Exactly. There are tons of people (like myself) who wanted a small smartphone that gets the job done and gets out of the way. Apple blew every bit of that market away for reasons I can't fathom.

And since everyone copies apple, get ready for massive slabs across the entire smartphone market.

Slightly off-topic but how are other manufacturers copying Apple by making large phones? Apple was the only one not making large phones for years.

The difference is that most phones were large due to limitations of miniaturization of the tech. Now it's mostly for aesthetic reasons, which is fine, as long as manufacturers make smaller form factors. Apple stopped doing that, so expect everyone else to follow suit and make phablets from now on.

This is definitely not true. I worked in the smartphone industry before and at the time Apple started making large phones. Rumor had it Apple stuck with small phones because Steve Jobs wanted them to stick with the same screen size to avoid apps looking different on different iphones. Regardless, everyone was making them large because it provided the best user experience and eventually Apple switched to it as well because it put them at a disadvantage in terms of user experience. Even the term 'phablet' was coined before Apple switched to large phones.

You forgot the important part: mock Apple for doing something (before copying it next year)

iPhone 7 is $449, which is $50 more than what iPhone SE launched at.

But the SE was newer compared to the flagship then. What would the SE have cost this year?

> What would the SE have cost this year?

In late November 2017 no-contract SEs were going for $99 at some stores. A year later the price had dropped to $79. I bought one at $99 to use as an mp3 player and camera. Works great. I don't want a phone that's any larger because it won't fit comfortably into my pockets. Still using for day-to-day actual phone use a pretty great similar sized Android phone I bought for much less. I prefer it because it has an SD slot and replaceable battery and uses USB, all better AFAIAC than no SD slot, no replaceable battery and no USB. Phones are cheap and the cheap phones are very good.

Can't edit comment. From what I can tell, the refreshed SE was starting at $349 USD in 2018. That probably would have dropped if it was still on sale.

Maybe in the US, but where I live (Eastern Europe) the cheapest 32GB iPhone7 is still about 200 euros more expensive compared to the iPhone SE I purchased about a year ago. 200 euros is a sum that matters for a lot of people, including myself.

Euro was Over 1.50 per dollar at the exchange rate. No?

Currently 1.14 euro will buy a dollar. A year ago it cost 1.20 euro to buy a dollar.

You've got it the wrong way around. 1 Euro buys you around 1.136 dollars at the moment.