> And wow how I've missed Android, the UX is soooo much better in most aspects.

iOS has its problems, but every time I have to handle somebody's Android (i.e. to help them do something faster than telling them), I want to give it back as quickly as possible.

I feel the same way when someone hands me an iPhone. In 2020, the operating systems are equally capable and refined, it's just a question of what you're used to. If you had a great Android phone for a few months, you'd probably be just as comfortable with it as you are an iPhone.

When someone asks me what phone to buy, my answer is always "what phone do you have now?" because frankly, there is no reason to switch from one to the other. It's just a waste of time and energy to go through that.

Setting aside the question of whether the OSes are equally capable and refined, the simple fact of the matter is that most android hardware (both by unique SKUs and by total deployed devices) is hot garbage. I have to remember to slow way down and wait for the UI elements to react to my input whenever I handle anybody's android phone.

I just recently stopped using my XZ2 Compact for an iPhone 8 because the Androids software is really crappy and messed up. Thats a 2017 Apple flagship compared to a compact 2018 android flagship and the apple device feels infinitely faster.

I don't remember the details of it, but android uses more ram for applications, because of the dalvik VM. The iPhones also have way more cache on dye in the A CPUs. And apple completely decimates the competition in browser benchmarks.

I had a z3 compact before and was happily using it for 4 years before that(when I bought it was already old). Someone patched the system so that the camera apps still work on an unlocked device and I used a custom ROM which was working well.

Here's the thing about android devices. When you can keep them up to date with custom roms you gain things like fine grained privacy settings and faster lean custom ROMS.

But ... Sony is notoriously bad at that. Not only did their software quality degrade. They added more DRM and security features to make sure your Camera and other DRM functionality will not work on your custom ROM.

Compare that to Xiaomis Poco spinoff where they recently send all the XDA custom rom developers a free device to get the community involved.

I like Sonys devices but the software is utter crap. They completely botched the Android 10 update for most of their devices. It took them 2 months to release a version that wouldn't randomly fail and even then gesture navigation is not working in the older flagships. With Sony devices you can estimate only getting 2 major update the second one likely being buggy. Compare that to the iPhone update strategy which is a million times better.

To some extent the Android 10 disaster is to be blamed on Google since apparently the fingerprint problems existed in almost every vendors Android 10 release. I guess that when google moved their pixel 4 to no fingerprint/only faceID(or google face unlock) they just didn't care enough about other Android OEMs.

> I don't remember the details of it, but android uses more ram for applications, because of the dalvik VM

Not sharing an opinion on anything written, however Dalvik was replaced with ART all the way back in Android 5.

> To some extent the Android 10 disaster is to be blamed on Google since apparently the fingerprint problems existed in almost every vendors Android 10 release. I guess that when google moved their pixel 4 to no fingerprint/only faceID(or google face unlock) they just didn't care enough about other Android OEMs.

I feel that it is sad that Google phones mostly follow iPhone trends. It's as if the Google phone team are iPhone fans. Heck, I saw an Android team video and most of the people in the background were using iPhones.

I think customers would be better serve if each company play to their strengths, not on carbon copying each other.

Depends how old the phone is and how limited the h/w is though - Android is designed to work in some ridiculously under powered devices.

I highly doubt a top of the line phone like the Galaxy or the Pixel would have issues with input lag.

If anything, I get annoyed by how long animations on iOS take compared to Android. Everything feels like it's running in slow motion.

Apple software is pretty nice with their user experience. But I feel like 90% of this complaint stems from people comparing a $200 Android phone with $1000 iPhone.

Happens in laptops too. Its just silly. Go in the same price range and then make a judgement.

I have the exact opposite opinion. Don’t take my word for it, grab any Apple phone made in 2017 (worth about 99 bucka today) vs any entry to low mid ($100-400ish) android and the iphone will kick ass in most regards.

I long for the freedom of android and use iPhones reluctantly only because i really think they are a good value at almost any price point.

A three year old android flagship will also kick ass compared to a new low end android.

Can confirm. I did this, swapping my old SE for a Moto G7. After a few months, I still miss the iPhone. First, the convenience and care that shows in tiny aspects of the UI design. Second, Siri is usable while OK Google is not - it just fails too often to be worth even trying. I miss being able to use voice control.

Worse even, you can't pick up a Samsung flagship for trial in the store without the interface stuttering like crazy - at least if you're used to iOS.

Same with LG, Sony and others. The only smooth Android I have ever tried was Huawei's and I am reluctant to buy Chinese telco hardware.

> Go in the same price range and then make a judgement.

You can compare iphone and android performance benchmarks here [0] and here [1].

Apple devices still come out ahead of top of the range models from other manufacturers.

Yes I know benchmarks can be gamed and don't mean everything, but there is still a performance difference between top of the line Android models today, vs not only top of the line iPhones, but also iPhones from a couple of years back.

