I was itching for this announcement, not because I want to buy an iPhone, but because this will finally mean other manufacturers will start to make compact phones.
It drives me up the wall that I simply cannot find a reasonably competent phone (i.e. mid/upper range from the past 4 years) which is not absolutely fucking huge. It's insane that the "phablet" standard from ~5 years ago is now not even the new standard, but the only standard.
> It's insane that the "phablet" standard from ~5 years ago is now not even the new standard, but the only standard.
Utterly insane.
I replaced my SE with a Sony Xperia XZ2 Compact yesterday. It has a 5" screen and decent specs (2018 flagship). About as small as you can get a mobile nowadays, sadly.
And wow how I've missed Android, the UX is soooo much better in most aspects. I can't believe I was stuck with iOS (as an experiment) for almost 1.5 years. Reason being that I hadn't been able to find anything below 5" in the Android world.
> 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.
> 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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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 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.
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.
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."
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
>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".
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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%+
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.
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
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...
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.
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.
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..
I know a few people that still have the SE, and for all of them it was mainly about the size. That and a belief that they didn't want to be glued to their phone all the time. So the benefit was a combination of the smaller size being more ergonomic, plus the fact that less content fit on the screen was actually a pro for them because the extra friction encourages wasting less time on it.
It does seem weird that instead of continuing to serve this market, Apple assumes everyone wants their same large form factor and it's only a matter of price.
On the other hand, maybe we're just in a bubble. Trying to avoid consumer tech even though you could easily afford it is a rather niche, privileged view of a subset of people that work in tech. Maybe outside this bubble there's a much larger group of people who do want the big, more up to date designs and price is the only consideration.
> It does seem weird that instead of continuing to serve this market, Apple assumes everyone wants their same large form factor and it's only a matter of price.
The problem there is that they can't get the smaller form factor, +nice specs, at that low price but at a higher price it would probably not sell as good because the SE line always had that air of "more affordable iPhone" to it.
That why this new SE is exactly iPhone 8 dimensions, to a point where Apple even confirmed that iPhone 8 cases will be compatible with the new SE.
So it stands to reason that they retooled a lot of their 4.7-inch production to make this "SE" as affordable as it is.
Trying to put all of that into a 4-inch screen form factor like the original SE, would require sourcing completely different parts, require much more retooling of already existing manufacturing processes, for many parts, there'd be zero overlaps with their other products.
So while people like me prioritize the 4-inch screen smaller form-factor, Apple chose to embrace the SE as a "budget iPhone" brand that makes all the other "budget" competition look like really outdated and lame ducks.
Which is most certainly a bigger market than people prioritizing size of the device over anything else.
> So while people like me prioritize the 4-inch screen smaller form-factor, Apple chose to embrace the SE as a "budget iPhone" brand that makes all the other "budget" competition look like really outdated and lame ducks.
In fairness, 4.7 inches is now a very small phone. So small in fact that you have basically no options that small in the Android line, and no recent iPhones that small either, if I'm not mistaken.
As a lifelong Android user, I'm very grateful that this exists. I detest just about everything about the Apple ecosystem and dislike the design of most of their products I've tried, but I will be getting an SE next time I have to get a new phone unless Android has responded, simply because that's the only way to get a quality phone that small. Even if it means giving up Firefox, for example.
> As a lifelong Android user, I'm very grateful that this exists. I detest just about everything about the Apple ecosystem and dislike the design of most of their products I've tried, but I will be getting an SE next time I have to get a new phone unless Android has responded, simply because that's the only way to get a quality phone that small. Even if it means giving up Firefox, for example.
You don't have to "give up" Firefox, per se. I use Firefox and "Firefox Focus" every day from my iPhone X. Sure, Firefox doesn't use Gecko on Mobile, but a ton of core Firefox features work great: Sync, Send Tab to Device, AirDrop, etc.
No addons though, I assume. That's whole point of Firefox on a phone for me. WebKit / Blink based browsers have much better performance. (I don't use any of the features you mentioned, though of course that's just specific to me. Maybe other people would find Firefox on an iPhone useful.)
> In fairness, 4.7 inches is now a very small phone. So small in fact that you have basically no options that small in the Android line, and no recent iPhones that small either, if I'm not mistaken.
You have to look at the physical dimensions though. A 4.7 display edge-to-edge would be truly compact, but this one has a huge bezel so it's closer in size to the flagships and not really compact.
Yeah, I didn't realize quite how big it is. Strange ... why not just make the screen bigger instead of releasing a new phone with a bezel that large? Is it really that much cheaper to do?
pretty sure the user you're replying to was merely explaining that Apple made the SE larger due to manufacturing convenience, rather than any ideas about optimal size.
Well, it's an economic use of their existing assets and resources, considering what else is currently happening, on a global basis, that's a really smart choice.
COVID-19 means that in the coming year a lot of people will have a lot less money to spend, not exactly the best time to cater to the luxury $1000+ phone sector branding yourself with exclusivity.
The 5S and the SE for me was mainly about being minimalist.
Size was a big part of it, but it was also that the SE was a really good design that should last for years. Up until this announcement, I was going to have the battery replaced on the SE. The bigger issue is if Apple will continue to support the 1st gen SE with iOS.
My wife prefer the bigger phones. She has aphantasia. I don't, and often hold visualizations of things I can't see.
It eventually dawned on me that people buy those things to attach to the back of their phone because you _couldn't_ safely hold and operate the bigger phone with a single hand without that attachment.
Well, iOS 14 will only be formally announced by Apple in WWDC, which is in June. Apple hasn’t mentioned that release name anywhere yet. So any announcements you may have seen on device support would be speculations or rumors.
Keep in mind that the old SE was still being sold by Apple until just a year and a half ago (discontinued in Sep 2018). Generally, their devices can be expected to be supported for several years after they were newly purchased. I would be quite surprised if iOS 14 drops it, and have some hope for the release after that even.
Well, good for you? I don't know why my wife prefers the bigger screen, but I came to accept that she experiences the world differently than I do, and prefers the bigger screen.
> That and a belief that they didn't want to be glued to their phone all the time.
This made me think of another reason they are cutting smaller form factor phones, maybe not valid.
It could be that manufacturers of mobile phones are optimizing for engagement (see: apple switching revenue to services), and the engagement metrics on smaller form factor phones are lower, so they want people using less of them. They only want you to be able to buy a larger phone, because they want you to engage with your phone more.
The bigger the phone, the larger the surface area for the battery that they can put on it. I suspect that's the primary engineering concern driving it, and it just so happens that customers either like, or haven't balked, at large screens.
Yep. A screen's power consumption grows with the surface area of the screen (w * h) whereas a battery's capacity grows with the volume of the battery (w * h * d).
I think the dominant market pressures so far has been practical concerns like phone thickness and battery life so manufacturers - who are all also competing with their past products - are forced to sacrifice screen size options to compete. Now screen size is becoming unwieldy and screens/batteries have steadily improved so we might swing back the other way.
You could double up on gains on a smaller phone by reducing the screen resolution, which reduces the power demand on the chip managing the display, and so on. Back when I had the Nexus 4, at 720p, I never felt it was pixelated or annoying. Then again, I don't watch movies on my phone either.
On the other hand, given an OLED screen, where energy cost only grows proportionally to the number of pixels receiving power, you could slap a big screen on the phone "for watching movies" but have the phone display a smaller screen centered on it (with black bars around) most of the time. I have a feeling this is the direction the industry would go, if battery life truly became a concern.
The impractical aspect to that idea is that it would mean creating a new accessories variant. Keeping the same physical dimensions as a previous phone means compatible cases are already available from hundreds of accessory makers.
You're getting downvoted (I guess because of the all caps and self proclaimed very good reasons?) but you are absolutely correct. Headphone jack + ergonomics + modern processor + price were the key selling points for me on the previous iteration.
I'm thinking to buy SE 1 while I can, even though I own 8. If I would break my 8, I'll either return to SE 1 or change to Android. I don't like new iPhones at all. I don't even like iPhone 8, I just bought it for its internals and I thought that I'll get used to big screen. Turns out, I did not.
The only good thing about 8 is that it's kind of water-resistant, so I can read books in my bath.
Damn. I just said upthread that I (an Android user who has never owned an iPhone) would make it my next phone because of the form factor, but you're absolutely right about this. I had forgotten. I certainly won't ever be buying a phone without a traditional headphone jack.
Hate to say it, but you should probably be eying your next phone based on what is on the market now - new models with headphone jacks are increasingly unlikely.
Then I won't be getting a new phone. I'm quite serious.
That said, the situation doesn't seem to be as dire as that. Last I checked there seem to be plenty of inexpensive phones that "still" have headphone jacks. It's ironically the top end of the market where people buy phones for signalling that you can't get them.
I’m still on my 6s+ for the headphone jack. And I really see no reason to upgrade, anyway.
But I would pay good money for a new iPhone with a headphone jack, if anyone at Apple is listening. Make it the pro super-duper model, with a $200 premium: I’m in.
But alas, I’m stuck on 6s+ for what seems like a foreseeable future.
Main thing for me is size in the hand and squared off sides. I find anything with rounded edges I can't hold on to and just hits the floor constantly... little better with a case, but that makes the phones just that much bigger and less comfortable. I can't bring myself to let go of the old SE's.... of which I keep two around just in case.
I found the iPhone 5 the slipperiest phone I’ve ever held. The texture seems designed to minimise friction between the phone and your hand, and the square edges make sure as little as possible of the back is in contact with it too!
Hm, at 4.7" this might be a bit bigger than the original SE (4.0" I think?), but I think it's still among the smallest phone on the market, no? Are there even any smaller?
It's apparently the format of the 6~8 (which incidentally is likely why the 8/8+ was discontinued at the same time).
So it's quite a bit bigger than the original SE, though the biggest issue I had with the design (on a 6S anyway) was that the metal back and rounded edge made it much slippier than the old 4/5/SE design, much harder to hold securely.
Anyway the SE/2016 was 123.8mm x 58.6mm x 7.6mm and 114g with a 4" display, the 8 was 138.4mm x 67.3mm x 7.3mm and 148g with a 4.7" display.
Significantly heavier (+30%), noticeably wider (+12%) and taller (+15%) and about the same depth (-4%).
Are there any Android phones for sale that are smaller than 138.4mm x 67.3mm though? (That are 'standard' phones, not gimmicky super small ones like the unihertz).
Some of the Android phones that seem to be known for being 'compact' are the Samsung Galaxy S10e (142.2 x 69.9). Google Pixel 4 (147.1 x 68.8) (slightly smaller Google Pixel 3, 145.6 x 68.2).
I'm having trouble googling to figure out the smallest 'reasonable' android phone available, I'm not super familiar with the market.
Aha! Sony Xperia XZ2 Compact is only 135mm x 65mm. Found one! Few mm smaller.
But I think the new SE may still be one of the smallest phones out there, even if it's bigger than the old SE. The market seems to have moved... larger.
There are certainly people (including me) who would prefer it be the old SE size... but it's not like there's really anywhere else for us to go. Except experimenting with the specialized 'oddballs' like unihertz.
With the new SE, Apple has still put out one of the smallest phones on the market, so is still serving the smaller end of the market. Which, yeah, that is weird.
I hate screen cases. But I bought one for iPhone 8 because this thing is not made to be used without case. I dropped it first day, it's just not convenient to hold. I had 4S for 6 years before and never dropped it.
FWIW I firmly believe that the protruding camera array is a confirmation that they intend for phones to be in cases. There's no way it lies flush on a desk without a case.
It feels like really poor design unless that was the express intent.
The design is fine, if ugly on a phone, but it’s utterly bonkers on an iPad, which you put down on a table to write on and doesn’t even see that much camera usage…
Just to add a different perspective: I never used a case for any of my iPhones or iPads. I refuse to hide that mostly beautiful body in a cheap, or even high quality, permanent case.
And yet I have still sold all of those dozen devices in flawless, virtually pristine condition when it became time to upgrade. I think the secret is to use a lightweight, thin textile sleeve [1] during transport, in your pocket or bag. Plus, it also serves as a soft bedding when your device is resting on a table or other hard surfaces. It also has a microfiber inner lining, which combined with the snug fit keeps the display clean.
Sorry for sounding so ecstatic about a sleeve, but I always wondered why temporary sleeve usage wasn’t more popular compared to those dreadful permanent cases.
...as someone who absolutely loves big phones - I am on the other side of this argument.
I read and watch shows on my phone constantly, and screen size is a major factor for me. I specifically buy clothes with larger pockets to accommodate.
I agree that choice would be better - but I imagine that economies of scale sometimes means having only one size for everyone if you want to keep them cheaper than the competition.
Here's the rub; I'm glad you have your fill of phones to choose from. But consider that I (and many others) have nothing.
If the situation was reversed I would not argue against larger phones, in fact, I was part of that generation when the iPhone 4, 4s, 5 et al. were being released and over in Android Land the OnePlus One was coming out (legitimately called a Phablet)- I welcomed the choice. It wasn't for me of course but more variety is great.
Unfortunately choice has been removed and I regret celebrating the new form factor thoroughly.
What I'm trying to convey is that: I'm glad you have choice, please give me back mine. And I would graciously ask that if you're ever in a conversation about large phones vs small phones you don't take the stance of arguing against the existence of smaller phones simply because you have a preference for the current standard of sizing.
It's amazing how personal conversations about consumer tech can get. Your comment struck me as being a tad too emotional for what is, ultimately, a relatively mundane aspect of life.
But maybe I'm wrong, and you have your reasons.
I guess part of it is our impotence in the face of a multibillion-dollar ecosystem of mass-produced products, and the realization that we're (apparently) irrelevant (I share your distaste for large phones).
Anyway, I too hope smaller phones become commonplace again.
Consider that for many of us, our phones are now quite literally painful to use one-handed, and we have no alternatives - for devices that most of us use for at least an hour or two a day and is often our primary tech device when not actually at a desk.
My Pixel 3 at the time I bought it was one of the smallest decent quality phones that wasn't iOS, and even after a year and a half I still notice how much my hand has to contort for basic usage.
It's a computing device I use for at least a couple hours every day, and which I never leave the house without. Once my current phone breaks I'd just like to buy a new one I can keep in my pants pocket :)
It's a bit personal but it highlights the trend of going in only one direction without regard to a big subset of users. But in the end it's just mundane as you said it, we could probably just do without
You're upset that someone likes big phones because there are so many big phones?
This is really one of the most bizarre comments I've seen on this website.
We're not talking about rationing our food resources during a great depression where someone chimed in with "but I like excess rations!" while you get none. Nobody here has the power to change the size of manufactured phones with their two cent internet comments. What's the emotional bargaining for?
I really hope we can find a way to move beyond our hysterical fixation on gadgets and their grapple over our happiness. It's just a phone. It's just a laptop. It's just a smart toaster.
Yes, You really did just read this. But I think you took the wrong message away.
The parent "Would argue against" small phones, because they prefer larger phones.
I am asking him in the most sincere way I know to not argue against smaller phones because their preferences are currently well served. However mine haven't been nearly met in years.
I find the rest of your comment very bad faith, this is a first world problem _of course_ but this is a topic about a new phone and I haven't been able to buy a new phone in 4 years at this point. At some point the EOL will strike my phone and I'll be essentially forced (by application support, website performance, lack of browser updates whatever) to carry something that feels more like a mini ipad or tablet than a "phone".
Look, Phones are a central point of our lives today; I do my banking on it, I pay my bills on it, I order food with it. I literally pay for everything with it. It's not unreasonable that there is at least a modicum of variety that _isn't_ camera based.
Person B is having a hard time with the status quo.
Person B complains, asking to be included.
Person A complains, "I don't have a problem"
Producer (C) sees the bickering as a muddled frenzy, unable to understand if there is a need or people are being fussy.
--
If you are in a position to discuss phone sizes and someone floats the notion of a smaller phone. And you would "actively" argue against that- Then I would like you to not do that. Not because you're the CEO of samsung, but because someone who could convey critical information to the CEO of samsung might be swayed into inaction (because inaction is easier after all) by those comments.
Iphone SE user here. Big screens is why I have an iPad in the house. Small form factor is why I have an iPhone SE in the pocket. My iPad gets _much_ more use than my iPhone. I'm not out and about much, even before the virus. I see phones sticking out of people's pockets and it makes no sense to me.
My perfect Apple ecosystem would be a standalone watch that makes phone calls, initiate text messages, and can pair to my car via CarPlay. Basically do all the things that my phone does right now w/o needing the iPhone.
My phone is simply the conduit that everything flows through - I have everything routed to Mac, iPad, etc. My phone is just on a table next to my keys so I don't forget to pick it up on the way out the door.
The Apple Watch has to have an iPhone paired to support calls which means you need to own and activate an iPhone with a carrier.
I tried to get this setup with a cellular Apple Watch and a cellular iPad but it ultimately meant I didn't have a cellular phone number that could enable the Watch to take calls.
I use both android and apple. Recently got a ipod touch to replace my iphone. I don't understand the need for huge phones. We've got a bunch of ipad pro 12.9" for general tablet tasks.
Now I common carry an android and ipod touch tethered. Best of both worlds. The samsung is small too.
I never understood watching stuff on a phone given tablets, laptops, PCs, smartTVs and even VR headsets. But then again, I take my laptop everywhere and use it for everything when there's a choice between the two.
Not everyone has the necessity or ability to carry around a laptop with them everywhere. The convenience of a 6.5"+ screen is great if you are away from a laptop.
True, but for watching video? Is the need that common away from home/office/workspace? I get YT videos, which often don't need as big a screen, but movies and tv shows on a phone?
I don't watch tv a few yards away, but point taken people have different lifestyles and needs. I should have rephrased the context to be my surprise that the big phones came to totally dominate the market, when it makes them harder to handle and more cumbersome to keep on your person. I didn't think consuming content would completely trump that, not with the simultaneous rise of tablets. Choice is good.
Back when I was going minimalist and traveling more, I learned to watch my shows on the phone. I would lay on the couch or in bed and watch it with headphones. I ditched my desktop. For me, it was about having a few, high quality tech than a profusion of tech. If a device can serve multiple purposes, even better.
Now I am more settled and have a family, I watch things on my phone a lot less.
I understand, but wouldn't a tablet have worked better for that, in addition to reading and browsing? It's not a like a tablet takes up that much room or weight.
Being minimalist is about what works specifically for that person. What seems to work for you doesn't mean it works for me. I have spent effort at intentionally designing my life and environment. Not having a tablet at that time was an intentional decision on my part.
Rather than using a tablet, I was using a Kindle Paperwhite so that I can take my library with me. I don't use it to browse the web.
I have quite a bit I use my SE, including Evernotes, my meditation timer, my Go client, etc. I don't actually need a tablet.
I have a tablet now. More because my wife and the T-mobile guy convinced me that I can use it as a backup 2FA device with Krypton. There are some use-cases that I am looking to incorporate things with... but again, I don't actually need it. I probably won't take it with me when I travel.
I guess, but seems weird to me to watch video on public transport instead of listening to music or a podcast, or reading something (which I do use my phone for). Then again, I don't have good public transport where I live, so I don't spend time on it to know.
But it's more about do enough people want to watch video in public or on the go such that large phones became the dominating choice?
Fair enough, but I edited my comment to add that it surprises me that this preference became the popular one. The reason being that in a public place, people can often see what you're watching and there are potentially a lot of distractions, plus on transport the ride might won't always be smooth.
Watching TV is, for some people, a Very Important Activity
I don't get it myself, but for whatever reason a lot of people do enjoy this. I'm guessing as a coping mechanism. Probably in the same vein as reading books/news, or playing video games etc.
I have an old friend who every night picks out some criterion collection DVD to watch, and posts about it on social media before/during/after.
That said, I have a tablet I use for long-form reading/youtube (90%+ reading) during train/ferry rides > 10 min, but obviously haven't had to use it much recently. Mostly reading.
I like to watch lots of videos and television sometimes but not all the time. Ive lately transitioned to watching YouTube / Netflix . Also, when I want to learn something I try to look for Youtube videos that are relevant.
But your needs/desires are well catered to by the many many large phones. My needs/desires are completely ignored in the marketplace (maybe too few people agree with me). I tried larger phones. For a year or so I had a iPhone XS, but I absolutely hated it. So a month ago I upgraded it to a used SE, which I love.
for me, devices of different sizes do different things; I carry a lot of specialized devices, from a small laptop to a giant e reader to a regular sized ereader to a cellphone to a watch, and for me? the thing that is currently missing is a thing I can input text on with one hand (while doing something with the other hand) the SE original filled that gap; the iphone 7 is slightly too large to comfortably input text with using one hand, it's a little cramped to input text with two, at least for my hands.)
I should try one of those pop-out deals and see if it makes using the iphone 7 with one hand practical.
I spent 20-odd years enjoying how how mobile phones went from being huge 2-3 pound 'bricks' all the way down to the Nokia 100 gram 'chocolate bars' of the mid-2000s that fitted beautifully in my shirt pocket.
Then I watched in disbelief as phones began getting more and more swollen every year and got too large to hold comfortably in one hand. (or fit in your top pocket)
Time and again the phone-shop salesmen would look sideways at me when I said I didn't want the latest and greatest offering, but one of the older and smaller phones. My current phone is an iPhone 5S that I have kept for several years.
If they'd have minimal bezels, for comfort, in an iPhone 5 body we'd have about ~5.2" available for the screen. Unfortunately keeping the bezels for the fingerprint reader, earpiece, and front camera (~60% screen to body ratio) means that while it would fit better in small hands, the small screen may not give a great experience with today's content (sites, apps), or our eyes.
My old iPod Touch 5th gen. was quite a shocker for everyone who nostalgically reminisced about the good old times of small screens. I guess it depends what one expects from the phone.
To me this is the opposite of what I want in a small phone. It is less the physical size, rather that since 99.9% of all my usage is one handed, I need my thumb to be able to reach anywhere on the screen. With the ability to have minimal bezels, my preference would be to shrink the phone to meet the screen, not to enlarge the screen.
I never understood why Apple kept putting it on the front. It's so much better on the back like it is on most Android phones. You can unlock the phone without having to adjust your grip on it, which is great.
This home button/fingerprint reader combo is taking up so much precious real estate on what is a small device, and I just don't get it. It seems like bad design to me.
The jury is solidly still out on the "better" part. There's no consensus between customers on this topic. Manufacturers who placed the fingerprint sensor (and power button, earlier) on the back, or even the side despite the clear disadvantage of having a tiny sensor, did so to make the bottom bezel slightly smaller, not because of proven better ergonomics. And given the opportunity they switched back to the front, under the screen. Most also chase thinness at the price of smaller batteries which says nothing about the soundness of the decision.
> This home button/fingerprint reader combo is taking up so much precious real estate
The button is there because the design comes from a time when the screens were small so on-screen buttons were a waste, and the body needed to be large enough to accommodate everything else. This phone is an iPhone 8 with a better SoC. It's not a new design or even a redesign.
The design isn't bad, it's old. And it's old so it can be cheap. They achieved a worthwhile result a pricepoint where at the very least it provides exceptional software support and a current generation SoC. There are few phones that serve that segment (OP5 was pretty much the last one in the price range - good SoC, OKish support, regular old bezels). You can freely sacrifice this for better screen to body ratio phones if that quality is more appealing.
You make it sound like the iphone 8 came out ages ago. It was two and a half years ago. We were long past the point of on-screen buttons being a waste, or the body needing to be larger. In phone-land this isn't an old design, it's a retro design. It doesn't save money to do it this way.
> You make it sound like the iphone 8 came out ages ago.
The design features relevant for this discussion (bezels, physical button) didn't come out with the iPhone 8. I'm counting the age of the design since it was first introduced, not since last use. It is an old, successful design which leads to a cheaper phone.
> It doesn't save money to do it this way.
Of course it does. Any new design and part made for this phone implies extra expenses - new tooling, assembly lines, supply chains, etc. This drives up the cost and price of the phone. And you can't save money by sharing/reusing too much of what you have in place for your flagship line because for every $400 phone you make you took capacity away from a $1000 phone. So old stuff gets reused. You get a much cheaper phone by slightly upgrading the $300 iPhone 8 than the $800 iPhone 11. Works like this in every industry.
I have used android phones with a backside fingerprint scanner and it worked really well. Apple can be incredibly stubborn some time and hold onto something for way too long. It was the same with the one button mouse.
The main button was on the front, so they integrated the fingerprint reader into it. Moving the main button to the side or back might have worked but would have been non-intuitive for many users (e.g. my mom just realized her iPhone 11 that she got launch day has a mute switch, and that she has had it engaged for weeks). A back fingerprint sensor would also require some gestures to change, such as swipe to unlock - attempting a complex motion while also attempting to reposition your grip to hit a sensor on the back is going to increase drop rate.
They got rid of the button and the fingerprint sensor in one go, so there was never an opportunity to have just a fingerprint sensor on the back.
It's frankly one of the reasons I got rid of my iPhone 6S shortly after buying it, for another Android phone. A lot of Apple's ergonomic choices just seemed bizarre to me compared to most Android devices. I'm sure they've gotten better since, but things like the fingerprint reader on the front were in my opinion bizarre and made me have to completely hold the phone different just for my fingerprint, where on most Android phones my finger is already right there in its normal usage position in my hand.
that's something many people would've hoped. but Apple product cycle is re-cycle. so the R&D of this SE allows going to target price while keeping their expected revenue.
Sadly as I'm not getting any younger my SE 4" becomes harder on my eyes and my decision of having 16GB at the time got it to be filled. though it's really the best phone and most reliable phone I had.
(that's btw a pro for using the iPhone 6s -> 8 design including fixes for bendgate/audio ic/etc at least I hope so)
The screen on the old iphone SE (i.e. the iphone 5 body) still seems fine to me when using it with today's content. About a year ago I upgraded from one to an iphone XR but on the occasions I use the smaller phone it still seems fine.
It's called "IPhone SE" but does that mean it's the same height and width as the previous SE??
That's the key thing about the SE and before it the 5S-- something that can be operated with one hand and that can fit in a pocket.
It's clear from the photo that it doesn't have a camera optic that's flush with the back, nor does it have that cool pseudo 1960's Philips-like metal case with flat beveled sides.
It looks like this is on the same chassis as the iphone 8 (5.45" in the longest dimension) whereas the old iphone SE was on the same chassis as the 5 and 5S (4.87" in the longest dimension).
I'm with you on the size, which is why I still have the SE myself.
It also bugs me that no one is showing a comparison of the new SE to the old SE, so here is an old article I found, 2nd photo is the 7 (5.5 in), 6 (4.7 in == new SE), and old SE (4 in).
So the new SE is bigger, but still acceptably small for most people. It seems like Apple couldn't bring themselves to make it any smaller. And at this price with these features, it will be my next upgrade (in 2-3 years), and I predict it will sell like hot-cakes.
You can fit a bigger screen into the same space with the bezels removed. There is no compelling reason to have a 4.7" screen when a 5.something" can fit in the same form factor.
I did think it was odd to have such a large, ugly bezel on a contemporary phone, especially one from Apple.
I absolutely want a smaller device, and the trend towards phablets becoming the new "normal" really annoys me. But why does this have to be so damn ugly?!
The Palm Phone[1] looks pretty cool and certainly ticks the compact box. It's almost enough to make me consider Android but I'll probably just keep using old SE until it dies.
The forces that made the "phablet" standard are the same thing that makes software today so terrible -- "Let's support our biggest and most profitable use case and screw everyone else!"
