Hacker News Reader

Comment by carefree-bob | Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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."

> 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 ?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com