0: https://browser.geekbench.com/ios-benchmarks 1: https://browser.geekbench.com/android-benchmarks

This is a funny comment given the post is a out the cheap SE, starting at $500.

I have a reasonably top-speced phone - A K20 Pro, with a Snapdragon 855 - and it stutters. It stutters more than the last iPhone I used, a 2016 SE, and I used it until early 2018. The only top of the line phone I found that was responsive and fun to use was OnePlus, and they seem to have made speed and responsiveness their company motto. It's a shame they dropped the headphone jack, because that was my deciding factor for picking the K20, which I find painful to use at times.

My Galaxy S20 Ultra has a 120hz display with 240hz input sample rate. It is stunningly gorgeous, and there's simply no input lag.

Technically, most Windows desktop hardware is hot garbage. That's what happens when you have a system that can run on pretty much anything. And yet, Windows is the system of choice for large enterprises that have to get work done. Just because a system can run on lots of different systems doesn't make it inferior. If you were to use an equally priced Android device, like the Galaxy S20 Ultra, you would see the same smooth and fast performance you get on an iPhone. And that Galaxy S20 Ultra is still going to fast in 3 or 4 years. I'm running an Android flagship from 2017 and it's as smooth and fast as it was the day I bought it.

Also, typing on the iPhone is a pain because of the horrible auto corrector. Remember all the jokes from people on iPhones cursing on each other because of it? I guess Apple is miles away from Google when it comes to AI for these kind of stuff. Android's keyboard is so good because of it that I often write words pressing all the wrong keys and it somehow figures out correctly what I want to say.

I’ve had to turn off the iOS auto correct because it became so poor. It’s literally easier to type them out and correct the many mistakes than fight the auto correct.

is this something you noticed in the past couple of years? i dont remember autocrrect feeling so terrible...its like im being trolled every time i use it now. it suggests the completely wrong words and the wrong tense until i type out more than half the word.

Yes, it's got noticeably worse. It used to be pretty good.

“Ducking”

I just add all the variations of curse words to my dictionary which tends to take care of that issue.

I favor the gesture input, and it's surprising how many words have similar swype patterns for the keys.

Even when I turn autocorrect off, it replaces double word combos unpredictably, especially in Spanish. The biggest problem with iPhone in general is that it’s hard to tune for your needs, because Apple decided that one way is The Way.

I'm using android... sorry if that wasn't clear.

> In 2020, the operating systems are equally capable and refined, it's just a question of what you're used to.

I don’t think that’s true if you work with sensitive data or are just generally privacy conscious. iOS is then recommended over the OS from the advertising company (eg by tptacek and other experts here, if I’m not mistaken).

And I don't think it's true if you want a system that integrates Google Assistant and the G-Cam software. Being privacy-conscious is not universal, it's an individual priority. For you, get an iPhone. My statement was, weighing advantages and disadvantages against one another, the math comes out pretty close.

On a Pixel, I can use Google Assistant like a secretary. It screens the calls, forces the caller to answer questions, then relays the answers to me to see if I want to talk to them. That's pretty damn awesome. But again, it's not everyone's priority.

I used to think this, however now I think for a lot of users iPhone is easier. Fwiw I use android..

I used to think this as an Android user, however then I spent 1.5 years on iOS and now being back on Android feels like bliss.

Apple has the security advantage though if you disregard the information apps leak but then again on both OS's you can use Pi-Hole, or better yet NextDNS, to shut up some of the chatter.

Until you leave your house and use your mobile phone as a mobile phone, and then all access is granted to the data-sucking fiends.

And I say this as someone who runs Pi-Hole. But I feel like it is a battle I am using.

That's why I said "or better yet NextDNS", which is not tied to your home.

Apologies! I missed that! I'll look that up since it would server me well, thanks!

My mom (~75) got an S8+ last year. She had some prior smartphone experience with an old iPhone 4S but not as her primary phone.

First day she got the S8 I set it up for her and showed her how to make calls and send text messages. Next day I got an MMS with a picture from the garden, she'd figured that out on her own.

Mainly I think things are just different, some things are easier on Android, some on iOS and vice versa.

Unless you care about privacy, in which case the answer seems to be iPhone. I haven’t found a good Android experience that doesn’t involve funneling everything to Google.

You can atleast remove the googleware to a great degree, you can't do the same for iPhones easily.

Huge difference. You have fdroid, apk slicer and alternative stores without google gate-keeping. You can reflash your phone with ungoogled android or open source alternative gapps package. Use microG to sandbox google stuff.

There are ton of ways to contain googleware.

Which of those do you think are accessible to the average user?

All of them if someone else does the initial set up, from first hand experience.

What about updates or when something goes wrong?

Does google provide you support when something otherwise go wrong? No. Unless of course it's a pixel.

And I have a custom rom which gets update every month. Ungoogled. :)

The comparison you should be making isn't with Google, but Apple.

