They are extremely intelligent for a mollusk(like, these folks are family with slugs and clamshells), but they are not that intelligent if you compare them to a pig or a dog.
Their main brain is after all very small(although huuuge for a mollusk), most of it is dedicated to the processing of vision, with two big lumps next to the eyes, and there's a small lump in between these two for the brain proper.
oh wow, I'd never heard of this. Reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flicker_fusion_threshold - now I think I understand why I can always tell GM vehicles with LED taillights at night. I can spot them a mile away, literally, because their taillights blink slower than others and I can see it, and it drives me crazy.
Cosmic expansion happens uniformly rather than through a local gravitational pull.
In physics, "we" use the raisin bread analogy where when you bake the bread, the raisins are all getting uniformly distant from each other with no central point of expansion and no obvious sign of pulling in any specific direction such as would be the case for a gravitational effect.
Spaghettification is directional / linear, and is in the form of a tidal acceleration. Expansion of the universe is uniform in all directions. Urban legends about cosmic sized black holes are in conflict with what cosmologists can actually see.
FWIW (and this is not directed to you specifically but anyone reading this) the police can use biometrics to compel you to open your phone without a warrant, but they cannot force you to give up your passcode.
Why do they insist on every new phone being bigger than the phones before them?
I don't mind folding. I think it's cool, and a nice way to get a useful space. But I have big hands, and I can't use my iphone 17 now without two hands. This is even wider before unfolding.
Who wants bigger phones? Who is like, "damn I wish I had a tablet that I could fold up and still barely fit in my pocket"?
I want smaller phones. The width of the iPhone 4 was nearly perfect imo. If they would take modern display technology with approximately that width and expand it to 16:9, I think it would kill, even if it were relatively underpowered compared to the modern top of the line.
> Who is like, "damn I wish I had a tablet that I could fold up and still barely fit in my pocket"?
Me. I get why people like small phones. But, I've have the iPhone Jumbo Huge edition for a long time now. I use my phone as a pocket tablet 10X more than as a phone.
1) 1878 pixels over 4.64" vs. 1284 over 3.07"
2) Default camera mode is 48 MP vs 12. Other modes are surprisingly similar.
3) A much faster CPU
I'm sure there are 1,000 more small differences. But, my 12 Jumbo Huge from late 2020 still runs great. If I were to upgrade, I'd get the Duo. We'll see how much longer I keep waiting, I guess.
The other night I was at an event and pulled out my iPhone 13 mini to show some people a video I had taken -- the two people on either side of me exclaimed and pulled out their iPhone minis and we all laughed about holding on to them until they turn to dust.
lol i have upgraded multiple times and i always end up back on the iphone mini. it's cost me a lot of money to find out how much i truly value small phones. my phone use is so balanced compared to some of the people i sit around who are just glued to their damn phones all the damn time. i love the utility that i can literally do whatever i need on the iphone mini, but i don't feel drawn to pick it up and just scroll much. i think the size helps reinforce that a lot, and i mostly feel like i have such a healthier relationship with screen time than my coworkers, family and friends.
if there was ever an iphone that was the size of the iphone 5 it would literally be over for me id pay 2000 dollars for it i dont care. there's literally no other options for small phones that don't suck right now i have looked exhaustively. the 13 mini is still the small phone king it's the best damn phone in the milky way.
Still to this day Apple 12/13 mini has been my absolute favourite form factor for a hand-held device. I appreciate Apple must have had their valid reasons to discontinue it, but it's such a shame.
I regretted it too after I went with an SE 2022. I thought the battery life would be better, and I thought I didn't want to swap Touch ID for Face ID.
18 months ago I bought a used iPhone 13 Mini, and much prefer it. I used to feel unhappy every time I held the SE 2022. I never liked the wider, rounded-edged shape of the iPhone 7/8. I'm finally going to get a battery swap for the 13 Mini from Apple this afternoon.
I'm hoping that stops me vaguely wondering about battery swapping for my SE 2016 (1st gen) and going back to using that. I don't think I'd want to go back to a camera that old, and too many apps are not supported. That was the last iPhone I really loved. Fastest smartphone on the planet in benchmarks when it was released, and in the rare event that it slipped out of your (someone else's) hand, it felt unbreakable compared to newer iPhones.
The claim is that people weren’t buying it enough. Which, you know, might be because they made it as thin as a feather and the battery life was terrible…
Also still haven’t moved on from the iPhone 12 - it’s a beast. I’ve dropped it thousands of times. Refuses to die or break. I think we’re due another mini run. They seem to come every 5-6 years.
> Who wants bigger phones? Who is like, "damn I wish I had a tablet that I could fold up and still barely fit in my pocket"?
I have bad eyesight. I've worn bifocals since I was 16, and I'm twice that age now. I literally used to carry around a 7" tablet in my pocket in college because I didn't have a smartphone yet. I want to be able to make things big so I can read them easily and not have to scroll constantly.
When I go for walks I only bring my smart watch. If I break an ankle or someone has an emergency we can talk. But I can't pull up a bench and doomscroll for an hour.
I don't think that follows. You can doomscroll at any screen size, small or big. If they don't fit in your pockets, it's probably harder to doomscroll on the phone, not easier.
I actually read more ebooks with a foldable. It gives me more functional options for entertainment other than doomscrolling. Videos are also obviously better on the inner screen.
> Videos are also obviously better on the inner screen.
How? Most foldables I've seen have an inner screen with a ratio so bad that the full screen video results in mostly black bars and the image is barely bigger than watching it on the outside screen.
Some foldables do have poor ratios, admittedly, but none of the ratios are so bad that I've seen that you get a smaller picture in practice than a standard smart phone.
Lots of people. There’s a reason folding phones have been a big story for years.
Maybe they only sell to 5% of users but they sell and at top prices, meaning more possible profit.
And you can’t grow the iPhone at the current sizes. Everyone who once wants at one of those sizes already has one. You either have to convince them to upgrade or switch, and those are both hard.
However, if you give them a choice of something they haven’t had before, it’s way easier. Get the people who wanted to fold and went to android and would like to come back. Get the people who have a max and want something bigger. Get the people with an iPhone 13 who are simply curious enough to do the upgrade, but otherwise would’ve stood still.
