming from mobile, you might be the outlier?

What next? The old Slashdot meme “I haven’t watched TV in 20 years. Do people still watch TV?”

I believe the GP was talking about trying to do “real work” on a phone, which is something many people try to do — but which many others find a repugnant idea, as they currently use the excuse of the impracticality of doing work on a phone as a lever to push back on letting work intrude on their personal life.

Have you thought that a lot people work remotely and don’t sit at their desk all day? I have deliverables and deadlines to meet like everyone else. But sometime I would rather go for a swim in the middle of the day in the heated pool when the sun is still out - benefit of living in Florida in the winter - and work late and be contactable (wearing my watch) or go to the gym during the day (downstairs). Business traveling is also a thing (much less than I use to), working with people in different time zones where I’m not going to refuse to answer a message from a coworker in India if they need me.

It’s a fair trade off. My company gives me a lot of leeway during the day and I am flexible about time zones.

What a ridiculous exaggeration.

I said you don't have to do every task, not do no tasks.

> Have you ever thought that with 80% of web traffic coming from mobile, you might be the outlier?

Wow, snark too. In recent years, I've taken a much more luddite stance against mobile device usage for my own mental wellbeing. Maybe other people should follow suit.

"You should do your taxes on the train". No, I don't think that I will. You're free to stress yourself out like that. Have fun.

So park_match is the arbiter of what tasks should and should not be done on your phone?

> You should do your taxes on the train". No, I don't think that I will. You're free to stress yourself out like that. Have fun.

I along with 90% of the taxpayers in the US take the standard deduction - meaning my taxes are stupid simple.

I logged into the TurboTax app, it offered to download my w2’s, I answered five questions, entered the date that I wanted IRS to take out the taxes we owed and we were done. I don’t have to even file state taxes for the state I live in?

How would that have been easier from a computer? In fact it would have been harder if I had to use a computer because the other option I had to submit my W2 was to take a picture of it.

The things that require more than a few taps to do aren't things that need to be done at a moment's notice. Those things can wait until I'm at my laptop.

Just Thursday, I left home at 6AM got in an uber, waited at the airport got on a plane for an hour and half , waited at another airport, got on another plane for four hours, uber to the Airbnb and while I was out to dinner that night, my wife and I were planning a trip we were taking during the summer.

Are you suggesting that o just queue everything up until I set my laptop up?

Again you realize you’re the odd one right with most activity these days taking place on mobile?

Is there anything you need to do during that time? Or are you looking to fill that time with whatever to keep you occupied and enjoy whatever?

If it's the former, you lead a very different life from me. There are very few things in my life that show up and require immediate action (or action within 24-ish hours for that matter. Most things can wait). If it's the latter, I try to fill that time with reading.

Again, are you so much in the HN bubble you don’t realize that most people don’t wait to get home to their laptop (if they even have a laptop) to get things done in 2026?

Is it really that hard to look at stats and realize that you might not be the normal one?

I'm sure they do it that way. I'm also not convinced there's any actual need to do it that way.

You also didn't answer my question. Nothing in your travel scenario there, if I were in your shoes, would need me to use my phone for more than a few taps per actual task, while the rest of my phone use would go to mindless browsing or reading. What specific tasks are you imagining popping up here that I would then queue to my laptop?

Have you ever thought that the HNs crowd superiority complex above the “commoners” and unwashed masses may be unwarranted?

And no I’m not a young guy - my first computer was in 1986 in 6th grade…

I'm not trying to say my way is superior. On the contrary, I'm asking what use cases you have that you are unable to solve. If you have a genuine need to send emails from your phone at a moment's notice, then I can't argue with that; if you can't wait to respond to the emails you receive, there's nothing else to really do about it. That's why I'm asking what needs you have. I'm trying to better understand your situation, trying to put myself in your shoes.

But if you have no desire to actually respond to my inquiry, I shall remain in the dark.

Yes you will if you think most communication personally or even work related is happening via email…

You know sending email via mobile has been popular since 2003 right?

> Yes you will if you think most communication personally or even work related is happening via email…

The same principles apply to Slack, Teams or whatever else you may use. I don't do work outside of work hours, so what would I know. Email was just the example I thought of in the moment. Again, I'm asking you a question out of a desire to better understand your situation.