My experience with custom ROMs was unfortunately a lot worse than yours. I had the original Galaxy Note, and picking a custom ROM for that was a "Updated, has features, doesn't kill your battery - pick 2" kind of deal.

Not too different from MS not being first line support for your Thinkpad, but offering more for surface laptops.

I'm still under update coverage for my Pixel 2XL, haven't felt compelled to upgrade at all. i do wish more handsets supported using Lineage or another open variant/option for after coverage expires at least.

For updates, you hit the update button. When something goes wrong, same as others.

You can still use the google play store and switch email, maps, and browser and give almost no data to google and anyone can install apps in google play.

I use LineageOS without the google play (/media) services, which is the first huge step, then I also use as much from F-Droid as possible.

Google is very strong in the data heavy areas. GMail, Calendar and especially GBoard and are extremely hard to replace, as are YouTube and Translate.

Your privacy has much more to do with the apps you use than the phone itself. Apple doesn't collect user data like Google, but the difference between them is 1 company.

If you have an iPhone and you use Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, Microsoft Office, Google Photos/Docs, Spotify, the Dominos Pizza app, etc etc there are half a dozen companies holding your private information either way. If you want to go total lockdown, get an iPhone with a VPN and never use any social media or cloud apps, but don't pretend like having an iPhone alone is some huge change to your privacy problems.

You can have access to the google play store and browse with firefox, use fastmail for email, use maps.me for maps, and text messaging + a million and one different messaging apps.

Then google knows what? That you installed fastmail, firefox, and maps.me?

If you have Google Play Services embedded into your system and you use Google Play: Yes. You have a good chance of avoiding that by downloading through Aurora, though.

I must say I never understood why Apple is supposed to be any guarantee of privacy?

If you are technically minded, you can easily flash LineageOS + microg on your phone a use a virtually surveillance-free phone (as far as you can, ignoring stuff like cell tower tracking and opaque baseband, etc).

To be fair, most skinned Android variants are really horrible. My whole immediate family uses Android phones, but half the time I just don't know how to quickly tell them where an option is because I've used CyanogenMod/LineageOS on all my phones, and they're using Samsung's take on Android, which is shockingly different. Worse yet, they often are on much older Android versions than me which results in even more differences. Settings categories having different names is the biggest problem. At least on some newer Android versions there's a search in the settings so you don't have to guess where stuff is as much.

Yeah it's mostly Samsung but also Oppo and Huawei, that basically just seem to do a half-baked copy of Apple with their own peculiar weirdness thrown in to make it worse.

As a counterpoint, I think OnePlus's "Oxygen" shell is often quicker and better than the already spectacular default Android experience.

OnePlus’s customizations tend to be much lighter and more thoughtful.

That's the primary reason that I use Pixel devices. I want the stock Android experience and updates to the OS. I don't get those with other phones.

I hope you're not equating Samsung with Android. I find most (if not all) skinned Androids horrible as well. Spent some time with mine removing preinstalled bloatware using adb and then a bit more finding various settings restoring default Android behaviour on the Sony, even though it's relatively vanilla.

How could you not though? Skinned Android is how most experience android.

Yeah, which in mind tarnishes the reputation of Android. Well on the other hand most regular people don't even don't know what Android is, they only talk about "Samsung" phones, which is somewhat correct.

I think one of the main problems with Android is how _varied_ different versions are. When I pick up anyone's iPhone I find it equally easy to do everything. Even when I had an Android, picking up anyone else's phone and trying to change settings (you know, being the only computer person around, I had to help people fix problems) was an enormous difficulty. Just because I had figured out my phone well didn't mean I could even find the same setting on someone else's phone. It's been a few yeas - it may be more standard by now.

Learning new things is always hard, and some flavors of Android (eg; Samsung) are pretty atrocious. What problems did you face?

I have both an iPhone (work) and an Android (Nexus 2, personal) and use both daily.

I find (stock) Android to be a much more usable and capable operating system. Which is a shame because the iPhones really are better hardware, especially the smaller ones.

Part of that is of course what you're used to, but a lot of Android phone makers put their UI and crapware over Android. I don't know why they put extra effort into making their phones worse. I tend to look for the purest Android I can find.

> I don't know why they put extra effort into making their phones worse.

How else will you distinguish between them?

Hardware?

Yeah, unfortunately their hardware is getting increasingly identical. Same sizes, same shapes, same screens, same everything. In the early days of Android smartphones, we had phones with physical keyboards, phones made out of steel instead of glass, and tons of other physical differences. These days they all look the same and they try to make up for it by messing up Android in different ways.

There's still a few outliers, I'm dailying a. BlackBerry Key2 and have a backup UniHertz Titan on the shelf (which has a passport style 1:1 screen).

