This seems to be a recurring pattern, big-handed people as the last holdouts of the non-gigantic phone screen. Apparently the smaller-handed have given up on single-handed use several phone generations ago, so they have nothing to lose from even bigger phones.
(Written with one hand on a way too big XZ2 Compact)
Yes, we do - RSI issues on the medical front and at some point you also simply exceed pocket size. For some of my jeans, a current generation Google Pixel barely fits into the pockets without sticking out at the top.
For me the ideal phone would be an iPhone SE running Android. There must be a market for this sort of thing and it doesn't make any sense to me that no company is even trying to play in it.
Note: I'm a dude who also prefers smaller phones. I have a used iPhone 5S but my primary phones are a slightly larger Android phone and a very large rugged Chinese phone (giant battery, dual SIM, good RAM, this is my travel phone).
[1]https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-iphone-sales-region-ch... [2]https://brilliantmaps.com/population-circle/
No, it's silly to assume that your experiences are the only experiences that exist.
Nearly every woman I know carries it in the back pocket of her jeans/pants
Most of the women I know only wear jeans on weekends. And some, not even then. I don't own a pair of jeans at all. My wife has one that she breaks out for Halloween or gardening.
Some will also carry it in their purse when her clothes don't have usable pockets.
Some women can't carry a purse with them all day to stick a phone in. For example, shopgirls in high-end boutiques, who can't hold a purse while doing their jobs, and also wear clothing that more often than not does not have pockets.
At one time Burberry made a cross-body purse that was just a strap and a tasteful phone case. It was very popular among the class of women for whom jeans aren't a fashion go-to.
It's impolite to mansplain. Tracyshaun was course-correcting the following generalization:
> Women have been putting them in purses instead of pants pockets for a long time. Pockets usually aren't even an option for womens' clothing.
It's doubly impolite to put words in someone's mouth, such as stating that someone is assuming their own experiences are the only ones that matter ("your experiences are the only experiences that exist" -- not something Tracyshaun said or even implied). When read appropriately, Tracyshaun's comment reads as disputing a generalization with Tracyshaun's own personal experiences and those of friends.
We can make HN an even better place to comment by correcting such generalizations the way Tracyshaun did and not mansplaining people for re-baselining our expectations.
Even this back pocket is small and a bad way to carry a phone, as evidenced by the fact that you can see it sticking out. You can't sit and you can't run without the fear of dropping it.
There is, but I'm not sure it's big enough. Sony plugged away at it for years with their Compact devices, and they were... not bad, all things considered. But they've stopped with the latest generation.
My hands are (to my knowledge) average size, maybe a slight bit on the small side.
Really wish more vendors made high-end smartphones below 5"... (I previously used a Z1 compact, and before that a Nexus 4 - loved both.)
It's borderline impossible to use with one hand, and hard to avoid dropping occasionally because it's so much heavier and harder to grasp. It's so slick that it regularly slides off of almost flat surfaces.
My next phone will be 5" or less. I have the same size preferences as you, and also owned a Nexus 4. I still think it was the pinnacle of the cell phone form factor.
Next, the screen to body ratio has changed screen sizing specs a lot. Phones are very much still sold in the iPhone 8 and Xperia Z3 Compact size.
PS: additionally, I'm actually not all that happy with "better" screen to body ratios, coming to the XZ2c from the original Z1c. Accidental touch events from the holding palm at the screen edges are a daily nuisance for me.
You seriously do sound like the kind of person who needs to try a Popsocket. Screen palm edge issues begone!
I did just test it vertically and it seemed to work if the PopSocket itself hung onto the lip of the charger. I think this might affect the charge rate, though, due to the distance from the coils.
[1] https://www.anker.com/products/variant/qicertified-powerport... [2] https://www.anker.com/products/variant/wireless-charger/A251...
My main annoyance is that I'm essentially stuck with "budget" phones since all of the top of the line phones have a larger form factor. I think 5" is ideal, but it's hard to find anything under 5.5" these days, much less something with decent specs.