I think they could get 0.1 to 1 percent increase in sales by fixing family/ screentime. It doesn't work flawlessly and a teenager is basically the same as a hacker and there are too many workarounds and it is very hard to harden either iPhone or Mac.
It also needs a kill switch. (Non parents will judge I am sure)
The device with good parental controls will be the go to for many parents regardless of practically anything else.
Well, I'm with you and I was very excited when the iPhone Mini came out. However, the capabilities weren't equivalent to the regular-sized Pro (probably due to space reasons). So I didn't buy one despite loving the size and now cannot complain that it was discontinued.
Stumbled on my old iPhone 5S in the back of a drawer recently and could not believe how good it felt in my hand, even having only used 12 and 13 Mini models since 2021. What an excellent form factor and construction. Would happily pay a big premium for a modern version of it. Dreaming of a sub-mini phone trend. Sell me a $1500 Zoolander phone—not even joking!
The older phones didn’t have the screen extending all the way to the edges, but the size was ideal. And yes, Zoolander promised a future that never came!
I want the rest of you to have big phones, so that the concept of "mobile friendly websites" can die. This is my sole interest in phones. So I hope the Duo can be held comfortably in landscape orientation, but I guess in fact it can't be held comfortably at all. Oh well.
It is true that mobile oriented design killed a lot of great web designs from the 00s. But its not just screen size, thumbs are less precise than mouse cursors, necessitating larger buttons and click areas.
Bad luck, accessibility standards require you to support 320px width without horizontal scroll bar for most elements, especially the main layout. (1280px with 400% zoom)
Yep. Last time they made a mini iPhone it didn’t sell as well as they expected. It seems the market loves big phones. I bet these folding iPhones will sell like hotcakes.
I can understand people want bigger phones. I just don't get why apple can't make smaller phones anymore, especially for a company that seems to advocate for accessiblity and inclusion. They can make different size tablets. They make different size laptops. Why not phones? It's all large or x-large. People point to the mini but it really didn't do that poorly. It also was released at a weird time right after a cheaper SE model and not to mention all during COVID lockdowns where fewer people would actually touch the phone.
I like my Apple phone 4s too it was fine in its time but these days I need a bigger phone because the eyesight isn’t exactly what it used to be. I don’t need a giant phone, but I need something a little bit bigger than a 4s.
There was a while where the bezels were getting smaller and the pixels cleaner where getting a new iphone/ipad pretty much kept pace with my declining near vision.
But these days I pretty much need to buy different pants so the goddamned phone fits without dislocating my hip.
I kind of thought the same and then I invested a bit of money into seeing(!) an ophthalmologist. If it's correctable, do it. Better investment than a damn phone. Now I can go back to asking for a smaller phone.
It was a genuine question. I also suffer from eye issues and a bigger font and warmer colours really help, with no need for a bigger screen in my experience.
IMHO, one of the reasons I've been delaying an upgrade is because the standard sized iphone 13 ( not even pro ) I've had for a few years now is big enough already, anything larger just would not be ergonomic ( and I have large hands )...
I carry an iPhone because I love the size. I carry an iPad to read. This would be nice, although I prefer to keep these devices separate. The iPad isn't connected to my life, so it can enter my bedroom.
I'd like to think if Steve were around, the apple watch would have been pushed for more battery life and connectivity instead of more health monitoring, which is a gimmick people mostly use for a few months and then turn off.
I'd like to carry my iPad and tether it to my watch instead of my phone, and just have those two and the headphones as my Personal Area Network. Nobody is even doing an all-in-one device anymore, but we keep pretending like that's the world we live in.
> Why do they insist on every new phone being bigger than the phones before them?
Folded, I get, I want it to be a "regular size", but the only reason I don't like big devices is because they are clumsy to store in my pocket and use/grab one handed. If I can use it BOTH ways, now I have a choice. One handed for quick usage, and two handed for extended sessions. For $2K, yeah, I'm going to want a full fledged computer in my pocket.
> Who wants bigger phones? Who is like, "damn I wish I had a tablet that I could fold up and still barely fit in my pocket"?
I literally just got 7 pairs of pants tailored with bigger pockets so they could hold my freaking phone without it falling out all the time. I would love a smaller more petite phone.
The same thing goes for cheaper phones. Apple has made some phones that were a little bit cheaper than the flagship phone, but most people still buy the more expensive phones if it’s not the most expensive, it’s the next one down that most people buy.
They sold just fine. They just didn't sell a billion million units, so in Apple land that was considered a "failure". Most manufacturers would've been stoked to get the sales figures the iPhone mini got.
I also want a small phone. I was happy with a Sony Xperia X Compact which is one inch shorter than my current Samsung A40, which is shorter and lighter than almost everything else.
The flip side is I used to be the person that upgraded every year. Meanwhile I'm now sitting here with the most recent mini model and HODLing. I realize its' a drop in the bucket for them, it's their loss that I no longer purchase new equipment.
What's particularly frustrating about the discontinuing of the Mini is that it really didn't sell badly, just below _expectations_. Compared to every other model of phone sold by other manufacturers, I suspect the Mini outsold all but the most popular models.
From that perspective, the discontinuation feels more like an act of embarrassment by management than the result of a rational cost/benefit analysis. Given that reportedly the Air is selling substantially worse than the Minis, and I suspect the Duo will also fail to match its internal sales target because IMO Apple _usually_* overestimates the number of buyers willing to drop $2k+ for personal purchases (lots of corporations are willing to buy laptops for $2k+, but I suspect that almost all AVP/iPhone purchases are direct to consumer), I wonder if Ternus be willing to adopt a strategy that will keep profitable products around even if they don't meet their target. I suspect this is sort of an effect of the predictors being in some kind of high income bubble where _everyone_ they know has enough cash to drop $3500 to try out an AVP.
I had a Mini 12 and upgrade every 3 years, so I didn't bother with a mini 13. I ended up buying a base 15 and hoping that I wouldn't mind it, but my regret has only gotten stronger over time.