Personal correspondence doesn't take many taps to do. It's rarely more than 25 characters at a time in my experience.

> You know sending email via mobile has been popular since 2003 right?

'sending' and 'popular' are doing some pretty heavy lifting here. Reading, sure, I'll buy that. Sending? I'm not sure sending emails longer than two sentences from any device without a keyboard has ever been popular, for values of. It's probably more popular than ever given that touch keyboards make it reasonably possible, but James S. Casual isn't sending a lot of emails from his phone just through the sheer power of not sending many emails to begin with.

And 'popular' for that matter. Possible, sure, but how many people ever even had a mobile device that could send email before the iPhone came out?

I'm sure sarcasm and implying I'm stupid are great ways to convince your interlocutor, or the unseen masses for that matter.

I’m not implying you are stupid. I’m saying straight out that you’re feigning ignorance (ie not that you are ignorant) and you know how the world works in 2026.

Myself personally, I work remotely. I might be running errands during the day and still be monitoring Slack so I can be on a call at 6 or 7 at night with someone in another time zone.

I also travel for work - consulting - and travel personally during the work day and may work after I land. Even if not for work, do you wait to get to your computer to respond to text messages? Check HN?

Believe it or not, I'm not feigning ignorance. I just lead a very different life from you.

> Myself personally, I work remotely. I might be running errands during the day and still be monitoring Slack so I can be on a call at 6 or 7 at night with someone in another time zone.

> I also travel for work - consulting - and travel personally during the work day and may work after I land.

See, I would never do this. A.) I don't work remotely (not out of a desire not to, but it's just not viable with my current line of work), and B.) If I did, that work would be zoned off away from my personal life. If there's downtime, I can kill time by browsing whatever, but I wouldn't be out and about but also 'at work' at the same time. Work-time and personal time basically never mix in my life, and I'd like to keep it that way.

If you're 'at work' for 48 hours at a time, while travelling, then having to respond instantly at any given time makes a lot more sense, although I'd probably still want to defer those responses until I can get some downtime during any given travels to then type up my responses on an actual keyboard. I can however understand if that's not really viable in your life of work.

> do you wait to get to your computer to respond to text messages?

I've never(?) sent a text message longer than maybe 100 characters. Most are a fair bit shorter than that, and I don't send that many to begin with. Same goes for Discord, although confirming that is harder, since it's contaminated with messaged written with an actual keyboard.

> Check HN?

To read? Sure. I even read books on my phone. Respond to a comment? Not unless my response is really short.

You're being pretty defensive / aggressive about what some might call a phone addiction.

Most on HN know the data: healthier people tend to enforce boundaries with their devices. The average person is addicted, yes, but I'm not sure being "the odd one" in an era of actually decreasing literacy and numeracy and attention span is the insult that you seem to think.

No I’m not living in some Luddite bubble. I am sure you’re also surprised that I’m not running Linux and using KDE Connect.

Again, look at the statistics..

The statistics suggest that being perpetually glued to a phone is negative for your life across essentially every dimension.

Yes I’m sure that using my phone for things that in the before times I would have used a desktop computer to do over a 2400 baud modem is a negative for my life. Those negatives are around social media

I was ready to agree with you, as that was my belief. (I also agree it's a sign of a dangerous addition, but just like everyone in the 60s smoked, everyone today use phones)

Then I cam across this, showing about even split between laptop and phone

https://tgmstatbox.com/stats/united-kingdom-device-usage-bre...

I'd assumed it was more like 80% phone

> while I was out to dinner that night, my wife and I were planning a trip

Were you out to dinner with your wife?

Yes, during our first night of our 45 day stay in another country and she got a text from someone she is meeting on the first leg of our trip during our summer 45 day domestic trip asking could we come 3 days earlier. We were looking at our calendar, our Hyatt points, flights etc. while enjoying live music and planning our next get away.

I’m sure you would have thought we should have waited to take out my laptop when we got back home.

Surely your laptop has a mic on it and probably a camera. It also has blueteeth, wifi and stuff. Your phone has much the same and can act as a proxy to whatever is missing on your laptop and vice versa. Obviously, getting your laptop to fit under or within your "lap" is a bit of an ask!