This is not what tech is supposed to be about. There's supposed to be options, so all types of users can feel comfortable and at-home. Instead we force all users into a couple of comically-bad stereotypes based on market research pulled out of bullshit sales figures and a focus group's collective asses
Yes, but the original post talks about the `"phablet" standard `, in such a way as if there is no alternative. Apple doesn't make a tonne of concurrent iPhone designs like other manufacturers. One reason to choose Apple is to not have to choose the model, just get the latest (or in my case the oldest model that doesn't fall into a pile of shit running iOS). I've had areally nice small android phone, most of them sucked though, it will depend on the mfr and luck. I prefer apple overall because I'd trade choice for the 'just works'. I've never had a situation where I cannot dial on an iPhone, but in other-mfr land it seems quite common.
The main reason I haven't dumped my XZ2 Compact for a Palm Palm is my paranoia around owning a Chinese designed device.
Largely the same story for those waves of Android Lollipop "smart watches".
I'm very unhappy with the market for mobiles, it seems manufacturers have no balls, and are clueless about what I want / sensitive to what carriers are willing to sell en masse.
In a phrase, the stupid shitty financing options carriers provide seem to define the market for devices (supply, credit, marketing), not what actually makes a good device.
A lot of decent smaller phones are available in the developing world. The silliness is the market segmentation with frequency band restrictions that could all be handled in firmware.
I wish it meant that, but i'm not sure. When the first SE was still in production, other manufacturers had already mostly stopped having anything small in their lines, no?
As someone who has an iPhone 6 I see little reason to upgrade. FaceID might have changed things, but is there any reason to upgrade my phone besides a slightly faster CPU?
Probably a better camera, new battery, significantly better performance from the chip.
If you’re happy enough with your phone as is then you’re good for now.
I suspect you’re exactly the target audience for this phone though (happy enough to trade cutting edge specs you don’t need for better value - I’m the same).
In any case it’s probably good to know there’s a very familiar drop-in replacement for your existing phone when it gets unusable that isn’t going to break the bank though, right?
I have the same sentiment. I held tight onto my Xperia X Compact until the battery gave way. Looked around and found literally no replacement for it, out of all manufacturers on the planet. In the end decided to go for XZ2 Compact which was already outdated at the purchase date.
I haven't seen any new phone in that class since mid-2018.
I suspect the trend is to do with the fact that the majority of the population use their phones as cameras now. A larger screen means larger photos and videos. As long as people are using their phones to browse Instagram, I don't see manufacturers going back to smaller form factors.
How is this phone compact with 50% body-to-screen ratio. There are already compact phones like samsung's s10e which is a modern phone. Honestly this looks like an april fools joke.
I switched this year to the Samsung Note 10, because it was SMALLER than the previous budget "lite" phone I got as a short term replacement for my broken down Z3 compact.
Sony has been the only company doing them, but the Z3 Compact was the last great one. I have an X Compact now and it's not as good. I've never had a big phone. One of the main reasons for getting a smartphone for me was the favourable size (easier to fit in pocket). The huge ones have no advantage. I use my PC for a big screen.
>but because this will finally mean other manufacturers will start to make compact phones.
Why does it mean that? They could have been building compact phones already and they weren't. Not sure why they're going to start now when Apple is clearly signalling to the industry that people don't want to buy small smartphones.
I read somewhere (can't find the source now) that the reason for this was that the Apple processor gave them an advantage in being able to have that small a form factor and still have good (actually great) battery life. Without the energy efficient processor, a larger battery was required which led to larger phones.
You would think that at least one of the countless Android phone makers would try to produce a premium device in the sub-5-inch segment, but no. Not a single attempt. It must be impossible.
> I was itching for this announcement, not because I want to buy an iPhone, but because this will finally mean other manufacturers will start to make compact phones.
There are plenty of compact and competent phones. A Samsung A40 for example is barely larger than this new iPhone SE, but has a 5.9 inch display. A friend wanted a smallish smartphone and she's quiet happy with the form factor.
I know I'm in the minority here, but the iPhone4, in my view, was the ideal form factor (3.5", I think). At least half of the time I glance at my phone, the informational payload is not even a full sentence and requires no interaction. Otherwise, I check mail and sometimes use maps. More or less, my phone occupies the niche that I'm supposed to want a digital watch for, but don't.
If I need more screen, there are a plethora of options. I really don't want a tablet in my pocket. And I don't keep it with me like anywhere nearly like I used to - it has turned in to more of a 'desk phone' that I check when I think about it.
I compromised comfort and upgraded to SE after 4’s usability was consumed by unoptimized software updates.
4\S was perfection as far as ergonomics go. Timeless design. The natural 2:1 ratio was ruined in 5 by stretching in the vertical dimension. What they should have done was to expand the screen and have it eat the top bezel. They stopped pushing. Supersizing was the easy road.
> A Samsung A40 for example is barely larger than this new iPhone SE, but has a 5.9 inch display
A major pro of having a smaller phone is being able to reach anywhere on the _screen_ with just a thumb. While A40 and SE may have the same physical form factor, the former does not achieve this.
I'm still using a A3 2016 with android 8 (4.7" amoled, good battery, audio jack and wow, a type-C USB connector), I would smply like the same one with a refreshed CPU/RAM/eMMC.
1163 Comment right now, ~800 Are about Size of Devices. I thought there was another important point.
The current entry level iPhone; iPhone SE 2020 with A13 is now faster in Single Threaded performance than ALL current shipping Android, including Flagship Android. And judging by the Qualcomm roadmap, this will likely remain the same in 2021 as well.
This is important if you are doing or using Web Apps like Discourse which requires JS processing. The Cost of javascript is still huge. [1] [2]. And While Mobile Apps are well optimised to take advantage of multiple cores, it will still be bounded by Amdahl's law[3].
And a point on devices size.
Japan, the nation which prefer single handed usage and small size Smartphone, and has a hand size smaller than average, median or general US / EU population, has overwhelmingly voted with their pocket on the 4.7" Devices, and not the previous 4" iPhone SE. Even During the iPhone 7, iPhone 8 era.
So I do suggest before people writing off 4.7" as being large, please try and give it a go first.
Another Point worth pointing out, once the tech for FaceID Shrinks to small enough or could be done under display, a 4.7" Edge to Edge Face ID Design would be exactly the same size as the previous iPhone SE. I believe this could be the long term goal for Apple.
I'm not sure why you cite Japan as an outlier regarding size preferences and smaller-than-average hand sizes, which I generally do not believe to be true and could not find any hard data to cite (source: I live there).
Regardless, the iPhone SE did not sell _as_ well in Japan due to a variety of factors, not the least of which being that the iPhone 7 introduced built-in Suica support.
Suica is a mobile cash card technology used at stations for transit, convenience stores and restaurants for purchasing, and vending machines -- among others. Given the lack of support by many credit cards for Apply Pay in Japan (for example, you cannot add a Visa card to your iPhone due to JP-specific Visa restrictions), it's no surprise that this was a major selling point of newer models.
In my opinion, manufacturers have not provided a high-end, small form factor device to sufficiently test the markets. Without doing so, it's too easy for people to make the claim that people have already voted with their wallets for larger phones. I sincerely hope the rumors of a 5.4" iPhone 12 are true (as it should be somewhere between iPhone 5 and 6 form factors, from what I gather).
People have been hoping that Google opts for global NFC capability but Pixel4 disappointed everyone on that regard.
Sony and NTT Docomo have a stranglehold on the Android ecosystem. No JP NFC supporting android phone ever has more than 3 LTE bands. The only unlocked Android phone that isn't crippled is Oppo's Reno A, and that's an expensive middle range Qualcomm SoC, which is slower than Apples 3 year old devices.
Apples iOS presence in Japan is VERY well executed.
The few Sharp devices that are very expensive for lowrange SoC (QCM630 in late 2019) and one Oppo device isn't exactly the definition of "many".
But you're right I apologize:
The aquos sense3 is device supports 7 Bands. Compare that to most other android devices that have upwards of 20. B1,B2,B4,B8,B5,B9, B28. Personally I don't even understand how as a Japanese you're supposed to travel with these devices. The first device I saw with this kind of connectivity internationally was the Poco F1. Which was a flagship SoC for 300 bucks.
> I'm not sure why you cite Japan as an outlier regarding size preferences and smaller-than-average hand sizes, which I generally do not believe to be true and could not find any hard data to cite (source: I live there).
Human hand size is proportional to height across races, and average height in Japan for male and female is several centimeters shorter than in other markets like the US and Europe. So it would be surprising if the average Japanese hand size was not smaller than the average hand size in US or Europe.
Of course, I have no idea whether that difference would be enough to affect smartphone size preferences.
In my time abroad in Japan, I found that bringing a small bag was almost an imperative compared to the US where it still seems taboo. This relaxes the pocketability constraint so bringing a larger phone isn't as big of a deal.
I get what you're saying because I'm in SE Asia now. Here a lot of men carry small bags. In places like the Philippines men even carry small shoulder bags that are purse size. That's why it's a bit different from the West (especially USA) where most men either carry a bigger bag like a backpack and messenger bag or else no bag at all. The fact that the iPhone SE slips easily into a front jeans pocket is a major convenience in the West.
Before I transitioned, I used to carry my stuff around in a camera bag. It was really roomy and didn't carry any of the social stigma messenger bags had at the time.
(and not having to deal with that social stigma anymore was a nice benefit of transitioning...)
I wear a jacket with big inside pockets. Works like a charm, frees up pocket space in the pants and I get to carry everything. Been doing that for years now. Way-too-big phones became uncomfortable when sitting in a car or other tight spaces a long time ago.
Well I grew up in a dry place that gets 42+ degrees celsius (over 108°F) so I absolutely don't mind wearing a light denim jacket in summer where I live now, where temperature barely reaches 30° C (86° F).
Cargo shorts can also be an alternative, though I understand in some contexts they might not be appropriate aparel.
It's not cool and many people prefer to be like everyone rather than using what's convenient for them.
For example using short dress for men probably is more convenient as it allows better cooling for their genitalia which is important for reproductive function and generally for health. Yet outside of Scotland dresses are not considered an appropriate for men and nobody even dares to use them.
A good kilt is heavy and warm and if you wear one to a social gathering, it's a hot thing to wear. But wearing it outside is a brave thing to do, particularly in the damp cold air of autumn/winter.
Probably why they have long socks/hose to stop your legs freezing.
I am not brave enough to try it. I am not sure where you are but the UK has a lot of moisture in the air so low temperatures feel a lot colder than equivalent temperatures elsewhere in the world.
eg. a 5°C day will feel a lot colder here than Iceland.
People usually think 80s/90s fanny packs, which look dorky.
Now you have lunatics who feel the need to walk around with loaded pistols, but don't want to have a holster to effectively use it. So you see gun fanny packs in some places.
Looking like a dork or a nut isn't appealing to everyone.
I think people are missing the point. I know that most SE owners liked it because of its compact size but from company side this product was never about the size. Its focus is to be cheapest, most affordable entry level iPhone and the way it is achieved is by optimising production and reusing same components. Apple tried to make cheap iPhone with 5c in 2013. SE was continuation of same idea just better executed and it become much more successful. I never had any illusions that Apple will make completely new design just for SE. They have done exactly the same cost effective product as previously so no surprises here.
No it's not. The HN crowd has a vocal group of people who advocate for phones like the iPhone SE. The main complaint of this group is that other phones are too big. So a new release of the SE brings a lot of hope for extending that experience.
The fact that this phone is bigger doesn't sit well with this vocal minority, because they want a small smartphone and now see that medium is the only available in stock.
Expectation, expectation, expectation. It's being shattered, that leads to emotions and that leads to comments.
I'm also not too happy about the new SE, if you search my comment history I don't think you see me talking about it, but I'm in the same camp. I think other phones are preposterously big, and the SE is the only normal one.
Alas, the new SE is not normal for me. Going back to a dumber phone is now something I have to consider more seriously. I don't want my pockets to bulge out and I want to handle my phone with one hand without straining it. The old iPhone SE was perfect for that. I have pretty tall hands but with the iPhone 8, it didn't strain but felt clumsy (and I use the device quite often in order to help my grandparents with their iPhone 8).
I hope I gave you some insight into the marketing persona of people who want the old iPhone SE to come back and how that persona is well represented on HN.
See also:
Search on HN Algolia for iPhone SE to see these sentiments repeated. Example: the top comment in the this thread [1].
A solid summary, and here is one other point that helps explain the passion:
2006: Smartphones were boring.
2007-2010: Smartphones become magical. The pinnacle, or close to, of the 3.5 inch phone is developed in the iPhone 4.
2010+: Phones smaller than 4.5 inches disappear; by the same magic that they used to appear.
For the people who want a 3.5 to 4 inch phone, such as myself, paradise was basically snatched away. I know they can make them, I know they run every app I care about, and they are no longer available for purchase. I want an iPhone 4. I'd settle for an iPhone 5 or similar form factor. Instead they've disappeared and best-case is maybe there is some Android phone that has the right dimensions and is probably poorly fabricated because it is targeting people on a budget.
The issue isn't even entitlement, it that the form factor situation is backsliding from where it was when I was happiest. It is infuriating.
Yes! To me, the iPhone 4 was the pinnacle of phone design and useability. I'd love to have a modern phone with a decent camera in this form factor. AR, NFC, wireless charging are cool, but I don't really NEED them. A decent camera, a small form factor so it fits in my front pocket and battery life are much more important to me.
I own a iPhone 8 plus now, thinking I could get used to the size. I can't, even after almost 2 years it's still annoying. I love the screen, I love the screen size for viewing videos and playing games, but I loathe the size of the thing itself. I wouldn't mind giving up screen real estate for a smaller form factor phone.
100% agree. I had hopes for the 5.4" iPhone 12 changing this trend by being a high end device with a close to OG iPhone SE size. But it now looks like it will not be given the "Pro" title after all, and will instead be the budget option. I hate that "small" has become synonymous with "budget" in the eyes of the manufacturers.
Ah, for a return to the (early?) 90s when the smallest phones were the "pro" models, and priced accordingly. And people would be amazed: "it's so tiny! Don't want to ask what it must have cost, though."
This comment is really the perfect summation of the issue.
For what it's worth, I'm also a firm believer of "it should be useable with one hand without akwardness". 4.5" would be my perfect size; just slightly smaller than the current small offerings on the market. I currently have an iphone X and really dislike the form factor - it's just too large, and the rounded corners lend themselves to slipping out of the hand. The square edge design really was the easiest the grip - I hope it makes a return on the next iphone pro. The ipad pro has gone back to the square edge design already, so there's some small hope in this regard.
You can also get them in colors that closely match your phone so they’re less conspicuous. The black aluminum one goes very well with the space grey iPhone.
Unfortunately, the form isn't functional in the first place, and the recommendation to spend more money on making the form worse to provide a workaround for the lack of functionality out of the box? I can't stomach that personally.
I remain a resentful Apple customer. I hope a new phone comes out this year that is right sized, so I can actually become a happy customer, rather than an even more resentful customer a year from now when I am forced into an upgrade due to lack of security updates.
If you are resenting Apple for making larger phones and not having a long enough security update support period, wait until you find out what everyone else makes!
I’m painfully aware that the rest of the market is worse.
Apple is the best practical option, making me a resentful Apple customer since ~2018. I was a resentful Microsoft customer back in the early 2000s as well, for similar reasons.
If there was a better alternative, I would “vote with my wallet”, but unfortunately there isn’t.
I feel it’s important to note, primarily because Microsoft never claimed their customers were filled with joy and delight from their magical products, while Apple continues to do so.
I have no joy, or delight, from using my Apple products. I get even less joy and delight each time I give them more money. If there was some other product range that solved my needs at a similar price point, I would already be there.
OnePlus 7 Pro here. Just too big for one thumb to get to all the corners it needs to go to. Not a deal breaker for me, but slightly smaller would be great. Not sure how the pop socket would fix that.
It alleviates that problem because your hand doesn’t have to grip the corners of the phone to be able to hold the phone with one hand anymore. You can pivot the phone from the center without dropping it or having to shift your grip.
If you can’t imagine it, seriously, it’s a $10 thing. Just try it. Give it a week for you to get used to it. If you hate it you’re not out a lot of time, money, or effort.
Talked about how much I hated my iPhone XS since sept 2018. I hated it so much I returned it the next day ..too big and no Touch ID.
My comments were downvoted a lot then... yet glad to see there's demand for iPhone 8 size(my current device since 2017) iPhones. It Looks like potentially many others weren't upgrading either.
Wow didn’t know palm still made smartphones, I just think about early 00s PDA. But that phone looks amazing, I hope they bring it to the EU market as well. I’d prefer an iPhone but I’d consider to switch for that formfactor. Honestly though, I’m fine with 4” but the iPhone XS I have today is so clumsy, very hard to use with one hand.
Phones like the SE are mostly about corporate customers and people who don't want to pay a premium. Nobody gives a hoot about the small phone crowd, as shrink introduces other design issues.
The SE is a replacement for the iPhone 7/8, which is a huge seller as it's near zero cost for big corporate accounts. It's also cheap enough to undermine the resale market for many customers. Apple will setup a production line somewhere and churn these things out for years at low cost -- I wouldn't be surprised if this is also tied to a factory-in-a-can model where production can be ramped up in places like India.
Agreed. I'm only here to see how worked up people can get about another phone that's 98% the same as all the other phones.
As for it being faster than all Android phones. Ok. And? I dont look at my Galaxy and say "if only this was 1 or 2 or 5 or 6.7% faster." We are kind of past the "it should be faster!" for basically ALL smartphones in my view.
Some of us are using a four year old phone that is likely to be EOL in a little over a year, struggling with battery issues, camera issues, general stability issues, etc.
Some of us continued to hold out in the hopes that there might be a new device announced that wouldn’t require spending $700+ on something that is effectively worse than what we already have.
Some of us are pretty disappointed that we now need to spend money to maintain a device that is unlikely to receive security updates past IOS 14, or spend money on something that is explicitly against what we want.
I’ll get over it myself, but it won’t stop me being frustrated in the immediate term, because you’re absolutely right. Instead of being anything new and useful (as price point isn’t a big differentiator on here, given average earnings), it is just another phone, and it’s just like all the other phones out on the market.
This phone is a certified big fucking deal in terms of market impact.
It takes the “iPhone most people should buy” from $750 to $399.
It completely demolishes the Pixel 3A and makes that phone just about impossible to recommend. A load of Android OEMs selling at this price point should be terrified.
And much more than the original iPhone SE, expect this phone or a $399 phone to finally stick around for Apple. The iPhone SE seemed like an experiment or a way to squeeze out more use out of some remaining machinery. But, I don’t know, this feels different. Apple is selling a price point and they’re going to keep that permanently. Look how much fanfare is on the home page of their site. This thing might even be updated every year.
And honestly, the iPhone SE is too small for most people and had more downsides than this.
It heavily depends on the country. There are only a hand full of countries where iOS and Android almost have the same market share (US, UK, SE for example).
In most countries this is not the case. Android share is still very dominant world wide (~80% vs ~20%).
Switching to another OS / ecosystem is not something done easily. When you are an Android user and everyone around you is why switch to iOS? There are plenty of good Android devices available for $400-$750. Also: in a lot of countries people just prefer a very big screen size.
So I think your comment is a little over the top. Yes it might attract some customers but I don't believe it will mean an exodus of Android users.
I'm sure the price point will induce some people to buy it. and I'm sure android users will be in that group. But I use Android and am looking for a new phone. I wont be considering anything Apple, even at a much lower price point. Agree that it will be interesting to see what happens to the sales of their higher priced phones.
Every phone apple have released since the 5S has been faster than every other phone by a laughable amount, especially in JS benchmarks & web performance. The SE is nothing new.
For a long time, Apple's 2 gen old phones were still faster (based on Geekbench) than the fastest android phone.
I second this. I own a 2017 iPhone SE. Firefox, Gmail and Waze launch in a blink of an eye, and that's good enough speed for me. 1/2 blink of an eye speed won't make much of a difference.
If bloat is your true problem, having cpu say 5% faster won't solve anything at all. On Android, you can at least revert to clean Lionage/whatever Android installation for most devices, and all folks report remarkable improvement of overall speed of device, sometimes also battery life.
Also, I don't get the phone 'workflow' where you heavily depend on computing power to render some web pages faster. Connection reliability is usually much bigger factor if that's what you really do (which is strange but maybe I am not a typical phone user).
JavaScript these days is incredibly heavy. Most phones this year don’t have any trouble, but you can feel a huge difference between, say, a typical 2018 phone and a 2017 phone in rendering speed. If you’re planning on keeping your phone for a few years, you’ll notice.
Yeah the Samsung S20 Ultra barely scored a mention. My 512GB model features 16GB of memory, and a staggeringly beautiful display. Not to mention that camera..
As a random snapshot, my present memory usage is 9.6GB. Previous phone had 8GB, so this is part of why it's so much faster - although storage as well as CPU is also significantly better.
(The regular model had 12GB which would suffice, but 128GB storage was a bit of a joke - I take a lot of pictures, and am familiar with Samsung slow downs unless plenty of free space.)
What I use? Slack, multiple email accounts, Discord, life 360, signal, WhatsApp, Facebook, Messenger, Hangouts, Instagram, .. nothing special, just a lot of different messaging platforms + apps. The extra memory allows them to stay loaded and ready when swapping.
I locked myself into a salary sacrificed tax free pre order in February (before realising just how bad C19 would get), so not paying the full sticker price. Also rotated my old S10 5G device to wife and sold her old for good coin.
I for one absolutely love the big display in these times of home iso; whether for videos or reading technical books on Kindle. Wife also embraces the nearly as big S10 5G - she wouldn't go back to a smaller phone now.
Yes, I was pleased to see the phone actually use it efficiently for caching.
My desktop has 32GB and it does the same thing; a larger size is reserved for caching than on the 16GB work laptop (both Win10). I use Docker a lot which probably "helps" in making use of the memory. :)
16GB of RAM and still it will stop receiving major SW updates within a couple of years. This is where iPhones really shines, even Google is crap in comparison, and I say this as an Android user (never owned an iPhone)
I've been on iPhone 7 for 3 years now and I still miss the smaller form factors. IMHO, the 3GS has the perfect form factor for a phone.
When you are weighing iPhone 7 against a first iteration iPhone SE, there's a lot of things to consider beyond form factor. I've been holding out waiting for the smaller phones to come back. I guess I'll just keep on waiting.
> Japan, the nation which prefer single handed usage and small size Smartphone
Do you have a source for that, or do you just expect them to want small phones because of small hands?
The rest of Asia are the front runners of large smart phones, so I don't see the small hands thing being relevant to phone sizes.
To my recollection, phones have always been pretty big in Japan. When I first visited in 2006 I asked my Japanese friends why all the phones where so big, and they just said "It's fashionable, nobody wants a small phone", but I've never noticed a trend towards small devices, just more features and bling.
Moreover, given that Japan sees relatively little usage of computers, but historically has been extremely cellphone oriented, it actually makes sense that you want a large screen as your primary screen.
Lastly, I've noticed that young people on variety shows, when doing a gesture for "typing", swipes the air with their index finger over the palm of the imposing hand, suggesting that the primary mode of text-input is on (1) your phone, and (2) this is done with 2 hands. I don't think Japan has a special affection for one handed usage, at least not since they moved to touch screens.
I very much don't have smaller hands, and still think 4.7" is the best phone size I've ever used. I currently use an 11 Pro for the features, but still think the 4.7" 8 is the best form factor they've ever made.
> I very much don't have smaller hands, and still think 4.7" is the best phone size I've ever used.
I don’t know what normal size hands are, but I’m quite tall, 195cm ish, and the iPhone 8 is too big for me to use single handed. The iPhone 5s was excellent size wise for me.
> This is important if you are doing or using Web Apps like Discourse which requires JS processing.
I'm not sure this is impacted by the CPU speed really for many reasons.
1. For a popular app, you can't target the latest / the best model. We already cycle through the phones less often than a few years ago. By the time this gets to become popular, other phones will have comparable speed.
2. Developers will work both ways: To speed up the current code, (positive impact) and to add more features (negative impact).
If JS is required, people will find solutions. If JS is not enough, we'll get native apps. Current speedups in raw CPU are meh.
Honest question: every time I must debug my mother or a friend on an Apple device, I have to go through a Windows-Vista amount of confirmations of multiple-FA steps and it never seems to stop or remember my agreement to this or that feature.
I've been using Apple devices exclusively for 10 years until 2016 or so but I reckon it's become incredibly bloated UX on iOS devices, at least from my very anecdotal perspective.
Meanwhile Android seems much more 'sane' for me as a user, but more so software developer aware of the cost of bad UX.
So I'm wondering, in making this choice to go for SE rather than 4a, I'm assuming you're familiar with both OS, how do you think they compare?
I really like what I hear about the iPhone SE but immediately I remember how dreadful my experience is every time I have to use an iOS device, they're just so unnatural to me, just so weird UI/UX choices. I feel like they're maybe great for seniors but as a 37 nerd/geek I feel lost with iOS. It's just not doing what I want it to. Like Windows 10. Like Gnome. I tolerate KDE because it's great but it's not without big issues yet.
Am I too demanding? Have I been spoiled by the best products during 30 years of computing, such that 'average' in 2020 doesn't cut it for me, or did UI/UX really get worse as I suspect?
Please, someone, in this highly popular thread, help me make sense of this perception, and see where I fit in a large 'nerdy' crowd.
I don't think it's just you - there's a lot of basic everyday functionality that is pointlessly difficult and cumbersome in iOS.
E.g. data management is still the worst of any modern OS by a huge margin, and data sharing between apps is still a half-broken mess. Even things that _should_ work with straightforward data types often don't - e.g. you can't share audiobooks to iBooks even though it can play them, or trying to share an image to an art app might simply open the app with no indication of where the image went or what went wrong. Lack of default apps means you often have to open files the long way around through a convoluted series of download/share steps. These are all things that work fine on Android, and were never a problem on desktop OSes to begin with.
I had heard that there was a file exploring app now however, doesn't that make everything easier? My idea was to just use SyncThing¹ as I do on Android, and I was thinking I could just open things from there in any app.
Thanks a lot for this account, it really helped confirming my personal bias regarding this (I mean 'bias' neutrally, neither good nor bad just mine).
____
1: Actually I just checked, there is no iOS client for SyncThing... And no plan to either. (I assume it's a limitation of the system and so is true for all such apps like Seafile, NextCloud...)
So yeah, nope. That's a showstopper for me. My entire information system (like any IS worth its salt) is based on having plain access to files... I honestly though that was long solved on iOS. Misinformation from the media, I guess.
You’re not being too demanding. You have established a set of expectations about interactivity and UI/UX affordances that iOS might not provide.
My opinion: With any phone, you are going to spend most of your time in a small set of apps. As long as the OS enables those apps to perform smoothly without being intrusive, you should be good to go. There are certain platform differences that can seem like paper cuts when making a switch -> share screen, default app settings, where settings are housed (centralized in the Settings app or hamburger menu in each app), default permissions, text manipulation, and the Home Screen. There is nothing like using the device to overcome the pain of these changes. also, the good apps out there have homogenized the platforms to some extent.
I’m speaking from experience. As someone who has had iPhones since the 1st OG iPhone, I used an android device for work email for almost a year. It wasn’t easy; there were some annoyances when I switched from work to personal, regardless of direction, but I found a way to ease the cognitive load: I used 3rd party apps for most of my tasks. For example, Chrome or Firefox, Overcast for Podcasts, Pandora or Spotify, Outlook for Email, Kindle for books, etc. The good app developers do a fantastic job of smoothing over the differences between Android and iOS.