* Exception: they have dramatically underestimated the number of people wanting to buy high ram minis/studios for local AI.
> I suspect that almost all AVP/iPhone purchases are direct to consumer
I have worked for multiple companies that provide iPhones to employees, but neither of them would budget for the newest best version, unlike with the macbook pros. Companies know that if they buy devs computers with more ram and a bigger high resolution screen, we will get more done, but the main reason to provide a top end iPhone is as a perk.
Might be different with the Duo because I can see an argument for it being a better productivity device for people who need to send a lot of emails from a mobile.
There's a sizeable amount of us. I finally had the battery changed in my 13 Mini a few months ago. I don't want a larger phone.
The Duo has the same diagonal as a Mini when closed (5.4"), so I'd love to see them eventually embrace that size and release a 7:5 ratio SE or something similar.
> Who is like, "damn I wish I had a tablet that I could fold up and still barely fit in my pocket"?
But this question is silly. When your reference point switches from people buying phones to people buying tablets, there's a huge demand for tablets that are more portable.
The obvious answer is that people actually want bigger phones and you're in minority. But no, let's pretend what you personally want trumps that and ridicule them for it instead.
Kinda of. But the mini was released at a terrible time to get accurate data.
The iPhone SE had launched 6 months earlier and had been lauded as the phone to get if you wanted a small iPhone. People who bought the SE were not ready to upgrade straight away to the mini.
I suspect if the mini launched today it would see (a little) more success.
I'm sure Apple, and most other smartphone companies who have released a smaller phone before, are also at least as capable as us at accounting for launch timing in their investigations of what causes a phone to sell well and what doesn't.
Can attest to that. My wife always complains how big phones don't fit well in her shorts. But when I remind her of that when she is buying a new phone, she goes "Yeah well its annoying, but videos are nicer on a bigger screen".
Why do they insist on every new phone being bigger than the phones before them?
I don't mind folding. I think it's cool, and a nice way to get a useful space. But I have big hands, and I can't use my iphone 17 now without two hands. This is even wider before unfolding.
Who wants bigger phones? Who is like, "damn I wish I had a tablet that I could fold up and still barely fit in my pocket"?
I want smaller phones. The width of the iPhone 4 was nearly perfect imo. If they would take modern display technology with approximately that width and expand it to 16:9, I think it would kill, even if it were relatively underpowered compared to the modern top of the line.
Because for a lot (most?) people their iPhone is their primary and only personal computer. I also want a smaller phone. I bet Apple designers would love to sell you a smaller phone. They've certainly tried with my beloved and retired iPhone mini and the same size but thinner iPhone air. But the market keeps rejecting it because it's not just a portable companion to some other computer, it is the computer. If you're doing all your work on it then you need more real estate. Aging populations across the globe probably need more screen real estate also for bigger text.
My need for this new iPhone is driven by my declining vision. Twenty years ago, I had no problem with my first iPhone. Five years ago, I started to get acquainted with some of the visual accommodation measures in iOS. I do still use my (physically larger than I would like) iPhone 16 Pro Max, which I bought for the biggest screen.
I'd love to do my stuff on my laptop or desktop, but smartphones are de facto The Computer these days. So I'll probably buy an iPhone Duo after I sell a kidney for financing.
All that said, today's Apple presentation left me gobsmacked at the technology they've developed. I was born before civilian jet transports were in service, with all that implies for a long personal view of tech dev. The tech feels to me like a cut&paste from 2076.
And why should we all have to buy big ass phones because your vision is declining? Nobody argued big phones shouldn't exist, it's just small phones currently don't.
Camera blocks take internal volume. Smaller phones have less internal volume to spend - while still having to pack all the non-negotiables like the modem and the SoC into it. Something's got to give. And no one want that something to be the battery life going down to 6 hours.
Volume constraints are bad enough for "normal" models. "Minis" have it way worse.
The iPhone Air's SOC demonstrates that they could compact the actual SOC portion substantially. Add a bit of thickness back for the battery, and they could have a Mini with space for a decent camera and decent battery life. Remove the camera bump by making it a uniform thickness and the battery life would be fine.
But we already know that they can make a smaller iPhone with everything.
The iPhone 6 was a decade ago and was smaller in all dimensions than an iPhone 17 and had a perfectly acceptable battery life. Since then, they have removed headphone jacks and buttons, batteries have gotten more power dense, chips have gotten more efficient, etc.
It’s the camera and Face ID. The camera on the iPhone 6 is nowhere near as capable current cameras. Even the much improved camera on the last iPhone SE was considered a huge issue by most people. Cameras are too important to go back to something that thin. The current Air is leaps and bounds better in every way to the iPhone 6 but it doesn’t sell. Why? The battery life and camera. Imagine shrinking the iPhone Air and having even less battery life. Critics would howl and even fewer people would buy it.
Smaller phones can’t fit as much stuff in them as larger phones. Shrink the phone and something has to give. People in the aggregate do not want to make those compromises unless the price is noticeably less. But then it can’t have any of the premium features that are expected from Apple. Small phones are compromises that don’t pay off for Apple.
We’ve come close to doubling battery capacity per volume in that time.
The battery was the single largest module by a long shot in an iPhone 6, and now you can get the same capacity in a much smaller volume. We’ve also lost other bulky items like the home button and headphone jack.
The camera on the current gen has its own expanded volume area of the case, so I don’t buy that they couldn’t just use the same hump they use on literally all of their phones. Sure Face ID is new, but I’ve seen the size of that module, and it is only slightly larger than the selfie camera from back then that it replaced.
They used to be able to. I don't think they can anymore. The iPhone 6 was 3 years after Jobs died. Apple's corporate/engineering culture has had 12 additional years to rot since then. If the Scott Forstall situation, Chris Lattner situation, etc, tells you anything, it's that Apple cannot make basic, common-sense tradeoffs anymore. All they can do is copy whatever the wider industry is doing.
All of the excuses people are coming up with in these comments are just that: excuses. Look at the sibling comment by musictubes, for example. Citing these ethereal "critics" and "most people" when in reality Walt Mossberg was the only critic whose opinion mattered.