Things like KDE Connect provide a direct bridge and a bit of imagination does the rest.

If your laptop isn't cutting the mustard then ditch it ...

... Oh your phone has a tiny screen and a shit mic and speakers, unless you stick it in your ear?

Horses for courses.

Oddly enough, I don’t carry around my laptop in my pocket all of the time. You do realize that in 2026 most people do most of their day to day non work tasks on phones don’t you?

Yes most people use KDE Connect..

Is this really a driving factor for people? If I anticipate tasks that I can't wait to get back to a good work environment to do, I'll bring my laptop and tether on my phone. It's a fantastically more productive setup than trying to ssh in via a phone keyboard or even write a long email. 1 inch extra on the phone screen diagonal won't move the needle there for me.

Yes and even though you haven’t watched TV in 20 years ((c) Slashdot) people still watch TV.

The feigned ignorance on HN that most normal people don’t pull their laptops out to do everything in 2026 is amazing

It's not feigned. I'm astonished to learn how hard people will work for the (seemingly to me) false convenience of doing things on their phone which would be (to me) much more straightforward to do on a more suitable device.

So I tend to assume that these stories are often the outliers, and that my personal experience is more common. I recognize the fallacy, and I suspect we're both wrong and we're both right. I just honestly don't know which one of us is more of which.

It probably devolves to a question of what kind of work we're talking about. The work that I do (or the way I do it), I do not believe could be done effectively on a phone or tablet, most of the time. I work with people whose work can be done there. And there are probably more of them that there are of me. But that does not mean I could become one of them.

(addressing your comment on another subthread): if music, camera, and web are a person's "work", then sure. But that does not resemble "work" for me in any way.

So it’s not feigned ignorance…

Again, you can look at the worldwide penetration of cell phones vs laptops, where most web traffic comes from, the amount of resources spent on mobile development vs desktop, the amount of revenue globally of phone sales vs PC sales, etc

I also don’t spend all day working and I definitely don’t take out my laptop when I’m not working

Worldwide is not relevant, and mobile-vs-desktop dev is not relevant.

Mobile-vs-web dev is probably a better metric. And developed, mature markets only. Anything else introduces the second- and third-generation tech gap inconsistencies.

Yes Japan and S. Korea who led in mobile penetration for decades are poor countries..

Are you really arguing in 2026 about time spent on mobile vs PCs?

This is non-responsive to my comments.

Also, you're being unnecessarily unpleasant in these threads; I wish I had read down further before replying initially, but I'm done now.

> Anything else introduces the second- and third-generation tech gap inconsistencies

This is completely responsive to your thread if you think countries that use their phones more than the US is some type of signal they are 3rd world countries.

Only about 70% of Americans even own a laptop[1]. Factor in many of those being ancient with 15 minute battery life, plus user preferences… it’s hard to see how that could be the majority use case.

1. https://www.statista.com/statistics/228589/notebook-or-lapto...

It's not feigned ignorance, it's disbelief that people are comfortable working in such an inefficient and frankly unpleasant way.

Can I file my taxes on my phone? Probably. But I could also set myself on fire, and I think that might be more fun. Why would I not want to use a tool that is 100x faster and 1000x easier to use for any task more complex than writing a sentence?

I'm a developer. I've heard of developers SSH'ing from their phone and developing that way. It's impressive, in the same way removing all your fingernails is impressive.

Really? I did file my taxes by phone. It took me all of five minutes.

90% of taxpayers claim the deduction - meaning their taxes are really simple.

I launched TurboTax, it offered to download my and my wife’s W2s, I clicked through a few buttons on a wizard and I was done. It had all of my information from the prior year so it already knew my employer.

As far as speed, have you compared the speed of the fastest iPhone to a low to midrange x86 PC? The latest A series chips in the iPhone are faster in single core performance than an M1 MacBook Air which is no slouch. But all that is besides the point. How fast of a computer do you think you need to file taxes? There was tax filing software for the 1Mhz Apple //e in 1986. You just had to print it out.

I entered maybe one number?

I live in a state without state taxes so I didn’t even have to file states.

FWIW, I also shopped for, did all of the paperwork before closing, for the house we had built in 2016 from my phone.

