Story 2016-04-07 19R2T Big phones work for everyone, except you

Big phones work for everyone, except you

by
in mobile on (#19R2T)
When the 4.7-inch iPhone 6 came out in 2014, I refused to believe smaller size phones were truly dead. I didn't want to believe they'd done it, but the signs were clear. Other iPhone owners told me there would be an adjustment period. I would have an easier time using and holding onto a live fish, the way it flops around in my hand. The time I spend using my phone hasn't changed, but now my hands go numb and wrist and fingers ache holding it.

In bounding after large screens, phone makers seemed to ignore the usability issues that accompany them. Small studies have shown before that 4.3 inches is about as big as a phone can get before people start struggling to use it. The time to operate the phone slows down significantly because one-hand use is awkward-and that's for average men's hands. Assuming a normal distribution, a phone bigger than 4.3 inches is too big. People were especially annoyed about their inability to use the phone safely with one hand. Women's clothes also haven't caught up to the big-phone trend. It's weird, isn't it, how bad of a design choice this seems to be, from a company whose driving force is good design?

That brings us to the economic explanation, and my own personal conspiracy theory: There are powerful interests that want us to drop our phones so they can fix them and sell us new ones. If you took the earlier versions of the iPhone in, it wasn't uncommon to get a free replacement phone for one with a cracked screen. Fast forward a few years, and Apple now charges $99 to replace the screen on an iPhone 6S, even if the owner bought the AppleCare warranty.

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/a-big-phone-works-for-everyone-but-you
Reply 8 comments

Screen replacement (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2016-04-08 07:38 (#19S56)

Isn't the cost for replacing the screen because too many people break their screen?
Offering free replacement for everyone doesn't sound like a viable business model.

iPhone SE (Score: 1)

by bryan@pipedot.org on 2016-04-08 16:12 (#19TRX)

The new iPhone SE, with the old 4 inch form factor, makes my iPhone 5 look new again. :)

Re: iPhone SE (Score: -1, Flamebait)

by Anonymous Coward on 2016-04-22 13:34 (#1BDYZ)

Please. Try an Android. There are reasons.

Re: iPhone SE (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2016-04-22 20:44 (#1BFC4)

Reasons which are classified, or what? Why won't you say?

Dana Scully (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2016-04-15 23:15 (#1AP22)

I thought Scully's phone was far too big for her tiny hands, in the recent miniseries. It almost looks comical.

Disagree (Score: 2, Insightful)

by axsdenied@pipedot.org on 2016-04-16 06:17 (#1APSF)

I disagree on multiple points.

1. Nowadays, the main use of phones is as multimedia devices (gaming, movies, facebook...). You need as large screen for this as possible. Everybody will agree that selfies look soooo much better on a larger screen :-)
The average user will cope with some usability issues to gain advantages of a larger screen. Simple as that. Note that I am talking about the average user here.

2. You are writing the article implying that Apple is the driver of the large screen devices. This is not true...
Before iPhone 6 there were several large-screen android devices (by Samsung for example) which were very successful. iPhone sales were going down and people wanted larger screens. Apple just followed the trend despite Steve Jobs' claim that "You can't get your hand around it, no one's going to buy that."

3. The only way manufacturers can force a larger screen on you is if they don't sell smaller screens. However, last time I was at a phone shop there were lots of models running Android with smaller screens... not sure about iPhones.

Re: Disagree (Score: 1)

by wilson@pipedot.org on 2016-04-18 14:25 (#1AXQG)

3. The only way manufacturers can force a larger screen on you is if they don't sell smaller screens. However, last time I was at a phone shop there were lots of models running Android with smaller screens... not sure about iPhones.
Yes, but in most cases the smaller screen models are crippled compared to their larger siblings (slower processor, less ram, less 'features', etc.). As far as I know Apple is the only company to recently release a smaller phone (se) with the same specs as the larger ones (6s, 6s+), but even then it was only released 6 months later.

Re: Disagree (Score: 2, Interesting)

by axsdenied@pipedot.org on 2016-04-19 13:32 (#1B1HN)

Keep in mind that it is easier to put more/faster/better parts into a larger phone than into a small one. And even the smaller/less powerful Android phones are usually still upgrades from previous generation (not talking about the extremely cheap rubbish phones).