I hear your point on third-party apps loud and clear.
Sometime in the 2000s I became a self-proclaimed "platform agnostic" (no OS church, a desire to be productive on any of them).
This lead to a long journey in cross-platform-land, third-party apps, and naturally the open source of it all (ideally). My threshold of acceptability for any app is now "give me data files" so I can just use CLI mojo and tools like SyncThing to sysadmin the hell out of my digital life.
SyncThing, as I've just found out, is not available on iOS. So clearly (assuming this is a limitation of the system itself regarding filesystem access), that platform cannot fit my IS paradigm.
It seems like it could be an "edge" device but even that is pushing it... (sync my flows through some ad-hoc proprietary clouds per app; and then sync from those clouds back to my IS, i.e. one custom path per file type probably... maybe have to resort to IFTTT for some... yeah no that's too much work).
Thanks a lot for the perspective. It really helped my see where I fit based on my needs and former experience (I can relate to a lot of what you said).
I went from iPhone (4 years) -> Android (3 years) -> iPhone (4 years), plus I used a stock Android phone for a month a while ago when I soaked my iPhone SE. I don't really see that point. For me they are about equal in interface complexity. The only thing that annoyed me in Android were the hamburger menus that were on top, which becomes painful on a large phone screen. The primary annoyance with the iPhone is that the removal of the home button introduced more gesture-driven interaction (though I like the edge to edge screen).
Apart from that, UI rendering has always been much smoother for me on iOS than Android. On Android it's generally fast, but then there are some weird hiccups.
At any rate, even if iOS was ten times more complex (which I don't believe), Android has become an unacceptable option for me due to grave violations of privacy and the amount of malware pushed through the Play Store.
> Meanwhile Android seems much more 'sane' for me as a user
In my view it's devolving into an awkward, less and less usable system. I run a phone with stock Android 9, and it does not let me set notifications to "vibrate only". I only have a choice between muting the phone(which makes me miss calls etc. because it basically plays dead) or letting it annoy me with a notification sound every couple minutes. There is no inbetween.
Also, it does not have a way to toggle automatic screen brightness aside from the switch buried in the settings.
This is, to put it mildly, insane and near unusable in my opinion.
The last 5 years I've used exclusively Windows Phone 8 and Blackberry 10 OS, and both of those are still years ahead of Android's usability even though they're both not being actively developed anymore for almost the same period. I still don't see a current smartphone on the market that comes close.
I would most certainly not peg Android as the promised land for users.
It's indeed "devolving" slightly as of late, after a peak UX around 7-8 imho (still not perfect but it was smoother back then I feel, less clutter).
Note that my screen brightness control, manual (slider) or auto (toggle), is right there in the notification menu.
Android seems to be the least of two evils for me, as I've just found out in these comments, insofar as I have more access (filesystem etc) to do 'enterprise-y stuff' like data sync to personal infrastructure, remote flow management, etc. But it's evil, like iOS :)
Oh let's define "evil", because this is not r/conspiracy. I mean:
- not user-centric but vendor-centric (this is true of all commercial OS, which is why I use Linux whenever I can, or FreeBSD when it applies)
- feels less like your "home" (as a desktop does) and more like some project housing or hotel room (all identical, like appliances in dev terms). Think not "wallpaper" but "GPOs", what a sysadmin can do (or should be able to).
- tons of hidden 'features' and otherwise magic triggers that are poor in the way of discoverability, let alone transparency if we're gonna get there. Obfuscated, silent, opt-out, the whole dark side of tech is concentrated in mobile platforms.
Lol, I am so jaded with UX these days. Why can't we have nice things. I mean, user-centric UX paradigms. How hard can it be to make money by selling great(er) products?
Yes. I've long been impressed with the single core performance and power efficiency of apple's mobile SoCs. Same-generation SoCs used on a variety of androids can't even compare. Google Maps for example was running like total shit on my old Galaxy S6, switched to iPhone SE (2016) and never looked back.
Really exciting times where an A9-based quality handset can be had for ~$60 on eBay. I expect prices will fall a bit further with this new SE model. And yes, the A9 is completely viable in 2020. Planning on holding onto it for as long as reasonably possible.
> So I do suggest before people writing off 4.7" as being large, please try and give it a go first.
I was actually planning on grabbing a larger phone when iPhone SE inevitably lost software support, but then I got an old iPhone 6 to use casually and I just couldn’t use it at all with one hand without invoking Reachability all the time. Plus I can’t wrap my hand around it so it feels a bit less secure…I’m not sure I’d be happy to lose the form factor.
FWIW the iPhone 5s received iOS 12, and has had a patch as recently as March 24th (2020).
It was released Fall 2013.
It was also the first 64-bit smartphone, and remained that way for more than a year from what I can tell. It also has the first Secure Enclave; i.e. a fingerprint authentication system that had any hope of being secure, and a decent FDE system.
> The current entry level iPhone; iPhone SE 2020 with A13 is now faster in Single Threaded performance than ALL current shipping Android, including Flagship Android. And judging by the Qualcomm roadmap, this will likely remain the same in 2021 as well.
Qualcomm uses off-the-shelf Arm Cortex-A series cores. Arm has promised between 15-25% CAGR for next generation high end cores [0]. The A13 has ~35% better fp perf and ~50% better int perf than the Qualcomm’s latest flagship, the Snapdragon 865, which uses Arm Cortex-A77 cores [1].
So assuming best case scenario for Arm perf growth and Apple remaining completely stagnant, Qualcomm would catch up in 2 years.
More realistically though, the A14 is rumored to be quite the upgrade. At least more significant a change than the A13. And Arm won’t have a very competitive design until they release their Matterhorn core 2 generations from now, where they’re rumored to finally scale up the physical size.
20% faster single threaded doesn't matter. Websites aren't magically targeting the exact cpu power of your phone. Websites are 2x-10x too slow (and bloated, using up RAM and swapping), not 10%. this is a software problem not a hardware problem.
Even a tiny site like HN has problems on a phone when the comment count gets large
Really? I'd argue that if any number of comments on HN bog down your phone, there's something wrong with it. The Axx processors even have JavaScript-specific instructions to accelerate web apps. iOS does not have swap. Compare the Speedometer 2.0 benchmark results between an iPhone 11 and a Pixel 4 in the middle of this page: https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/10/22/iphone-11-versus-...
There, the difference between the iPhone and Pixel is about 3x on that particular JavaScript and web benchmark.
It's important that we can't buy smaller good smartphones even if we want.
In addition, recently smartphone's screen is getting bigger without expanding the body. AQUOS R2 compact is smaller device but has 5.2 inch screen.
Thanks for this! I know A certain portion of HN/twitter/reddit etc user base who comment are super anti bigger phone sizes. Which I don’t care about. Happy there’s some bigger threads to read not just about the size.
I agree. I look at it as the price of a phone, not price of an iPhone and the new iPhone SE as of today is too costly for what it offers.
I switched to iPhone (older SE) from Android. Size and privacy were two reasons. Then my SE broke down after 3 years (I hadn't put any protective gear). I bought 7 as I needed another phone immediately and I was going away for two months.
The last one year I have been using 7 the lack of a headphone jack is so frustrating I would never buy the new SE.
The next time I have to buy a phone I will buy the smartphone that will provide at least 2-3 years of guaranteed OS upgrades (or there's Lineage support) and has a headphone jack.
My current phone cost half as much and is by far the best-performing smartphone I've ever owned.
No, I don't get why I'm supposed to pay double for iOS. Then again I don't see any smartphone on the market that I'd actually pay a premium price for. They're all not quite convincing to me.
Also, $399 is not entry level compared to the first generations of the iPhone, which was already not considered cheap. I'm not a fan of this severe price drift.
Huh. you're right. I remembered the price drop fiasco-- turns out the entry level 4GB was $499 and the 8GB was $599 at end-of-june 2007 launch, but the price for the 8GB dropped from $599 to $399 when they discontinued the 4GB in September, just over 2 months after both products were released.
The article is almost is an year old. Nonetheless, a great read to understand the techniques of profiling. There have been 4 more releases of V8 in chromium based browsers which improved the speed and memory. Other browsers like Firefox also follow the suit.
Only because there is only the WebKit engine available on iOS, it's not like the processor does anything special with regards to JS, if Apple opened up to using additional HTML/JS engines in iOS 14 it would be powerful for all the alternative engines as well.
> The current entry level iPhone; iPhone SE 2020 with A13 is now faster in Single Threaded performance than ALL current shipping Android, including Flagship Android.
I stopped to look at Single Thread performance long time ago when comparing phones. I now look for AI coprocessor performances, new sensor types and wireless charging performance
> I stopped to look at Single Thread performance long time ago when comparing phones. I now look for AI coprocessor performances, new sensor types and wireless charging performance
The amount of daily time the average person spends doing tasks affected by single core performance versus the amount of time people spend doing AI related tasks or using exotic sensors makes you an outlier.
Do you have any source showing global apps usage to support your claims?
Just by guessing, I would say whatsapp/FB/instagram/Snapchat/youtube are the most browsed apps. All those apps use Neural Networks in the background, for text translation, automatic subtitles, picture and video filters, encoding, decoding, upscaling video, ...
Neural networks will run constantly in the background to analyze phone sensors data and adjust the device energy usage, infer location, etc
Even games will use them massively (see the RTX application from Nvdia)
A performant single threaded CPU can probably run those AI applications fine, but an AI coprocessor (or neural processor or DSP or whatever the marketing named it) runs those applications by using 10 times less energy (easily)
I recommend to everyone to take a look at http://ai-benchmark.com/ . The improvement in this domain is massive, like an order magnitude bigger over the last 2 years, to the contrary of CPU and single threaded performance
Yes. I'm an Android user who is absolutely sick of phablets. I have a Pixel 3A (5.6") and it is way, way too big. I've been quite excited about this iPhone SE announcement. However, the lack of a headphone jack is a huge negative, and 4.7" is the absolute largest I think is reasonable. A little smaller would've been ideal. I'm undecided on whether to switch to the SE, but I genuinely hope it sells like crazy. Then maybe the Android copycat manufacturers like Google will copy the small form factor, but add in a headphone jack. One can dream...
My current phone has no headphone jack and it's been an absolute pain the whole time. Adapters are hit-or-miss and generally suck. Even high-end devices (mine was over $800) often have hissing due to the analog signal running fractions of a millimeter from a bunch of digital signals.
Adding insult to injury, music objectively sucks with bluetooth. A good DAC takes space and power. Multiple drivers take space and power. Bluetooth modems require space and power and generate interference simply because they are modems. When you try to shove all of that inside a tiny earphone, there are going to be massive tradeoffs.
On the flip side, my phone does have a headphone jack and it's been a perennial weak spot. Debris gets in there far too easily to the extent that it doesn't even allow me to use a standard headphone cable.
I'm not an audiophile, so wireless headphones and streamed music is more than good enough for me - but as someone who has a headphone jack and would be more than willing to use it, it's not exactly been a bed of roses after a couple of years of use.
Am sure a manufacturer with better QA than OnePlus might be better, or if I'd have wrapped my phone in bubble-wrap every time I place it in a pocket it wouldn't have got stuff in there. But that's the anecdata from someone with one.
I personally can't stand using a phone without a thick case. They give you a really comfortable grip on the phone. Modern phones are horrible to hold without a case.
The best part about having a bulky case is it removes so much stress. Dropping your phone doesn't matter. You can throw it across the room. It's insane how something designed to be taken everywhere and used regularly is so fragile.
Yeah, I don’t get it. Well I suppose if you want the protection you just put a case on it <shrug>.
I remember cycling down the hill and having my Nokia 6610 fall out of my pocket, front n back case n battery flying every which way down the road and thinking nothing of it.
Absolutely hate having cases on my phones. Almost all make it hard to slide into a pocket, make it far too thick for my hands, and take away the elegance of the design and the "hand feel" (I know that last point will get short shrift here, but enjoying using a device is important).
I have never had an issue using wooden toothpicks for the headphone and lightning cable jacks. It feels like you'd really have to try to break the pin connections that way
I've cleared it out a few times, but I think stuff in there's gotten damaged now. It's a slight inconvenience when my headphones aren't charged or I can't use them, but again as anecdata, losing the headphone jack having one in the device hasn't exactly changed my world.
I've found a paperclip to work the best. Just bend it around a joint a couple of times until it snaps off and you have a little fish hook that'll grab onto any lint and pull it out with minimal risk of damaging the connectors :)
I've spent about $600 on various Bluetooth headphones and nothing beats the simple plug and play of a half decent $50 corded set.
Add to that the fact that fully cordless earbuds are beyond ergonomic failure. At least corded can hang around your neck. Bud's one has to pop in and out, hold, put in your pocket. The idea of continuing conversations even if they have passthrough is very rude
When I'm sweating at the gym or out in the rain the last thing I want is expensive headphones, earbuds or especially over the year. I'm likely not listening to (nor in an environment promoting) the highest fidelty music. I want a pair of < $20 ear buds that when grubby or stop working are easily replaced. Blue tooth may work 98% of the time but the old 3.5mm audio is 100%
Counterpoint: I got really sick of the cable constantly yanking on my ears, so I got some Jabra Elite Active 65ts and I've used them for thousands of miles of running since then. The sound quality is great, they're comfortable (I never even notice them once I put them in), the case charges them so I don't need to remember, and they keep running like a champ in the rain. I couldn't go back to using wired earbuds for running at this point.
I recently got Bluetooth headphones for exactly the same reason as you, but continue to use them wired with my computer because it's just better. Bluetooth works almost all the time, but not 100%.
I sleep with wired earbuds and white noise. They're $5 cheapos because they break every couple of months or so. and yeah, when working out, I have another set of cheaper earbuds, wired. Wireless might be nice for workouts, but when I tried it, I just kept having to remember to charge them - yet another 'thing to charge' that I didn't want to bother with.
To me, no headphone/earphone experience has ever been better than my AirPods. I have both the normal and Pro versions. They fit magnificently. No cable means nothing ever pulls on my ears, which over time can be painful and irritating. I can listen in bed on my back, on my sides, etc. It's not a big deal to take them out and just stick them in a pocket. And I know people complain about how easy they are to lose, but anecdotally, I have lost wired bluetooth earbuds in the past, but never lost an AirPod since I've gotten my first pair in early 2017.
> It's not a big deal to take them out and just stick them in a pocket.
Personally I can't agree. I've found they are a nightmare. Walk into a coffee shop, take them out to order. Have to take each out, at significant risk of dropping or fumbling. Back in pocket or held in hand. You then have a bag to carry, them. Wired Bluetooth would just drape easily around the neck whilst one conducts business.
I know few airpod users who have not lost one or dropped one on the street
> have lost wired bluetooth earbuds in the past, but never lost an AirPod since I've gotten my first pair in early 2017.
I never thought they could be good, but I now have Sony’s latest ones and the sound itself is genuinely better than any corded ones I’ve had over the years, up to over £100 and always carefully chosen. So I now believe it’s possible to make them good, though they are still expensive.
Comparing them negatively ergonomically to cabled earbuds is of course crazy :)
I absolutely hated not having a headphone jack so I finally gave in a bought a pair of AirPods Pro. They are literally my favorite thing I've bought in the last decade.
I know it's an extremely expensive solution, and it's super shitty that Apple is basically forcing you to buy them, but now that I have them I love them.
> I know it's an extremely expensive solution, and it's super shitty that Apple is basically forcing you to buy them, but now that I have them I love them.
That’s an exaggeration. As mentioned in another comment Apple’s lightning to jack adapter is cheap, well done and enables all your high end headphones to be used with the iPhone. Just leave them attached to your headphones if you keep forgetting to bring them with you.
Plus, there are countless non-Apple wireless headphones options if you really don’t like adapters. Airpods are by no means mandatory.
Comments like this always make me really glad that I've never tried "good" audio equipment. I think music sounds great with my Sony XM3s and even my AirPods, and I don't have to travel with a DAC to experience it. shrug
I would consider myself an audiophile but I agree with you wholeheartedly. My AirPods and other headphones are more than good enough to listen to music when I'm out and about. I've never carried a DAC anywhere because, at least for me, the only time I'm listening to high fidelity stuff is when that's my sole objective. I don't need lossless quality when I'm listening to music on a train or on the subway or even while I'm working. I've never been taken out of my mindspace because I may have possibly heard a compression artifact.
It feels to me like people just want to complain to complain.
I think it depends on what you want - I have some pricier headphones myself & I used to own monitor speakers too, but I never think to use any of it with a phone. I use a phone to be on the go, and having big headphones don't go with that well unless I'm sitting for a long time like an airplane.
So far I've been dealing with being on the go with the PowerBeats Pro - it's good enough for my purposes (light, good battery life, sound is good enough, somewhat compact), although I have it mainly because the AirPod Pros were not out then.
I think I'd mentally adjust to the improved quality as the "new normal" pretty quickly and not get much out of it thereafter, leaving only the frustration when I couldn't have my audiophile quality. Seems like there's very little upside in it for me personally. I don't doubt that some people can genuinely sustain additional enjoyment out of it though.
I've noticed this trait with myself in a number of other aspects (operating system--no way I'm going back to Windows after having used Linux for years!), but luckily I haven't been spoiled by other people's good audio equipment yet.
If you haven't gotten into high-end audio already, I'm guessing you're not the type who "listens to equipment" as opposed to listening to music. So long as you're paying more attention to the music than the minute differences between exponentially more expensive pairs of headphones (or DACs and amps), you're probably not going to have the problem you're afraid of. I can rarely hear the difference between my midrange Sony wireless headphones and my friend's super fancy open-back headphones when there's an equalizer profile applied to each to make them sound similar.
And it's not even about only headphones. It's about billions of audio devices that take one thing as input: line-level audio. Home stereos, car stereos, portable amps, hotel-room docks and TVs, PA systems and mixers.
Then there's the idiotic problem that Apple created but never even solved: blocking the phone's sole port with a "headphone dongle," which prevents you from CHARGING the phone. So now if you want to listen to music while navigating (which kills the battery quickly), you're screwed.
I ended up buying a few of the Lightning-to-30-pin-iPod adapters, which you can then plug a USB+audio cable into. Yes, the ancient 30-pin iPod connector has line audio out, and the cool thing is that it's a true line out; the volume control has no effect on it, so you only have one volume control to dick around with (the one on the amp).
I think Apple’s official Lightning to jack adapter is fine for mobile use. Sure, it’s not ideal, but a headphone jack comes with other trade offs which have been discussed to death. At the end of the day I’m under no illusions that audio people like me, who enjoy good wired headphones, are a niche group. Most people don’t miss the jack at all and I think having the adapter is an acceptable solution for everyone else.
well for those of us who live with blue tooth head sets the lack of jack has not been an issue. even when I needed corded headphones the lightning to standard jack worked fine on my 8+. Since it can wireless charge I could go charge and used a corded headset, but to be honest I haven't found a need as the quality of blue tooth headsets/air pods has been superb
I live with a couple bluetooth headsets (Apple's AirPods, Bose QCs, and a pair of Beats), and I would say 95% of the time it's not an issue. There's the 5% of the time, however, where I need to re-pair the headset (not the biggest issue in the world) or the battery is dead (bigger issue) and I rarely, if ever, have the dongle on me (or even a pair of headphones to use the dongle with) - obviously the biggest issue when I want to listen.
That 5% of the time, while not often, is enough to remind me why I held onto my iPhone 6S until it finally died on me. As an iPhone user, I truly wish Apple would offer an iPhone 12 with a headphone jack, because I would absolutely buy it (two of the best pair of headphones I own are corded and it's a shame I can't just plug them into my iPhone when I please...)
The main problem I've had with it is it gets lost--constantly. Now I'm generally disorganized, which probably explains why I cold never find it when I wanted it. I know some people leave it on the cable but my headphones get used much more on other devices than on the iPhone, so I was constantly pulling it off to plug into a mixer or keyboard, and it would get lost. In the end I solved it by junking my XS and getting a used SE.
It isn't about the screen size - it's about the external dimensions. This is almost as large as the Pixel 4A, Samsung S10e or iPhone 11. You are only saving a couple grams and a few mm.
Hopefully the Sony Xperia 5 II comes out soon - it should be smaller than this.
It does perceptually, not intellectually. Obviously anyone can see that it's offset, but the perception is still smaller than it actually is. There's no easy marker to re-align and try to make a better estimate.
Let's take a step back though- why are the phones in this image offset at all? Apple made the image, it's explicitly for a size comparison, so why make it harder to comprehend?
You're right – the iPhone 11 is larger than I understood. I haven't bought a phone since the SE so my Apple info is a little rusty. But for the other phones I mentioned, it's quite similar.
Yep, the thing is, this phone has a huuuge forehead and chin which is comparable to from 5 years ago. Even if you don't want notches and pinholes, you can still have much thinner bezels without actually changing the body size. Look at this photo of Pixel 1 vs Pixel 2. They are both the same body size: https://i.imgur.com/VVqVt2x.png
I keep seeing this. I’m below average height and I only have use of one hand so I know I never use my phone with both hands. Between the single handed keyboard mode and double clicking on the home button to bring the screen down, I have no trouble using the 8 Plus with one hand.
Egregious sarcasm aside: I owned the 6s after the 5s and it was too large to use comfortably, I kept dropping it, it meant that I had to _only_ use the phone when I wanted to check something- maybe I could get away with just a glance but a quick reply required far too much time unless I used two hands.
So I got a Samsung Galaxy S8 which felt superb in the hand, but was still wayyyy too big, and it saw the pavement in a similar way; I got rid of it because Samsung’s Android is horrible and on the S8 it wasn’t removable and went back to the old form factor SE.
I haven’t dropped this phone once, it’s comfy, it’s light- easy to carry around and very easy to use in one hand while I wait and sip a drink or something.
Anecdote: my girlfriend has an iPhone X and due to the size of the thing she leaves it hanging around the apartment and has to go searching for it each time she wants to use it. It’s simply too uncomfortable to keep in her pocket.
I definitely don't feel bad about my purchase, I don't play games (aside from puzzle games when flying) so I don't really care that much about high-end CPU/GPU. Regular apps running smoothly is all I need. I do love having a comfortable amount of RAM though, so that the phone doesn't forget app state when switching between apps. This happened way more often than I would've liked on the SE, not sure whether that was due to insufficient RAM or power saving measures though.
And whatever the case may be it's not like I had much choice when looking at phones of this size. And I'm so relieved to get rid of iOS, which with I had a 1.5 year hate relationship. I miss one thing though - the Apple emojis. Google's are way nicer than they used to be but nowhere near Apple's. Let's see if I find myself missing anything else in the upcoming days.
I've said it here before many times - the Nexus 4 was nearly the perfect phone in every way and was the best Android phone ever made. Literally all I want in a phone is the Nexus 4 with software updated forever. Hell, you don't even need to upgrade the hardware, the 720p screen is fine. Just make the battery replaceable and you'd never need a new phone if manufacturers would commit to long term support.
That said, imagine the world was sane and how it could be upgraded: they could reduce the size of the bezel, give it a more efficient processor and better battery life. It wouldn't take much, but it seems like the only reason we can't have good things today is that it isn't profitable enough.
Somebody should do an open-hardware clone of the N4 form factor.
As much as I loved my Nexus 4, there's no denying its camera and battery were quite poor. I wouldn't call it the best phone ever made, even at its time
Granted, that's very keyed to my own needs for a phone. I replaced the N4 battery twice, on my own. I don't care whether my phone has a crappy 8 MP camera, or even a 1 MP camera, because I have a real camera. It's there for convenience or video chats.
On the other hand, I agree with you that there's plenty of room for improvement on the N4. But I don't think I've seen a significantly better phone. Certainly every phone I've had since then (and I'm careful to choose phones that meet my needs, not go for the flashiest model) has been worse.
There have usually been smaller androids available. But people didn't buy them in enough numbers to make them a thriving sector AFAICT. Samsung used to do the Galaxy Mini line, Sony always had smaller xperia's... But most folks seem to want a bigger, shinier screen.
That's not to say you're wrong in your desires, it's just they might not be widely shared.
I also hope this does well. It's a nice looking unit.
Most of the time those smaller form factor Android phone have had lackluster CPU, mediocre battery life, and crappy cameras. The SE is very close to a flagship product in terms of performance.
Indeed, I think it's been a vicious circle of lack of demand leading to lacklustre products.
This phone does look close to flagship in terms of cpu etc, though may be missing various features - multiple cameras etc - compared to actual flagships.
There are a lot of reasons small Android phones didn't work. One of the biggest reasons Android went to bigger form factors first was because they needed the extra battery capacity. Android was a bit of a battery hog and, CPUs on the higher end Android phones were pretty demanding. That last bit is likely the biggest reason small form factor Android died an untimely death.
It seems to me there's room in the market for one or two high-end compact Android phones. It's not a big enough segment for every company to sell one profitably, but if someone really nailed that niche....
Lower-priced sports cars don't sell well lately either, but Mazda continues to do well with the MX-5. There's a lot of value in finding an underserved niche and making a product that fills it perfectly.
They make corded headphones that plug into the power port. My XS came with a set of corded pods in the box. I assume this phone will to unless the strip of for price reasons. Either way they are available.
I'm a recent purchaser of a slightly used old iPhone SE and it's great really. Headphone socket, does all I want, fast and snappy in practice, only cost like £100/$130.
My AirPods are the best in-ear headphones I’ve ever used. I definitely don’t miss having a tangled fraying cable that gets caught on things.
Plus I used to go through at least one set a year because the mechanical stress on the cable would break them. In the long run AirPods are actually cheaper.
really? I thought they would be more expensive in the long run since the battery will be degraded in 10 or so years to the point where you would have to constantly charge them
I suppose it depends on what brands of wired headphones you would normally buy but it would probably be cheaper to just reinforce the part that keeps breaking on you
"Popular design"? On the contrary. As an iPhone SE owner, this is exactly the form factor that fans of the iPhone 4/5 series (like me) rejected as being too large.
The most perplexing part has always been the positioning of the SE as the low-price iPhone.
As an SE fan, I would happily, HAPPILY pay $1000 every two years to keep getting upgraded internals in the current form factor.
Yes Apple, I'm sure it's harder to fit those parts in a smaller case. That's why you should charge me more!
It's not a matter of Ludditry. That form factor is ergonomically ideal for a certain kind of phone use. That's precisely why it was so successful for so long.
The SE is the previous iPhone design. Before that happened to be the iPhone 5/S, now it's the iPhone 6/7/8 design. There are likely a lot of people with iPhone 6, 6S, and 7 that might upgrade but don't want to spend $700+ and lose the home button.
I don't think the SE was targeted at small phone lovers, it just happened to be that since that's the manufacturing and design they had already created for the 5 and 5S.
Rumor is that the iPhone 12 this fall will include a smaller 5.4" model. This would actually be smaller than the 4.7" SE given that the screen goes to the edges. That's likely the "premium small phone" replacement, not this new 4.7" SE.
Thanks. That is really helpful. I've been seeing the rumors of the 5.4" iPhone 12, but I had trouble understanding how the overall size would compare with the two SEs. I'll be really curious to see the price point of the 5.4". ~$1,000, or somewhere in between the 2020 SE and that?
