I have giant meaty ape hands and I love love love my 6+. Rather than presupposing a shadowy, moustache twirling cabal of manufacturers, one wonders if instead Apple et al think that larger phones will sell better. It perhaps contradicts the experience of literally tens of Twitter users, but is overall more parsimonious an explanation.
I have smaller than average hands. I got my monster phone because of the display size and battery life. I put a BookBook cover around it which made it even more bulky - and I don’t care. Every time a hardware vendor talks about their new thin device I want to poke them in the eye until they make a fatter unit with more battery.
The silly camera bump on my iPhone 6S Plus really begs for a fatter case loaded with batteries.
While I am ranting: Laptops need to be fat enough for ethernet jacks and fill the internals with battery, please.
+1 for making the entire phone as thick as the camera lens. Actually, make it a little thicker so the lens is inset and protected rather than protruding! I use my phone for on call, so I nearly got the 6s+ for its increased battery capacity, but settled on the 6s as a comprise on price.
My personal dream phone would be an iPhone nano, with a beefed up Siri and a more-or-less absent screen. Maybe that would help me break my addiction to checking Facebook and, um, lobste.rs on the go…
In 2015, my upgrade time came. I’d thought about sticking with my 5S, but the OS was already starting to get laggy on the two-year old hardware.
Is this really true? Apple still sells the 5S and features it on their website, so I have a hard time believing they would ship something that is laggy.
But in bounding after large screens, phone makers seemed to ignore the usability issues that accompany them.
Apple at least acknowledged this with Reachability, the accessibility feature where you double-tap the home button and the whole screen shifts down an inch or so to help you reach the top of the screen without moving your hand.
Apple at least acknowledged this with Reachability, the accessibility feature where you double-tap the home button and the whole screen shifts down an inch or so to help you reach the top of the screen without moving your hand.
Interestingly, that was the first feature I disabled on my phone. I hate when things move around.
My Nexus 4 (which is apparently 4.7" diagonally) is certainly the largest I would ever want to use. Of course, part of the problem is that the slab is a terrible form factor for a phone irrespective of size. There’s significant tension between the use of our phones as phones, and the use of our phones as multipurpose pocket computers, and pocket computers are steadily winning out. Phones would, for the most part, like to be smaller, but pocket computers are more ambivalent because the bigger screen is useful.
I think this trend is likely independent of the desires of manufacturers, though. It comes from larger phones being seen as more “premium” (for whatever reason; in all honesty, cooling and battery volume are my best guess as to cause for this, with shadowy corporate ulterior motives coming well behind) and therefore the market trending larger in pursuit of that “premium-ness” irrespective of actual usability.
I returned my 6S at the end of the two-week return period and reverted to using my 5, despite its pronounced lagginess. In comparison to the 5, the 6S was uncomfortable in my hand, uncomfortable in my pocket, slippery, and (to my eye) ugly. I’m really hoping the 5se turns out to be “modern enough” in hardware that it’s worthwhile to upgrade.
I have giant meaty ape hands and I love love love my 6+. Rather than presupposing a shadowy, moustache twirling cabal of manufacturers, one wonders if instead Apple et al think that larger phones will sell better. It perhaps contradicts the experience of literally tens of Twitter users, but is overall more parsimonious an explanation.
These kind of posts is bait for anecdotes:
I have smaller than average hands. I got my monster phone because of the display size and battery life. I put a BookBook cover around it which made it even more bulky - and I don’t care. Every time a hardware vendor talks about their new thin device I want to poke them in the eye until they make a fatter unit with more battery.
The silly camera bump on my iPhone 6S Plus really begs for a fatter case loaded with batteries.
While I am ranting: Laptops need to be fat enough for ethernet jacks and fill the internals with battery, please.
+1 for making the entire phone as thick as the camera lens. Actually, make it a little thicker so the lens is inset and protected rather than protruding! I use my phone for on call, so I nearly got the 6s+ for its increased battery capacity, but settled on the 6s as a comprise on price.
My personal dream phone would be an iPhone nano, with a beefed up Siri and a more-or-less absent screen. Maybe that would help me break my addiction to checking Facebook and, um, lobste.rs on the go…
Is this really true? Apple still sells the 5S and features it on their website, so I have a hard time believing they would ship something that is laggy.
Apple at least acknowledged this with Reachability, the accessibility feature where you double-tap the home button and the whole screen shifts down an inch or so to help you reach the top of the screen without moving your hand.
I wonder if he means that modern software and apps were laggy on the old hardware?
Interestingly, that was the first feature I disabled on my phone. I hate when things move around.
As someone who watches video with subtitles on my commute, a big phone is wonderful. I was a Note devotee for years until “mainline” phones caught up.
I really like my 5.1" LG G2. I think it just depends on the size of your hands.
My Nexus 4 (which is apparently 4.7" diagonally) is certainly the largest I would ever want to use. Of course, part of the problem is that the slab is a terrible form factor for a phone irrespective of size. There’s significant tension between the use of our phones as phones, and the use of our phones as multipurpose pocket computers, and pocket computers are steadily winning out. Phones would, for the most part, like to be smaller, but pocket computers are more ambivalent because the bigger screen is useful.
I think this trend is likely independent of the desires of manufacturers, though. It comes from larger phones being seen as more “premium” (for whatever reason; in all honesty, cooling and battery volume are my best guess as to cause for this, with shadowy corporate ulterior motives coming well behind) and therefore the market trending larger in pursuit of that “premium-ness” irrespective of actual usability.
I returned my 6S at the end of the two-week return period and reverted to using my 5, despite its pronounced lagginess. In comparison to the 5, the 6S was uncomfortable in my hand, uncomfortable in my pocket, slippery, and (to my eye) ugly. I’m really hoping the 5se turns out to be “modern enough” in hardware that it’s worthwhile to upgrade.