Love having a physical keyboard, and will gladly give up some screen size for a much comfier typing experience. That and the BlackBerry Hub is amazing and actually makes managing all my communication in a day much more effective. (Global shortcuts, gestured text navigation, a control key, etc):

At least Hub can be installed on other Android devices, for me a unified inbox is a killer feature.

> Yeah, unfortunately their hardware is getting increasingly identical.

Not to mention that you basically need to look at the latest iPhone to know what maybe 70% of Android hardware is going to look like for the next year or so (notch, cameras, software features like Animoji, even the absence of things like the headphone jack).

It's like everybody is supposed to have the same taste in hardware and features.

Both the state of smartphones and the state of laptops and OSs really make me want to get into that industry and make some better alternatives.

I have same experience with ios

Right? Simple things like selecting/copying text can be so annoying and unintuitive to the point where I wasn't feeling comfortable even after 1.5 years, and I'm somewhat of a power user in that I like to figure out the most effective ways of doing things. With iOS I've failed on so many different occasions and having to succumb to what I'd consider workarounds.

Another glaringly obvious thing with Android that frustrated me to no end with iOS: Why the fuck do you need to swipe twice to remove a notification. So many swipes wasted that I could've used for Tinder instead.

I have a boatload of stuff that annoys me about iOS, to the point where at one point thought about opening a Twitter account to send a daily tweet about something that sucks on iOS.

Emojis look good though.

Just to pile a couple more on, why is the only way to get to the bluetooth device list by going through settings?! Long-pressing/right-clicking on the bluetooth tray icon does that in every other OS I've used, phone or desktop.

And for the love of god why does your spellcheck keep trying to replace the word "talk" with "ya'll?" I've had to manually set text replacement for way too many word pairs like that, and if you do typo the word you're going for in a way that's not in the text replacement, it defaults to the weird choice anyway.

> Just to pile a couple more on, why is the only way to get to the bluetooth device list by going through settings?! Long-pressing/right-clicking on the bluetooth tray icon does that in every other OS I've used, phone or desktop.

This is something Android messed up since Android 9 (IIRC). You used to have a small arrow below the Wifi and Bluetooth (and whatnot) icons where you could select what to connect to. Removing those since 9 was partially what drove me to angrily expore iOS.

Can't say about the spellcheck because I used Swiftkey on iOS but the Android version is miles ahead of it. In hindsight I should've probably just reverted to the iOS built-in one.

Gboard for iOS was a bit worse than the Android version the last time I used it (years ago), but it was usable.

That might be, and might've been better than the native keyboard, but SwiftKey on Android is still on a level of witchcraft that I've yet to seen anywhere elsewhere.

Long pressing on the Bluetooth icon in iOS 13 gives you a device list now, if you wanted to know.

Well, that's a life-changer. Though it's annoying that it only seems to work after a second long-press to go from the condensed version of that little window to the bigger one.

My ideal is that I can flip up and change the source in the time it takes for a song to change, which I used to be able to do seamlessly in Android. Though according to the sibling comment, Android got worse for that use since I switched too.

Ok I kind of feel like an idiot now, I just checked and apparently on Android 10 you can long-press as well to get a menu of available devices/networks. I'm not sure whether this was already there in Android 9 or whether they introduced it later but I'm quite sure that I read the release announcements (and reviews/articles[0]) at the time and turned up empty-handed.

Just wish both had some kind of UI indicator that there's a long-press action available... it's not like people are reading mobile phone manuals nowadays, even if they existed.

[0] For example no mention here https://www.xda-developers.com/everything-new-android-p-deve...

A lot of this works on the basis of intuition and I think that's pretty okay for shortcuts. It becomes more problematic when it's an essential path, but then again right-click-abilityis also undiscoverable.

It's a totally intuitive thing, but after a few years of using something you stop trying to intuit as much and are just doing the things you know work.

True.

It works on my Android 8 device.

Are you saying you don't have a down arrow below the icon? I might be wrong as I said initially, I thought they removed the dropdown in 9 but might've been 8?

I do have a down arrow, which takes me to a sub-panel listing the devices, but also I can long press on the icon to go to the full list.

Personally I think the down arrow is way too small for me to press so I always just long press the icon anyway.

Ok then my memory was correct about the versions at least. Long-press or not, the arrow is still a great indication that there's an action besides a single click - wish everyone implemented something of the like.

Well this is an awesome thing to learn today!

As an iPhone/iPad user, yes, selecting text is absolutely jackiechan.jpg befuddling on iOS. To the point that you wonder if anybody at Apple actually uses it.

They've actually made it worse in a way by removing the magnifying glass, but at least the new copy/paste/cut swipe gestures are handy, if a little odd on smaller screens.

I agree that removing the magnifying glass was a terrible idea, but what's befuddling about selecting text?

The biggest loss for me on newer devices is 3D touch, since that's the best way to select text quickly and easily.

Try getting the cursor after tapping the Safari address bar with a long URL.

On many websites it will zoom around unpredictably.