Occam's Razor: The Innovator's Dilemma. It's a rotting, bloated megacorp with too much to lose, that doesn't take risks, and can't change direction. The direction it's in is "bigger phones", for whatever reason. So we're gonna keep getting bigger phones. It's that simple.
Same, I look longingly at the Samsung Flip and I'd buy one in a heartbeat if only it had the camera system from the Ultra. I'll even pay the Ultra price+extra for the foldable function.
But right now it's in a space where you're paying extra for the fact that it's a foldable, but it feels....budget in its specs? Like...how does that work?
As my eyesight is getting worse I do end up appreciating bigger phones. Even though I miss how smaller phones felt in my hand, it's just hard to see small text on it and that's even though I don't use my phone all that much since I have a kindle for reading and a computer for everything else.
I'm honestly curious about the "market keeps rejecting it" part. Yes, they sold far fewer units than the other models....but did they really not make money? I have made variations on this comment many many times. I completely buy that the opinions about phone form factor and features expressed on HN/reddit/online, and my own idiosyncratic preferences probably even more so, represent somewhat of a niche, and that your median phone consumer isn't interested in what we/I want. But the phone market seems like it's so large that it should be able to support a lot of niches! A tenth of a percent of the total market (~1,300 million in 2023 according to [0], 0.1% of which would be 1.3 million phones) should be totally viable as a business! I get that, maybe for Apple there is opportunity cost. Having more product lines adds overhead, and if the profit margin on those extra product lines isn't enough higher than the main lines to justify that overhead, they kill it. But why doesn't some smaller company (so yes, this mostly applies to Android) try to steal that fractional market share? I simply don't understand why it doesn't work to the point that now, when the market is so much larger than it was in the past, we have so much less hardware diversity.
Why does the Vision Pro exist then? What is that if not a niche? What about the iPad Mini or for that matter the Mac Mini, which if not for the recent AI craze would have been cut in the next few years for sure.
Apple can absolutely do niche products. Just not this one I guess.
Yeah and the production numbers from the start seemed to indicate that Apple knew it wouldn't be extremely popular.
FWIW, I bought one knowing this, and have zero regrets. Amazing hardware, it's the best personal display on the market. I use it for the majority of my movie watching.
>>The Mac Mini is an entry level product I see quite lot of people pick up. How is it niche?
It's a stationary computer that requires a standalone monitor, keyboard and mouse/touchpad. People just buy a laptop instead, a dedicated "computer" space at home is increasingly a thing of the past. And especially now if you can get the Neo for very similar money I have no idea why you'd buy the mini if your entire computer use is Facebook and maybe some word editing from time to time.
The Vision Pro (and the folding iPhone Duo) involve developing a lot of underlying technologies that will be useful in currently popular or potential future product lines, even if the market they serve themselves is niche.
I'm sure they made money. But that's not the right question to ask, in my opinion. The right question is did they make as much or more than their internal rate of return (IRR)? Perhaps the smaller iPhones (I had one) do not so they cut the product line. Or maybe they over-purchased some components and figured they could make a phone or two out of them.
Like many other HNers, I don't quite understand the appeal of not having their own computer, or even a VPS setup they can remote info for more structured work. But then I remember the famous Dropbox comment where one user had qualms, and perhaps looking outside our bubble can be worth it.
My use case is that I have terminals on various servers that I'd like to access when I'm travelling, and I'm often just doing short trips without my laptop. It's often inconvenient to schlep a bag with me just so I can use it on the train, so it's nice to be able to bring a phone that has enough screen for the terminal to not be tiny.
Apparently a lot of people don't even own a proper computer nowadays, be it a PC or a laptop, it's all just phones/tablets. In fact I know a university professor teaching CS and he told me that obviously not everyone, but a growing population of students starts the CS course without knowing how to use a mouse. They all have laptops, they know how to use a keyboard and a touchpad, but unless they are gamers they probably have never used a mouse.
If you went back in time to 2006 and showed a cellular Apple Watch and an iPhone (with no apps for either) side by side I think a lot of people would assume the former would be the ubiquitous consumer product and the latter would be a niche product for wealthy executives.
The cellular Apple Watch would be a great cell phone if all you want is to use your phone as a phone + iPod. But it’s hamstrung by its software and being forced to be anchored to an iPhone to be activated just makes it unsuitable as a primary device. We’d probably all be healthier as a society if we didn’t have the black rectangle of doom in our pockets all the time.
I’d love a cellular Apple Watch that’s elongated enough to have a headphone jack (lol) and all day battery life. It’d be fine even if it was meant to stay in my pocket instead of on the wrist.
I really don't think this is just for people who don't have personal computers. I do think this is for people who don't want to carry additional separate devices with them in order to access the bigger-screen experiences. There are a couple gimmicks based on the fold as well.
I for one would love to have my phone turn into a tablet while I'm charging my car. Saves me from having to bring the iPad separately, which can't fit in my pocket. Would eliminate a step from that routine.
Also would love to always have that capability on me in the case where I couldn't have foreseen a need for the bigger screen. Being randomly out with friends and able to spontaneously just show them something in a way they can actually see would be nice.
And why does it need to be wider when folded for that? The competition showed that a narrow folding phone works quite well if you want to have access to a bigger screen without a different device
Apple explained during the event why the square aspect ratio was not for them, but basically it doesn't conform to content well. You supposedly get less black bars with this approach.
And the sky is blue. Your comment does not dispute the fact that larger watch faces is a style people like. Because you don't does not invalidate others do
This was a style thing that tended to ebb and flow. The trend in the 2000s was to have really big watch faces but by the 2010s people were calling them “dinner plates” and it started to be viewed as kind of tacky and ostentatious. Smart watches ended up recalibrating people’s expectations but, if they hadn’t shaken things up, I think we’d be leaning towards smaller faces by now.
In fact, fashionable youths these days are wearing those vintage Casios which come in at 35mm to 39mm.
To go on a different tangent, I want a round Apple Watch. I know it's not the most efficient use of space, but dangit I don't want the weird little (but constantly-growing) square! If I have to have something on my wrist all day, I want it to look nice and not like a brick.