It‘s also generational. My 18yo sister in law is now applying for colleges and the word “application” immediately made her look for an app. That the whole process happened on a (not mobile friendly) website was rather surprising to her.

(English is her 3rd language)

I am 51. The amount of Ludditism on HN shouldn’t come as a surprise to me. But it does. Most older 70+ year old people I know don’t own a computer at all and would never use one. But they do know how to get to things they need on their phones.

I don't understand why are you downvoted. Are people in this thread really pulling out a laptop and trying to get it connected (or pay for one with a cellular modem) every time they need to respond two words to an email, call a uber or look up where is the nearest coffee shop that is open at an odd hour?

HN seems to have some really weirdly prescriptive view of how people ought to use their devices in a way that is almost like Steve jobs.

And they probably are also surprised that I’m using an iPhone where I can’t use Docker and have JavaScript enabled on my browser.

> every time they need to respond two words to an email

I don't have my work email on my phone, and personal emails basically never need any actual response.

> call a uber

This is a few clicks and not a big ask regardless of the exact device. You can order an Uber regardless of screen size.

> look up where is the nearest coffee shop that is open at an odd hour?

Google Maps works fine on smaller screens. Ask me how I know.

> I don't understand why are you downvoted. Are people in this thread really pulling out a laptop and trying to get it connected (or pay for one with a cellular modem) every time they need to respond two words to an email, call a uber or look up where is the nearest coffee shop that is open at an odd hour?

Because some of us read the original comment and thought maybe the discussion should be responsive to it:

> If the task can’t be done in a few taps I feel I’m better off opening a laptop anyways.

Talking about Uber, email and directions in Maps are literally "task[s] that can be done in a few taps". Perhaps being less "weirdly" defensive and taking the time to think about the discussion you're about to jump into would be helpful?

At least for me, the effect is real, and is driven not by media consumption but ergonomics of use. But at the same time, I'd say you're not missing that much. I always preferred large screens because of productivity gains[2], but even as screens kept getting larger, the set of things that "I feel I’m better off opening a laptop" for remained the same for me.

That is, until I switched to a foldable phone (Galaxy Z Fold 7) half a year ago, and - I kid you not - I haven't used my personal laptop since that day.

FWIW, I still have a proper desktop PC; In the past decade+, I've been using a PC at home, and a "sidearm" on the go / away from home: always a 2-in-1 Windows laptop with top specs[0]. Being always with me, this laptop often replaced use of PC at home too, because of convenience & portability.

So by amount of productive use, for past 10+ years it was sidearm >> PC >> smartphone. But getting a foldable flipped it around. Having twice the screen size of a regular (large) phone is a big productivity win[1], but it's folding that makes the actual qualitative difference. Folded, the device becomes a regular smartphone - i.e. something that fits in my pocket, meaning it's always on me, in my hands, or less than 1 second away. Contrast that with tablets, whose form factor makes them basically just shitty laptops (same logistic as ultraportable, but toy OS of a phone).

I didn't expect this. I didn't even feel this change - I only noticed two months later that my laptop has been sitting unused on my desk, covered by a pile of stuff. Doing "laptop tasks" on a mobile device is still annoying (no keyboard, toy OS), but combining tablet-sized screen with portability of a phone makes them less annoying than logistics overhead of a laptop - and at least in my case, this eliminated the entire[3] space between "smartphone" and "PC".

[0] - Think Microsoft Surface, except I could get better specs at half the price if I bought an off-lease but pristine Dell or Lenovo.

[1] - It's not immediately obvious to people, but as things are today, a foldable phone isn't any better at media consumption than regular one, because almost all cinema, TV, videogames, etc. are all produced for widescreen - meanwhile, the inner screen of my Fold is approximately square, so e.g. for most TV, half or more of it is black at all times. However, all that extra space allows to effectively use multiple (3+) apps on screen, not to mention makes spreadsheets actually usable.

[2] - Bigger screen = less scrolling and tapping in menus, but also with text size scaled to minimum, my previous phone (S22) had a big enough screen that running two apps in split-screen became useful on a regular basis.

[3] - Well, almost. There are some tasks I really like physical keyboard and larger screen for - but for those, I just plug the phone into the screen via USB-C, and volia, it turns into a regular desktop. A shitty one, but good enough for occasional use.