Very awkward to select specific text in Notes etc. sometimes, especially around links and other clickable items.

> Try getting the cursor after tapping the Safari address bar with a long URL.

I’ve found that if you try to move the cursor with the keyboard it’ll show up.

I think that's less to do with realistic differences than it is familiarity... I've used google experience for the most part, and even then using someone's Samsung devices is different enough to be annoying.

For the most part, I adapt along the way... I've felt similar with iOS, but refuse to buy from Apple.

Refusing to feed anything more to Google whenever I have the choice, is the reason I will probably always avoid Android.

Familiarity may be one factor you never use one device long enough to get familiar with it.

It may also because idiots keep "innovating" with the home screen experience but for most androids the home screen is just another app you can replace with one not made by incompetents.

Nova is nice for example.

As a 95th-percentile-sized human, the large phones have been quite appreciated, there is quite a lot of frustration when everything in the world is the wrong size, whatever your size. Now if we could do something about airline seats, sedans, and home furniture.

Agree kind of, although airline seats, sedans and furniture haven't been trending towards one end of the spectrum over a number of years. And I think it sounds like a reasonable idea to offer cars with swappable (or well-adjustable) seats. Airlines already offer seats with extra legroom, as well as business class depending on your needs.

The first touch devices might've been around 3.5-4" (just guessing here) but they've since then been constantly growing to where 6" is nowadays considered normal. How far can you going up in size? It's definitely not comparable to finding the size of a seat, as a phone's "right size" depends on how you intend to use it. There are hundreds of phone models on the market but they all seem to revolve around price points (and hence features/specs). Why not expand the range size-wise as well while at it?

I have fairly large hands and I don't mind manhandling a 6" "phone" but I simply do not want to carry one in my pocket. I can't imagine I'm alone on this. Largest phone I've ever had was 5.5" and that one constantly fell out of my shorts pocket when sitting down and now with the 4" iPhone SE I've grown rather accustomed to the form factor and am willing to trade off usability (more difficult, precise typing required) for it.

And then you have people with small hands.

Edit: Easy one-handed usage is also important to me.

> airline seats, sedans and furniture haven't been trending towards one end of the spectrum over a number of years.

I beg to differ! Airlines have slowly crammed in more and more seats for years.

"Less legroom is now the industry norm. In the early-2000s, rows in economy used to be 34 inches (86 centimeters) to 35 inches apart; now 30 to 31 inches is typical, though 28 inches can be found on short flights, according to Washington D.C.-based advocacy group Flyers Rights. Seats have narrowed, too, from about 18.5 inches to 17 inches on average."

https://time.com/5636154/airplane-legroom-shrinking-asia/

I stand corrected! I still believe I'm correct on cars and furniture though. :)

Car size have steadily increased up to the early 2010s [1] and I haven't noticed a stop to this trend, especially when including the market movements towards car-like small SUVs.

Availability of smaller cars keeps going down (Honda Fit dropped in Canada, Toyota Prius C gone, etc.)

[1]: https://www.teoalida.com/cardatabase/images/Car-Classes.png

That's probably true but I thought we were talking about car seats. Car size doesn't really matter much within this topic, whereas I can imagine standard size car seats being quite uncomfortable if you're way smaller or larger compared to the average human being.

Its not just seats. Pushing the seat lower doesn't put the pedals any lower or change the distance between the steering column and the top of the windshield.

Every ergonomic setting on my car is at the extreme and it's still not right. I need the ceiling to be taller and the windshield to be taller and the steering column to be further from the floor.

The best car I ever drove was the silly VW New Beetle

Sorry but (after spending some time in this thread) I fail to see the point of bringing up extremes... I'm merely arguing for a couple of smaller smartphones on the market. Not because I have small hands, just because I don't really care for a huge screen. With the wide variety of mobile phones (in all sizes between 5-6") on the market they could squeeze in a sub-5 incher somewhere. Especially since just a couple of years ago this was considered huge. Hand size hasn't changed over the years.

It would definitely not make any sense to create a car with a seat where most people wouldn't reach the pedals or be able to look out the window. What you're looking for is customization. And yes, I think that car manufacturers should offer custom versions of their models tailored to people smaller or larger than average, I think that would be cool.

Agreed I'm slightly off-topic. I was more thinking of the general thread of some things getting bigger and not always an improvement (for various reasons).

Yeah although if we were to continue on the off-topic then I'd argue that I'm similarly baffled by cars growing in size, whereas you'd think that the increased urbanization would drive people to use smaller vehicles. Oh well, I guess there might be some logic behind it but I fail to see what.

The physical footprint, weight, etc have gone up but ergonomically they're made for the same size person. I can either sit on the floor or push my head into the ceiling and it's hard to find anything where my eyes aren't level with the top of the windshield. Sitting normally in my car with the seat all the way down I can barely see above the horizon.