I put a data-only SIM into my old Nexus 5 to use for tethering and as a secondary device. Right away I noticed just how amazingly small and thin it is!
The #1 reason people buy a bigger phone is the better camera. They don't necessarily want a larger phone, but they definitely want that camera to take better pictures of their kids/dogs/vacations/spouse/family.
My reaction to this quote is to think of everyone without perfect eyesight, e.g. most people as they reach a certain age.
My parents love their plus-sized iPhones. Reading glasses + ticking some boxes in iPhones accessibility panel (like ++fontSize) let them participate in the digital world again.
I loved my SE (would buy another one if i could read the thing) while i had it in 2016-2017 but the screen made my eyes go downhill noticeably and the nuisance of carrying multiple pairs of glasses everywhere made me replace it for a Android phone + BigFont app and problem solved.
How can such a brilliant company(Im a mac fanboi since late 70s) still be so useless on the mobile device UX?
That the "Done" buttons in an upper toolbar have persisted for so long after they were reachable is a bit embarrassing. It was a great design for the original 3.5" iPhone screen, started to get iffy on the 4" iPhone 5 depending on how big your hands are, and has been stupid since the iPhone 6 in 2014.
There's still other buttons up there, but you can get away without them more often than before. I guess the concession is that phones are assumed to be two handed devices now, which I think is unfortunate. If I want to two-hand something I have an iPad for that. Give me a one-handed phone with the same camera as the flagship. RIP iPhone SE.
More on the popover cards here (EDIT better link): https://medium.com/@hacknicity/view-controller-presentation-...
[EDIT] I think part of why I haven't made it part of my normal use of the phone is that the shift-from-normal-one-handed-grip-to-double-press-home-then-back-again maneuver is risky (of dropping it) enough I'd shy away from it and just use two hands.
I really wish to see iPhone SE2 with X like screen keeping same dimensions for my hands. :)
To be honest, I didn't find larger device more productive and usually when reading something I end up going on some Tablet or my laptop. but maybe that's just me...
> I'd imagine that this will only accelerate once the SE is the only 4" screen left.
one note though. Apple released new iPod Touch. so there's currently an active 4" product in the iOS eco-system.
Yes, 17% of these users are using the 4.7" screen, which is what's in the 6, 6S, 7, and 8.
The iPhone X and XS have a larger screen dimension in inches but the physical size of the phone is roughly the same thanks to a better screen to body ratio.
When we see 5 and 6 inch phones, but with higher screen to body ratio, some of us seem to mistake this with a phone that is too large to hold.
So what I'm saying is, no, Apple isn't deprecating the 4.7" screen size. Not in any way shape or form. The iPhone 6, 6 Plus, and 5S are being dropped for architectural and performance reasons. The iPod touch just received a refresh and should indicate that Apple will still support the 4" screen size for at least some amount of time.
My final piece of advice is to just get a PopSocket, it makes your phone way easier for single hand usage. There's no need to be stuck using a phone as tiny as the iPhone SE. Customers do not prefer it, it was not popular, otherwise we would still see that form factor.
This is not sufficient reasoning — industries can independently yet collectively decide what the next big thing is, and operate in tandem to produce a market where only that thing exists. Notably, the shift to large phone sizes occurred rapidly, suggesting this may have been the case. That the shift was not a reaction to consumer interest, but rather in anticipation of it.
The biggest recent example of this effect was the 5 years or so where every new tv was a 3D TV; its now been phased out in favor of SmartTVs, which I personally believe are shitty enough to likely have no real consumer support. Another example is car touchscreens, and their somehow consistent terribleness across all brands, even luxury ones.
When it comes to Apple, I believe it was not anticipation, but overreaction to the Galaxy Note. Phablets quickly became popular in East Asia[1], and "pocketability" turned out to be a complete non-issue for the many women who carry around a bag all day. But instead of just serving the phablet market, they've gone all-in on it.
