What actually happened to the market for 4" phones? I came across my old Droid Incredible II the other day and it felt so much better in my hand than any other smartphone I've held in the last 3 years. I could comfortably type on it with one hand, something I couldn't dream of doing well on a 5" or larger phone.
I think that the market for smaller phones has died a bit as phones have become the primary computer for a lot of people.
There are people who don't own a desktop or laptop at home, or if they do, they use it very rarely. For them, their phone is their primary device, so it makes sense for the screen to be large enough that it's practical and comfortable to use for long periods.
Yup since OneNote has became really good, I find myself nowadays predominently going to meetings with just my phone and no laptop or paper notebook. What would be amazing is a way for easily connecting phones to HDMI.
I see others using tablets with a keyboard or the surface pro with a stylus but I don't like the form factor which I have to carry in my hand but not in my pocket. Considering a switch to Samsung Note 9.
There are several ways to connect phones to screens. Android support screen casting to some smart TVs like LG (I used to use this feature all the time and it works really well over WiFi). Unfortunately Apple does it's own thing so you'd need an Apple TV if you want to use AirPlay on iOS.
However iPhones (and some Android handsets too) do support HDMI over their data port. You'd need to buy a cable but they can be got for ~£15 (though you'd be looking more at £40/£50 if you want an official branded one - but I've found 3rd party dongles generally work just as well on iPhones).
I switched to a Note 8 from a Nexus 6P for the stylus.
I probably use it once a month. The input latency and the small size (compared to a notepad) prevents it from replacing the spiral notebook I carry.
I also understimated how much I'd hate the samsung crap that's installed, and the edge to edge screen is more trouble than it's worth--I'm always accidentally clicking something while holding it.
How do you honestly believe that?
Market is not a feel. Companies with multi-billion dollar revenues invest gazillions into researching the market. They can't afford to come up with a product based on "honestly believing". Then they apply resources to tackle a potential need. As much as I would like that my feelings could overlap with the markets, I'm aware that I'm a niche, and I don't think that judging market choices through the lens of what I'd like can lead to anything but a skewed personal view of a market problem.
The SE was far from a failure not because of the size, but because for the first time it let people into the iPhone realm at a much lower price (without being just an old phone with a lower price). It had the "new" tag on it, although it was basically a product that Apple could generate by mixing up a couple of production lines with much lower assembly costs. By any measurement, the iPhone SE is an old and technically lacking phone with a superior and hyper-sticky software ecosystem. It was also the workhorse of carriers who could sell expensive plans with a lower device subsidization fee.
Apple's marketing is best in class when it comes to framing the complexity of market tactics and vendor-carrier relationships within a simple and clear narrative. The underlying mechanism are still as intricated as they can be.
Yet companies do precisely that all the time, in many markets and niches. They lead rather than respond to the market. Such is the nature of companies that get large enough to be multinationals. Customers count for not that much, so take it or leave it.
Almost no one wanted headphone sockets actually removed because anyone who actually wanted bluetooth already had the capability, and countless surveys reveal a wish to keep them. Most recently Oneplus finding 80%+ of their customers wanted to keep it, so their next phone removed it. Almost every company has now followed suit, so it's damn clear they are not researching the market, unless it's to ascertain the extent of what they can get away with.
Same with Google+, almost no one wanted it, yet for several years there was insistence one would have it.
So I maintain the presence or absence of a product or service is often little or nothing to do with market sales. Or one can believe in perfect markets and perfect filling of opportunities.
Of course sales matter. What doesn't matter is people pissing and moaning (e.g. over headphone jack) if they end up buying your product anyway. Apple has always been in the forefront of removing legacy features before the market was really ready for them to be removed.
I'd actually bet the SE is viewed as something of a failure within apple after the X was such a hit.
With more people willing to pay multiples of the price of a SE for one, SE screen size support for iOS apps must be an absolutely huge restraint on some developers.
I love my SE though. Battery is so much better than I've been used to.
Perhaps, though it's hard to understand from the outside what could have had Apple view it as a success, enough to warrant an SE2. It appears to have got almost universally positive press, and surprisingly good sales if that press is to be believed.
My own circle of friends and their families must be ridiculously unrepresentative because the SE seems to have an outsize presence, and there's remarkably few huge flagships of any make. There's a couple who still hope every year that Samsung see sense and bring out another S Mini.
