Right. A product is, well, a product of its time. I doubt Apple spent much time worrying how can we go bigger after saying we had the perfect size. Seems a bigger problem is how can we go bigger without people thinking that's the only difference? A 5.7" iPhone would be as out of place in 2006 (not enough power to push those pixels, low power screen tech was non-existent) as a 3.5" phone is today. No mental backflips required.

> A 5.7" iPhone would be as out of place in 2006 (not enough power to push those pixels, low power screen tech was non-existent) as a 3.5" phone is today.

Why would a 3.5'' phone be out of place, today? I see people everywhere assuming this is right, that increasing the screen size was truly needed (and demanded), but I'm yet to see the evidence.

I mean, I'm sure that there's evidence that people wanted bigger screens (if Apple did it...), but I can't seem to find it, except for interweb-people who blog about... stuff. :) Real people - do they want bigger screens? For them, is the 3.5'' phone really out of place?

Anyway: I guess I can be considered a interweb-person, tech savvy, heavy user*, and all that jazz. Still, I'm proudly driving my 4s. Even the 5/5s/5c is too big for me; I can't comfortably reach the top corners of the screens. I do believe that habits may have changed, but our anthropometry certainly didn't - the average human thumb is still the same length.

Plenty of articles show that people are buying phablets and bigger screen phones this past year at higher rates. In fact, I would argue it's the only reason Apple made a big ass iPhone as they were losing customers in this growing segment. Purchasing a product is a pretty god measure of intent.

"People are buying" and "higher rates" isn't really proper data. Also, phablets are somewhat new, so increasing at higher rates is normal.

What I wanted to know is roughly how much are the bigger smartphones being sold, against the regular-sized ones. The most recent Apple smartphones are big, both, while the "regular-sized" ones are from last year or before. Does the data supports this decision - "forgetting" about the "regular-size" and launching only bigger ones?

My attempt was not to share the actual data, but to allude that the data is readily available showing that "phablet" as a market segment is growing.

Can't put my hands on the exact article and corresponding chart, but from memory the segment has grown from around 4-5% area to closer to 10%. Again not exact numbers, but until I find the post that's all I got.

Consumers have had both "regular" and "large" phones to choose from and they're choosing larger and larger displays.

These are not the posts I'm specifically remembering, but do have helpful insight:

http://www.businessinsider.com/there-will-be-four-times-more...

http://www.canalys.com/newsroom/third-smart-phones-shipped-q...

> Consumers have had both "regular" and "large" phones to choose from and they're choosing larger and larger displays.

I'm sorry, but I can't read that from the data you shared. "They"'re not choosing larger and larger displays - it was an untapped market, so people willing to buy bigger smartphones are doing it, as they become available. We can't assume that everyone/most/many will follow this trend and we also don't know when it will stop growing. Also it seems natural that buying trends will, up to a point, follow marketing trends - if almost all automakers start selling only big cars, then people would choose "larger and larger" cars.

First, let me preface this with I really dislike large phones. My hands aren't big enough to use any of the new phones' screens one-handed, either. So, I feel your pain there.

The reason you're looking for is that these aren't phones any longer. Pulling numbers out of my ass here, but I bet the vast majority of smart phone users spend less of a hundredth of total smart phone usage actually talking on the thing. They're media consumption devices, just like your TV. And just like TVs, people like having larger screens so they can see more content, easier. Obviously, there is an equilibrium of size to convenience that will eventually be reached.

The web has changed. Agreed.

I agree. Steve Jobs died in 2011. It's like an eon ago in this field. He would have changed his mind so often in this period, over so many things, that we would be here reading tons of bad pieces about that time Steve said so and so and "oh look how the prick's contradicting himself all over again". Get over it people, the Steve's passed, we can't have him back, unfortunately, and the worst thing Cook & co. could do is to follow the footprints of a guy who completely defied even the most common rules of big business. It worked, because he was Steve. It won't work for Tim & Phil & Jony & Craig and all. They're too smart to ignore that. The only one who really thought he could be Steve II, Scott Forstall, has been ousted. And that's fortunate, or he could have steered Apple against the cliffs in a very short time.

The adulation is a bit rich. Wasn't 3.5 inches claimed to be "the perfect size" by this same individual?

Part of being Steve Jobs is knowing when you have a breakthrough and knowing when you've got an incremental improvement. He did plenty of the latter as well as the former.

There are a lot of Apple fans who are about to suddenly discover that their thumbs are actually longer than they previously thought, or have grown in the years since the first perfect iPhone was released.

The design of the iPhone is guided by what is technically possible as much as by ergonomics. As the size of our hands hasn't changed, how can a 4.7 inch phone now be perfect when previously 3.5 inch was deemed perfect? Here is one reason: as the devices become slimmer, your thumb can reach farther than before and hence cover a larger screen. So: it's the combination of thinness and size that makes the iPhone 6 still usable with one hand. I'm not denying that people might not care as much and simply want a bigger screen, too, and this is an additional factor.

> As the size of our hands hasn't changed, how can a 4.7 inch phone now be perfect when previously 3.5 inch was deemed perfect? Here is one reason: as the devices become slimmer, your thumb can reach farther than before and hence cover a larger screen.

Well, I'd say most of the problem here is trying to identify a two-dimensional screen by a single number, the length of its diagonal. It must make more sense to give the actual dimensions of screens.