I have a conspiracy theory that Apple redesigns the form factor every few years so that the "gotta have it" people are forced to upgrade to the latest and greatest device, and those with last gen's model feel that they need to keep up with the Joneses.
edit: I think this is a very real, but subconscious aspect of Apple culture and it exists across all of the product lines. Phones just happen to be one of their biggest products.
I don't think it's subconscious. It shows up obviously in bezel thickness and radius of corners. When they release a new product the bezel is thick and the corners are very round. As they are able to reduce the bezel size, they also reduce the rounding of the corners. This has the effect of making the last generation look toy-like and the new generation look more serious. They have used this pattern for like 20 years across many product lines.
Cars were like this when they were the conspicious consumption item of choice. Every year, new designs. Not always better, but forever permutation so old parts don't fit and so that the 2 year old models already looked 'dated'. Now we have phones as our way to show our buying power.
Absolutely, but there's more than one reason to buy a product, and people buying the cheapest and smallest model with last year's technology aren't generally the novelty-seeking "gotta have it" people. Especially people using an iPhone SE in 2020 and raving about how much they love the design. They're not going to win these people over with "new!"
4/4S/5 and the old SE are still my favourite designs / form factors (saying this despite owning 6/7/11Pro). I hope 12 will do away with rounded edges (similar to the latest iPad Pro).
Mid- and high-end Android phones (e.g. Google-owned Motorola era) used to have a soft-touch plastic casing which was incredibly grippy, and felt and looked great. Then some phone reviewers decided that in order to be "premium", a phone must be made of slipperiest materials known to man. And so here we are, with everyone covering up their "premium" phones with cases, so they're both uglier and thicker than they used to be when they had soft-touch casing and headphone jacks. Progress.
Yes! I didn't need a case with my iphone 7 since it had a metal back that created friction in my pocket. My iphone x is glass and slips out of my pocket constantly so i had to start casing it.
One could also ask the question "how many people would prefer to have a phone that didn't --need-- a case"?
Given the choice between a thin phone that needs a case and a phone that is as thick as a thin phone with a case that is more durable, possibly has a headphone jack and a slightly larger battery, I would personally go for the latter.
If a phone is designed so the screen always breaks when it hits the ground unless it's protected by a case, it would make more sense to manufacture the phone inside a case already, no? I.e. make a raised rubber bezel around the screen's edge part of the standard design.
I've never had a phone come with a case? Strange. But these days I just use the 10$ minimal rubber cases. It's enough to protect were the screen and case meet which is the source of all my breaks.
I’d never used a case until I got the iPhone 8 and had to buy one because of how slippery it is! Unless you put it on a perfectly flat surface it will just slide off on to the floor.
If it’s any consolation, consistent rumors have been pointing to a new, smaller size added to the flagship lineup this fall. It will supposedly have a similar footprint to the 5 series, but with the bezel-less screen like the modern models.
The 8 had a 4.7" screen and 6" (diagonal) footprint.
The 5 had a 4" screen and 5.4" footprint.
An "all-screen" phone with a 5.4" display would be have the footprint of an iPhone 5, like I said. (and that's an 8 Plus — not just an 8 — sized screen)
((still too big, imho, I want something in the iPhone 4 footprint, but I'll take what I can get))
Were that rumor to be true, it would be the first time in ten years I'd line up at a physical store on launch day just to make sure I got one as rapidly as possible.
Of course 4/5 fans wouldn't like it. They are a hilariously small and vocal minority.
This is the most popular selling smartphone design in history. It's no secret that the market back in 2013 was begging for a larger screened phone and this design delivered it in a big way. It's also much smaller than current flagships.
I kept my iPhone SE and was waiting for this announcement for literal years. I only just replaced it for an XS _2 weeks ago_ (refurbished off Woot!), and I knew at the time that as soon as I caved, the new SE would come out. And here we are. If only my Wall Street bets went so well.
The small form factor is really nice to have. Some people don't want a gigantic phone, it's true. Maybe we are in the minority, but a huge phone is inconvenient at the times where you don't need a big screen. I still can't even unlock the thing without having my big dumb face directly in front of it.
The screen is gorgeous OLED and it's terrific to watch Youtube/Netflix on in bed. The camera is incredible. A foldable phone would clearly be the most practical, but I know Apple won't ever do that, and I won't switch to Android. At this point, I just have this stupid thing attached to me at all times, and I'll have to accept it. You ever try running with a damn X/XS/XR or god forbid one of the Max phones strapped to your arm?
But my point is that just because people have gotten used to bigger and bigger phones, doesn't mean that they wouldn't appreciate it being smaller 99% of the time. Like I just mentioned, running or even going for a walk wearing gym shorts with one of these devices in your pocket is pretty much impossible. They are too large and weigh too much, flailing around and whacking you in the knees. I have a battery charging case which admittedly adds more weight, but it literally pulls my shorts down when I go for a brisk walk with my dog.
So to call those who desire a small phone a "hilariously small and vocal minority" sounds to me like "people are in denial that a bigger phone is always better" when that most certainly is not true. It has benefits but I still think they should have kept the SE2 the same size (4") as the SE. The ideal solution would be a phone that can be big OR small depending on situation.
Much like the concept of a touch screen as pitched by Jobs himself during the initial iPhone reveal (context-sensitive buttons/keyboards depending on what you currently need vs. a static keyboard), you can't tell me that the vast majority wants a huge phone every hour of the day.
This is why they will gladly sell you a cellular Apple watch. I actually laughed at the comparison of strapping the phone to your arm because it was so obvious.
I'm just saying that the SE would have sold better or people would have been more upset about the discontinuation, or the Xperia compact line would have sold well...but people want a big screen. It's proven by the market. I'm not saying there isn't a market for a small phone, I'm just saying that there is a much bigger market for a larger phone. (and the original comment claimed the design wasn't popular because it wasnt 4/5 sized) The companies are not idiots out there, all of them went to larger phones because the majority of people prefer them. (Notably the older crowd with worse vision that came onboard to smartphones in the early 2010s and the crowd that got addicted to apps.) I loved my 5S back in the day but the larger screen is much better when you actually use it in depth.
I have a cellular Apple Watch! But Apple doesn't let Spotify sync music to it (or stream via the CELLULAR), so I can't listen to anything unless I'm near my phone.
Imagine my surprise when I got an Apple Watch with cellular specifically to avoid having to take my phone with me. Absolutely absurd - and it's obvious why - they want you to use Apple Music. I refuse to be forced into using a piece of software. And before someone comes back with the inevitable "well you should have researched it":
1) I never thought such a simple and obvious concept would be absent from the Apple Watch, and
2) I use the Watch for the utility of fitness tracking, and that far outweighed the inconvenience of having to continue bringing my phone with me everywhere. I'm not a big runner anyway, usually mountain biking, and my phone is in my backpack or mounted to my handlebars.
Bottom line is it's ridiculous.
EDIT: I did some research on this again and it appears that Apple actually does allow developers to stream and store data from the watch, and that it's Spotify who have yet to release an update for their WatchOS app that provides that functionality. Interesting turn of events; at least I know it's theoretically possible and not gated by Apple.
Apple is referring to the 6/6S/7/8 case. It is indeed extremely popular.
Check out these stats from a year ago. On this app (which has a broad appeal), the 6/6S/7/8 had a 47% share. iPhone 5s/SE had 11%
The old SE form factor is great! And those who like it, like it a lot. But you're clearly wrong if you take that to mean that the new SE form factor is an unpopular one.
By calling this model "iPhone SE", they're plainly hoping to appeal to people who already own the earlier "iPhone SE" (and probably have not upgraded in several years). Among those people, the larger form factor is unpopular. Obviously, people who like big phones already have plenty of choice.
When they released the last SE, it was the previous generation phone design with updated internals at a lower price point.
When they released this SE, it is the previous generation phone design with updated internals at a lower price point.
I don't think Apple's intention was to get all of the "I like tiny phones" people to upgrade and they somehow just missed the mark. They know who they want to buy this phone, it just doesn't happen to be one group of people who liked the old SE.
It feels like the automotive industry's product lines. Gradually increase the size and shift it more towards luxury, then introduce a new economy product line. Maybe in 2022 we'll get the iPhone XSE.
IIRC the iPhone is the most profitable consumer product ever. If anything, it should be able to support a greater diversity of models than it does. Because even the "small minority" slices are still large in absolute terms. For instance, I'd suppose a niche iPhone could still be more profitable than, say, the new Mac Pro, which is expensive and looks cool but doesn't sell that many units.
Which is perhaps why the iPhone 12 rumors point to four new models, one of which is smaller than the iPhone 8 and one of which is larger than the current Max phones.
If that's true there will be 5 distinct iPhone models released in one year, which I think is a new record for iPhone model diversity.
As a current iPhone SE user, here's my assessment:
Pros:
* Feature set in terms of processor, camera, etc., is exactly what I want
* Continued presence of Touch ID is a huge plus, I don't like Face ID
* Price point is, admittedly, fantastic
Cons:
* Lack of headphone jack is still unacceptable
* Form factor is, candidly, still too big for my tiny hands
* Color schemes aren't as nice as the SE's (can I contribute to COVID-19 research without getting a bright red phone?)
I will be considering this phone, but skeptically. Would be ideal for me to be able to physically hold one before buying, but not sure that'll be possible (maybe I can borrow somebody's iPhone 8).
I think I'm in the minority, but I haven't really missed the headphone jack in my iPhone 11. I have the Echo earbuds, and those have been good to great for my use cases.
This continues to feel a bit like the 3.5 floppy and CD-ROM removals from the Mac: a lot of people hated it, until it was a nonissue.
> I think I'm in the minority, but I haven't really missed the headphone jack in my iPhone 11
You don't miss it until you do. When you are trying to join a meeting and your bluetooth headset absolutely refuses to work (and yes, even the fancy Airpods Pro do that occasionally), you wish you had the ability to just plug in an old-fashioned, analog headset. Which you can pull easily, with no fuss, from many devices, including computers and gaming consoles. Quick, no pairing required. No battery issues.
Analog headphones are also very cheap(good if you are not in a rich country), and will always be cheaper than bluetooth headphones, as there is minimal hardware required. You can quickly pick one up even from a shady street seller and you know it will work(longevity might suffer, but again, cheap).
The only problem with the headphone jack is that it is a very old standard. It's big connector, and takes significant real state inside a phone.
> a lot of people hated it, until it was a nonissue
While I got the Airpods Pro when they launched and loved them at first, the battery degradation and seemingly worse ANC performance has really irked me given their price. I've also tried using cheaper wireless earbuds, but their connectivity can be spotty. I know it's not the worst issue, but I do miss being able to take a pair of wired earbuds and use them freely between my laptop and phone and not have to worry about their battery lives.
how long did it take for the battery to start degrading? its odd how people never seem to mention that problem when they are taking about how great their bt headphones are
I think bluetooth receivers are the way to go. you get the wireless aspect for the most part and can change track/volume without having to take out your phone.
you can use it any headphones or earbuds you have
with the fiio one I own, you can charge it while using it so you are never caught if you are near a power source or have an external battery chargers. and if not then at least you can quickly switch to being directly plugged in
there's also a much better chance that I will be able to replace the battery at some point in the future. with bt headphones, they are so small that it would be almost impossible to take it apart successfully
I've only really noticed the degradation in the last month or so, and it's taken maybe ~1 hour off of their initial battery life which doesn't bode well for their longevity :/ I'll look into bluetooth receivers for next time, thank you for the rec!
Yeah, I hated the concept but then I picked up an iPhone 8 as the most reasonably-sized flagship I could find and willing to make sacrifices for the size.
It was basically a forced upgrade to bluetooth headphones. I bought some bluetooth over-ear ANC headphones like two weeks later and it really hasn't annoyed me at all since.
Might be that some people still remember the Bluetooth from 2010 or so.
These days, I charge my wireless headphones once a week. When I turn them on, they are connected before I have opened the music app. The connection is stable. When I stop playing sound on my phone and start sound on my laptop, they automatically switch to that. Their microphone is perfectly fine for calling people.
I'm sorry, but I don't think this is the case, at least not for me. I actually own a pair of Bluetooth earphones, which I use at the gym. They do well, I don't have to worry about the cable or accidentally hitting the phone in my pocket when picking up weights. They have a reliable connection, sound is decent.
But I have hundreds of dollars invested in good-quality wired headphones, plus wired earbuds, and I want to be able to use those with my phone without needing to re-spend that money. Plus, regardless of quality of the product, I'm occasionally a forgetful human. I've actually run out of juice mid-workout with my wireless set. Instead of not having music for the rest of my workout (I like music!), I simply walked over to my bag, pulled out my wired earbuds, and finished up.
Not having the ability to do that is a deal-breaker for me on a phone, and it's not something that can be fixed by improving the Bluetooth tech. While this is obviously anecdotal, I don't imagine I'm the only person who feels this way.
> Not having the ability to do that is a deal-breaker for me
The dongle is small enough to leave attached to your headphones and costs $9. It would be wasteful to include one with the phone, as most would be unused. Clearly you'd prefer a built-in jack, but you have a cheapish option to add this ability.
Saying you can leave a 3.5-to-lightning adapter attached to your headphones assumes that all of your other devices can do audio over lightning also. Realistically, it seems like you'd add or remove the dongle based on what devices you're attaching to, so you probably wouldn't want to actually leave it attached to your headphones.
That was my thinking as well. I honestly hated the lack of headphone jack.
After getting an iPhone XS from work - replacing my iPhone 5 - I found that I would actually just leave the adapter on my headset. If I ever used the headset for anything else I would take it off but immediately replug it after being done.
My conclusion is that it's been waaaaay less of an issue that I honestly expected it to be.
> But I have hundreds of dollars invested in good-quality wired headphones, plus wired earbuds, and I want to be able to use those with my phone without needing to re-spend that money.
In my experience with a fairly recent and expensive set of bluetooth headphones (Sennheiser Momentum 3), it works well most of the time, but in 5% of cases it does not. If you use your headphones a lot, those 5% get annoying very quickly.
Some issues I've noticed:
- My tv (flagship LG OLED) always has trouble connecting to the headphones. I usually have to turn them off and then back on again at least once. Macbook and iPhone rarely have trouble connecting. Connecting on Windows has always worked so far.
- When I'm connected to both my Windows laptop and my phone, in a skype conference on the laptop and get a call on my phone, the skype conference is automatically terminated. FOR ALL PARTICIPANTS. That's insane.
- To make the previous point even worse: except for the ringtone, the audio from incoming calls never even goes to the bluetooth headphones. The audio from outgoing calls does, however. This is all on an iPhone SE.
- Sometimes when I listen to music, or watch a video on a Windows machine, my bluetooth headphones will just pause the playback every couple of seconds. This only happens on Windows.
- If your headphones are connected to multiple devices, you have absolutely zero control over what is happening. You might be listening to music on your phone, but some notification from your computer will interrupt your playback even though the computer is set to silent.
I could go on and on and I've only been using bluetooth headphones for a month. There is a LOT of polish missing here. That being said, this could be a great technology and it's not too far off at the moment. There certainly are some advantages over wired headphones as well.
You aren’t in the minority. You are in the silent majority though. Most people -and really emphasizing most in terms of what people actually buy not what they complain about online- don’t care about a 3.5mm jack.
It’s gone, it’s never coming back. To that end, once iPhone goes USB-C it’ll accelerate this majority non-issue.
I don't think it's a good comparison for several reasons. 1) Those technologies were already not as heavily used when they were dropped. There are still tons of traditional headphones being manufactured and sold, even years after phones have started dropping them. 2) It's easy to leave an external drive at a desk for occasional use, it's much less convenient to carry a dongle everywhere since you likely want to use headphones on-the-go. 3) This is subjective, but floppy to cd-rom is clearly an upgrade, wireless to wired headphones is not. It adds syncing and battery life problems to an otherwise simple technology.
> Those technologies were already not as heavily used when they were dropped.
I'll give you it's not an apples-to-apples comparison, but having lived through all there events professionally, I can tell you that's not how it was perceived at the time. At least, not around my offices :-)
If you're carrying headphones on the go, how much less convenient is it to carry those same headphones with the adapter on them? I would argue it's exactly the same level of convenience.
I still have a 6s with a headphone jack. I don't use headphones much, but do plug it into our cars (admittedly not as much of an issue lately). One has no bluetooth, one has incompatible bluetooth. Neither have USB input. Both are likely to last at least ten more years. One adapter per car is not going to be the end of the world, but it is an annoyance.
3.5 floppy and CD-ROM are replaced by something that does everything its predecessor does and better. Whereas bluetooth headphones are not 1:1 replacement of analog headphones. e.g. they have a battery, their audio quality is worse.
I realized I was not going to miss my headphone jack when I plugged in headphones and they didn’t work. Realized I hadn’t plugged in headphones for several months.
Ugh, this is not at all a valid comparison. It's extremely tired, too.
The phone MUST create analog audio signals, to drive its own speaker. Denying customers a connector to access it is petty and offensive. Compounding that offense is requiring every listening device to now incorporate redundant D/A converters. Contrary to apologists saying that this enables better quality, it in fact results in wholly unpredictable quality.
Not to mention that your ears will ALWAYS require analog audio. So do billions of amplification devices around the world.
What's with the US and Checks? Can your financial institution not get on with the time and offer internet/mobile banking? Not to be an arse but it seems very backward in many ways.
That's only because the cheques are allowed in the first place. Rest of the civilised world can make online transfer that will reach the recipient the minute you pressed the form button, granted no unusual infrastructure issues.
If that were the only reason then Apple wouldn't associate it with Product Red.
The Red iPhone is signaling and that's the whole premise of Product Red. The charity appeals to vane people who feel the need to show off and exploits them for good.
A bright red phone is attention grabbing, like a loud motorcycle or crazy hair. You can claim that because one person might just like having a red phone, that everyone who has it just likes red phones but the association with and marketing around Product Red all point to the red colored phone being a form of signaling.
That's nonsense. The marketing around Product Red are that you can buy the same product you want in a color that you want and donate to charity without changing your behavior at all. That's the only association being made.
My comment was in the context of Apple's Product Red offerings, not the charity itself. You can't buy an Apple product and have proceeds from the purchase go to the Product Red charity unless you purchase a bright red device.
But I appreciate that you're willing to read through an entire thread and then take my last comment completely out of context for your "witty" response.
My comment was in the context of Apple's Product Red offerings, you can't buy an Apple product and have proceeds from the purchase go to the Product Red charity unless you purchase a bright red device.
Yes you can purchase any Apple device you want AND donate to the charity. You can also forgo the device and just donate to the charity, but we weren't talking about either of those scenarios.
FWIW I thought I would miss TouchID for a long time until I finally bought a new iPhone and realised that FaceID actually worked much better than I expected.
Yes there are some occasions where it doesn't work well (when you're trying to unlock the phone without looking at it properly) but there are also many occasions where it works much better. Most of the time my phone now unlocks so smoothly that I don't even realise it was locked. So on balance I think FaceID would actually be a plus.
To me FaceID makes zero sense. The majority of times I unlock my phone when it’s laying flat on the tabel and away from me. I typically don’t pick up my phone to read a message, so FaceID will require me to move my entire face and upper body to unlock the phone. This is also why I don’t get the point of having the fingerprint reader on the back like many Android phones.
I wouldn’t argue that Apple drop FaceID, but at least put the fingerprint censor back, so we can choose between ToucID or FaceID. I believe that many would choose TouchID.
Surely this depends on the situation. In many lying flat situations, Face ID does work. If you want to read a notification (eg a message) while you have gloves on (eg if you’re skiing) then Face ID plus raise to wake are a massive improvement, though of course you have to take your goggles off.
Sure, there are situations where Face ID is preferable, but I have to agree with the parent commenter here. The situations where my phone lies flat on the table but can’t be unlocked without me picking it up or moving in position for the camera to recognize me significantly outnumber the occasions where gloves or wet hands prevent me from unlocking my device. It’s not close at all.
Touch ID is much more convenient and reliable in my opinion.
Still boggles my mind that the Apple device you always use sitting directly in front of has a fingerprint sensor and the Apple device that I use at arms length, laying on my side, glancing down to at an angle, on its side, upside down etc now needs to be directly in front of me and one specific orientation to unlock.
I'm sure that's a huge help for people who like to check their notifications or other things on their phone while it's sitting on the desk without picking it up. There are tons of situation where your face is not in front of the phone yet you would still like to unlock it without contorting you or it, and how well face I'd work or not has nothing to do with it.
Yes, that's one of the occasions where I have noticed it not working well. I guess it just depends on how often you do that and how annoying you find it to have to lift the phone up a bit. Not a big deal for me.
Or having to remove your sunglasses, or when you have a face mask on, or when the ambient sunlight/IR is too high for the sensor to read the tracking dots it projects on your face.
FaceID introduced a huge swath of new failure modes while simultaneously reducing security. Not acceptable.
FaceID works totally fine with your sunglasses on and in bright light...
It does fail if you have a mask on, if you have goggles covering half your face, or if you have a helmet that covers your face... but to me that is all completely understandable.
And also something that you can partially alleviate with alternative appearances in the FaceID settings, depending on how much of your face you're covering.
Yes, I will admit that it's not great with a face mask. But then that wasn't really an issue until a few weeks ago. Never had problems with glasses or too much sunlight but that might just be a perk of living in a country that's not particularly sunny.
>until I finally bought a new iPhone and realised that FaceID actually worked much better than I expected
Found the opposite, it actually worked far worse than I expected. I can no longer use my phone in bed without having to hold it right up to my face because the tech only works one way up.
Found the rest of the innovations it brought underwhelming, like it can tell when I look away for 10 seconds to dim the screen but it doesn't undim it when I look back or the utterly confusing logic for showing me full notifications or not. The amount of times I've had to unlock my phone just to check through notifications is crazy.
My iPhone 11 consistently feels like a downgrade in user experience from my 7, even the camera everyone raves so much about doesn't seem that much better to justify how much of the case it now takes up.
FaceID does work quite well, but what if wearing masks becomes normalized because of Covid-19? I don't know how well FaceID would work with a mask on. (Of course the same thing happens with gloves and TouchID, so maybe there's no good solution)
Yes, I'd be leaning towards trading my SE in for this except for the headphone jack which I use a lot. Now I'll have to wait and see if iOS 14 supports my phone.
Otherwise this looks like a solid improvement. $400 is the north end of what I'm willing to pay before I look at refurbs and last year's model.
I would happily make do with the dongle, but the Apple dongle's built-in DAC is noticeably poor. And, the iPhone having a lightning connector instead of a USB one, there really aren't a lot of alternatives on the market, especially if you're looking for a reasonable price point.
It's really frustrating. I use my phone to listen to music at work, and while I'm far from being an audiophile, things like a tinny high end are still annoying. Where Apple has spent so much time marketing to creatives, you'd think they would pay more attention to something like this. My impression, though, is that they're so caught up with the cash cow that is AirPods and wireless Beats headphones that they just don't care anymore.
Or perhaps there's a manufacturing error or some cable damage in the one I listened to? Or, for that matter, I have no idea what the impedance was on the headphones I was using; it was a pair of cans that could well have been more than 100ohm.
In any case, thanks for sharing. These test results are definitely reassuring.
Well he tests at 35Ω and 200kΩ so probably not resistance, and the output impedance is very low.
It may be that you’re used to hearing certain artefacts from other sources (eg you get totally different harmonics near the upper limit of a valve amp compared to a solid state one), or that the headphones could not be driven at a sufficiently high voltage. But the dac in the dongle is either the same as or better than all the dacs in iPhones with 3.5mm jacks so having a headphone jack wouldn’t help there.
Yes, I agree. I personally find the dac in the lightning connector to be pretty solid. Not as good as the interior one with headphone jack, but pretty solid overall.
I'm just going to buy 2 old SEs on Ebay and swap units when my current SE finally dies. No way am I paying $400 for a bunch of features I don't need (better camera) plus a bunch of anti-features I want to avoid (no audio jack, still too big).
I guess you must be frequently switching your headphones between the phone and some other device and so it is not sufficient to keep the $10 dongle attached to your headphone cable
No, I really just use the standard 3.5 mm EarPods to talk on the phone with family. But the conversations are long and it's much more comfortable to listen with the EarPods than to 'use the phone'. The conversations always begin with 'lemme rig up.'
But if you got a new phone it would come with EarPods with a lightning cable so it’s only different if your phone conversations last long enough that battery life is a concern
For me, I prefer the 4" screen but I can handle a slightly bigger screen. Touch ID is a must and I'm glad they kept it. But the loss of the headphone jack will be bad, so I'll stick with my current SE as long as it's supported.
The original SE is about 4 years old now, which is close to retirement age in Smartphone years. It should be noted that the SE uses the same class hardware as the 6s, which is at the very bottom of Apple's currently supported list.
FWIW I've got some wired headphones I really love and I bought a dongle for them when I got my iPhone XS in 2018. I really don't notice it; it just feels like an extension of the cord.
When was the last time you plugged your phone into anything except to charge? And when was the last time you needed to charge it and listen to music at the same time?
All I'm saying is, lots of people who are going on and on about the headphone jack are upset out of principle, even though it won't actually degrade their user experience to a meaningful degree. I'm not saying it was the right decision, necessarily, but I'm saying you'll have a better time if you just accept it and move forward. It really isn't that bad.
Edit: Personally I only ever charge at night, and only ever use headphones when I'm walking around/driving somewhere. I guess battery life varies, but I also suspect that a lot of people are eagerly charging at every opportunity, even if they'd last the day without doing so. My XS lasts two days on a charge, usually.
> When was the last time you plugged your phone into anything except to charge?
Aside from headphones? March 15th, the last time I took a train (been at home due to covid since then)
> And when was the last time you needed to charge it and listen to music at the same time?
Last night, when I was watching futurama in bed
Now when it comes to both cases, the answer would again be March 15th, when I had my phone plugged into my laptop providing limited connectivity, my headphones plugged into my phone listening to (offline) spotify. I then unplugged my headphones from the phone and plugged into my laptop to listen to a short video, then back into my phone to continue to listening to music.
This is possible with a lightning+3.5mm jack dongle, but it's not as nice an experience as with the superior iphone of yesteryear.
Bluetooth is a pretty ropey experience for multi sources - which device am I paired with, how do I change from one to the other, all of that goes away with 3.5mm.
I don't deny there are benefits of bluetooth, but there are benefits from a 3.5mm jack too.
I'm fortunate that I have my own office so don't need to worry about headphones during the working day - just have multiple speakers. How do these extraordinary headphones cope with sources from a TV, computer, laptop, phone, and test kit, which I want at different levels and outputs?
A £50 mixer takes these inputs (almost all from 3.5mm sources) and brings them all together via a reliable tactile interface.
On the road of course I only tend to have to choose between 2 sources, so perhaps beats can approach the utility of a 3.5mm audio cable.
> The certainty and simplicity of an audio jack is not valueless though
Nobody is saying that audio jacks are valueless in general, just that it's reasonable for a mass market device where it has value for a small % of people to not have it.
Sorry, but I think that's nonsense. I have an iPhone 11 and charge it completely wirelessly and even you're admitting that you haven't needed to plug something in for over a month. Your complaint requires you to willingly ignore the other options you have for accomplishing this, some of which may actually be easier/smoother if switching from device to device.
So get AirPod Pros and be done with it. Watching a show in bed, you won’t have cables tangling up. You won’t be frustrated with trying to listen to music while charging your phone on a train. You’ll have a much better experience overall. Futurama isn’t streaming at some audiophile deluxe level of audio quality, so whatever wired headphones you are using aren’t going to beat AirPods Pro for the purposes you’ve mentioned.