The thing that annoys me no end when I talk about the size of airline seats is that the usual remark is: “but they offer extra legroom!” Yes, generally that’s true but being 6’10 (2.08m) tall I am forced to spend more money just to fit in the seat. Especially now that emergency exit row seats are also sold as extra legroom seats.

Airlines I've flown with Over the last few years haven’t been very accommodating...

Somewhat off-topic but yeah, I can understand your frustration... And it would naturally be great if airlines would be able to accommodate for people not fitting into average parameters. But it's also a tricky proposition, as you surely understand. Should obese people get huge, two person sized seats? Should people with stiff joints automatically get extra legroom? Should people with a cold have no passengers in a 2 meter radius around them? How do the airlines check/verify these things (yes, height is obv easy)?

Besides, even having the option to pay for extra legroom is what I'm missing altogether from the mobile phone market. Do you see my point? At least you have the option when it comes to legroom. I don't have any sub 5" options when it comes to Android phones, even though I would be prepared to pay extra for it.

There's a law requiring FAA to regulate seats. I have a petition to support it. Wouldn't it be nice to fly in comfort again? :) http://chng.it/HLxMmhnF

Ok, but then look at airline prices. Prices have dropped fairly consistently over the last 30 years. Even though you have to pay more, you are still paying less than people over the years. Seems fair to me.

Manufacturers have been trying to increase the size of phone as much as they can get away with. Larger size usually means larger battery & life (even after accounting for the larger screen) and more people doing more things on the phone (viewing more videos, longer reading etc). All are good for the mobile manufacturers. The size of the pocket is an unfortunate restriction in their ever expanding world. They are hoping and likely winning the bet that pants will start having larger pockets.

I wonder if this is a bit like bodybuilders and fake tan. Nobody, least of all bodybuilders, thinks bodybuilders should be the colour of French polished walnut (the ones with naturally white skin, that is!). But if being a fraction of a shade darker than your competitor gives you an edge in showing off, that's where you end up.

Rubbish, they have been doing it for one reason only. They can charge more. They get more profits for bigger phones.

It's obviously a profit motive. They can charge more and have to spend less on R&D since they don't have to try to squeeze all the hardware into a small form factor. Not to mention there is no competition that could eat into their marketshare since nobody is making small phones.

I also think it's responsible for the unisex fannypack comeback success.

I have no problem using my 6 inch phone generally, but I can't use it one handedly (especially over head), which is insanely annoying.

Agreed. I recently bought a Nokia 3310, just to hold my two extra SIMs (because I move around) and I was enamored by the T9 keyboard and remembered typing SMS's while driving without looking, back in the good old days 20 years ago. You can't do that shit anymore. Slightly off-topic but felt I should share..

There is a clothing manufacturer called Kuhl that makes pant and shorts [other stuff too] and all their pants have a cell phone pocket on the right leg. The quality is very high but they are kind of expensive. My 6" iPhone fits perfectly. I don't think anything larger would though.

I have a Kuhl zip-up fleece hoodie - a large phone fits in every pocket. There are zippers on the pockets to keep the phone from falling out. It's by far the most comfortable hoodie I own, even though it isn't very attractive.

Haha are you seriously suggesting that I should change my wardrobe instead of my mobile phone?

From what I've read, when Sony came out with the first portable transistor radio, they outfitted their salesmen with shirts that had oversized pockets to fit the radio. Just an amusing bit of history.

Clothes are definitely cheaper to change, more disposable, and in fact changed much more often than mobile phones. Are you seriously suggesting that one should change their phone to acommodate their clothes?

Having vendor lock-in on my pants is a step too far.

And the cheapest pair of pants there is $75, Which is more than I pay for simple clothes like plain pants, and by the time you're getting a whole wardrobe, you're at least halfway to that phone. More if you value diversity in pant-styles.

This is starting to feel like trolling... Yes, I am seriously suggesting that. To continue on the trolling, I suggest that everyone now using 6" phones immediately upgrade to 7-8" and upgrade their wardrobe to clown clothing. Then they can have that huge screen estate to watch their videos on and pockets that match their devices.

Fun fact: pockets are generally made of thin internal fabric and making them bigger does not require making the clothing baggy.

The depends on the size of your wardrobe and which phone you have.

>Airlines already offer seats with extra legroom, as well as business class depending on your needs.

I don't like having to pay more money because I was born a different size. Not to mention you are usually paying more than other customers for the added responsibility of accepting to help in case of an emergency.

If you happen to be male (and I'd wager 95% of people who are tall enough to complain about airline seats are), then you have a distinct and inherent advantage when it comes to sexual attraction.

This applies whether you're homosexual, heterosexual, or both.

Oh, and statistically you make more money as well. But you're less comfortable on airplanes, and Asian minibuses, so it's impossible to know if it's a net benefit or not...

>Oh, and statistically you make more money as well. But you're less comfortable on airplanes, and Asian minibuses, so it's impossible to know if it's a net benefit or not...