That said, I absolutely agree that companies often converge on weird standards. I'm glad that the glossy screen hype seems to be mostly over, but now we're losing inverted-T arrow keys :(
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/sep/02/phablets-...
They were absolutely nervous about losing sales to larger phones that customers liked. Turns out reaching everything with one thumb isn't really as important as having a big screen to view content on.
We know the rest of the story, the next year the next iPhone became larger...
Customers loved iPhone SE, both because it was cheap and because of its size.
I love the size, the headphone jack, the price, and I get iOS and don't have to worry about the security and update issues of Android. What's not to like? :)
TBH, I probably would have upgraded to an iPhone XR had I not grabbed the SE on clearance but I ended up saving ~$500 so I'm happy how it turned out.
There's definitely a market for phones that are affordable, that can fit in your hand and run iOS. /shrug
But it was not popular in terms of volume. If you need any evidence of this, just look for Android phones with a screen under 4.5" containing a Qualcomm 825 CPU or better.
Actually, try and find any Android phone sold by any US cellular carrier under 5", never mind 4.5". This is not just an Apple-style opinionated decision, the whole market has spoken on this.
My honest belief is that people stopped buying small phones when the screen size trade-off didn't save them any significant money. I also believe that some portion of people who are vocal about the inevitable, eventual disappearance of the 4" screen aren't necessarily even using these small phones, but aren't happy about their disappearance out of some kind of principal or nostalgia.
I don't know that any of us would agree to use a 15" 1024x768 display again, even if it was free. I think it's the same concept.
As a consumer I don't remember even being given the option of buying any small phones (besides the now discontinued iPhone SE) for the last handful of years.
> I also believe that some portion of people who are vocal about the inevitable, eventual disappearance of the 4" screen aren't necessarily even using these small phones
I'm using my SEs as much as possible, but due to the limitations of iOS it's not feasible for me to use them as my primary work phone. This means I can choose between carrying two phones, carrying one that's too large, or significantly reducing my access to work resources on the go.
[EDIT] actually I suspect this is a common reason for purchasing larger phones and the phone makers know this, and are using the large-size-better-camera pairing to charge me $300-500 more for the better camera, instead of $100.
That's like observing that small cars don't do well with luxury buyers. Well, true -- because carmakers have chosen not to make small high-end cars. I've had friends tell me they wanted to buy a smaller car but the interior wasn't nearly as nice so they bought a bigger model. They'd rather have a car that's too big than get a second-rate dashboard and seats.
So I'm not sure why you're pointing to supply and claiming that it's indicative of demand of one particular attribute. Even more than with cars, the history of cell phones is companies making the wrong thing, and then having their lunch eaten by some other company. 15 years ago, all my friends had Blackberrys or Palms, but today nobody would say "The market had spoken" and everybody wanted hardware QWERTY keyboards and styluses. People didn't have a choice. These companies were seeing exponential growth, right up until a better choice was available.
Also, the desktop display comparison is out of left field. My desk is plenty big enough for two big displays, while my pants pockets aren't big enough for even one 'phablet'. I don't have to move my fingers across every pixel of my desktop displays to use them. It's completely different -- ergonomics, use cases, hardware, OS, apps, and so on.
Whenever there are fewer companies C than the exponent 2^R of the number of relevant attributes R, consumers don't have a sufficient number of axes of control to communicate to product designers purely through market forces.
(There's a name for that law, in the context of systems control theory, but I can never remember what it is.)
sigh or they make it but don't bring it to the US. Why no Mercedes A Class hatchback for us!?
As a happy user of mid- to low-end phones, I don't need anything in the 800 range. Decent 600s works for me. However, I'd love to have a site that allowed searching and comparisons based on maximum screen size. 'Nothing smaller than X' seems to be a near universally available filter, but good luck with 'Nothing larger than X.'