I am not willing to spend $250 to solve a problem that Apple willfully introduced. I am also not willing to spend $250 on a product with a usable lifetime of 18 months max.
I hear a lot about the inconvenience of wired headphones, but as a daily user of wired headphones, that's not something I experience. And it certainly doesn't outweigh the costs (financial and environmental) of switching to Apple's disposable wireless headphones.
Use any other pair of bluetooth headphones on get lightning wired headphones or use the headphone dongle.
I was annoyed when Apple initially got rid of the headphone jack but I've been without it for quite some time now and it's not really a bother. Even if you have to charge while having the wired headphones in, there is a dongle for that. I suppose if that's a very frequent use case, I can see the annoyance.
My last iPhone that had the headphone jack required frequent cleaning of the jack or else it would get clogged with accumulated dust and make the speaker very quiet.
I use hook earphones at night [0], haven't found any wireless ones, but even if I did I'd have to keep them charged which seems like a retrograde step.
The downsides of "AirPods Pro"
1) They go in my ear, which is uncomfortable
2) They need charging
3) They presumably are trivial to lose
4) They cost about 50 times as much as hook earphones.
> Watching a show in bed, you won’t have cables tangling up
I don't have cables tangling up.
> You won’t be frustrated with trying to listen to music while charging your phone on a train
I'm not, because I have a jack on my phone and I don't use bluetooth and thus suffer from deciding which host they should be connected to at any given time
They're not quite as easy to lose as you would think. Since they're so easy to cary around (rounded, small case), you don't end up putting them in strange places and it's not a problem to just keep them in your pocket.
> And when was the last time you needed to charge it and listen to music at the same time?
Not music, but phone calls. Working remotely means I spend a lot more time on the phone, and only recently I was frustrated by the fact that I could not charge my phone and use headphones on a call at the same time.
When was the last time you needed an airbag? I wouldn't be upset on _principle_ if it turns out my car doesn't have a working one; I don't even expect to use it frequently. However, when I do _need_ it, I'll need it badly.
I have often wanted to charge my phone and listen to it at the same time. Wireless charging helped, but I really missed being able to plug my iPhone 8 into a power bank and my headphones at the same time.
Playing Pokemon GO beat this into me hard. It used to be such a battery drain that you pretty much had to constantly be plugged in to a power bank with everything non-essential turned off (wifi, bluetooth, brightness, etc). But when you're out walking around, it was also way more enjoyable to have some kind of music or at least in-game sounds.
Plugged in, with music. For as many hours each day as the power banks would allow.
No, that's illegal where I live (at least for the driver, I'll sometime wear headphones on a long trip when I'm not driving but in that case I won't be navigating so battery drain isn't as bad). I was responding to the above poster's question: "And when was the last time you needed to charge it and listen to music at the same time?" I don't have wireless Android Auto or whatever new cars have nowadays, so I use an analog connection to my car's stereo. The cable uses the same 3.5mm jack as headphones, but is legal as long as I don't fiddle with my phone while driving.
Connecting a portable music player to car radios tended to go
* 3.5mm cassttee input
* FM transmitter input (for cars with CD, not cassette)
* 3.5mm aux input
Power was a 12V cigarette lighter.
During all of this the output from the mp3 lpayer was a 3.5mm device.
It was only relatively recently (say in the last 7 years) that most cars started getting USB and bluetooth sockets that took audio connections. Even then there are issues - my 2016 skoda's airplay doesn't play music properly - it frequently skips, I have to use bluetooth to get skipless sound, which means not using maps.
Having USB audio input as standard was even more recently than that - I hired a newish car about 3 years ago which had nothing by a 3.5mm input and 12V jack.
This sure seems like a niche case that rightfully Apple wouldn’t see in their actual-use statistics when making decisions like “should we remove the analog 3.5mm?”
I'm not sure "driving an older car" is a very niche case. 3.5mm jacks on car stereos go back literal decades, and my 2019 Jetta still has one (even though it also has Android Auto + CarPlay). Even as far back as cars with cassette players saw people buying cassette tape adapters so people could route 3.5mm audio through the tape deck.
Even in newer cars, it's the same kind of choice reduction you see on phones, though. With a jack you can choose whether you want wired or wireless audio; without a jack you're still with wireless all the time, even when wired would be more convenient.
It's definitely a niche, most people buying $1000 phones are probably driving newer cars.
However I think use cases like air travel or just hanging out at home with a low battery are less rare. These can be partially mitigated w/ wireless charging, but when I use a wireless battery pack on a flight my phone and tablet don't do a great job actually staying in place, and necessities lowering the tray which is annoying
Presumably plugged into the AUX jack in the car. Usually with power plugged into an cigarette lighter adapter. This use case is covered with the correct kind of dongle, but they're a bit hard to find. You'll probably have to order it off of the internet, not pick it up from the checkout aisle at the 7/11.
> When was the last time you plugged your phone into anything except to charge? And when was the last time you needed to charge it and listen to music at the same time?
It's been a while, because I dropped my adapter down somewhere in the center console of my car, past the hand brake, so it's gone. I've been burning CDs instead. A CD burner only costs about as much as 3 of those adapters and the media's dirt cheap.
"And when was the last time you needed to charge it and listen to music at the same time?"
Well, I listen to audiobooks while walking in the Scottish mountains and 10+ hour days are possible and when running multiple apps (OS maps, Endomondo, Audible) I do need to charge and use my phone at the same time (I have a dual lightning/headphone adapter that supports charging and listening at the same time).
Over the last 8 weeks? Every single day. My regular bluetooth headset with built in mic picks up too much ambient noise, so I use a wired Jabra headset with a boom microphone, and I'm on this every day since I'm now remote from the people I need to speak to regularly.
Prior to the last 8 weeks? Not very often.
Over the next 8 weeks? I expect every day still.
Over the next year or two? 40% chance that it'll still be happening regularly.
Every single moment of "oh, I'll just plug my phone into the AUX... oh. right." is not "out of principle". It's made especially stark when contrasted with other devices: right now I'm 3.5mm'd into a 2019 MacBook for Zoom; I can trivially replug into the iPad next to me, but if I want to do the same with the equivalent era iPhone, I have to walk out of the room, root through a bag for the adapter, or go find the AirPods (hoping they're charged), probably re-select them as the output, while accepting the loss in quality from the old-school cans.
It's not some hypothetical: it's literally decades of habit and muscle memory, throwing away a simple and universal technology that worked insanely well. I can forgive this sort of short-term sacrifice for a transition to a better world: floppy for USB, HDMI for USB-C. One can debate whether the loss is necessary, but usually once we're on the other side, the new standard is inherently superior across every metric.
This is not the case for wired to wireless audio. Though I love the AirPods, they still have batteries, which still run down (short term, and long term). It's always more of a hassle to swap bluetooth connections than just replugging cables. If I want to not share my audio with the world, I can be 1000% sure of that by plugging in a cable, as opposed to the ephemeral "is my computer paired right now, and if so to what?", which could change at any moment when signal is lost or a battery dies. Sure, there's dongles, which is yet another piece of tech junk to juggle and find and lose, and which never seem to be around when you actually need it.
Imagine you went to your bookshelf to grab something to read, only to discover that your curated and beloved collection has all been pulped, and a Kindle with their contents is now in its place. Bezos enthusiastically tells you how much better the Kindle is, and how brave he is for "upgrading" you. That is how we feel. It's one thing to decide to make this sort of transition yourself; when a massive corporation does it on your behalf, "for your own good", yeah, we're gonna get peeved.
Well, my son also has a car without Bluetooth and he had an aux cord that he left in his car with a lightning adapter attached. He even found it much more convenient to just turn on his car and it paired to the Bluetooth adapter above. A $10 adapter that just stays attached to the cord you would need for your car anyway if you don’t have Bluetooth doesn’t seem that inconvenient.
However, a wireless cigarette lighter adapter that supports Bluetooth is much more convenient either way.
For me personally, Bluetooth headphones in general and AirPods Pro in particular are much more convenient - especially going back and forth between my cellular watch when I am jogging or in the gym (pre-Covid),my phone, my iPad, my laptop, and my AppleTV. Besides cords get tangled, yanked out, caught on things, etc.
>For me personally, Bluetooth headphones in general and AirPods Pro in particular are much more convenient
You're free to use Bluetooth headphones even if you have a headphone jack; being able to use them doesn't seem like a "benefit" of not having the jack.
So did you also complain when computer manufacturers stopped including PS/2 and VGA ports?
People have been complaining about Apple getting rid of things since the original iMac got rid of the 3-1/2 drive. High end android phones from Google and Samsung got rid of the headphone jack also.
I didn't complain about PS/2 and VGA ports because the replacements were decidedly better.
I've yet to see anything that makes the removal of a 3.5mm jack seem comparable. You couldn't use DVI or HDMI without replacing the port, which isn't the case with Bluetooth (which you can use regardless of having a 3.5mm jack or not).
A more apt comparison in my eyes seems like wireless mice/keyboards. They don't have cords so they're significantly nicer for cable management, look better on your desk, have longer reach, and probably have other benefits (as well as their own set of tradeoffs like latency, battery, etc). You can use them now or you can use wired versions... but just imagine if a company started selling computers where you could _only_ use wireless keyboard/mice unless you bought USB dongles. Sure, you could just buy the dongles and deal with the loss of choice/convenience, but... why would you want to?
but just imagine if a company started selling computers where you could _only_ use wireless keyboard/mice unless you bought USB dongles.
You mean like the one port MacBook that once you plugged it in for power you had to use wireless accessories, the current MacBook Air and 13” MacBook Pro that only has two ports - but once you plug in power and a monitor you don’t have any ports left?
Yeah, kind of like that (except laptops have a built-in keyboard/mouse, so it's not as much of a problem as, say, a desktop where people rely on their own existing hardware would be). I'd wager most people buy those devices because the rest of the machine is so compelling, despite the lack of ports.
Anecdotally, it seems like each HN thread about new macbooks also has plenty of comments from people complaining about the lack of ports and/or wishing for more. I don't see a lot of people saying the equivalent of, "Apple's never gonna bring those ports back, get over it and get used to it."
When I wake up for an early meeting and find that I forgot to put the phone on the charger, so I need to charge ASAP and also get on the call with headphones.
>> lots of people who are going on and on about the headphone jack are upset out of principle, even though it won't actually degrade their user experience to a meaningful degree
But that is patently untrue.
1. I used to have a bunch of cheap, working headsets everywhere - laptop backpack, car, office, home. That whole use case and convenience is GONE.
2. If I was somewhere and needed to take a concall, I could just borrow anybody's headset. No longer the case.
3. Instead of having a good pair of headphones for 2 decades, I now have to buy new bluetooth headphones with unreplaceable battery and aging standards every few years, and worry about charging them etc.
My life has been so much worse since my employer switched to iPhone, that I wrote to my boss, project manager, practice lead, and in the end CFO. And not because "I'm one of those people" - I spend 3-6hrs a day on calls, and life just sucks now.
(for those who think Airpods are "fine for calls" - yes. For YOU. Not for other 20 people on the call who have to hear everything happening in 5 miles radius of you. And heaven help us if multiple Airpods join the call!)
So even if we say life got worse for - whatever: 10%, 5%, 1% of population - how has it gotten BETTER for you guys that don't happen to have a need for a jack? The phone is not smaller, it doesn't have a better battery life, etc.
I just don't see the argument here other than "I don't need it, so nobody should have it".
I've now spent several hundred dollars on the best-reviewed, bluetooth headset for my conference calls, and it's nowhere near as good, or convenient, as my $29.99 wired headsets.
It now becomes either something I have to carry around with me always; or buy one for each 3.5mm headset I've stashed.
Add the poor reliability and performance, and we come back to your point:
"Yes we shouldn't have to, yes it's a step backwards, yes it's not as good"
Exactly. So I will absolutely do whatever I can to make my life easier - but I also refuse to pretend this does not make my life needlessly harder - once again, for no obvious gain for those who defend the decision.
Phone jack is inherently different than all the Firewire/Zip drive items. There are literally thousands of technologies, interfaces and standards that live and die like fireflies. But the phone jack is a century old and still works perfectly well, and we have replaced it WITH the technology of the day - who thinks their $300 Bluetooth Bose will work 20 years from now? Or seemlessly plug in to each device they use?
Life is full of situations where you have to adapt to an inferior world, it's important to avoid stressing over situations you can't control.
"I've now spent several hundred dollars on the best-reviewed, bluetooth headset for my conference calls, and it's nowhere near as good, or convenient, as my $29.99 wired headsets"
You could buy 50 3.5mm+lightning dongles for several hundred dollars, and stick them on the end of each headset, which sounds more convenient than messing around with bluetooth.
I was thinking of the terrible headsets that some collegues use -- they have USB-A plugs on the end, for laptops. Not sure what they do if they want to join a call from their phone (say out walking). My 3.5mm tip+ring+ring+sheild headphones works on laptops and phones, seems far superior to their single-use devices. But western economy is built around selling you something new every 2-4 years, so needs obsoleting.
My significant other got some bluetooth for xmas. (A nice bose since she is wildly anti apple, im not totally clear on why) She was into them for about a month.
With cabled audio it is sort of unavoidable to miss that never having to charge, pair, unpair, removing phone pairing history (example rental car retaining contact info), just plugging in is so clean, reliable. Honestly in the case of BT vs 3.5 jack i believe we invented in reverse order.
She has since stopped using the >$100 Bose and prefers a 20 sony earbud where one of the two ear buds is actually totally smashed (i drove over it, sadly. Shes a total catch.
So the missing audio jack is my only barrier to new iphone SE entry. I wonder whether anyone has considered some pcb+3d printing a slim fitting adapter which might extend the length of a phone but then provide the existing port and add a 3.5. In other words Is there any attempt at integrating the usb c Or lightning to 3.5 adapter into a clean little clip on / case thing.
>>but not sure that'll be possible (maybe I can borrow somebody's iPhone 8).
My SE broke recently and I had to switch to iPhone 8 (They stopped selling SE by then in India). I am able to manage but the form factor is no where as comfortable as the old SE.
>> Price point is, admittedly, fantastic
True for the developed nations but still on the higher side for India and South East Asia. If they could price it at 299 in India it will sell like hot cakes here but iPhone always misses the bus here in India.
My impression of India was that up could either easily afford the iphone or you were in the market for a budget phone. Not much middle market. Is that a correct assumption?
That used to be correct in the past but things have changed here a lot. There is a growing population of the middle class. Nothing compared to what is there in the developed countries but nonetheless with some significant purchasing power.
The mean income of the 90th percentile in India in 2004 was about 113 USD a month.[1] In the next 4 years the GDP has increased ~4x. [2]
Now even if we assume (I don't have data from a study on this) the 90th percentile income doubled, it leaves them with 226 USD a month.
I can say from personal experience that is a modest assumption. My own salary has increased 40x in this time period. If you consider my friends (a sample space of 30) whose salary I keep track, the average increase is around 20x.
Now it is very reasonable (as the phone has become a very personal "being") to assume that someone in this income will spend a month of their salary on their phone.
Now that is a market size of 120 million people and increasing.
On a personal note, I run a operations company of ~40 people and their average salary is ~300 USD a month and everyone has a phone that costs more than 200USD.
So I think it's reasonable to assume Apple is still missing the bus.
1 month of salary for a phone!? Wow, that sounds really expensive. I would think people would prefer to buy used phones from US/Europe instead at a discount.
I'm not surprised because it's the differentiating camera feature between the SE/XR and the 11. My friends and family that have Night Mode love it, but most don't care that much about multiple lenses. I too believe the SE is up to the task. Hopefully someday Apple will issue a software update that enables it.
Either way, I'm going to upgrade as the 1st gen SE camera is showing its age. Everything else about the 1st gen is still good enough for me.
Still changes the form factor, but without the fidgeting problem. The case makes it easy to pop the phone in and out if you need the original form factor.
My old SE is about as perfect a size for me as there can be: with an Otterbox it fits in a vest pocket. That's what I need. This new one is too big and that is such a disappointment.
Headphone jack is overrated. Keep the DAC as close to your ears as possible if you are an audiophile. For the rest of us casual listeners, the adapter is fairly cheap and just keep one connected to your headphones (or in the headphone bag if you got one).
I am willing to accept no headphone jack only if the device supports USB-C, like my new iPad Pro and every other product I have purchased in the last 4 years.
Personally not too important to me, but I fully agree that it is time to change the port to USB-C. I am not sure why Apple is lagging behind on this, as I don't think it would have any negative effect.
I was thinking the same till I bought an iPhone 11. The tiny adapter for 10 bucks is not that much of a hassle. I have one in my backpack and one at my workplace. I also bought a wireless charger. All that is not expensive compared to the phone itself.
Have you checked the battery health/cycles? Mine was like that, even iOS at once unexpectedly shutdown...
The battery page in settings, under Battery Health should tell your capacity and other info. for me a new battery fixed everything... and batteries aren't usually covered under warranty as far as I know in general but Apple replaced it for me. FedEx Overnighted it to their repair center in California, and then back. So only without a phone for a few days. Kinda like a brand new phone just by changing the battery.
That's the thing. The battery is still healthy and it looks like it retains 90% of its capacity on the Battery Health setting page. I bought my SE very late into its lifecycle (June 2018), so I'm not sure why it's acting this way. I have had a problem with the phone rapidly losing charge in cold weather though. Did you also have severe battery drain on your SE on iOS 13 before replacing the battery?
Yeah, at the point before I got it replaced seemed like sometimes you could watch the percent going down in real time. But then at times I’d be at a few percent and it’d run lot longer then I expected.
I know the OS itself prompted me to get a repair. Got a popup when restarting about a unexpected shutdown. So maybe that helped with the replacement process.
As an everyday user of FaceID IMO it is superior in every way to TouchID.
However, that’s just an opinion. What’s indisputable is that FaceID enables removal of the Home button, which is also a massive positive in and of itself.
Every iPhone I’ve ever owned that had a Home button ultimately had the first thing to fail be the Home button. Not always a complete failure, but at least a partial failure that would make the phone highly annoying to operate.
Besides the Home button wearing out, it also limits the screen size. A full screen is better in every way. In particular by giving significantly more space for the keyboard to be shown without taking up most of the available vertical space.
And so having a biometric unlock which is (arguably) better is really just 1/3rd of the benefit of FaceID. You get a more durable phone, a phone easier to waterproof, and a more usable phone with a better aspect ratio.
That said, the lack of FaceID on the new SE is extremely disappointing to me. I gather they just couldn’t make the margins work at $399.
I have come to realize that headphone jack advocates in phones really do seem to be a minority.
* If you use wired headphones on your phone, a dongle is just a few inches of cable
* Most who use wired headphones accept the quality and comfort of apple earpods that plug into the lightning port
* Most people in general who use their phones for audio use bluetooth.
Note: I am using the metric of average American consumer, not other countries.
Those are observations. My personal opinion is that you cannot get much smaller in display size than the 2020 SE without reducing UI functionality or having a pen. I am not sure 2020 apps would function well for any significant number of users with an iPhone SE 2016 form factor.
Also remember, this may be a good market for them to get into, but Apple is doing this so they can use existing parts and processes. This is not a top down design of a compact phone.
---
PS: My personal "Why did you do that" is removing fingerprint. They should have moved it to the back, if they cared about borderless display. Face recognition depends on lighting, and me looking at my phone.
I got my first iphone when they were around this price. Nowadays I have a hard time spending ~1k on a new phone, so I end up shopping used.
Granted it’s my personal preference to buy the handset outright, I’m happy to see a hardware refresh on a more budget friendly option for a new iphone.
Regarding the price point being fantastic - that may be true for an iPhone but not for smartphones in general. For 480€ i can get a pretty high end Xiaomi phone for example. Or three very decent Xiaomi A3 phones with multiple cameras and an OLED screen.
The batteries on original SE's are seeming to reach end-of-life now so I think I'll still have to jump to this. I've bought 2 used ones and had 2 new ones and they've all got dead/dying batteries.
If thats the only issue with your phone, aftermarket battery replacement service is pretty reasonable. 50 dollar ballpark and takes like 5 minutes. Just have a search in your area for phone repair shops.
I wasn't following the leaks (if any) but I was excited for this announcement. Looking for a new phone to replace the 6S and this one looked like it might encroach on "small" territory. It's about an inch past the ideal but probably doable (even though it's as big as the 6S) and it's at a great price point but the lack of headphone jack is a single nail in the coffin that does it in for me.
Not a clue yet. The Pixel 4a looks promising, but is once again huge. It's for my wife, so it might come down to whether she prefers that jack or something that fits in her hand, but I'm in this thread to google the other phones here and hopefully find something that checks both boxes.
I hung on to my 5S for the longest time before finally getting an 8. I'm happy with the 8's form factor, but it's definitely at the upper limit of what I'm willing to carry around in my pocket all day. I can operate it with one hand, though sometimes a little awkwardly.
I hated not having the headphone jack for a long time. But AirPods (which I do love) have taken care of that problem.
If this came out six months ago I would have considered buying this vs the iPhone 11 Pro.
The one thing about small phones is that you can operate the phone one handed. The iPhone 6-8 and the SE's design is pretty much at the limit that you could operate the phone one handed.
I had an iPhone 8 and Pixel 2 for a while. Both fit well for average-sized hands and I can barely type on my wife's iPhone SE. I'd consider this one for her but the lack of headphone jack is a problem.
Agree with all these points (also an iPhone SE 2016 user). One more point to consider is whether or not the iPhone SE 2016 will continue to get OS updates.
It was flagged obviously because you put an unrelated flamebait phrase in the middle of your comment. That's not cool, and we already asked you to stop this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22824585.
What flame bait phrase? You linked me to a comment where I told a guy off for making excuses for china. In this one I said I’m wearing a mask because of the Wuhan flu. How is what I said flame bait?
There's disagreement around whether "Wuhan Flu" is a good way to name the disease. There are arguments for and against it, but which argument people prefer is strongly (entirely?) correlated with their political commitment, so tossing a phrase like that into an HN comment is political flamebait.
Edit: here is an example of the sort of low-rent, repetitive thread that such things lead to: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22886052. Would you please stop feeding this here? It's the sort of thing this site is explicitly not for.
My opinion continues to be as follows: As of January 2020, there is nothing any phone manufacturer has added that I would be willing to exchange my headphone jack for. Until that changes, I will either stick with my iPhone 6S, or upgrade to the best Android phone with a headphone jack available at my time of purchase.
I'd like to have a phone with a better screen and a nicer camera, and I'd even be willing to pay a lot of money for one, but those features just aren't worth the loss of my headphone jack.
The one thing I could see being worth my headphone jack is a folding screen, but it seems like we're still a ways away from those being durable enough. (And if some company does ever decide to put a headphone jack in a folding phone, that's the one I'll buy.)
I can hang out on outdated iOS for a while (I'm actually on iOS 12 right now), but yeah, eventually I'll likely hop over to Android. Headphone jacks are getting rarer in the Android world, but they're still around, and I'll get something slightly older if need be.
You can get a Lightning adapter for iPhones. The problem is, I know myself—I will lose the adapter, likely right before a long trip.
I can't keep the adapter plugged into my headphones indefinitely, because then I wouldn't be able to connect them to my other devices (multiple computers, etc).
The iPhone comes (came?) with a pair of headphones that have a Lightning jack on the end of them, in place of a headphone jack. Just use those with the iPhone and use your regular headphones with everything else.
Or, if you want good headphones, then just let in the missionaries who've been telling you to accept Bluetooth as your Lord and Savior. (There are some really good Bluetooth headphones nowadays—studio-monitor quality audio, enough battery life to get through a working day, and <$200. I refused Bluetooth until headphones surpassed this bar, but they eventually did, about two years ago.)
Sure, and I could also get two sets of headphone-jack headphones and keep the adapter plugged into one of them.
I just don't want to carry two sets of headphones around with me. Currently, I keep my single pair in my back pocket, so I have them with me everywhere and I can use them with everything.
To be sure, the world would not end if I had to carry around two sets of headphones instead of one. But then, I don't need a faster phone either! New phones today are only adding marginal improvements, and the absence of a headphone jack is a bigger inconvenience by comparison.
Re: Bluetooth, the problem is that switching devices is still finicky. If you only use Apple products the Airpods do a good job at switching devices, but I sometimes use PCs. Also, I lose headphones frequently, and Bluetooth headphones are still expensive.
I mean, how about doing the opposite: leaving a pair of headphones plugged into whatever they "go with", and then putting in your ears the headphones of whatever device you're interacting with? How many devices do you have that need headphones plugged into them?
Many people just leave the Lightning earbuds plugged into their iPhone and wind them around the phone, putting the whole assembly into their pocket. (I've damaged enough cables of expensive devices that I've developed a tic against doing that, but in the case of the iPhone earbuds, it seems to be exactly what they're designed to do, judging by the extra plasticizer in the cable shielding that's not necessary for comfortable wearing and makes them degrade faster under UV.)
> and Bluetooth headphones are still expensive.
Have you checked Amazon lately? There are (high-quality!) $30 wireless earbuds from reputable brands.
> Leaving a pair of headphones plugged into whatever they "go with", and then putting in your ears the headphones of whatever device you're interacting with?
So my MacBook Air for instance (the 11 inch model, small enough to comfortably carry under my arm and use on the subway) doesn't really have a place to store headphones. And permanently wrapping headphones around my phone would get annoying quickly.
Again, these are nitpicks and there are ways I could adapt. But it would be inconvenient. I have a headphone jack, and it works.
> Have you checked Amazon lately?
I have not. The main problem really is switching between devices. And to a lesser extent, the Nintendo Switch's lack of Bluetooth audio support.
Huh, I hadn't seen that! That's really neat, and a possible real solution. Any product links? Doesn't need to be an endorsement, just as an example.
Edit: Oh, but then I totally forgot in this whole discussion—if it's Bluetooth I'll also have to remember to charge my damn things! Bleh. Still would like to see an example though!
Off-topic, but I use the HomeSpot adapter [1] to add Bluetooth to my Switch. It's a big battery drain so I try to use wired where I can, but if I need wireless (watching something while doing dishes, etc) it works pretty well with some minor caveats on initial pairing.
> That, and the Nintendo Switch's lack of Bluetooth audio support.
IIRC, they make a slimline adapter that you can stick to your Switch that gives it Bluetooth support. If you've got it jailbroken, you can also just enable it in software.
Headphones aren't the only devices that use headphone jacks. They can also be plugged in directly to non-portable speakers. And you can use them for high (enough) quality recording.
Plus, it's still much easier to plug in the cable than go through the pairing dance.
And the comment you replied to was talking about the usefulness of non-headphone devices that also use headphone jacks. I just don't see the relevance.
There's a difference between wanting something and having an expectation that you'll get it. For instance, I have an expectation that my phones will have a jack, which is one of the reasons my phone isn't Apple.
> People who don't want to buy an iPhone because of it should just not buy them and stop hammering away at this dead horse.
That's exactly what I'm doing. I'm already not buying iPhones. The only reason I'd ever mention it anymore is when I see comments like this.
> You might as well give up on the headphone jack bud.
There's no reason to give up on headphone jacks.
> Finally, it has to be pointed out that people who complain about this omission underestimate how much internal space a headphone jack wastes in a phone.
I can't be underestimating it if I'm not estimating it. Some phones have jacks. Some don't. I buy the ones with jacks. I don't notice a difference in size.