The SE dragged down apple’s average selling price, which is a key metric Tim Cook optimizes for. You can see how the SE brought down the ASP when it was launched Q2 2016: https://www.statista.com/chart/15379/iphone-asp/
If they bring back an SE-sized device it will be a high end one, a X SE for example with the screen size of the iphone 8 in an SE-sized body. I wouldn’t be surprised to see them launch that within 6 months and as a current SE owner I would definitely buy it.
All spiritual or religious beliefs have no basis, that's literally what differentiates them from facts. They're all ultimately grounded in baseless assertions.
> All spiritual or religious beliefs have no basis
Spiritual and religious people give reasons and justifications for their beliefs all the time. Have you never heard an argument for why the universe couldn't exist without a god? Surely you're aware of all the arguments made in things like the philosophy of religion?
Even if a belief feels to you to have no basis that doesn't mean there isn't one. People often claim that their intuition about something has no basis, but it's actually that they don't have a consciously-accessible basis -- there's all the actual things they subconsciously picked up about, say, the person who seemed shifty, and all the subconscious mental processing that leads to that feeling.
Yes, and this shows you agree with my point. I think what's confusing you is that you're thinking "has a basis" means "is factually correct". If you look at my comments in this sub-thread, you'll see that I'm talking about the basis of views that are potentially/actually wrong (e.g. the view that there's a market for small phones, or the view that the earth is flat). This "basis" is the reasons, drawn from experience or other information, why we think something is the case. That basis can be dead wrong, but that doesn't mean it's non-existent.
Having a 5.5" myself, I can tell you that while a smaller phone would be more comfortable in my hand, having a larger screen provides more utility by allowing more content to be seen and used at once. I guess what I want is a super-portable substitute to my computer for when I'm on the go. Having big hands also makes it easier to get accustomed.
EDIT: I also get the feeling that bigger phone means more features and longer battery times because of the extra space for electronics and the battery. Who knows, maybe if I held a 4" that's fast with a lot of memory and long battery life, I could get accustomed to seeing less content.
There's also the fact that website layout is determined by the website developers. I wonder how good the layouts are generally on the internet for 4" screens. It might be that many websites have fixed width side margins that cause a bigger whitespace-to-text ratio on smaller screens.
Just saying, Sony was managing to fit a microSD card, headphone jack, and good sized battery (in terms of battery life, they've been some of the longest lasting phones despite using (admittedly low res) LCDs instead of OLEDs) in their 4.6" compacts up to the XZ1C last year. The only feature they were missing was wireless charging.
The Motorola Razr M was an even smaller form factor with a 4.3" display. And all the iPhones from 3g to SE were outstanding in this now-extinct category, especially the 5s.
The 5s has the venerable status of being not only small, but one of the oldest currently-supported smartphones. At over 5 years old, it can still run respectably with iOS 12.
Not had much problem with sites on my SE, or felt the experience lacked compared to the larger Android phones I've owned. The few times something's been off I've not been able to compare against a larger or Android phone so it doesn't really count for much. :)
For me the difference is the SE simply fits the hand better. My other half would be even more vocal on that point.
So if the choice becomes 5.5" and larger or nothing, we'll probably be ex-smartphone owners. Speaking for myself I'd go feature phone before I'd "go large" again.
I'm starting to think that "computer-substitute" is precisely what smart phones have become, and that having a real computer you depend on might correlate with age, income or occupation in a way that phone ownership cuts across. It's pretty easy to finance a phone purchase through your carrier, especially compared to Apple's Barclay deal (unless this has changed a lot in the last few years.) I think a lot of people under thirty are borderline computer illiterate, but get by using their phone. For them, a bigger screen that's harder to type on is fine. For people with more money and computer literacy, it's just a matter of taste--but we're not the biggest slice of the pie.
Well, it may make sense if you're always on the go, but a lot of people like me would spend most of their time with a full size computer available that provides way more utility than whatever phones. I would even totally pay more to have a smaller phone that's much more comfortable. Frankly I don't find the larger iPhone I currently have to be any more useful than the 4" ones.
They would cost practically the same as a larger phone but the perception would be that you're getting much less, so few people would buy one even if they say they want one now.
it's probably much more difficult to reduce the size of the phone than to extend the screen. Think about specs such as battery life and processing power, smaller phone would have really tough competition, apps and mobile OS hoard all the fancy specs that come with bigger phones, there's very little room left for phones with less capacity.