Try Garmin if you want a round smart watch. They get good reviews and the sporty types who own them swear by them.
Can’t imagine Apple ever doing this, though, because a round display is pretty terrible for displaying the sort of content and UI elements that iPhone/Apple Watch users are used to. Much of the UI and all existing apps would need to be completely redesigned.
I have a Garmin for the express reason of battery life. I get 2-3 weeks per charge and it's "oh I should charge it eventually" "about to start a jog - oh it's a 6%, ok charge it tomorrow..."
Yeah I fully admit I'm yelling at clouds here. I have looked at Garmin and they're likely to be be what I eventually settle on. I have my own issues with their design philosophy, or more particularly, the design philosophy of their operating systems and back-end UX, but they're a far sight better aesthetically to these eyes. The watches by "nothing" are also pleasing to the eye but don't seem to be really be good at doing what i want (responsive heart rate monitoring, sport features).
Even better idea: Get a Casio FX-91 [1]. You'll get used to its shape pretty quick - like the 100 Million other humans who already have. Good chance it will still be produced 30 years from now, too, so if you lose it or break it you can get a new one. Costs a tenth of an Apple watch.
One day the stockpiles of iPhone 13 minis will deplete to the point where making new products in that form factor is economically viable.
Until then, off to eBay we go. There are more than enough sitting around completely unused. You aren't missing out on much with 5 iPhone generations these days.
Yep I'm keeping my 12 mini until it fails. It's absolutely the biggest phone I would ever want. I'd prefer one a bit smaller, actually, as I still cannot reach all points on the screen one-handed, at least not without changing my grip which risks dropping it.
Indeed! I bought a 13 mini off ebay about 18 months ago I think. Great phone but battery is poor... can't last a full day even as I don't use video. Sigh, great size.
I really deeply wish they had attempted a profile that was 64mm wide folded and double unfolded. Height is less important.
The whole advantage of having any screen at all when folded is something quick to access and *one handable*. Just looking at the Duo, it appears too wide for that by a large amount.
If I’m forced to two hand the thing I’ll just get a phablet: no folding mechanism, no unfolding step before using properly, no gigantic price hike (guessing).
Are you left handed? The rearranging of the UI to provide navigation on the right side of the 5.4” screen seems like it was made for this exact purpose.
I gather that for many people, their smartphone is their only computing device. Doesn't have much appeal for me, but if that was the case, I could see that nudging people towards bigger devices, even if it makes them less practical as phones you carry around / try to grasp with one hand.
>A lot of people who are "mobile-only" prefer larger phones.
And a lot of people who are not prefer smaller ones.
>I've never been able to use a smart phone with one hand, even an original iphone. So this is probably a really niche complaint that you and Shaq have.
Not in the slightest. I've got a Galaxy A52, a large-ish phone for its time, and I can use it quite easily with one hand. I can't readily think of the small-hands equivalent of Shaq to compose a snarky "it's you" retort, and I'm sure it's not just you, but plenty people around you, with relatively normal hands, can use their phone with one hand.
To do what? I usually hold it with my left and, and one-finger (right-hand index finger) to type / scroll / select / etc. I guess I never "got" the phone model properly or something. My daughters type way faster on their phones, I can't do thumb typing (how do you hit those letters?!?), plus my thumbs get too sore too fast (decades on the edge of carpal tunnel) and/or cramp up.
I was timed at 140+ wpm in high school and online tests / etc have hit close to 200 wpm on a Qwerty. So I CAN touch-type and do it well - and keyboard + mouse is my goto jam. My favorite phone (alas, discontinued way too soon) was the Photon Q (work gave us phones way back) with slide-out physical keyboard.
I "use" an S21, but even just entering my 4-digit pin is awkward with my left thumb - is there some other way to hold it? I can't even imagine trying it with my right.. My thumbs just cramp up..
Mobile-only is a larger segment and growing. "ipad kids" are at the age where they are "iphone teens". And it's also the segment of people who care most about phones.
Apple made smaller phones, but they don't sell. They don't sell when they are nice phones, but smaller, and they don't sell when they are cheap phones and smaller.
Tech people are like car people in that they don't really appreciate that their preferences are niche. Wanting a smaller phone is akin to wanting a smaller car
> with relatively normal hands, can use their phone with one hand.
According to the US Army, the average length of the male thumb: 2.75 in; for women it's 2.49. So we can assume the actual population averages are probably a bit lower.
That means the average iphone is larger than the average male thumb, by a reasonable amount, and it has been for quite a number of generations.
Personally, my thumb is as wide as my iphone, but practically, the way I have to hold it one-handed means that I can only reach half of the screen (technically, the bottom quadrant, so 25% of the overall screen area). I'd need another 1" or so to reach the entire width of the screen with a single hand, and idk 2"+ to navigate the entire screen one handed.
The disconnect probably comes from what it means to "use" a phone one-handed. I mean to be able to hold it in one hand and touch anywhere on the screen and perform any action. Which limits phone size to around 2.25"x4.50", or so to account for a average hand to hit 95% of surface area while holding it. You might mean, just be able to type, or just be able to scroll, which does change things.
> Apple made smaller phones, but they don't sell. They don't sell when they are nice phones, but smaller, and they don't sell when they are cheap phones and smaller.
They funny thing is that the sales numbers were only terrible compared to other iPhones. IIRC it was something like 3% of the iPhone market at the time of discontinuation. Not a big seller for Apple, certainly, but there were times when the Mini made the top ten list for smartphones in general.
> So this is probably a really niche complaint that you and Shaq have
I developed a hypothesis when the phablets first started showing up and still feel it holds. There are two main clusters of users:
1) People who use their phone "on the go", specifically walking around and that sort of thing. Like I'm walking down the sidewalk and pull it out to check a message or see directions.
2) People who use their phone while stationary. Sitting on the couch, on the subway, on an airplane, that sort of thing.
People in group 1 generally lean towards smaller phones as the single handed usage comes in handy. You're not trying to surf the web doing this, so you don't need full usage, but you need to be able to hold it in your hand.
The people who are more stationary users don't have this restriction and they're more likely to want the full functionality when they're using it.