I don't think the headphone jack will make much of a difference to size (specifically thinness) until they can completely eliminate all ports and move completely to wireless charging. I think that's their endgame here, as ports are the biggest hurdle to the thinness which their industrial designers (and marketers) fetishize.
If anyone ever manages to produce a phone with zero ports on it, then I'll evaluate that phone on its own merits. I'm not going spend hundreds (thousands?) of dollars on a phone that's worse just because it might encourage the manufacturer to design one that might be better in the future.
It's not really about "encouragement". This is clearly Apple's plan, and this is merely an incremental step that they must take to normalize certain things before they can achieve what they actually want to.
Framing the headphone jack as a "premium" feature may not match the views of others, and should not be considered an assumption to be taken for granted.
Headphone jacks are not necessarily considered a premium feature by all phone users.
They are by some, as is evident, but that view cannot be taken for granted — even here at HN.
> Headphone jacks are not necessarily considered a premium feature by all phone users.
Neither is a large screen, indeed I consider large portable electronics to be decidedly non-premium.
A premium feature is something I'm willing to spend money on - a phone the physical dimentions of a traditional SE, with a 3.5mm jack, dual sim cards, a modern processor, and a decent amount of storage.
other phones never got rid of it, such as the lg v-series, and other phones have brought it back, such as the sony xperia 1 ii. these phones are just as thin or thinner than the iPhones with the same ip rating.
why is this downvoted? these are facts. i just presented some examples from other manufacturers.
And give up on the screen size. The number of people who want a phone to fit in their hands and pockets is effectively zero compared to people who want huge screens to scale up content size or watch videos on their commute.
Not only that, but as an SE owner I can attest that many apps and web pages have more or less broken UIs on its screen. And I can't blame creators for not wanting to spend effort on a form factor with small and diminishing user share.
I'm the opposite type of (amateur) developer - I designed an app with an SE as my testing device. I was months into the development process before I said, "hey maybe I should look at the app on an XR." But it was pretty simple to scale the design up. I mostly just adjusted some left/right margins for the larger devices.
And frankly this is part of Apple's premium positioning. If your primary concern is comfort of the form factor, then you're not willing to sacrifice your comfort to signal that you're using Apple's [attainable-]luxury product, and if you're not willing to sacrifice for luxury you're probably not likely to pay for it in the first place. For now, they're happy to let those people go to the Android world. We'll see if that persists into this economic recession, or if they start to move more aggressively downmarket to boost their numbers. But it's a very valid strategy.
As a non-iPhone user, the standout feature to me is the 16:9 display. I'm so sick of phones with absurdly tall screens and dearly wish I could get an android with flagship internals and a 16:9 screen.
Complete BS 'cons', this product is great, admit it.
1. airpods you peasant
2. my hands are f*king huge anyways this phone is still probably too small
3. already donated to Covid research without going through a corporation, I'll take white.
Why would anyone accept the worst sound quality the market has to offer?
For the price of the AirPods you can get wired ear-buds or over-ears which literally provides you with 10x the sound fidelity and listening experience.
And they all require that good ole’ standards-compliant jack.
When it comes to audio, I’ll only take the best. And the AirPods aren’t even in that competition. Peasant indeed, eh?
I wouldn't buy it at this price right now unless you had bought a iPhone 6S or 5S (They are actually the same, except for the screen size) in the last 2 years.
The removal of the headphone jack was something seen as treasonous for Apple to do at first, but then they will then tell you to purchase wireless earphones instead. Making it impossible to listen to music without being discovered via bluetooth trackers / scanners.
If those aren't problems for you, then it seems to be a reasonable buy for other customers who bought older phones. But if it were me, I would buy one in a year and a half when the price eventually drops further.
You say "As a current iPhone SE user... Lack of headphone jack is still unacceptable"
But you're a current user... so clearly you accepted it. And as long as you do (accept it, keep buying phones without headphone jacks) why would anyone change? The message you are sending (in the only way they care about $$$) is that you do in fact accept phones without headphone jacks.
I think you're confused: the original iPhone SE, the one the parent comment is mentioning, has a headphone jack. The new iPhone SE, the one that hasn't been released yet, doesn't.
Sorry, you can't have IP67 water resistance with that 3.5mm headphone jack.
Edit: a lot of folks proved me wrong. I feel that I need to clarify: Apple's design goal is to make it thiner, more integrated, less components more battery space and unified input/output interface, all that combined with water resistance, is not practical. All the 3.5mm examples I am seeing doesn't attempt to make it thin and light albeit water resistant.
That's not true, although I assume it may be harder to water-proof devices with each possible opening in the chassis.
There are some water-resistant phones with a headphone jack and an IP68 rating even. The LG V30 for example is a beast. Semi-regular usage on rainy days works without any issues. Even using it as a flashlight it survived 30min of pouring rain. I had to wait for the USB-C port to dry up to charge it after getting home, but it still survived without any damage whatsoever.
Other phones that are both water-resistant and have a jack [1]:
* Pixel 3a
* Galaxy S10
* Huawei P30
* and a lot more
If I remember correctly, Apple tried to justify its removal due to its size and water-resistance. I wonder when (not if) Apple will remove the power plug due to "water-resistance" and insist on using Qi charging (even though it has worse efficiency[2]) and cloud services instead of transferring data via cable.
My Galaxy S8 has IP68 water resistance and a 3.5mm jack. I guess if you need the extra .5 meters that's non-negotiable, but still feels like a niche use case.
You have to add $75 a year to the operating cost of these phones, for AirPods, which appear to have a design life of about 18 months, max.
I am very frustrated as the SE is really getting to end of life. I have bought 3 of them in the past month from various eBay sellers with good feedback. One fake, one had a badly degraded battery, and the other went into a reset loop after a couple weeks. There's not much out there. Apple's privacy is second to none, usability is very good (though if they introduce one more type of swiping I'm going to go mad. What's next, Force Swiping?), but the hardware is getting extremely inconvenient. Even my buddy who has large hands complains that the phone is too big and heavy.
When I got an iPhone 8, it came with that adapter in the box. I do keep a spare we had lying around in my cross-body bag too, for times like using someone's aux cord in a car.
Yes, it's another thing you can lose, but in practice I don't think it's really a problem -- certainly not the issue that would decide a phone for me, since rarely are all other specs equal.
There are many bluetooth headphone choices, plus an adapter for plugging in headphones. I'm just as sour about the death of the headphone jack, but I think it's hyperbole to say that $75/yr for airpods is required.
Some bluetooth headphones have outstanding battery life. Beats Solo 3 for example. Personally I have no reason to go back to wired headphones, just switching them between devices with a click of a button is so convenient.
An upgraded iPhone 8 with a starting storage of 64 Gb at only $399. Seems like a great deal. Makes me seriously consider this model for my next phone instead of spending $1200 on an iPhone 11 Max.
A while ago I quit buying new models and switched to refurbished ones. The 7 I had did more or less what its predecessor did (car services, chat, remote camera control) and the one I have now (X or Xs?) does more or less what the 7 did.
I can afford the newer ones, but I don't see the value relative to the four-figure cost.
When I got my XS ($1000) it was because I planned to keep it for a long time. It's been a year and a half and I have zero complaints of degradation in speed, battery life, etc. Still feels like new. I plan on keeping it for four years at least. Compare that to the $500 phones of the past that would limp across the two-year mark and it's really not unreasonable.
Looks like I'm hardly original, but I'm also still using an original SE that I bought 4 years ago. Unlike the other posters here, I'm even rocking my original battery! (it is admittedly on its last legs, though). Spending < $100/yr on fully-supported phones is a pretty tough benchmark to beat. Looks like this new SE will accomplish that task like its predecessor.
I don't think this is the comparison that you're drawing, but I'd like to point out that my current iPhone SE has been doing well for three years (other than a battery replacement), and I think it has at least one more year left in it. So it's not just the top-end phones that have staying power.
Another dedicated (first-get) iPhone SE reporting in. It did desperately need a battery replacement but it was only $50. I have noticed that increasingly apps and websites aren't designed for such a small screen, even Apple's first-party ones.
That depends a lot on what's meant by "refurb". I've had some that had had a screen and battery replacement, and they work and last like new, as they should. I've also had some that were sold as "refurbished" despite having had, at most, a wipe down with Windex to get the fingerprints off. Those don't do so well, but if you're handy, you can do your own refurbs with $80 in parts and an hour or so of work, and get the same like-new result modulo whatever damage exists to the case.
Agreed, I upgraded from 7 to XS for the camera upgrade, and I can't really see myself wanting to upgrade again soon. I just paid the XS off and now I just pay for an unlimited plan at $60 a month, it's pretty nice.
Current iPhones still struggle in low light photography but I can't see myself caring enough to upgrade to a new flagship anytime soon just to maybe take better pics at night.
I agree with the low light photography situation. I have an XR and the only thing that i feel short off is low light photography. I had pixel 2 before this, so low light situation was bit downer. Recently I compared my phone with iPhone 11 from my co-worker, we tried shooting this dark storage location and iPhone 11 definitely is big improvement. But i am planning to keep my phone for at least next 4 years. The rest of the phone is fantastic.
Yeah. I'm not saying there will never be a new feature that inspires me to upgrade early, but there isn't one on the horizon right now. The only things I can think of right now are a foldable version (maybe) or a significantly smaller screen size (SE-size). 5G certainly won't do it.
I'm also still holding on to my 6S+. We upgraded my wife to an 11 and I just don't see anything that I have to have. Eventually, I'll upgrade for a better camera but I'll probably keep using the 6S+ until the battery can't hold a charge
And even then, they replace batteries now on the cheap ($50 I think). I would say the biggest limiting factor would be OS updates; they guarantee updates for 4 years, which is the longest in the industry, but may be shorter than the lifetime of the device would otherwise be
Same here. Recently the camera has started shaking really badly so I'm thinking of finally getting a replacement. I have other cameras though, so the phone camera is just for convenience. It's hard to bite the bullet on a new phone when the one I have is (aside from the camera) in great shape.
I'd still be using my 6S+ if this hadn't happened to me. Apparently there's a software problem with the optical stabilization, and it goes haywire. A fix is to override the stabilization solenoids with a magnet next to the lens. Not happy that Apple never fixed this bug they introduced.
The other thing that went wrong, also apparently in an OS update, is that TouchID won't work anymore. The hardware isn't recognized.
I looked into it a bit, and found that this happens when a piece of dust gets into the lens, which steals the focusing of the camera, so it shakes because it oscillates focus from the field of view and the piece of dust. Sadly the camera module needs to be replaced, which can be purchased cheaply but medium tedious difficulty to replace - or pay to have it done not as cheaply.
I thought that too with my XS, but it’s been nothing but trouble since day 1. The LTE and WiFi modems (not antennas) just don’t work right, and require a hard reboot occasionally to work correctly.
For the future, Apple has a short-term return policy (14 days I think) where they'll take a device back for any reason, no questions asked, full refund. So even if it's an intermittent problem that's hard to demonstrate, if you feel like there's something wrong with your device, you can just take it in and get a new one in that time period no matter what.
Doesn’t really seem worth it to me, you get multiple years less of updates, slower hardware, and worse battery life for what, like $200 saved over the XR?
Every industrial engineer and electrical engineer I know said that it was a doomed project, and when I repeated their arguments to me (huge inefficiency in battery life, very heavy, poor performance) nobody wanted to listen. (And I was heavily downvoted).
my friends ended up being right, those issues could never be worked out because it’s a fundamental problem. Integrated circuits are more efficient than others and having high performance data and power contacts is wasteful at best, and heavy at worst.
It’s the same as building a computer on a breadboard vs having everything built in like a raspberry pi.
I still use a 7. I don't even notice it, which is exactly what I want in a phone - it does what I need and doesn't annoy me or have many annoying quirks.
iOS's new text interface may still push me to Android. The affordances for text on iOS have historically been simple, dependable, and understandable. Now, I find myself struggling to select, copy, and edit text fields. Gesture-based cursor management doesn't work well on small screens.
Ssh, don't tell me that! I've used my 128GB iPhone 7 since buying it used when the iPhone 8 was released, and I still think it has an excellent camera compared to my previous Galaxy Note 4.
There is also a difference between phones. My 7 only makes decent pictures under the best of conditions. In other conditions it yields grainy and water painting style pictures. My wife’s 7, ordered at the same time yields way sharper and higher resolution pictures in the same situations.
Mine took this photo yesterday, and I can definitely see room for improvement both in overall sharpness and in detail clarity like the signs and foliage: https://i.imgur.com/U1mmscV.jpg
It sits above my personal line of "good enough", though, and every photo will be mangled by $social_network JPEG compression before anybody else sees it anyway.
See that's funny because despite switching to Oneplus I still miss the camera from my Note 4 every day. Even the "standard angle" cameras these days have such wide fields of view there's never enough detail on my subject to make my pictures worth having.
I was running an AOSP-based build of Android with significantly worse camera results than Samsung's Android, presumably due to some missing proprietary driver. My fault :)
Right. They seem to seriously be undermining their higher price point phone products. Although, this may be the time to do it given current market conditions.
That’s how a smart company does it. Cover the whole range even if it may hurt sales in one segment. Better to cannibalize yourself than have the competition do it.
If you want the smallest iPhone available, and prioritize that in your purchasing, you no longer have to compromise on a wide array of features to do so.
That will spur a great deal of people who are refusing to buy iPhones to buy iPhones (+$$$) and convert a certain percentage of bigphone users to smallphone users at a lower pricepoint at the next upgrade cycle (-$$).
It is possible that Apple's usage statistics for old iPhones indicate that the + will be greater than the - while getting a bunch of users off of older lower-performing phones.
I have an iPhone 7 and I was reluctant to change because of FaceID, which I don’t like, and screen size of new models. This SE makes me think the opposite: I look forward changing. So it is a real game changer.
(I don’t buy Android because I’ve been bitten by the non-encrypted memory before, and Google isn’t serious about privacy).
This phone is for those of us clinging bitterly to our SEs and 6-8's because we actually like the form factor and/or are the kind of tightwads who will buy a second-hand iOS device and run it another 3 years.
> You can buy cheap Android but if you go much below $399 you’ll be replacing it a lot more often.
Not true - I've been using using a $100 Motorola G6 for the past 8 months with no issue. I bought it as a "temporary" replacement when I cracked the screen on my $399 X4 which I had used for 2 years with no issue (silly me, with a price that low I decided to self-insure). I ended up using the G6 as my primary phone because it's pretty good phone and does everything a modern flagship can but with expandable storage via microSD - the only downside is that the camera doesn't take amazing pictures
I’m wondering if I have an unfair bias against android. I think perhaps the ecosystem has evolved in the last few years and it sounds like even the more affordable devices are offering good performance now?
I bought my son a Moto G in 2016. It was dreadfully slow. Not just for games, even simple apps. He was glad when he got upgraded to my hand me down 2014 iPhone 6s, in 2018. I had already replaced the battery.
If high end Android phones are usually two years behind iOS in performance, can you imagine how bad a low end or midrange Android phone is?
Motorola's G-series is midrange at best - so not only was you assertion wrong; but you don't have to imagine what you experienced. Moto's high-end is the X-series, and frankly I saw no speed difference when I switched between the two (I don't play games, so it's possible my G6 has weaker GPU perf & I wouldn't have noticed).
I've had a lot of smartphones & especially with kids they wear out/break before their CPUs become obsolete.
My last iPhone was the old SE and I had to replace it after it got so bent/broken after 2 years that it could no longer be reasonably repaired.
These phones (android or iOS) tend to last ~2-3 years at our household (2 adults & 2 kids, kids don't have their own phones).
I now have a Google pixel 3a I bought at a sale for €300 & it doesn't feel any less quality-wise than my old iPhone did. And unlike the old SE I don't have to suffer the too small screen (I got the SE cuz it was the cheapest iPhone at the time but 4" was really too small for comfort).
The mid-range Samsung Axx range (A50, A70) etc. are in that range and have received very good reviews re: battery life and camera, the two key factors people care about. Samsung's about as reliable as it gets when it comes to Android OEMs.
Android version updates for 2 years, Android/Samsung security updates for 4 years. As an Android user, I can live with that.
My S7 is on Android 8.1. I have a newer Nokia on Android 10. I don't see any meaningful differences. The Nokia has something called "Digital Wellbeing" which I don't use. Everything else, like Fingerprint unlock and stuff like that has been around a few years now.
The hardware makes most of the difference IMO. The Galaxy S7 camera handily beats the cheap lens of the Nokia.
Same here. I'd got an iPhone 7 with 128GB for only $100 used, on Craigslist. I only buy used phones now, and I never spend more than $200. The market is always saturated with used phones, and they work fine.
I bought two Sony a7ii cameras and a flash for only $1400, because they were used. Full price new, it would've been 3600. They work great, and I can use my money on other things. I see very few reasons to buy new electronics, especially given the security of an iPhone and how easily they are reset.
Due to Apple's intentional design choices and the psychology of in-groups & out-groups; having a non-Apple phone as an American teenager appears to be a grueling experience, even for the most well-adjusted kids. Group texts mark you out with green bubbles when everyone has blue, and sometimes you wont receive the messages on time. I remember reading how one teen had been assigned a group for schoolwork, and their colleague created a secondary iPhone-only group chat without him.
I don't know how much Apple has to do with it, I think most of the problem is that SMS is hot trash and nobody seems too concerned with getting a replacement out network-wide (if AT&T said that they were getting rid of SMS for RCS, Apple would build it into the phone. But due to the fragmentation of the current implementation(s), nobody seems too concerned).
Most people don't think about that, they just think green bubble bad, blue bubble good, but this is one of those rare instances where it's actual technical issues causing the hangup.
That's interesting, here we use SMS so nobody is left out. You don't have to download an app for it and just about every plan for the last decade has had unlimited texting (or a ridiculously high limit).
Yeah, but you can't easily create and manage groups with SMS or share photos and videos conveniently and absolutely everyone owns a smartphone now from the wealthy to homeless people so downloading a cross platform app is not a barrier
WhatsApp ran quite well on Nokia's S40 for many years - so even those with 3-day battery, $20 featurephones could use it. Unfortunately, after the Facebook acquisition they deprecated support in favor of feature-bloat based on smartphone capabilities (IMO)
Yes, whatsapp was the first nice and easy to use free Multimedia Messaging Service worldwide. It was so refreshing to be able to send messages to anywhere In the world and not worry about international charges.
Also it was mostly spam free due to being tied to a phone number.
Teenagers in Japan mainly use iPhones because of airdrop, letting easily share photos and videos. Few can afford to pay for data caps.
The price of the phone is split into 24 payments across the standard 2 year contracts from carriers. Failing that, Apple also offers a 1 year interest free loan. So the price of the phone is already taken out of the equation.
In the US, Apple themselves offer an interest free loan for 2 years. The price of an iPhone plus AppleCare is the same whether or not you pay at time of purchase or over the next 24 months.
It's not entirely unwarranted begging. Personal electronics are the few status items kids/teens own, and while I'm sure every marketing department on the planet loves it, it's still a bad idea to make them visibly outcast by withholding a decent phone.
> it's still a bad idea to make them visibly outcast by withholding a decent phone.
Where does it end though? A phone in one thing; what about a video game console, or pricey sneakers or brand name clothing from the top streetwear brands?
Rvery day I'm feeling a little more grateful that we had school uniforms where I went. The materialist one-upsmanship was insane even then, but at least for 8 hours/day people weren't walking billboards for "look at how much my parents have spent on me".
> Where does it end though? A phone in one thing; what about a video game console, or pricey sneakers or brand name clothing from the top streetwear brands?
They don’t use those things to talk to their friends. Think of how many things are digital-first or digital-only these days. Their phone is how they literally exist among their peers in society. It is non-optional.
Yep, exactly. $400 is not unreasonable for the most important communication device, which should be amortized over 2-3 years (and explained to the kid)
And/or give them chores and pay them an allowance. Offer a free phone of your choice, or they can save money for whichever one they want.
May or may not work though. I have a friend that does this, and one of his kids simply cannot save money. So when there's something he knows that they all want, he buys it for all of them rather than make them save for it.
Maybe, but please keep in mind $400 is a different price for the silicon valley developer earning $300k/year vs the equivalent developer in e.g. Berlin earning $80k.
This is no different from how things have always been. When I was growing up the kids who got hand-me-down clothes got picked on. Now it will be the kids with hand-me-down phones.
My iPhone 8 was maxed out with storage and is going strong. But even as a tech person who loves phones, I don't see the value proposition... it feels like a fully loaded Honda Civic.
I'd love the fancy camera, but the cost of the flagship seems to be way out of line with the value. I'd rather have a phone + macbook. (I keep computers for 4-5 years and phones for 2-2.5 depending on the battery), so the annualized cost of a fancy iphone is basically the same as a $500 phone + macbook.
Yeah, I priced out the 256GB model and saw that it was $299, if I were to trade in my 8+. I reflexively assumed the store had an error and reloaded the page. Can't remember the last time I've seen a new Apple device priced at <$300 (iPod nano?)
at this price point it makes pairing with an Apple Watch more enticing. I would have gifted watches to my parents long before but it requires an iPhone to pair too and previously the price wise option was used.
The whole point of the programme is to have the latest device if you're the kind of person who likes tech and wants the latest, not someone who will keep an SE for several years.
The new iPhone 12 Pro is supposed to have a smaller screen than the 11 Pro and have squared sides, which basically means it will be shaped like the original SE, have a full screen, and the best cameras. Except for the price, the exact phone you want will probably be out later this year.
Yes, but it will be smaller than the 6/7/8 line. The overall dimensions haven’t been leaked, but a 5.4” screen is 93% the size of the 5.8” on the 11 Pro. If we scale the outer dimensions by the same amount, the 12 Pro should be 133.8x66.4 mm, which is in between the original SE and the 6/7/8 lineup.
Edit: after re-reading the leaks, it seems like the vanilla 12 is getting the smaller screen and not the Pro. So maybe we won’t have a smaller phone with square sides.
Sadly, it doesn't seem to be uncommon for a company (even Apple) to hit a home run and not understand why it was so successful. And then they're unable to follow up on it.
HyperCard still appears in top-10 lists of "greatest software ever" -- and it's usually the only one which is no longer maintained and doesn't have a modern equivalent.
Steve Jobs was strongly adamant about the size of the iphone.
Likewise, Steve Jobs saw hypercard as the future, wanting it to sync up online between people, being like the future newspaper. It's no longer maintained because it's modern equivalent is a web browser. When Steve came back to Apple he pushed hard for advancing web tech instead.
> Likewise, Steve Jobs saw hypercard as the future, wanting it to sync up online between people
Everything I've ever read about Hypercard indicates that the opposite is true: neither Jobs nor the company could "see" that Hypercard needed a true network component, nor could they even see the business case for it as time progressed.
Yeah I love my old se. The square sides give me a more secure feeling when holding it. I love that it is smaller and fits nicely into my pocket. I really don’t want a phablet.
The glass back really helps grip it compared to the metal backs on the 6, 6s, and 7. Of course, any case with some rubber (like the Speck ones) are very grippy.
Like many here I prefer the (original) iPhone SE due to the small size. Rumors of the iPhone 12 say that there will be a smaller model with a 5.4" edge-to-edge screen. I wanted to see how the size of that device would compare to the SE.
If we assume that the iPhone 12 would have the same aspect ratio as the iPhone 11, and that the "margins" between the edge of the device and the edge of the screen will be the same as well, we get:
iPhone 12 (5.4") is 2.69x5.30"
Body size is 26.67% larger than the iPhone SE
Screen size is 62.27% larger than the iPhone SE
That is only 1.3% smaller than the iPhone SE 2 released today. This device size is here to stay.
They could fit a 5" screen on the SE form factor if it was edge-to-edge like the iPhone X, or keep the old SE 4" screen, make that edge-to-edge, and make the phone itself even smaller.
Since the iPhone X design, the screen sizes have been significantly larger due to a (nearly) edge-to-edge screen—the removal of the "chin" dedicated to the Touch ID sensor, and of the "forehead" with the selfie camera and other sensors being reduced to the "notch." The X had a 5.8" screen compared to the 4.7" of the iPhone 8 (and SE 2).
> The first iPhone SE was a hit with many customers who loved its unique combination of small size, high-end performance and affordable price; the new second-generation iPhone SE builds on that great idea and improves on it in every way.
Customers loved how it was both small and powerful, so we've improved it by making it much larger...[1]
OK, I realise they mean "small compared to the ridiculous size of other phones" here, but I still feel like they've missed the point. They could have had the only truly small and powerful phone on the market in 2020, on any OS! No competitors. They could have even kept the exact same old SE size and had an even bigger screen (5") if they went edge-to-edge.
They just don’t get it. This isn’t a replacement for the SE, because it doesn’t actually improve on the things SE owners cared about improving. Things like an edge-to-edge screen and a kick-ass camera in the same form factor, not an iPhone 7 reboot with wireless charging and a faster CPU. What’s more, I know I’m not alone in saying I’d be willing to pay MORE for an ultra-premium small device like that than for any of the iPhone models being pushed as “top of the line” right now, because there are no good alternatives. Unfortunate letdown by the individuals at Apple who put this together, reminds me of the ‘97 Malibu.
Maybe us consumers underestimate how much space those internals take? The larger screen to body ratio would not only take more space in an already tiny phone, but the battery needed to power that would also need to be larger. The old SE had a 1600mAH battery... which is half of the 3000mAh+ even smaller phones have these days, and none of those lasts more than one full day.
So we somehow expect them to take the exact same form factor and somehow magically get a 10% larger screen and 50% larger battery in there? My guess is that it's just not physically possible to achieve that. Big chin and forehead is the best we can get with the current battery technology for a phone that size.
They could always make it X% thicker. We used to fit 15mm thick phones in our pockets with no trouble in the old days. Not to say you're not making a fair point. Although if it came down to it, I'd still much rather have the old size even if it still had a 4" non-edge-to-edge screen.
And be out of support after 2 years? No thank you. Xperia is overpriced and Sony dropping its expensive phones from support left and right. After 10+ years with Android vendors should've put in the work to support their handsets in a streamlined fashion at least with security/OS core level updates relatively effortlessly. They didn't, Sony sure didn't. Apple is the only vendor with decent support, sadly.
Me too. iMessage is the one and only reason why I switched to an iPhone. My family demanded it, because the picture/video quality in our group chats was degraded for everyone because one group chat member (me) had an Android.
I got an SE. And now I'm seriously glancing at this new SE. Size is fine for me.
I can see people not liking phones like > 6" screens because they are too hard to hold but it seems like 4" screens are too far in the opposite direction.
Hard disagree. 4-inches screens were a thing because that’s the perfect size for a human hand. Phones became huge when content consumption got prioritized over ergonomics.
I have an iPhone 6 that I keep around (I normally use an iPhone SE, of course) and I don't really like it much; I find it uncomfortable to hold for long periods of time and I constantly have to use Reachability to get at stuff :(
I use Pixel 4, and I absolutely hate not having a fingerprint sensor.
Cons:
* At night it doesn't work, because I am laying on the bed and half my face is covered.
* It doesn't work when I am not wearing my glasses. Annoying when I have just woken up or going to bed and want to check a quick notification.
* Sometimes it unlocks by itself even if I don't want it to.
For the headphone jack, I got a cheap USB-C ones and couldn't be happier. Bluetooth just doesn't work all the time. It sometimes refuses to pair for random reasons, specially if you paired it with something else, you can never be sure its charged enough, easy to forget it turned on and have the batteries depleted etc etc.