I remember pained discussion of the Nexus 5 saying the 4 was wide enough. The 5 is only wider by a couple millimeters, but is significantly enough taller that they bumped the single number identifying its size. That's no way to communicate.

Doesn't perfect also depend on what you're trying to do?

It's all trade offs but as we increase what we do with our phones, a bigger screen potentially becomes more valuable.

I know a lot of people saying they have no interest in more than 3.5" or 4". Generally those people are fairly casual users. I also know "power users" (horrible term) who have been crying out for bigger screens.

I'm less worried about thumb size and more worried about how it feels in my pocket.

Heh, how about this gem:

>Half a billion original thoughts safely stored on iCloud.

Yea, very good idea to say something like this just couple of weeks after data has been leaked from iCloud.

This is satire, or sarcasm. Much like when he makes a quip about Jobs' health. (He was rumoured to have eschewed proper medical treatment.)

The audience responses (audience gasps) was like reading a script to The Simpsons. Like a dumb mob audience.

Sounds like a good cross section of the tech press. Only half kidding. There have been mentions of this kind of thing (cheering, gasping, feverish typing) in live blogs of these events from The Verge and others.

That's interesting. I know we have some mild interest in the industry, but some people's slavish devotion to it (with associated euphoria/disgust at features) seems really weird to me. How do they keep up the excitement?!

Seriously, this was a cringe-worthy read.

my experience with the iPhone is that Apple doesn't give a shit about old iPhones.

First, "old" in this case is "older than 3 years", which is about 3 years older than almost any other phone manufacturer; my almost 3-year old iphone 4S is still getting updates the same day a new phone does. (Yes, my more-than-5-years-old iphone 3G does not, so?)

2nd, they don't care about older-than-3 iphones. But they care about getting old iphone owners to feel good about themselves and to upgrade to a newer one. And disparaging older products goes against that.

The author of this piece has got it completely confused: Talking sh*t about your old products is in the Microsoft playbook. Whenever they have a new Windows coming out, they tell you how bad the old one was so you should upgrade. Apple has never done that.

> "2nd, they don't care about older-than-3 iphones"

great, so we agree.

> Apple doesn't give a shit about old iPhones

..

> my almost 3-year old iphone 4S is still getting updates the same day a new phone does

..

>great, so we agree

No. I don't think you do.

Please show us an example of another smartphone manufacturer that does better.

Google's updates make your phone go faster, while Apple's updates make your phone go slower ? :-) (Harvard Study) http://goo.gl/wyAQYE

Does anyone read the actual articles anymore?

A study by Harvard University shows online complaints rise every time a new version is released. Researchers discovered that Google searches for phrases such as ‘iPhone slow’ spike whenever a more expensive type of the device goes on sale.

In contrast, they found there were no such patterns for rival products such as the Samsung Galaxy.

Professor Sendhil Mullainathan said: The results are, to say the least, striking’. However, he warned that the perception of a phone ‘slowing down’ may be purely psychological.

The study bases itself solely on results of Google searches. (also, that's the kind of research some professors are spending their time on these days? wow.)

please explain how this is any sort of relevant to my argument.

i never compared Apple to anyone. i never suggested it would be in character for Apple to vocally disparage their old products. i never put a limit on "old" nor did I ever suggest the original author was correct (or incorrect). lot of people hearing what they want to around here.

feel free to downvote without explanation- that seems to be the trend in Apple threads.

Don't know why you're getting down voted either. My old ipod touch is basically a brick. The battery doesn't last more than an hour, I can't update the OS anymore, 90% of apps aren't for my older version of iOS, and it lags on every input.

I wish I could just install whatever version of iOS it originally came with and use it as an mp3 player. Don't know why iTunes let me update to a version of iOS that my hardware can't handle, but oh well.

I honestly don't understand why apple fanboys get so worked up over this stuff, as if Apple is infallible. I just try to keep my opinions about apple to my self for the most part, at least on HN, because that's the environment the user base here has fostered.

Can't even read relevant tech news on HN if it shows Apple in a bad light, but hey, I can always go to reddit if I want to get a dose of reality relating to Apple.

You might find Whited00r useful for older iOS devices. For me it made an old 3GS into a snappy prepaid loaner phone for guests visiting from out of country.

i was scared to even breach this topic but I agree here too.

the tone in my original post would have been very different if I could install an old version of iOS on my iPhone. strange you can't, no?

It's relevant in that it shows that there is most likely a reason that support doesn't last > 3 years.

If you're going to state facts like "hardware gets deprecated" simply just to state it, then you're not adding anything to the conversation and that's why you're getting downvoted.

If you're mad at Apple for not supporting outdated hardware when no one else in the industry is supporting outdated hardware, then you're being unreasonable and that's why you're getting downvoted.

thank you for a thoughtful response. my point is not that "hardware gets deprecated" nor am I "mad" at anyone. are these really the only two possible interpretations of my post?

my point is that just because Apple doesn't vocally disparage their old products doesn't mean they think their old products are perfect.

my point is that some light disparaging of their old products may be a refreshing dose of honesty. (inb4 "but that could be bad for business!". I don't care.)

Yeah, at least for me, that's how your original post came across. I think your points that you declare here are fine points and would likely have been well-received (or at least not downvoted) if you had started with it to begin with.

Without qualifying your original statement, it just sounded angry and purposeless. I agree with you now, though.

Not caring about something is not the same thing as disparaging it.