That's interesting. I knew foldables have been selling well, and I assumed they were basically the promise that tablets were trying to sell but as you said- usable this time. I've never heard anyone's actual story laid out like this before though.

Now I'm having second thoughts on what I'll do myself because I would have never guessed a foldable would be ideal as you described.

I've been trying to avoid building an $8,000 tech stack of redundant devices that I don't need. Which is what Apple is all about, and then some. It's not the initial investment that bothers me, it's calculating replacement costs over time. It's pretty quickly that you have half a new vehicle in redundant electronics. It leaves you asking: why?

So while I appreciate the longevity and durability of my iPhone 12 mini, along with seamless Airdrop and the Airtag network being as handy as it gets, I'm thinking about going back to Android for docking support. This is a feature I don't think Apple will ever add until the end of time, so I may as well bite the bullet now and get another OS switch over with.

I'm not entirely convinced I would love a foldable like you do, but I am rethinking that now. I've been on the idea that Microsoft's partnership with Samsung for Phone Link features will make my life delightful at my desktop battlestation, and DeX with a lapdock will cover any mobile needs. A lapdock really does create an alternative to the battery life offered by the M-series Macbooks, while leaving me with only two devices to maintain and replace with my desktop and phone.

It's amazing with the flexibility and options offered in the Android space, whether it be my proposal or your foldable experience, how they don't have more marketshare. I think the issue is marketing, people need to be shown what they can do with a product and Apple makes Continuity and closed ecosystem features seem like a value add. When it's kind of a lure to an iCloud subscription and $8,000 personal tech stack.

What, ummm, efficiency benefits are you finding on a smart phone? Is it related directly to the keyboard size when typing? That's kind of all I can think of, other than a really tiny display + big fingers being an issue.

I find my efficiency directly proportional to the distance from my smart phone.

You could put a sim card in a tablet in that case. Might look a little funny when doing a phone call though.

I did downgrade back to my SE (from iPhone 16). Big selling point (aside from its size and rounded corners) is the physical button with fingerprint. I missed that even more than I disliked carrying a big phone around.

I'm typing this on an iPhone SE (2020).

It runs the latest iOS, although it's likely missing some of the new bits.

I prefer the size, although the screen that spans the entire front surface would be the superior device; I like the iPhone 13 Mini.

My SO has the latter and switched from the former when it started behaving erratically.

It's the very last reasonably sized iPhone and one of the very last in this category overall.

I rather have the fingerprint button!

Former small phone person here: I went from a small iphone to a large one just to substitute not having to carry around my ipad. I really wish iphone fold is here sooner.

Same. The Pixel 4a was the perfect phone for me: Light, screen exactly the right size to navigate with a single thumb whilst holding the phone in one hand, enough battery life, small enough to fit in my jean pockets comfortably.

But people buy big phones in preference to small ones, so that’s what Google & Apple manufacture. Nobody (from the POV of Apple/Google decision makers) buys these smaller phones.

Completely agree. And to make matters worse, I can't even switch to android without losing the ability to reliably send quality video to iPhone users.

Apple suffered for decades from Microsoft's anticompetitive OS monopoly, and turned around and did the same thing to the android ecosystem.

I have no idea why this sub is full of Apple fanboys. I was an Apple fan 10 years ago, but these days they no longer deserve your support.

> the ability to reliably send quality video to iPhone users.

Just curious but why? Is it iMessage lock in?

Yes exactly. RCS exists but unless an iPhone user goes and turns it on it won't work. Which means no one has it turned on.

I don't think that's true. Every iPhone user I've texted in the last 6 months at least has had rcs turned on, and that's including some very non tech savvy friends that I doubt did it manually

It's also dependent on the telco supporting it. Australian telcos don't.

RCS compatibility with iMessages relies on the telcos to implement it, particularly for group chats.

iMessages work using SMS 1-to-1, but group chats require the telcos to enable RCS instead of SMS.

Of the 3 telco network operators in Australia, none of them have enabled it.

And no one uses WhatsApp, Telegram, Line or another cross platform messaging service?

You should look into grips that attach via Magsafe.

>it causes real pain in my wrist if I use it too much

LMAO

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