And I don't know if this is common or special to Huawei but my 5.2" Honor 8 also has a nice "drag across the home button bar" that shrinks the screen down to the bottom left or right in a roughly 4" screen size area. Very convenient for one hand use.
I don't believe that iPhones moving to a slightly larger screen size for a couple years (and without offering any new smaller models with the same performance) is evidence that people dislike smaller phones.
What would I expect to see if a sizable number of people did actually like the iPhone SE? Perhaps something similar to when Apple discontinued the cheesegrater: some people buying the new model, and some people clinging to the old one, and many people complaining online about having to make this choice and begging for an upgrade of the old design. In fact, that's pretty much what I've seen happening with the iPhone SE.
Apple famously has many future versions of their products in their design pipeline, so a missed prediction can cause a bubble that will takes years to clear.
Why is it so hard to believe that some people DO prefer smaller phones?
PS: I have average sized hands and without a case I can easily use an regular iPhone 7/8/X with one hand. Cases make this far more difficult, but imo that’s why phones seem to converge on that size.
That's true. However, it'd still be harder (or impossible) to reach every corner of the display with my thumb, which I think makes it tedious to use. I don't have a problem with that on my SE. If it were up to me, they'd just make the SE even smaller by removing the bezels.
And thumbs haven't changed since then!
Of which users? Of all the users in the set, 47% are on 4.7" phones, if I counted correctly.
Definitely agree the popsocket helps manage a larger phone. Though I think total screen size matters are much as case size. It affects where your thumb has to reach.
Total case size matters more for the pocket than for holding it, as users never grip the whole of the phone at once.
Small phones are most definitely not popular.
- Smartphone design goals are to cram as much into a phone as possible, so engineers prefer having more space to work with.
- If I'm a designer for a smartphone, I'm probably pushing for more screen real estate to work with
- If you can only pick 2-3 form factors to build with massive economies of scale (as Apple in particular has to do), the demand for a smaller screen might not align with the relative cost to produce
- I wouldn't be surprised if the "it's smaller so it should be cheaper" mindset that people have in other markets (cars come to mind) plays a factor here. The reverse would be true true: A company can charge more for a bigger phone because it's bigger.
So if, say, 20% of the market wants a smaller screen size but wants it done cheaply, there might not be enough incentives to mass-produce such a device in a way that makes enough money to be worth it.
The only thing impacting my phone purchases these days is the camera, which like you said, the good ones only come in 5"+ screen sizes.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/6/18212311/palm-phone-review...
> This phone is repeated called small in reviews.
It's repeatedly called a few more things in reviews as well.
Now I have a large iPhone, but almost all websites are responsive, so I’ve been thinking I’d like to go back to a smaller phone.
People quickly forget that prior to the 6, Apple was getting criticized by not 'innovating' and making larger screen iPhones.
I believe bigger phones are first computers for a lot of people, and they never graduate to owning a PC.
When using the phone as, well, a phone, I find smaller phones annoying. I’m never quite sure if the mic can pick up my voice if the earpiece is near my ear. I’m also much more likely to drop the smaller phone.
I’ve been this way for a long time. An early phone of mine was the LG Env which opened up and had a large-for-the-time QWERTY keyboard. It required two hands even way back in 200x.
I doubt that I’m representative of the average person in this regard. But I doubt you are either. I suspect for most people one-handedness is a desirable trait in a phone, but not as strongly desirable in the average person as it appears to be for you, so it just gets eaten by trade offs.
An iPhone 7 is already tall enough to stick out of some rear pockets. And the width is pretty close to the max that will fit. I'm a 5'7" male, 30" waist, wearing average cut/fit pants (not skinny jeans).
This is funny because I feel like mic quality has only gotten worse since the days of the Nokia candy bar phone where the mic fell about mid cheek.
Maybe it has something to do with the way you had to hold those phones and your hand naturally cupped from the mic around to your mouth.
Or the miniature mics in modern phones and thier reliance on noise cancelling with multiple mic arrays.