> It doesn't work when I am not wearing my glasses
FaceID works with and without my glasses. I can't remember if it learned this automatically, or if I added it as an "alternative appearance." Does the Pixel 4 have any options like that?
FaceID is designed to work with or without glasses.
> Face ID is designed to work with hats, scarves, glasses, contact lenses, and many sunglasses. Furthermore, it's designed to work indoors, outdoors, and even in total darkness.
Imagine explaining this to someone in 2019: “Yeah, and we’re excited the new SE went back to Touch ID because it still works with the face masks we’re now required to wear!”
FaceID works with my regular glasses but some of my sunglasses do not work at all (0% unlock rate with over 100 attempts in various lighting). I think it may depend on the shape of the frame and how much of your face it takes up? Not sure.
It has to do with polarization of the lenses and the "Require attention" feature of FaceID. The notch cameras can't determine if your eyes are looking at the camera if you're wearing polarized sunglasses (depending on the type of polarization) so having that setting on will give you a 100% failure rate with something that's covering your eyes.
There is an option inside of face id settings that says "require attention". This basically means it looks for your actual pupils to unlock. if you turn this off then sunglasses will start to work, as well as off angle unlocks without sunglasses.
Tell me about it. I hope Apple can address this, it's so frustrating to type in the password every single time, and some apps just refuse to work without biometric authentication (payments apps)
I haven't confirmed this but I heard if you do alternate views with half a mask on both sides you might be able to unlock with a mask. I don't own a faceID phone so don't know if this is true.
> It doesn't work when I am not wearing my glasses
Are you holding the phone too close to your face?
I was getting frustrated that FaceID wouldn't work for me in bed when I wasn't wearing glasses, but I discovered it was because it was holding it so close to my face to read the screen (I'm very short sighted) and the camera couldn't focus (yes my eyesight is that bad haha).
Yup, it took me a few months to realize this. In the morning when I need to unlock something, I have to double the distance between my face and the phone for FaceID to work.
Pixel 4 face unlock works for me with big aviator sunglasses as well as not. I forget if I added another face or not though. Though, it doesn't work with a mask on and its not as fast so I do miss the fingerprint sensor.
This sums up my experience with the Pixel 4 too. It's not enough to push me away from it, but it's a bunch of minor annoyances that make me have to enter my rather long passcode more often than I should have to.
FWIW the Apple implementation of Face ID deals very well with both sunglasses and regular eyeglasses as well as the absence of them. Face masks, obviously, not so much however!
It works for me at night, with/without glasses and also with a massive headset on. I haven't had any issue with Bluetooth so far (it was painful with a OnePlus before). Battery has been surprisingly decent too. The issues I have are a very slow Google Maps and the display is absolutely useless in a bright environment.
Hate the face ID on my pixel 4. Requires me to hold my phone at the perfect angle/distance to work reliably, and even then, it's slower than the fingerprent sensor on my Pixel 1 was.
FaceID is so terrible. It's hard to imagine a company based out of sunny California invented an authentication system that requires you to remove your sunglasses. It also sucks in any bright environment like say... the beach. Which they don't have much of in California of course. When the ambient IR is too high the sensor can't see it's own tracking dots on your face so it can't build the 3D mesh to authenticate you. To make matters worse, FaceID also fails if you have a face mask on which is particularly relevant today.
With iPhone you can set up an alternate appearance to work with accessories like glasses/sunglasses or I assume a mask, though both might make it less secure. Personally I love Face ID. There are times it won’t work like when I’m actively brushing my teeth or wearing a mask, but those are rare enough for me and there times you can’t use Touch ID either like if you’re wearing gloves. Ideally they would have Touch ID under the screen and you could use either one.
I haven't felt like Apple has been making products for me recently until the Macbook Air release and now this. Sane price points, and the exact features I need. Not sure what changed over there, but I'm really impressed.
I just read his wiki, what influence did he have over pricing? Like, design wise this all seems on brand but it feels like maybe it be a different part of the business for pricing. But, i have no hardware experience or knowledge
I have a strong suspicion it's come from user surveys, and is tied to data science or analytics.
Sales were down and the butterfly keyboard caused so much complaining it was impossible for Apple to not eventually take note.
If people are complaining and sales are down, the reasonable solution is to listen to your customer. They've done it for every product as of late, like the new Macbook Pro, the new Mac Pro, and while the Apple SE is more a budget project so it may have been inevitable for it to turn out this way, the iPhone 12 is supposed to be smaller, much closer to the iPhone SE.
Well, it is not a new design. It is the same phone they have been making for 6 years, with a new chip and a new camera in it. I am sure it wouldn't take them that long to design it. And since they have been manufacturing them for 6 years, I don't get your point about manufacturing time.
You need at least a new PCB, an updated firmware/kernel, updated software. It's not trivial.
Having work with hardware, I highly doubt you can pull that through in 2 months.
As for manufacturing, they might have all the components, but you still need new assembly lines. And not for small runs, for million of devices. With China on lockdown.
Apple are amazing at logistic, however it's been months in the making, nothing reactionary.
That's a kind of vague assertion as I don't know to whom specifically you're referring as "people," but the same phone at 449 would be another 12% to margin so "in the same ballpark as what some people were hoping" is not the same as "pricing that the market anticipated."
Let's assume there was a speculated range. In a world with COVID-19 demand pressure and the speculated range is reasonably accurate, Apple is more likely to target the low end of that range than it would in a "normal" world.
I think people don't like the sarcastic nature of my earlier comment but that doesn't mean the underlying notion is wrong.
I find it hard to believe that Apple ignored reality and just priced the phone however it felt like doing prior to a major shift in their consumer base's economic habits.
I am not sure what you are saying, to be honest, since any price point above $400 would increase margin. If you’re saying Apple seeks the highest margin possible, I don’t agree - they aim for 39% and increase revenue by increasing component quality thus cost. Unlike, say, the HomePod, they aren’t compromising this phone with an older chip to save money.
Apple analysts, tech reporters, and consumers who pay attention to phone prices were expecting the new SE to be the same price as the old SE. Although there was also a case to make for the SE directly replacing the 8 at $449, there’s little evidence they were planning on that number.
If you are asking where the long-term price pressure on Apple would come from: it largely comes from India, where they need as cheap a phone as possible to break in without damaging their brand or resorting to a cheaper bill of materials.
But again, I am not sure if I understand your point. I would like to.
It is not a coincidence that MSRP is announced at a "sane price point" (uncommon for Apple, which sells a monitor stand for $1000) right when the mobile phone market shrinks.
Apple's mobile handset prices have been cut by 10% or more in China. In the US, new iPad Pro and Macbook Air prices have been discounted about 20% by authorized retailers and new old stock of the fully loaded MBP15 was discounted 35% by Best Buy a couple of days ago.
Apple typically reports a profit margin of about 1/3 for its devices on average, and 2/3 for its services. My understanding based on gross margin numbers from competitors is that handsets fall on the higher side of that average, and PCs on the lower side. In times when consumer demand for devices is expected to be price-elastic (eg when 15 million Americans get laid off in the span of three weeks and vast numbers of people are staying home so they don't need to replace mobile devices as frequently), margin can come down to increase unit sales and optimize net profit.
Handsets are not sold in a free market; prices are set by Apple and its partners. If they don't bring the price down, there are some consumers who will say "this is nice; I want it, but I can't afford it right now." That cohort of near-miss buyers would constitute a deadweight loss -- an inefficiency between supply and demand, caused by the pricing scheme set by Apple itself.
You can entice those shoppers to buy anyway (ie, eliminate the market inefficiency) by reducing the price. Pricing products expensively to widen gross margins works to increase profit in a time when demand is strong, but when demand is depressed and consumer discretionary spending becomes scarce, prices must come down to optimize for the new demand picture.
On a separate note, this particular device re-uses many components from past Apple devices (as did the previous SE), so you ought to differentiate the timespan of its development cycle from a new flagship handset for which a new processor is developed and most third-party components are being implemented for the first time.
Fairly unlikely that anything planned is fortuitous when we are talking about major product release by a trillion-plus-dollar company....
$399 is where the prior SE was unveiled, but handset MSRP has bloated since 2016. The iPhone 7 and 7 Plus base models came out at $649-$769 when new, compared to $699-$1099 for the base models of the iPhone 11. On the Samsung side, base model S20 Ultra is pushing $1400.
My personal view is that the next major battlefield for Apple vs Huawei vs Samsung is the developing world, and consumers there are fairly price sensitive (plus they often pay a premium due to import taxes, importer costs, and other add-ons to the retail price). There has to be a huge divergence in the slate of prices -- on the one hand, you have flagship handset expectations going skyward due to 5G, multi-camera, screen improvements, etc -- and on the other hand you have countries like Ecuador and Colombia where an entire month's minimum wage (before tax and living expenses) is insufficient to buy a new iPhone SE, even without accounting for the economic slowdown due to the virus.
Some of the market for the iPhone SE didn't even exist a couple of months ago. Apple only announced online sales and plans to open a store in India after Trump helped negotiate an entry point to that market during his visit a month ago.
Are you suggesting that Apple doesn't respond to its consumer sales environment when choosing pricing?
I’m suggesting that long-standing credible rumour said they intended the price to be $399, well before the pandemic. The same rumours accurately predicted the phone’s major hardware features.
I would agree with you if rumours had said $449 or $499. But, they didn’t. So there appears to be zero evidence of a change in intent.
I have to wonder if it's a marketing mistake to call this phone an SE. Most of the people I know who were sticking with the SE did so because they loved the small size and form factor. It seems that offering an upgraded iPhone 8 to those people is going to fall flat.
That said, this looks like a fantastic bargain. One of the best cameras and fastest chips on the market on a $400 phone with years and years of OS support.
And in my own opinion, a 4" screen is obsolete these days because app and mobile web design has moved on to larger devices. 5" is even starting to feel cramped on some apps like Google Maps.
The rumor mill suggests the next generation of flagship phones are going to have flat sides. So I'm guessing it's a way to differentiate and present flat edges as denoting "premium." The iPad Pro has flat sides too.
It will come back with the iPhone 12 Pro as the "Pro" form factor, inspired from the iPad Pro. No one will remember the 1st generation SE by then, and everyone will be blown away.
It's not too bad. I'm a huge proponent of the one-handed phone after using a Nexus 5 for 6.5 years. I think there are two main contributors to one-handed usability: (1) volume of the chasis, with a particular focus on width and (2) screen size, with a particular focus on screen height.
In terms of (1), the SE is in line with the Nexus 5 (and actually less wide), whilst the Pixel 4 is slightly bigger in all dimensions:
N5: 137.9 x 69.2 x 8.6 mm (5.43 x 2.72 x 0.34 in)
SE: 138.4 x 67.3 x 7.3 mm (5.45 x 2.65 x 0.29 in)
In terms of (2), a 4.7" screen with a 16:9 ratio is far easier to reach the top corners of than on a 5.7" that's 19:9. Yes, there is a bit less bezel on the Pixel 4 but it'll still be very difficult to reach the top one-handed with the taller screen.
I use my EarPods with headphone plug on a number of devices. The one with the Lightning connector is only useable with Apple devices, so this is again a vendor lockin. This has to stop.
I just bought a few lighting-to-3.5mm adapters and leave them permanently affixed to my various headphones. Seems like a simple fix, versus perpetually being upset that I can't use my headphones on my iPhone.
Agree. I was so excited to see this announcement and kept reading and reading to see if they had left the headphone jack :( I would have bought two _today_ if they'd kept the same outside and just updated camera + internals.
As it stands, not sure what I'll do as an updated SE was my last hope that Apple would continue making a phone with a headphone jack, but that was probably a pipe dream to begin with.
And please don't try to sell me on Bluetooth. It works OK 60-70% of the time in my experience, but it's super frustrating when it fails (esp. when trying to help older less tech-savvy relatives) and I often find myself just wanting to be able to plug in a darn cord. Ahh the good 'ol days...
Yep, plus my phone is just one of many devices that I connect headphones to and I can't be bothered to maintain a collection of adapters. Also, did you know that the firmware on the Lightning->3.5mm adapter can crash?
My basic point about Bluetooth audio is usually this:
In the absence of hardware failures, audio cables are almost 100% reliable. In the absence of hardware failures, Bluetooth still suffers from a variety of random issues.
Bluetooth has its place (I find it useful to walk around the house listening to stuff without carrying a device), but it's certainly not - and won't ever be - a replacement for audio cables.
eyes her 6s and the very nice earbuds that can still plug into it
ponders other things she could do with $400
I miss the Actually Small form factor but I've gotten used to the slightly larger 6s and I sure don't miss it four hundred bucks plus the cost of some bluetooth earbuds and having to hassle with keeping the bluetooth Square reader powered up the next time I sell stuff at a comics con.
I think this is a fine day to buy a new case to replace the one that I got along with the phone. It's been slowly falling apart and I'm worried it might not save the phone the next time I drop it. Twenty bucks for a black Speck and ten bucks for a gold accent Popsocket. Sounds good.
I moved from a 6 to an 8 last fall. The newer processors, especially the jump with the 7, make HUGE performance improvements in every day tasks like loading emails, maps and web pages. I can imagine with this having a few generations newer than the 8 that you’d see even better performance.
It may feel like we’ve reached the point where mobile CPU performance shouldn’t matter, but I notice quite a bit less time spent waiting with the newer phones, which helps in not spending as much time on them.
You are forgetting the seam where it goes to sleep after a while when it’s not being used every few minutes, and needs to be reconnected while the customer is waiting. In a crowded convention hall full of thousands of other vendors doing the same thing.
Oh, and the seam where if you do get it to connect to your phone, you then have both your phone and the customer’s phone fighting to get a connection to a tower saturated by people sharing their con photos/videos, streaming, and trying to process credit card transactions. It’s bad enough with one phone trying to authorize the transaction.
Also the seam where it’s one more damn thing to run out of power when you are at a table with nowhere to plug in because you are not gonna be moving enough stuff to be worth paying a couple hundred extra for the power fees unless you are a small press with the work of a dozen or so creators on your table.
This looks like basically the same phone as the 8 & the 6s. I own a 6s, I'm wondering what the advantage is to buying this phone rather than replacing the battery on my current phone.
Hilariously, some of the changes between models seem to be mostly renaming features.
6s: HDR for photos
8: Auto HDR for photos
SE: Next-generation Smart HDR for photos
Looks like this one "goes to 11"
Also funny is battery life:
SE: Lasts about the same as iPhone 8
8: Lasts about the same as iPhone 7
7: Lasts up to 2 hours longer than iPhone 6s
6s: —
So the new SE lasts about the same as two hours longer than "—" Got it!
The A13 chip will be a huge upgrade and guarantee OS support for quite a while, even if a lot of the other specs are the same. If the 6S manages to survive getting OS updates this year, it probably won't next year.
And Apple usually goes for a target battery life that stays fairly consistent across generations. It creeps up slowly over time, but very slowly.
Well, camera is going to be a lot better than 6s, so as the chip. I think overall it's a good upgrade from 6s, but probably I wouldn't go for it to replace my 8.
> I own a 6s, I'm wondering what the advantage is to buying this phone rather than replacing the battery on my current phone.
Your phone model has already gotten OS updates for about five years since launch. It’s possible that iOS 14 may not support iPhone 6S. If that happens to be the case, then getting a new phone makes sense just to have software support for the next five (or more) years.
Next generation smart HDR is a big upgrade. The new chip will be able to run the new image processing algorithms based on deep learning which gives you photo quality bump similar to a better camera
I am apparently in the minority here who prefers faceID, mostly because how transparent it is UX-wise. I don't have to do an additional 'Authenticate' press when opening protected apps, instead I pass through the security while the app loading animation completes.
Though, it has been hell now with using face masks for the past few weeks, where I have to spend 5 seconds on every auth-screen, where it tries faceID twice and then gives the option of PIN authentication.
A lot of people complain that Face ID doesn't work when they wear skiing gear or a mask. I'd argue that most humans can't identify me when I wear a mask, so it's a bit hard to expect my phone to do better.
I do prefer Face ID for almost everything except payments. Apple pay with Touch ID was a much better experience. The awkward double tap + stare at my phone for 2 seconds isn't great. Having an Apple Watch makes this much better but I do miss placing my phone near the reader and putting my finger on the sensor.
If you tap the screen right away when the face ID icon appears you can enter your PIN right away. I am not sure if this works everywhere, but it does at least work when unlocking your phone.
Found this out when I (recently) went to Asia and was wearing facemasks all the time too. :)
I haven't tested it but people have had success with adding an "alternative appearance" in the FaceID settings and having it scan your face with half of it covered by a mask. Here is an article with pictures describing the process:
FaceID is better than front or in-screen fingerprint readers but I greatly prefer fingerprint readers on the back of the phone. It's right where your finger naturally rests when taking the phone out of your pocket so the phone is unlocked before it even leaves your pocket. Plus you can pull down the notification bar with it one-handed without having to awkwardly stretch to reach it on large devices.
I don't really get the hate for the lack of a headphone jack tbh. Have people complaining about this ever really given good bluetooth headphones a chance?
My Beats Solo 3 have fantastic battery life, i can switch between devices with a click of a button (in the case of the Bose QC35 even be connected to two devices at the same time, listening to music on the laptop while being able to receive phone calls on the phone) and the sound quality is absolutely fine. Sure, an audiophile DAC with high end headphones will have better sound quality, but do you really need that on a phone?
I already have a perfect set (a couple, actually) of headphones. I see no valid justification for removing the jack except forcing the user to bend further to the existing Apple environment. There are slick and slim android phones with jacks, it's not a technical issue.
Disclaimer: I'm not an Apple user, but I'm a an avid listener and work in music industry. Unfortunately there's a bunch of "killer apps" for musicians which have no alternative for Android. It's a pity there's no escape from the walled gardens.
But still less than a batter life of a phone. Running out of juice on them after a while become like a constant self-inflicting anxiety attack, with semi permanent jumps between "Should I plug them now in case I have to have it later" and "I like this song/track/mix, I will listen to it". IMHO, YMMV
i am not saying there is no valid need for it, but nowadays it's a niche need and the market seems to have moved on. I was very skeptical of bluetooth for a long time, but the current generation of devices, especially those with Apples W1/H1 chips are just very very good. Instant switching of devices, no re-pairing, good battery life etc.
Yes you need it. I have a great pair of BT headphones, but I also have a great pair of wired headphones. There are times when I would prefer to use the wired ones, not the least of which is when walking through a busy city where BT likes to cut out from all the interference.
Our Mini-Van also doesn't have BT. I have to use my USB-C adapter which means I can't charge and listen at the same time. Very inconvenient on long trips when I'm also using the phone for navigation.
my car also doesn't have BT, i use a cheap adapter to charge and have audio out at the same time. It's not great, but in your case you would also have to run two wires, so not really a difference.
i have a chromecast audio on the stereo which i find more convenient to use anyway because you can keep using your phone like normal while the chromecast is running spotify. For rare cases where I need direct audio, Bluetooth audio receivers are also pretty cheap.
I am not saying you don't have a valid point, but you make it sound like it's impossible or inconvenient which imo isn't true.
> Have people complaining about this ever really given good bluetooth headphones a chance?
I have bluetooth headphones, but I still rely on my wired earbuds if I go running, or if I want to travel light, or for phone calls. And I also have regular non-bluetooth good quality headphones that I like to use (especially when the bluetooth ones run out of battery). For me, it's not only a matter of sound quality, but I find it convenient to be able to plug any headphones without bothering with bluetooth.
i use bluetooth airpods for calls and even for cycling long distances. They are very light and basically no messing around with bluetooth. Battery life isn't stellar, but enough for a couple of hours continued use and when i put them in the case they recharge automatically. When they run out, i have Beats Solo 3 over-ears bluetooth headphones which easily last for days.
Good bluetooth headphones cost hundreds of dollars, good wired headphones can be < $100. And I never have to charge wired headphones - I can always rely on them to just work.
It's strictly a decrease in functionality. My phone, with a headphone jack, also supports bluetooth, if I wanted to use it. What do I gain by losing the headphone jack?
Obviously some combination of water resistance, more space for battery, space for other components (larger camera), or along those lines.
There is no consumer device used by virtually everyone where every square millimeter counts more than in a cell phone. It's not like there's just an empty hole where the jack would be otherwise.
That space is being used for whatever component(s) Apple thinks its customers, as a whole, find more valuable -- i.e. a net increase in functionality for the average consumer, even if not for you personally.
"That space is being used for whatever component(s) Apple thinks its customers, as a whole, find more valuable -- i.e. a net increase in functionality for the average consumer, even if not for you personally. "
This is assuming that "what Apple thinks its customers want" === "what Apples customers want"
The "audiophiles" insisting on the need for 3.5mm analog output have always been strangely silent on the fact that they are tacitly accepting that whatever DAC is built into the phone is up to their standards.
That said, small but very decent DACs have been around for a while. There's one smaller than your pinky nail inside the lightning-to-3.5mm adapter included with newer iPhones.
There are plenty of good reasons to want a 3.5mm headphone jack on a phone. But audio quality is not one of them.
I don't know what audiophile circles you're in but when I started getting into headphones phone DACs were looked at with scrutiny. For most earbuds it's "good enough" whereas for higher end headphones it is both accepted and measurable that you're not experiencing all that your headphones have to offer.
In response there are many that purchase media players with DACs for this specific reason. When 3.5mm jacks started getting removed measurements also turned to the DACs within usb c/lightning to 3.5mm cables.
One of the biggest advantages of the first gen SE (aside from size) was its sub 120g weight - my SO has one and even with the protective case it's very easy on the hands - especially when lying down and holding it in the air.
The current gen weights almost as much as my Galaxy S8, which is objectively a rather heavy object to be held for extended periods of time.
All in all I was meaning to get her one once it's released, but given the weight of the device that won't happen.
Quick comment about sizes and popularity. This is the size of the iPhone 6/6S/7/8 form factor. There are a LOT of iPhone models of this type.
They're bigger than the old SE, but effectively a fair bit smaller than the X/XS/11 Pro format, which has a much larger screen to manage.
So, this phone gives those of us who liked the 8 body size an upgrade path.
David Smith compiled iPhone usage stats for his app. The iPhone 6/6S/7/8 had 47% share. The iPhone 5s/old SE had 11% share. The X/XS/11 Pro size had 12% share. So, this new SE is an extremely common and and popular design.
The physical size of the 8 and this new SE is pretty much the same as the X/11 Pro (it's only smaller 5~6mm in height, 4mm in width, 0.4~8 mm in depth). If you were holding up on your 8 because of that, I'd say you can fork the 1000+ bucks for the X or 11 Pro, it will be an upgrade in every dimension except Touch ID disappearing.
Hm? The whole iPhone 11 class was released, the sale of the 6/7/8 line was substantially cut down, and there's another year of older form factor devices wearing out.
I’d assume this new SE, like the 6, 6S, 7, and 8 before it, will continue to prompt users during the initial out-of-box setup process if they want to run their display in “zoomed-in” mode, making the resolution effectively identical to the 4” screen of the older smaller phones.
This is effectively an accessibility feature, but Apple proactively prompts users to enable it.
How come that the "white" variant is not "white" on the front side? Like it has always been the case until iPhone 8?
This is a huge disappointment for me. The big reason to have white screen borders is to reduce contrast to light screen backgrounds, which is so much easier on the eyes when reading. And also, white front side is a design classic. Its removal is even a reason for me not to buy the new SE2.
It could be. I don't know who designs the iPhones these days, although Jony Ive is claimed to still count Apple as a client of his new company. I don't know if his heart is.
One thing is certain to me, the black front makes the white version incomplete, and noticeably so, as if someone was inching towards "perfection", but then gave up.
It would be great if it were as you say. I would be glad to buy a 4“ screen iPhone. Or at least something with Touch ID and a white front. I mean, the new iPhone SE is probably a nice thing, but there’s something incomplete to it. Sadly.
Now why can't we convince Android OEMs that decent specs in a small design is a worthwhile endeavor? The Sony Xperia XZ1 Compact is the last one that comes to mind.
Seems like the only performant and small (sub 5.5") Android phones are usually Japanese and hard to come by, at least in Europe. I have seen a couple of them which looked great (Kyocera and Sharp, I think) but I don't feel brave enough to order them.
This is what I was about to say, because I remember the first SE. Then I went checking the specifications and I was a little disappointed
Width: 2.65 inches (67.3 mm)
Height: 5.45 inches (138.4 mm)
Depth: 0.29 inch (7.3 mm)
Weight: 5.22 ounces (148 grams)
This is only a little smaller than my Samsung A40, which is 2.72 x 5.69 x 0.31 in (69.2 x 144.4 x 7.9 mm) and weights less than the SE (4.94 oz - 140 g).
Furthermore the A40 has almost no bezel and this iPhone has a lot of it at the top and bottom of the screen. The screen of the A40 is so large that I wish I could cut a couple of cm off it. It would be large enough, fit better in pockets and weight less.
No, there really aren't. Trust me, I spent days researching this and ended up with the Pixel 3A phablet that I hate. There are exactly zero decent Android phones <= 4.7".
And in the past year, there were precisely 2 Android phones with <= 4.7" screens. Lava Z40 and BLU Advance L5. There were zero that were as narrow as the original SE.
It's a pretty objective fact at this point that Android has more lag, is less secure, and has a worse app store than iOS. Practically the only reason anyone uses it is price.
Original SE user here (and I have a spare sitting unwrapped on my bookshelf as a backup):
I'm disappointed by the lack of a headphone jack and the size, while better than the phablet nonsense, is still bigger than I would like.
I'm actually not sure what I will do after these phones go kaput, I only use my phone for calls, music, Whatsapp, and maybe maps (though with travel completely halted for the medium term, I don't even need that). If there was a feature phone version of Whatsapp, I'd probably go back to one of those.
WhatsApp runs on KaiOS feature phones, which are marketed to developing countries. Google Maps and YouTube also have official support: https://www.kaiostech.com/explore/apps/
Glad to see a non faceID option. I'm on an 11 Pro currently, will probably sidegrade to this.
FaceID is incredibly unreliable in my opinion, and it almost always takes more time that touchID did. Furthermore, "Reachability" (the feature where you slide the UI down for easy access with one hand) is much more difficult to access and dismiss with no home button. It's rare I don't accidentally invoke some UI action when trying to dismiss reachability mode (mistakes include: dialing additional numbers, super-linking on tinder, clicking on links in websites, etc.)
Apple seems to know this, the store workers I spoke with when I was purchasing the phone admitted it was difficult to use.
Is it rose colored glasses, or would old Apple never release products that the Apple Store workers have to tell you are "difficult to use"?
Repeating myself here but for me FaceID actually does feel like an improvement, despite my many doubts about it in the beginning.
Yes there are some occasions where it doesn't work well (when you're trying to unlock the phone without looking at it properly) but there are also many occasions where it works much better. Most of the time my phone now unlocks so smoothly that I don't even realise it was locked. I just take it out of my pocket, swipe up and I'm on my home screen.
Agreed on reachability though, that has never worked well for me either. I just avoid using it now.
If there were a quick way to switch over to pin input, and furthermore the pin input would constantly be looking for your face rather than needing to switch out of pin mode to try for faceid, it might be okay.
Two situations make faceid unusable:
1. I’m in bed and bedding materials occlude my face.
2. I’m using my hair to purposefully occlude my face in areas with public surveillance
In both of these situations touching the home button would be much easier.
When I’m feeling particularly pessimistic yes. More as a statement than real protection though. Gait analysis has all screwed anyways, but there is value in requiring more expensive systems to be tracked. Delay the inevitable.