Don't forget shorter lifespans, back issues, discomfort in most vehicles, difficulty finding clothes furniture and bedding (unless you're well off) and instant contempt from any male shorter than 5'9".

And washing the dishes is also uncomfortable and always get wet unless you squat all the time. :)

I'm above the 95th percentile in male height, and have never experienced contempt from short men. Must be friendly.

I'm also below the 99th percentile, which is where most of what you describe starts to kick in.

Lucky me, I guess. I do have to put up with my knees pressing into the back of airplane seats...

I'm 99th percentile, 6'6". If I had to pick a height it would be 6'4".

There are certainly benefits, but most people ignore the drawbacks when discussing height. I like to put it in perspective for shorter men who feel unlucky as well.

The argument about attraction makes no sense to me either. People reporting they like tall people also care about other traits. If you find a partner who fetishises you just for your height you really haven't gained anything, it's still just as hard to find actual love.

Let's not even get into the advanced math required to find positions that work with an average sized partner.

> If you find a partner who fetishises you just for your height you really haven't gained anything, it's still just as hard to find actual love.

Truly... it's similar to how a dashingly handsome hollywood heartthrob has no real advantages over somebody who looks like Quasimodo with smallpox.

The former has to wonder if their beautiful successful wife decided to have the family he always wanted with him because she loves them or if they only did it because he's a sexual object.

Whereas the latter may face personal and professional consequences for making the exact same advances the former would be rewarded for and thus is prone to self-isolation for fear of societal reprimand. He gets to live in a wonderful world of woke cynicism.

Yeah, 6'4" is probably the sweet spot. I'm a bit short of glory there, but I'm not complaining.

Fetishizing height might be more of an issue at your lofty stature, along with the thin air and whatnot. It's not what I'm talking about. Height is like facial symmetry, there aren't any downsides (talking about 90-98% here) and it just means more occasions when your crush crushes back. At the margins, this is a plus.

Everyone makes up for their deficits by playing to their strengths. It's important to acknowledge which is which.

Worth noting that sexual attraction isn't the only place this comes up, there's robust evidence that everyone, male, female, and otherwise, considers taller men to be more trustworthy(!), better leaders, and the list goes on. It's deeply unfair of course, but it is what it is.

There are all things out of our control. I can't control other people's attraction. I can't control someone hiring me or paying me more because I'm tall, hell you can't really even measure that on an individual level. These are basically genie rules, right? No love/attraction.

Want to know what is in our control? not charging extra money in order for someone to not hurt themselves on an airplane because they fall outside the bounds of average.

The problem is that everyone wants that extra leg room, not just the exceptionally tall.

Reserving the good seats for the height-advantaged is discrimination against short people, who are already discriminated against for personal characteristics beyond their control.

Suck it up and pay extra.

This is a disingenuous take. There's a big difference between a shorter person wanting extra leg room because it's nice to have, and someone being in actual physical pain because they couldn't afford / weren't quick enough to get one of the few seats they can actually fit in.

It's not.

There's no such thing as fair allocation of a scarce resource. Offering it at a surcharge is, in my not-disingenuous opinion, the least unfair option for this particular one.

Outright reserving it for tall people is discrimination against the short. There are other reasons someone might want the emergency row which are just as legitimate, knee surgery leaps to mind. Should we make a comprehensive list? How do we determine if someone is just lying to get the premium leg room?

I'm open to the argument that the federal government should mandate a larger minimum seat distance. But then, I'm not poor.

As I said, there's no fair way to allocate a scare resource, only degrees of unfairness.

A surcharge would be appropriate if it was proportional to the space used.

But you're completely wrong on the "discrimination against the short" front. Imagine if everyone that can easily walk demanded a wheelchair and cried discrimination if they didn't get one.

This actually happens. Ask your flight attendant friends about “miracle cures” walking off their flights after using wheelchairs to board.

They don't openly admit to not needing one at all, while still demanding one, do they? And if they did, they'd be obviously wrong to cry discrimination, right?

>the least unfair option for this particular one.

Nah dude, the least unfair option is to make sure everyone isn't in pain. After that, charge money, do whatever...but your option to literally hurt people for the way they were born sucks and breeds contempt.

> I don't like having to pay more money because I was born a different size.

If you eat more than the average person do you also expect grocery stores to give you extra food at no extra cost?

In an ideal world, no one would have to take on extra responsibilities for being born outside the average. I'm 6'5". I eat more than someone who's 6'0". It sucks that I'm taxed because of the way I was born.

If you take up more space, you cost more. And even with an extra leg room cost, prices for flights are cheaper than ever.

> I don't like having to pay more money because I was born a different size.

But you're fine with paying extra for more screen estate on your phone?

I'd gladly pay less - or more (I don't care either way, I just want the option!) - for a smaller footprint phone.