I'm not Shaq and I also have this complaint. Moved recently from an iPhone 13 mini which I could easily use with one hand to a iPhone 17 Pro which I can not use with one hand.
I use my iPhone SE with one hand all the time, and have small-ish hands. Being able to use a phone with one hand is a fairly basic accessibility feature, not a niche ask
Can confirm that I am not Shaq, but the 4S was the last phone I could use entirely one-handed (i.e. my thumb had full reach of the screen whilst my pinkie finger sat under the bottom of the phone, cradling it), and the 13 mini was the last functional size where I could reach at least part of the top of the screen with my thumb.
People act like bigger screens and no headphone jack is some conspiracy. It’s a competitive market. Small phones exist. Headphone jacks exist. They’re obscure because they don’t sell well, because that’s not what most people want.
It’s frustrating when you have an uncommon desire for a mass market product, I get it. But the answer to “why do they” is pretty obvious if you can understand that you’re not representative.
Either: 1) Apple thinks it won't be so niche in the future. 2) It's niche but profitable because those buyers who exist will pay a lot. 3) Apple made a foldable iPhone because they don't know what they're doing or they hate money or something.
Similarly, Apple doesn't make a small phone because either: 1) It's too niche to be profitable. 2) It could be profitable but those resources are better spent on more popular products. 3) They don't know what they're doing or they hate money or something.
And other smartphone companies make foldable phones and not small phones because: 1) Foldables are profitable and small phones aren't. 2) That's not yet true but it's where the market is heading. 3) They all don't know what they're doing or hate money or something.
I think they are exploring the market. But Apple has done very clear mistakes in the past, such as the Vision Pro and Apple Intelligence. It’s not like a very large corporation not understanding what their market wants is a new phenomenon.
In any case, with Apple the commentary is always the same, if they release a small phone next year people will be saying „Apple knows exactly what they are doing, that’s exactly what the market wants“, if they don’t it’s also a sign they know exactly what they are doing. Anyone expressing their dissatisfaction with the direction of a product line „is in a bubble and doesn’t know what others want so should be ignored“. That has been the case since decades now.
Companies make mistakes. But an entire market with healthy competition doesn’t make mistakes for years on end. If there was some big untapped demand for small phones, somebody would have come along and tapped it by now.
I was an iPhone 13 mini user for the last few years. I would buy a refurbished one off Amazon whenever my current one broke. I really prefer the smaller screen size.
Recently, I broke my phone again and my wife happened to have a larger iPhone laying around unused (through some accident of e-commerce). I felt weird buying a new phone when we had a perfectly good one laying around, so I decided to give it a shot.
I don't watch any video on my phone and most of my screentime is Kindle and Safari. My screentime is only like 2-3hrs per day. And yet, I still found myself chronically running out of batteries on the 13 mini. I actually now would prefer to keep my new annoyingly large 16e just to not have the battery anxiety.
(A hidden assumption in the above is that larger screens make more room for battery.)
As an average height woman with average hands, I want
1) an Apple + Levi's collaboration to put iPad Mini sized pockets in women's jeans
2) a phone slightly smaller than the SE so I can reach the furthest corner with my thumb
I'd also add that the mobile gaming market on iPhone is the largest individual gaming competitor, at least by the dollars, and bigger screen probably enhances play experiences that can be had on mobile.
The phone that grabs most attention always wins. Consumers don't do multi-year procurement processes unlike government agencies selecting a device - they literally gravitate towards bright light and pick up the device on the demo stand. So there's always going to be an arms race of more bigger and ever more glittery phones. That is, until a massive disruption like a flip-phone-to-smartphone transition comes and all those obnoxious peacocks gets instantly wiped out and doves come filling in the void.
I haven’t seen anyone mention this yet, but… other than the Duo, the iPhones have been the same size since the iPhone X? Obviously not counting the Max/Plus/Mini lines, but the standard ones have had 6”-ish screens for almost a decade now (and the screen itself has increased in size, but that’s because they decreased the bezels), so they’ve hardly made a new phone that is larger than the one before since then.
Personally, I quite like the size of the standard iPhones, fits in my pocket, can use it one handed well enough, and the display is big enough to comfortably view content. I have quite small hands though and I can see how someone bigger than me would like the size of the Pro Max line.
Also this size clearly works, because basically all phones now are this exact same size give or take a few mm.
Nobody bought the hp veer. Small phones stopped being valuable when phones got good enough to be the only screen a layman would see in a single day. It's now a game of 'movie theater in your pocket.' For better or for worse.
Even Samsung offers their 'smaller than a normal phone unfolds to a normal phone' as secondary to the flagship fold. The Flip, to me, is almost marketed as a kid's phone for your teenager.
It’s crazy that the reason we can’t have a comfortable-to-hold one is that a product that only sells 5 or 10 million units a year isn’t worth their time.
I think the iPhone 3G was peak iPhone design. It felt good to hold and was small. Later small models hand sharper edges and didn’t feel as good in the hand.
The Duo’s folded size has the same screen size as the iPhone mini, so they did go on the smaller size, rather than trying to unfold a Pro Max. It remains to be seen how the aspect ratio impacts one-handed use.
The iPhone X also had smooth rounded edges and was small by modern standards (bigger than the 3GS, though). Still one of my favourite iPhones.
Most people now days put their phones in protective cases, so the sharp edges don’t matter too much. And if anything, it makes the cases easier to design and smaller/thinner.
The iPhone X was better than the 6-8, I think the screen filling the whole thing helped it out, but it was still too large for my liking. I moved to the mini when it came out to get a smaller phone.
I found it interesting that the intro of the Duo talked about how it had 90% of the screen of the iPhone 18, as a way to talk up how big it is. They didn’t do this for the iPhone mini, and I think it’s why it failed. The iPhone mini screen was only .1” smaller than the 8 Plus, in a form factor that was smaller than the normal 8. I think selling it like that, as the base level iPhone (without the mini label) would have made it a success… but I’m still bitter they killed it off.
I went out of my way to make sure I found a "new" iPhone 13 mini for my corporate BYOD (needed for on-call, and I hate the cert they push so there's no way I'd use my personal phone...)