As for dropping, I disagree. I’m way more likely to drop a smaller phone.
That's why I have an SE.
I think Jobs was onto something when he insisted that users should be able to operate the device with one hand, meaning able to reach all the icons on the screen with their thumb.
My two and coming up on 3 year old iPhone 8 suits me fine. It also has Touch ID, which is a better UX then Face ID (grab phone with primary text hand and boom it's unlocked before seeing your face).
It doesn't solve the unlock delay, but it would make most other things people use FaceID for much quicker.
As a bunch of other people have said in different ways, it's not about hand size. Using my phone (other than scrolling or pressing play / pause) with one hand is a minor convenience, and I don't care about dramatically expanding the number of situations in which I can use it one handed.
On the other hand, I have an iPhone 8 Plus right now, and I wish the screen was bigger almost every day. There's just not enough room for readably-sized content.
May be mentioned elsewhere in this thread but it likely is diminishing eyesight that drives the bigger displays and not hand size. My wife has small hands but isn't able to see the smaller screens (4") so choses the bigger screen phones. I suspect that's the same choice for a lot of people in their 40s and beyond.
The thing is, a phone (to most people) is not just a phone anymore, it's an entertainment machine and for that screen real estate is crutial. E.g. During commute times, most people watch movies, read or play games on their phone but doing that with a small screen is not confortable.
HN demographic is an exception to the rule, mostly males (use phone on pocket) and less prone to use the phone as an entertainment source.
I've switched to an essential phone which I find to be a better size for a one handed phone for myself.
I also hated the SE because I found it to be super buggy at the time with the iOS upgrade and it was too small to be used effectively as a GPS and awful compared to slightly bigger phones(think standard iPhone size now, i guess) for media consumption.
I am a light user of a phone for someone my age(mid twenties). Phone use is texting, gps, occasional HN and reddit, and occasional discord and youtube.
My girlfriend on the other hand has tiny hands and would benefit from a phone the size of an SE, but she's constantly consuming youtube, instagram, pintrest, and other things that rely on media and images that I think are much more suited to a bigger screen despite the need to two hand the phone.
On a larger screen, it works well. On a small screen, it’s way too cramped.
I can use the XS single handed with no issues. I think most of the difference comes from the way you hold the phone.
I rest it on my little finger, and type with the thumb. I can reach the left top (I’m right handed) by just sliding the phone
Its like vertical video complaints: 90% of the people are conflating several UX issues to express their disdain, and the remaining 10% have a valid complaint
I'm a small guy though with small/medium hands (7.2" wrist to tip of middle finger).
So at this point I'm just going to say that not everyone likes the larger size even if they give it a solid try and it comes with other benefits. This applies to other things too: even if a great sandwich is cheaper and more filling than a good salad, some people prefer the salad. Some people like smaller, more spread-out cities where they can drive everywhere; other prefer living in a closet-sized space just so they can walk everywhere. Some people like sedans, others like trucks. Some people like Great Danes, others like Corgis.
I just wish smartphone manufacturers would make corgis again.
I have pretty big hands (L men's gloves are usually just perfect, maybe a little small), and I just can't figure out how all of these small handed people are using phones bigger than mine. I refuse to buy one of those add-on grips since they essentially double the size of the phone, and I don't want to have to use two hands to type.
I do love the real estate the 6.7" provides me, and am quickly getting used to this as the new standard for myself going forward.
Madness. Sheer madness.
Where do you see this? 320x is still a necessary design goal for 4" screens (6/7/8), as they use 320x layouts for the basis of zoomed/vision-impaired display.
A shame to see. I like my SE and will own one for as long as Apple allows, but designers are already forgetting to account for the 320 screen width. I see it with increasing regularity, in apps and on the web. I'd imagine that this will only accelerate once the SE is the only 4" screen left.
I don't get it! My hands are probably bigger than 95% of all humans, and I don't think a phone needs to be much bigger than the SE.