I’ve had the opposite experience with Face ID. Touch ID for me worked maybe 1/10 times. Something about my fingers, it would never work. I had to enter the passcode every time. Face ID on the other hand works consistently every time, all the time. I nearly never have issues.
I do miss old reachability though. I can never activate it on the first try.
My trick for touchid was to register the same finger in as many slots as possible. Also cross between fingers in the same slot. I think this helped decrease the selectivity while still keeping others out.
I care about absolutely none of this except weight, which they're not announcing. What a mockery of a successor to the SE name. I guess I'll hold on to my current SE until that's absolutely untenable and then abandon the iOS platform - really hope there's some more secure Android option by then.
I've been repairing an old iPhone SE for quite a while now, holding out for Apple to listen to customers like me saying "I want a decent phone that fits in my pocket." This makes me so happy, just like when I held onto a 2015 macbook pro until they went back to a "regular" keyboard.
A $300 (EUR500) phone in 2020, and its screen resolution is 750 x 1334 (according to GSMArena, because Apple doesn't mention it). Sadly, that's not enough to watch FullHD videos. An attractive form-factor aside, weird resolution of the lower-tier iPhones (XR, 11, SE 2020) is a non-starter for me.
It's a small screen and that's a normal resolution. You need to look at pixel size, not number of pixels. You wouldn't be able to see "full HD" detail on a 4.7" screen.
I use a 5.1" screen, and I can see the difference very well. I also watch a lot of FullHD screencasts, and while the phone screen is too small to do read everything, most of the text is still readable. The trick is to watch the original 1080p video.
The problem of the in-between resolutions is blurriness introduced by scaling. 1080p content is very common, text rendered to such images is already rasterized to take advantage of that resolution. iPhone has to downscale 1080 lines and to 750 lines, the scaling factor is 0.6944. There is no way that the text will remain sharp and readable. So the text in most videos will not only be a bit smaller (that's physical screen size, 4.7 vs 5.whatever), but it will be blurrier. Low cost 720p screens have the same problem, but at least the scaling coefficient (2/3) allows for sharper result.
The problem is particularly evident with text, but it applies to all minor details
The 5/5s/SE form factor is beautiful. Why mess with it? Give me upgraded internals on that and I’ll buy it immediately. It feels a bit like they have to justify to themselves that they’re doing work by proverbially and literally smoothing out the edges until all phones just look alike.
As an iPhone SE user, I am sympathetic to those who miss its screen size. However, as someone who also remembers how desperate the market was for an iPhone with larger real estate around the 5/5S/5C era, and how evolutionary the iPhone 6 was when it came out, I am fine with it being a compromise size.
I also understand that last year’s X-cessively large phones have conditioned users to be resigned towards huge pricy devices, thus making this new SE more dramatic-seeming.
Disclaimer: I have NO affiliation with this company at all. I'm just a happy user.
Pros:
- built-in rugged case. I've thrown it around the office with no issues
- incredibly small. It fits in the watch pocket (fifth pocket) of your jeans comfortably
- waterproof. Because it fits in my jeans pockets so well, I accidentally washed it with my jeans after a spill. The only piece of clothing in that wash cycle was my jeans, and the phone fell out at some point. It must have banged around in there for 15 minutes; but after the wash was done, I grabbed the phone and unlocked it with my fingerprint. No worries.
- some of the best BT and GPS I've experienced in an Android phone. (And I've owned Nokia, Motorola, and Sony Xperia phones).
- reasonable battery life for a phone of this size
- everyone tells me speakerphone sounds great
Cons:
- the camera is literally a potato. Don't buy this to take photos with.
- good luck typing on this incredibly tiny screen. But instead I use Android's voice-to-text which works great.
I'm on a three year old iPhone SE that I recently had the battery replaced in (An incredible use of $50 if anyone is fining their phone dying all the time)
I am really tempted to get this. I love the small form factor of my SE but I have large hands and the bigger screen might be a bit nice, and I really wish the camera was bit nicer on my current SE
The SE is great but my battery is quite bad now and as soon as it gets below room temperature, the battery drops from 50% to 10% and then starts turning off.
Probably will be changing the battery and keeping my current SE, the new one is not the same form factor. Agreed on the camera.
Yep thats what happened with mine.
i sent it back to Apple and had the battery replaced. I tried to make an appointment at the apple store but it said it wasn't available, maybe they don't have the parts for them in store.
Truly a night and day difference. When I leave for the day I don't have to think about bringing my charger (although I still do sometimes in case of an emergency)
I really wanted a phone with a current top level camera, and a reasonably quick cpu as in a modern iPhone or Android. I consider the iphone7/8 to be almost too big for one handed use, but it's it's worth it as a tradeoff for the improved readability. The problems with the iphone7/8 size is mostly poor legacy UX (Nothing should have to be clicked in basic, navigation above the middle of the screen!).
I basically had to upgrade from iPhone7 to iPhone11 to get a good camera in an iPhone. The 11 is a phone that is both much larger and much more expensive than I would like. So if the camera on this is as good as the main iPhone 11 camera, I would definnitely have gone for this one instead, had it been available 6 months ago.
This is apple cannibalizing their own iPhone11 sales, a lot I think
This is just an iPhone 8 mk II (it even fits 8 cases!), and that means those of us who want an actual SE replacement are now out of luck. Rather disappointing.
I loved the SE, but now am on an 8 after it broke. TBH I adjusted pretty quickly. It is a bit unstable to hold at times, but I rarely notice it. And just as often I wish I had more screen real-estate such as to fit a PDF on screen. :shrug: trade-offs.
Due to the planned obsolescence (via stoppage of security updates) of Android phones within 2 years I had been seriously been considering buying an iPhone SE2.
But I can't really justify myself buying it at the hefty price tag of $555 in India. (The extra $155 being added due to the high custom duties on imports in India.)
Salaries (at least for software developers) here being 1/4th of that of US developer salaries or lesser makes even the $400 price in US not quite easy to digest.
It seems I will be stuck with buying an Android One phone instead.
Whenever the COVID-19 travel bans are eased in different countries, you could ask someone to get it for you from the US (if you know someone, which may be an impediment). This phone is also sold in the US in an unlocked variant that can be used with any carrier.
They really, really messed up by not being upfront with Siri's contractors, and they are not taking a hard stance on E2E iCloud Photos/Backups.
You can back up yourself using the native encrypted backup format using the CLI on Linux/Windows/macOS using https://libimobiledevive.org idevicebackup2
Using ifuse from them too you can read the SQLite database the Photos app uses, see things like the on-device processed metadata (including recognized faces, tho obviously not the face data from FaceID).
Just a reminder that the terrific old 4" iPhone SE is still available refurbished on Amazon for about $100. Runs the current OS and all apps. Camera sucks by modern standards.
The most interesting aspect of the phone for me is that it looks to have the 16:9 ratio that's been abandoned industry-wide for 19:9, which I find to be extremely narrow.
I'm still holding on to my 4-year old Galaxy S7 because it's 5-inch, 16:9 display is just the right size. I have a newer 19:9 phone and even with fairly large man-hands, I struggle to reach the corners of the screen with my thumb, which is where most menu items are located.
I am sure the new iPhone SE has more advanced everything but if you're just using it for text messages, occasional photo and Whatsapp you'll hardly notice any difference.
I am currently using the original iPhone SE and for my purposes it works just fine. I use it for texting, Google Maps, checking stock prices, occasional photo/movie, email, WhatsApp, bank apps, NYTimes app, Apple Pay. I had the battery replaced last year and plan to use it for the next 3 years or until Apple adds a compelling new feature to the iPhone (which they haven't for several years). I dislike the newer iPhones because they are too big to be comfortable in my jeans pocket.
A lot of people are looking at this as a "replacement" for the iPhone SE (original) - but I don't think that is what this is. It is the "upgrade" that iPhone 6/6s/7 users have been waiting for. People that don't want the relatively huge iPhone XR/11 (3/4" taller and 1/2" wider) and don't want to spend $1k on the more reasonably sized iPhone 11 Pro.
People will get it or they won’t, the HN crowd is probably a fairly small demographic compared to who Apple is trying to gear this towards: people who want an affordable, new iPhone.
For my part (SE user of 2 years, and before that a 5s user), this fits my needs pretty well, and it’s got the latest hardware. The lack of a headphone jack was always going to happen, that’s just the way of the world and nothing will change it - and realistically, carrying around a dongle really isn’t a big deal if you’re going to be carrying around your phone and earphones anyway, it’s just another small piece to keep attached to your earphones on a semi-permanent basis. The 5s form factor would have been cool too, but that was also never going to happen, because the SE is released in no small part because there is a surplus of X device (previously 5s, now 8) and they need to move old stock.
I’ll hang onto my SE until iOS 14 comes out, then I’ll get a refurbished SE 2. I might be able to get away with getting an almost-new iPhone released this year for around AU$600, that would be cool.
What I mean is that new phones which have a headphone jack are the exception rather than the norm, and their number seems to be diminishing. Maybe if people voted with their wallets it would stop the development in this direction, but it seems like too few people are concerned with this issue (I’m one of them - it’s just not going to turn me off a potential phone).
Being a long-time Android user (not a fan, though) This is the first iPhone I'd actually buy. I'm tired of huge phones with no bezels, they're not usable. They are a pain in the ass, they are a literally a pain in your hand to use. I halso ahte the notch with passsion.
So at my previous employer I kept separate work and personal phones. At my current employer I decided I wasn't going to do that. Who wants to carry two phones? Or pay for a personal service you barely use?
I'm fortunate enough that my work phone is (now) an iPhone 11 Pro. I routinely go to Australia for extended periods and need a phone there. For years (>5) I used the last personal phone I bought myself, the iPhone 6S, which was still doing quite well since ~2 years ago it had a free battery replacement.
But I finally decided to upgrade this. I like the 11 Pro (particularly the cameras) but I find the narrower screen a little annoying (compared to the previous work phone, the iPhone 7 Plus).
But damn phones are expensive now. I couldn't justify the almost $2000 for an iPhone 11 Pro Max and decided to spend "only" half that on an iPhone 11 instead. It lacks one of the cameras but it has a bigger screen than the 11. I really see no reason to spend the huge extra on the 11 Pro or Pro Max.
But by God do I hate Face ID (even more so on my iPad). It's horrible. Apple says the false positive rate on Touch ID was too high. I say the false negative rate on Face ID is too high and this is incredibly frustrating. Worse, Apple tries to make it more secure by forcing policies on you like 5 failed attempts means it asks for a passcode. Failed attempts include passive fails where you just haven't positioned the phone right.
I think Apple just got rid of Touch ID to have more screen area, honestly. That's not such a bad thing but what I'd give for an iPhone that had a fingerprint sensor on the back (like the Samsung Galaxy S9 did, which I also briefly used).
So the presence of Touch ID makes me almost want to buy one of these but I can't go back screen size wise. As an aside, I am tempted to get rid of my iPad Pro and replace it with the newer (non-Pro) iPad because those still do have Touch ID.
This really is an updated iPhone 8 with a modern CPU. It seems like a pretty good deal to me.
It's tricky though. I don't wish that, simply because I don't want to have to upgrade my Lightning-connector dock, speakers, pencil, HDMI dongle, charging cables, and I'm probably forgetting a couple more things. When customers have invested in an entire ecosystem around a connector type, we really don't want to change more often than every 20 years or so.
And I personally don't care if it takes 1 hour or 7 hours to charge wirelessly, I'm asleep. The times when I need to emergency-charge during the day I can still use the port though.
I feel your pain with regard to loosing the lightning connector. For me I guess I’d have to buy a new proprietary cable for my car.
The cost of replacing all your stuff is one of the consequences of buying things with proprietary connectors.
I have an Apple USB Superdrive. It looks great but was purposely designed only to work with a MacBook. No reason for that except to keep me in the “ecosystem”.
Apple could release a Lightning to USB-C dongle for you. That would allow you to reuse your Lightning pencil ...if they wanted to.
I'm still using an iPhone 8. It's been great and I wasn't looking for a replacement yet. However, it's nice to know that I can get one in the same size. I don't want a big phone. I was reading through some of the threads and found some arguments about Android. I'm a poweruser myself. I was on Android for a long time. I've used both mid range and high end Androids. All of them have died after 2 years max after slowing down terribly. Finally switched to the iPhone 8, two years ago and couldn't have been happier. I still have an old iPhone 5s that works like a charm.
Bummer that this has the slippery rounded edges that started with the 6. My guess is that they're doing this because the iPhone 12 is rumored to return to more rectangular edges, and they want it to be visually distinct.
$399 iPhone? Weird! I always thought Apple stayed out of that pricerange to keep the iPhone line a "prestige" purchase (especially given how little time the "c" lasted for). I suppose that's why this model has such an iPod-esque visual design, so that outside observers don't misconstrue the people using these with their "luxury" users.
It's good to see more downward pressure coming from flagship phones lately, imo. It's a great analog to the Pixel "a" models and an overall smartphone trend that I'm very positive about!
The iPhone 5C, my guess, was Apple's experiment with having a cheaper end phone and seeing how the market would react to that. With the original SE, they probably had a ton of left over iPhone 5 shells so they chose that because it just made sense to use them. My guess is this is the same reason why the new SE has the shell from the 7/8. This also helps Apple cut down on price since they don't have to create new molds or re-engineer the interior much, which is probably how Apple is convincing themselves that they can still make their expected margins with a $399 price tag.
Apple is shifting to a service revenue model with things like Apple TV+. I suspect they're realizing that to reproduce their iTunes monopoly they're going to need iPhones to be as ubiquitous as iPods.
If GOOG designs Pixels w/Exynos chips (per recent rumors), they'll likely be cheaper than the Snapdragon ones. That will put even more downward pressure on these prices.
As current user of a Moto E5 Play, this is the first iPhone that I've been tempted to purchase. It delivers a lot of value at a reasonable price.
As penny-pinching consumer, I've started thinking about device longevity. This phone will certainly be supported longer than any Android.
However, my current phone still works, even if the camera is bad and it can be quite slow at times. I can't justify purchasing a new device, especially one that was probably constructed with unethical labor.
Is it weird that we're in 2020 and I still keep assuming that phones have a headphone jack by default... Until I check the spec sheet and realise there's no headphone jack :(
I own iPhone SE and let's be honest, this phone is designed for people living in warm climate, not someone living in nordic countries. If it's around zero degrees celius or less, then you better not take your phone out of your pocket. The battery will uncharge and phone will shut off(sometimes in matter of minutes). I thought there was something wrong with my iPhone, but it turns out the battery can't stand the cold.
-- edit
Otherwise I love iPhone SE. It's almost perfect.
I use an iPhone SE and an iPhone 8 -- I got the 8 only because the SE's microphone crapped out. I was thinking of buying an 11 Pro, but now I think I'll buy the 2020 SE instead because it's smaller and has the A13.
(I was hoping against hope they'd use the old SE form factor, but I can understand why they don't.)
I wonder how much the new SE will cannibalize sales of the 11's, for customers who aren't price-sensitive but are size-sensitive?
I actually like the "borders" on top and bottom, makes it easier to hold and use the phone.
That said, Apple is really taking the piss with these displays. Just like the iPhone 11, not only is the resolution laughable (Apple used to be a leader here, what happened?) but it's also IPS LCD, which uses more power and has worse viewing angles and colors.
OLEDs are excellent and competitors at this price point have them, so why not Apple?
Is there any word on the screen material? I have a Pixel 3a that for the most part I really like, but one of the ways I think they got the price down was by using a glass that was much less scratch-resistant. My original Pixel never scratched, the 3a is scuff up badly after just 6 months. My iPhone 7 is a couple of years old and also has no scratches, so I'm hoping for a similarly scratch-resistant screen.
occupies the entire first page of these comments, with 367 replies. Is this optimal?
Edit: looks like this has fixed/modified, some of the replies have been broken out into top-level threads. Might be time for auto-collapsing of replies like Reddit.
They could of done so much more than slap an A13 into an iPhone 8. I guess it was about that the last time although, throwing a newer processor into an iPhone 5.
At the very least they could of done touch ID on the back and make it a hole punch display with a smaller form factor, but that would probably have battery issues from the smaller footprint.
I love the iPhone 5 design - I wish they could have put a full screen Face ID display into that frame.
Maybe it wasn't possible with the space constraints, or maybe it would have been too expensive - but a premium small phone like that would have been really cool.
The iPhone 8 is probably my least favorite of all iPhone designs except for the 3G.
> I don't understand why other ARM CPU makers don't come up with comparable CPUs.
This is like asking why other rocket companies don't just build rockets this year that are reusable like SpaceX's.
Apple's CPUs are so fast because they have the best internal engineering team on earth paired with the best Fab (TSMC 7nm) money can buy. They buy out the entire production run from that Fab.
These CPUs are the most advanced and best designed in the world because they worked so hard to get here years ago.
It's like asking why other runners don't just run as a fast as Usain Bolt.
I have the latest iphone, but only because I switched carriers and got a good deal. FaceID is fine, but touch ID was way way better... but why don't they put it on the back of the phone like Android phones do? It's so much easier to use it and then you don't have those huge bezels.
Is there any confirmation that this phone will/won't support 5G? It seems to be omitted in the marketing materials.
While multiple years of OS support would be nice in this form factor, not being able to use 5G data would be a big negative in terms of this being "futureproofed".
Until our towers have enough network backhaul to consistently max out LTE to a phone when that phone needs it, 5G has exactly one benefit: less signal congestion at major sporting / concert events with high densities of people. The carriers would say “marketing” is another benefit, probably.
Just having 5G won’t make the internet any faster in most situations, since the towers are backhaul limited... they aren’t limited by LTE.
Even 200Mbps is more than enough for 99% of people's phones for the next 5 years, especially since that's like double the average home internet speed in the US. The 537Mbps seen in the article I linked to is just excessive by today's standards... and that just requires current LTE.
“5G” also refers to two completely different technologies, which most people probably don’t realize. One of them doesn’t even seem very different from LTE, and the other requires towers for almost every single city block.
I really want to jump back into iPhones and prepared to sustain another painful migration back into ios, but not with no guarantees I'll have a product refresh in the coming years; I've been forced out of the ecosystem once and I'm not going to get burned twice.
That’s a whole lot of hardware for 399. Android handset makers are likely going to be upset with Apple moving downmarket with a chip that will run circles around what they have to offer.
Honestly I should have gotten one of these instead of my 11 pro. My 11 pro is just too much phone.
Looks clean. Wonder if that means the array of sensors needed for AR/Face id is still that expensive to make that they can't add it to their $400 phone. You'd think that by now after having multiple gens of flagship phones using it cost would be low...
What's with the design, should have gone flat edges & slimmer bezels & in display fingerprint. From experience of 5 year old 5S, TouchID just doesn't work with little sweat or dust. In display readers on other phones just work so amazingly
Tangential: the scroll performance on hardware-accelerated Chrome for the landing page is absolutely atrocious on a Xeon v6 running past full frequency (3.6GHz, so not in energy-saving mode). I would have expected better of Apple. \shrug\
Another current SE user here.
I've been waiting for this since rumors started 6+ months ago.
I was hoping they were going to keep the same screen size but think I'll upgrade anyways. Figure I will need to eventually and this has a solid tech bump-up.
Awesome! I love my SE. A smartphone that doesn't try to be a full-fledged tablet computer (size-wise and spec-wise). $400 is what I paid for my original SE, so this isn't bad. Gonna miss the 3.5mm plug in though.
There are certainly all the previous iPhones that had just one (back-facing) camera. I suppose they're saying that it's better than all of those. Every year they say that the new phone is the "best iPhone ever," which I suppose is true but isn't a very strong statement.
I have an old iPhone SE. It is small enough that I don't even notice it in my pocket. It does everything I want it to do very well and is actually very responsive.
Also it is about $60 bucks on ebay. I have no compelling reason to switch.
I assume no more iOS updates are coming for the SE. Pretty soon your apps won't upgrade, and won't talk to the app servers, and you can't install new apps.
So you don't have a compelling reason to switch now... but in a year or so you unfortunately will. It's what happened to me with my iPhone 5. :(
I have the 1st gen SE and a pixel 3a. pixel 3a screen currently shuttered. But will gladly switch back to 2nd gen SE if they let me run Firefox on that thing. I will compromise on a headphone jack n get an mp3 player
Lets use all the spare parts of iPhone 8 and call it iPhone SE gen 2. I get the concept but it would have been nice with a iPhone XR design but in the size of the original iPhone SE. $399 is still reasonable.
but iOS still needs profiles. i'm really surprised they haven't done this yet. i wonder if google has patents that make this too expensive (or impossible) to do on iOS.
As much as I love apple products (I'm using mac and iPhone for years) I do think that the spark in their innovation is slowly fading.
I can't remember the last time they 'Wow'ed me.
Yesterday in their keynote, Oneplus dared to call the new Oneplus 8 "compact" with its 6.55" screen. Although to be fair it has a much better screen-to-body ratio than the SE.
That's one way to look at it I guess :-) (note: I personally think content should be the focus of a smartphone, so the screen should be as big as physically possible; 6.7" is my current limit though).
4G around the UK is pretty grim. I struggle to get any signal in the centre of Glasgow, especially around the Central train station. Even on 3G. Anything that helps is welcome.
I don’t see how 5G would help with that... that sounds like a carrier problem, not an LTE problem.
In my personal (and possibly wrong) opinion, even a very popular train station shouldn’t have enough people to oversubscribe the LTE airwaves and cause signal congestion.
The Atlanta airport has 3x to 4x as many passengers per year as Glasgow central station, and I’ve never had trouble getting good, solid cellular connection when I’m there... so I don’t think the number of people in close proximity is causing oversubscription of the airwaves.
The carrier you use probably hasn’t put up enough towers, or the towers just don’t have enough backhaul bandwidth to do anything useful.
Definitely is a carrier problem, but due to the decreased range of 5G it would make it more essential for the carriers to install more antennas around the area rather than getting away with having less for 4G/3G.
come on, that's just lazy, what would happen if they would make at least the top bezel smaller and expand the display together with higher resolution? so much wasted space
it's nice someone produce 4.7" phone, but it could be either smaller with such outdated low res display or display could be bigger in same body
this just seem like they have big stock of old displays and phone bodies they still need to dump
in all this talk about form-factor and sizes, the two most comfortable phones I ever used, in terms of their physical feel in my hand, were the palm pre2 and pre3. They felt like a little river pebble that was warm to the touch. I wish companies would go back to small phones that feel good in your hand.
I never understood hype behind this phone. On paper it seems like april fools joke. Single camera, absurd screen-to-body ratio and all of the things from 2010 in 2020.
None of you bought s10e which is a brilliant phone yet you whine that no small phones are available - maybe you should vote with your wallet or just admit that you're in it for the nostalgia and drop the facade.
I bought an S10e on launch. It was too large for me and when it got stolen a couple months after I had it, I just didn't replace it. Have now been phone-less for almost a year, waiting for a good sub-5 inch android phone.
The size of the original iPhone has been insisted by Steve Jobs. Based on his insistence on the table high and low for apple store, there is a reason for that size.
I still bought a iPod lately for the size and 2nd phone SE for the size (and the weight).
Nice, now if they can start making phones with easily replaceable batteries, screens and charging ports that don't break on every one of my iPhones, we'll have a product that should've been made from the very start.
You don't get carrier switching (T-Mobile only) and visual voicemail is done through the Fi app instead of the native phone app. Also no WiFi calling/SMS.
Other than that it works fairly well and costs a lot less than a standard plan at the other carriers.
I am still using my iphone 6 (from 2014) without any issue besides airpods not working well with Ip6. I have been hankering for an upgrade. This might be it.
Give it a little more credit than that, it's a pretty tight LCD that has better effective (observed) DPI than it might appear to have. (As OLED displays take a hit due to the Pentile arrangement) 326PPI in an IPS LCD with HDR isn't nearly as blurry 720P might sell it to be. The iPhone 11 is well reviewed despite similar agreement. Plus chopping the pixel count comes with battery gains. No surpises here.
Why do the edges need to be round? Can this idiotic trend die already? It makes it easier for the phone to slide off of flat surfaces. It also makes it much harder to hold the phone with one hand since all the weight that concentrates on your pinky rests painfully on 2-3 millimeters of your skin rather than being spread across the full thickness of the phone. It also makes it easier for the phone to slip out of your hand if your pinky isn’t at just the right location and angle, the smooth curve means it just slides right off your pinky knuckle and onto the floor.
Anyone else miss the 3:2 aspect ratio phones? If they made a device that handles like an iPhone 4S but with smaller bezels, chin, and forehead (and maybe slightly thinner, if they must), I figure that'd be a killer. Maybe it's less of an issue now that most of their apps seem to support navigation from the canvas rather than the top left corner of the screen (I don't know since I have only ever used iPhones for testing, and not recently), but it would be nice if an ordinary person could reach every part of the screen with a thumb without adjusting their grip.
Also this phone isn't even compact, whether they slap the SE label on it.
Not to mention that common upgrade motivators like battery degradation and cracked display glass become less important when you are at home all day and you can plug in to a charger, watch TV, and browse the internet on your laptop or desktop.
I know it's a pretty much lost cause but I am 100% willing to die on the hill of never buying a phone without a headphone jack, no compromises, so a sad hard pass on this one.
I don't really understand why this is at HN front page, and also why people are keeping upvoting it, are you afraid some people will miss the news if this is not at the top ?
Also the guidelines state : 'If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. '
As always, US pries are ex-tax (meaning state sales taxes are added on and can be as much as 10% depending on city and state). Most other places (UK included) as inc-tax. If you take out the 20% VAT you get to 349 GBP, which is ~437 USD at current exchange rates. That's not that far off.
Interesting, I'd find that super annoying as a consumer that's used to seeing the full price (ex. delivery) upfront. Is this standard practice for online US stores?
It is annoying but taxes in the US are based on locality, so they involve state and municipal sales taxes, so it would be impossible to list one price for every customer.
On a different note, Isn't it weird to see companies launching new phones when the whole world is fighting a pandemic?
It's not like an essential that we can't live without. OnePlus just did a few days back. Do these companies expect people to buy new phones when they're are being laid off or is it just an annual ritual or a desparate move to be the first to capture the market when things become normal?
> It's not like an essential that we can't live without
For $399, you can buy a device with the computing power of a networked workstation within a lifetime of memory. That lets you dial into e.g. VoIP calls, answer e-mail, manage your calendar and interact with workflow apps.
Put another way, this could be seen as a substitute for a laptop for some users. That's absolutely essential.
As Apple moves to be more of a service-based company, they are likely factoring in the increase in service value for newly acquired/retained customers.
Most of this was developed way before the pandemic started. Not launching would be wasted effort and you might end up looking like you are lagging behind phonemakers that announced/launched before the pandemic.
Gadgets are seen as a status symbol in some groups, having the newest thing could be more desirable than paying rent to some. There is also still a large group of people that were not laid off, they still want that money.
I do not know about the logistics of manufacture and shipping, there might be a shortage after they sell though the initial launch stock.
From Apple’s perspective, this is a good time to have a more affordable phone available for people who need to upgrade (broken, damaged, or lost phone) or are getting their first phone (kids).
It drives me up the wall that I simply cannot find a reasonably competent phone (i.e. mid/upper range from the past 4 years) which is not absolutely fucking huge. It's insane that the "phablet" standard from ~5 years ago is now not even the new standard, but the only standard.