The only corporate phones they offered were HUGE, being required to carry 2 phones is enough of an annoyance already, but two full-sized phones is a nightmare!
For me it's fitting the damn thing in my pocket. And unfortunately, width is the main limiter there, making this far WORSE than any other, despite the smaller screen. I can't imagine what this thing would do to your jeans. Apple needs to sell tiny man satchels with this thing.
I like bigger phones. Being over 50, my eyesight is crap and I need a bigger screen. Yeah, I miss one handed operation, but I already accepted that loss years ago. This will be the year I finally switch to apple though(18 pro max, most likely). Bye bye Pixel.
my first iPhone was the original SE (which was essentially iPhone 4 expanded to 16:9 screen) and I'd say it was the perfect size of a phone, the reason why I opted for a larger screen even though my hands are kinda small for a man is that website and application design has completely shifted towards those large screens and small screens are unusable (and for me this has been true since 2019 when I switched to a larger screen)
it is kinda annoying, but apparently the consensus of modern design includes both lots of useless horizontal margins (lots of them just for the sake of visible rounded corners) and lots of vertical space taken by ads (iPhone 17 is actually 19.5:9, not 16:9, so ads take less vertical space on such a screen)...
and after a few months of using a larger screen I learned how to use it with one hand so it is possible - I rest my phone on 4 fingers and use thumb to interact, I only use two hands when typing (well two thumbs, but whatever)... but I still agree that the bigger the phone the more I'm worried it will fall down from my hand when operating it with one hand... the Max versions of iPhone do seem too large for me...
For the Duo to make sense at all, it basically has to fold out into a screen which is big enough that (quite often, at least) you don't feel obliged to bring along a second, larger device anyway, or to wait until you get home or back to the office to "do real computer". That means that hitting a large-enough unfolded size and a suitable unfolded aspect ratio had to be Priority 1.
That's not really why foldables make sense. It's not for productivity, primarily, it's for entertainment. Videos and ebooks (and other long form text content) look better and feel better on a foldable (for the same reason we have e-readers despite having Kindle apps). Multitasking I'll admit is more useful on mobile now in the AI era than in the past. But really, a foldable isn't meant to compete with a Mac Air or similar. I don't even think it's really competition for iPads. It is nice to have the optionality and flexibility at all times and nothing is more on your person than your primary phone.
> Why do they insist on every new phone being bigger than the phones before them?
Others wrote complicated or bs jokes, here is my SIMPLE tip:
It has to change otherwise people would not buy new. Size can not change randomly so it has 2 ways: decreasing and later it becomes an iwatch, and tablet becomes a phone: this is stupid because harder to increase price.
So increase it is. If you do not like it, use a watch+earpiece as a phone.
While I agree on screen size, Apple does give a good amount of thought into application side of things - screen-layout fall into either the iPad like layout or single-column one of a regular phone. This is a bit easier for App developers. Also force-upgrade of OS is also better for those targeting iOS compared to the Android world.
Why do people keep asking the same question over and over? It's because of market demand.
I have an S24 ultra and I had an even bigger Sony xperia a while back. I have an old iPhone SE ( the one in the form factor of the iPhone 4) and find it absolutely unusable. Typing is a joke.
One of the reasons I plan on purchasing the iPhone Duo is actually because it has a smaller outer screen size than any of the other iPhones. Agreed that it is wider, but I think it can still be used one handed for most people
I also have huge hands, but a few years ago started to develop a persistent thumb sprain due “reaching” with it across my phone. This is problem that would not have happened if my phone was the size they used to be.
I've been hoping that the folded size would be roughly that of a mini, and perhaps I could be wasteful and get the foldable phone and always keep it folded. But this doesn't sound promising.
I don't understand this eSIM only trend. eSIM sucks for switching your service between devices or for travelling to countries where eSIM isn't a thing yet.
My z fold 8 is actually smaller than my old Xperia Z 3 Compact despite technically having a bigger screen. I would buy a device this size that doesnt unfold, even.
It's probably a good idea to reduce phone computing to a minimum. Also the larger phone will likely damage your vision to need glasses eventually but there are other ergonomic factors at play. Do you want to hold your phone with two hands? Doesn't it get tiring for wrists to hold the phone in the position? I personally reduced phone usage but am still using a SE2022 which is a small phone. For reading I got a e ink reader and Im very happy with that.
The problem is people don't buy small phones. ASUS' Zenfone 9 and 10 were, in my opinion, basically perfect; small, someting I can actually hold in my non-athletic hands, but they didn't sell well at all, and ASUS abandoned the small phone market entirely with the Zenfone 11 Ultra.
>Why do they insist on every new phone being bigger than the phones before them?
Wait until you get old enough to have to put readers on to use your devices like most older people do. And while I am yelling at the kids on my lawn, let me add every UI/UX person at apple - the idiotic and unnecessary choices they make for the sake of "cool design" infuriate me on a daily basis.
Presumably they are a trillion dollar company because they know the precise size of phones that will sell to the most people. Hacker News is full of the 100 people (me included!) that love small phones but the general public LOVES their gigantic horrible loud phones :)
We are talking about how wide the phone is when folded. The company doesn’t know yet what exactly the market wants here, given it’s a new form factor for the apple audience
Agree. I miss the mini. My girlfriend still has hers and is reluctant to upgrade for the inflation in size that happens every generation. Pretty soon we'll all look stupid with tablet-sized phones hanging from our necks by a lanyard.
> But I have big hands, and I can't use my iphone 17 now without two hands.
Are you a woman by any chance? I am currently typing this one handed on an iPhone 17 pro (not the pro max) and don’t consider my hands to be particularly large, for a man, but my wife has to two hand her android which is roughly the same size
Keep in mind the dimensions of the iPhone 1 were based on the most comfortable shape and size they could come up with. They weren’t targeting women specifically.
They released a number of small iphones over the years, and those always failed to reach meaningful sales numbers. Stated vs revealed preference I guess? People keep picking the larger model, so the models keep getting larger
I don't follow iphone products, but if it's anything like android this is because they tend to be the lower end models and are missing the features that people really want (mainly a better camera/lens setup). The top of the line models are ALWAYS the bigger phones and if your going for something budget, then you're better off with the Chinese brands for value.