Personally I'd be fine with it if it was comparable. By that I mean 10% more leg room equates to a ~10% increase in airline ticket price. But currently business class tickets are significantly more expensive - sometimes 200%+

If I had a disability that required a larger screen, I wouldn't want to pay extra for it...if that's what you're getting at.

It's really not. I would simply like the option of having smaller size mobile phones available on the market. I don't really give a shit if they are differently priced. If they only existed that would be a huge improvement from the current situation.

For me phone size is not about human size. I'm tall person and my finger are quite long. It's about one-hand use. I was able to use iPhone 4S with one hand and it was convenient, not some kind of stretch. It's just not possible with iPhone 8. I'd pay good price for 3.5" iPhone 4S with modern internals.

That said, this boat has been sailed. Modern apps won't work on tiny screens because their developers optimize for large screens, so it's a pointless desire.

Agree! And have definitely noticed this both on websites and apps, that sometimes for example it's impossible to highlight a field that's buried behind the keyboard.

One would think that you'd test the whole iPhone range when developing, since it's actually doable (compared to the Android landscape with infinite resolutions) but no.

I'm not blaming Apple for that though.

I don’t understand why people don’t see this!

It wouldn’t be so bad if the phone had a window manager and you could keep everything you wanted in a corner (although the iPhone 7 digitizer feels less accurate than the SE was so maybe that wouldn’t work so well.)

I’m in the same boat as you. I waited until iPhone 6 to buy my first iPhone precisely because the previous ones were too small for my usage. But, I full get the appeal for a smaller phone. I don’t expect Apple would revert back to the SE size though. They’re clearly optimising their manufacturing process to “eat leftovers” and reuse pipelines

Buy a seat in a cabin nearer the front. Buy a larger car.

These options are available, there’s nothing for people who want to have a hand sized phone.

I'm in your boat here. I have pretty large hands, and I've always regretted not getting the XL size of my Pixel 2.

Kitchen counters, too.

Nice choice on the XZ2. Like you I picked up a phone from the Xperia line. It's an older model than yours, namely the Z1 Compact, which I chose after filtering for form factor, LineageOS support, and price. I wrote about it here: https://hallau.world/post/the-perfect-android-phone/

That's a great little table you've built there, highly useful for finding new phones with LineageOS in mind, bookmarked! I wish I would've found it a week ago...

It seems that for support is not fully there yet for the XZ2 Compact, camera is still a work-in-progress, unfortunately: https://forum.xda-developers.com/xperia-xz2/development/rom-...

But once that's sorted out I might be tempted to switch, or at the latest when I run out of official Sony updates.

My previous phone, a Sony Z5 Compact, was sadly one of the worse phone experiences I ever had, software wise. I used it for 4 years and in the end it was sooo slow that was unbearable (maybe the internal storage degraded?). Battery life was great thou, 2 whole days when I bought it and in the end it was about 30 hours but after 4 years it was better then newer, just unpacked phones.

Wow, the Z1C is pretty old. Do you have any trouble with battery life?

I used to run a Z3C, but after some of the seals got loose I upgraded to an XZ1C. It's near perfect for me, and I don't know where I'm going to go next for a compact phone.

> Wow, the Z1C is pretty old. Do you have any trouble with battery life?

z1c battery is cheap and not too hard to replace. all you need is a hair drier, credit card and adhesive to stick the back cover again.

i’ve replaced mine in like 10 minutes after watching instruction on yt

I also had a Z3C and upgraded to an XZ1C. I liked the Z3C's rounded rectangle design as the XZ1C can be uncomfortable to hold in certain configurations. And I liked the color tones for the Z3C more. Other than that I'm very happy with the XZ1C. I hope they put out another phone with the shape of the Z3C and the specs of current flagships.

I did have the same issue on the z3c with the seals coming loose. Eventually the glass panels got loose too.

Wow, nice article! Bookmarked.

It's funny that 5" smartphone is branded as "compact" :D

It is compact compared to the competition!

Dell Mini 5, 2010, oh how people laughed at my clown phone, now it's 'pocket size'!

I'm hoping this recent announcement will highlight the gap left in the market for 4-inch phones.

a couple months ago i got a Sony Xperia XZ2 Compact to replace my Z5 Compact (4.6") - they are hard to find new!

i'm waiting eagerly for the camera focus bug to be fixed in oemv6 firmware to flash TWRP & Lineage and try it as a daily driver:

https://forum.xda-developers.com/xperia-xz2/development/rom-...

for now, my Z5 Compact is still going strong but has known noise cancellation mic issues (hardware) that cause echo on the other end of some calls.

> they are hard to find new!

I know! I found a single online store in my country selling them. There were lots of listings but in all stores except one they were sold out.

I was just looking at that XDA thread today and yeah, once the camera issues are fixed I'll probably be looking at flashing Lineage. At the latest once the official Sony updates stop coming in. Or if the next one brings back the bloatware I've removed..