High quality camera lenses take space. That alone starts to dictate the size of the phone. Add in the desire for all day battery life, and we start talking more volume. And the fastest chips take more power, so again more battery. The best way to justify the increased size is with a bigger screen and now you’re stuck with a larger phone.
Or a smaller phone that is more expensive to produce. In which case, it won’t sell well regardless.
It’s easy to see how we got to this point of large phones, but it is not very clear how someone like Apple can make a significantly smaller phone and keep customers happy.
As you mentioned, other vendors probably will have better luck.
Faster chips absolutely don't have to take more power. Apple's fastest chips tend to be some of their most power-efficient. It's sustained workload that takes power, and the faster chips just have a higher performance budget.
If small high-end models would sell, they’d be sold. It’s possible for a company to have a blind spot for a market segment, but not for an entire competitive market over many years.
I think it's because the people who want the smaller phone don't just want the smaller phone to the exclusion of everything else.
Some want a flagship model, some want a mid range, some entry level... all in small form factors and they won't compromise in order to settle for the one small model that's available.
I was listening to the Accidental Tech Podcast last week and Marco said that the iPhone Air has lower penetration, after 1 year, than EACH of the 12 mini and 13 mini _currently_ have. Among a tech audience.
We just had to replace a family 13 mini and it sucks to have to go with a huge modern phone. Personally, I'd also prefer a mini if it had the best cameras.
Be serious. 88% of buyers chose something they don’t want? Apple is saying, “actually we hate money, so we’re not going to make a model that people want to buy”?
Why is it so hard for people to accept that maybe their preference isn’t the common one?
Your command is not engaging in good faith. You seem to believe somehow if Apple produced a higher end, smaller size phone it would magically outsell the higher end larger phone, with no evidence to suggest that.
The market, in both Android and iOS land has dictated larger phones are more favored. This is abundantly clear with the advent of "foldable" phone sector. On paper foldable phones make no sense, they are less resistant, more expensive and use a plastic screen, yet the market is growing year on year.
I totally respect someone's opinion on a small or large phone, but even the largest iPhone is fairly easy to hold and operate using one hand. I don't have big hands.
Literally all available evidence directly contradicts you. There is not a single iPhone generation in which larger iPhones outsold smaller iPhones of comparable capabilities.
As was clearly, painstaking explained to you already, using easy-to-understand language, the 4.7" iPhones outsold the 5.5" iPhones. And today 6.1" iPhones outsell the 6.7" iPhones. Every single time, without fail, smaller iPhones have outsold and continue to outsell larger iPhones of similar capability. This is an objective and indisputable fact.
I don’t find “nobody wants large phones” while showing that the vast majority of buyers are willingly choosing large phones to be in particularly good faith to start with.
> the vast majority of buyers are willingly choosing large phones
This is patently false. It is widely known to be patently false. I cannot understand why you would confidently assert something commonly known to be patently false.
This discussion isn't about people preferring the Pro to the Pro Max. That would be a pretty uninteresting discussion: they make both, buy the one you want. End of story. People are complaining because they want something that's not on offer anymore: something around the size of an iPhone 4 or SE. And, we are told, lots of people want it, but for some reason all of the smartphone manufacturers have banded together to refuse to make such a thing, because... well, the reason is never explained. But it's definitely a conspiracy, and not because people don't actually buy them in sufficient quantity.
"iPhone 16 still leads the smartphone pack" has nothing to do with that. That's a phone that is, according to the complainers, still too big. This is a 6.1" screen. That's vast compared to the 3.5" screen of an iPhone 4, and substantially larger than the 5.4" display of an iPhone 13 mini that many commenters here express a longing for.
If you're arguing that people prefer the smaller of Apple's two large phones, you're in the wrong place. If you're arguing that people prefer phones smaller than what Apple currently makes, you're using the wrong argument. Either way, you're way off track here, and your attitude towards it is highly uncalled for.
I know the general consensus is that the mini was cancelled for (relatively) low sales, but I wonder if that was due in part to the release of the SE? I got the SE 2 not because it was cheaper, but because it was smaller. At the time I was on a 2-3 year upgrade cycle, so when the 12 mini was released a couple of months later, I thought "cool, I'll upgrade to the 14 mini when it's released." Of course the mini was canceled after the 13, so I snatched up the 13 and will hold on to it until it crumbles in my hand.
Right, because it scratches some nostalgia thing that people have obtained osmotically. Nobody actually wants a replaceable battery that makes their phone vastly thicker and harder to waterproof, nobody wants phones that randomly catch fire because their OOPLMXC brand battery from amazon wasn’t up to snuff, nobody wants to be carrying a pocket full of extra batteries to swap all day. Devices with field replaceable batteries just sucked a lot more than people don’t remember. As much as people clamor online about how they want these things, given the option they will shy away from it because it doesn’t match the fantasy that’s been created about “what has been taken from us”.
I wish I could choose even thicker to get the Pro Max's battery life but with the Pro's ability to be held comfortably. You practically need two hands to take a screenshot with the Pro Max
Weather 2 doesn't seem to have been an ensemble model. Weather 3 is, so theoretically it can get more accurate outcomes by taking the probabilistic analysis of several models concurrently to determine the most likely weather conditions.
I'm building a tool right now that uses an ensemble to determine wind gust likelihood, which is useful for safety critical work on construction sites and the like.
WeatherNext 2 was based on the FGN architecture described in [1]. It was explicitly designed and trained to produce ensemble forecasts (it was trained in such a way that the output ensemble optimized a CRPS metrics). In fact, it was a set of 4 different model weights, each of which was seeded with a random noise vector to produce an array of 16 forecasts for a total of 64 ensemble members. WeatherNext 3 trimmed that down from 4 to 2 separate model weights to use.
I'm not a biologist or in a medical field at all, but surely the fact that the heart rate goes up if you exercise means there is some form of feedback loop (which to me sounds like a rudimentary form of processing).
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