People make fun of me but I'll never skip a chance to complain about how large these phones are. I hate it so much. I have a standard iPhone, not a max, and it causes real pain in my wrist if I use it too much. Was honestly thinking about downgrading to the last SE model even though it's several years out of date.
I want to +1 every comment in this thread. Phones are too big now. I don't understand Apple's weird obsessions, first trying to make all the phone so thin you cut your hand holding it, and then making it too big to fit comfortably in your pocket unless you are walking around in camo pants.
You know what I would like? When I tap on the search and type the first few letters of an app on my phone, and the app appears, and I click on that -- I would like the app to open. Only happens about half the time now. UI is getting worse with every release.
Many people used low iPhone mini sales to point at the idea that small phones aren't popular anymore.
They might be right, but the "Mini" was more like a return to the size of the 6 & 8; not the same size as the 5 or prior SE. So for me it was still too large.
The "usable screen" is where my thumb can reach, not whatever idea people have in their heads about the total size of the phone or anything, truthfully.
Anyway; hit recognition of the keyboard is so far behind where it was in the iPhone 4/5 generation that I doubt modern iOS would even be functional; even if you excused the padding issues that would inevitably be an issue.
> Anyway; hit recognition of the keyboard is so far behind where it was in the iPhone 4/5 generation that I doubt modern iOS would even be functional; even if you excused the padding issues that would inevitably be an issue
Right?? It is worse than I remember right? I'm not crazy.
POS Apple just made me upgrade my iPhone Mini to 26 so that I could pair my new Apple Watch, because I just broke the old one.
I wasn't sure I wanted another Apple Watch, but it was the easiest thing to buy, and I don't have to figure out how to transfer all the data and set it up somewhere else.
But I definitely regret going the "easy" way; iOS 26 is truly awful, what the fuck.
I'm going to figure out what fitness/sport watch I really want to use next because I doubt I'll be sticking to iPhone with what they have on offer these days...
Luckily, hearing all the complains early adopters of 26 had, I disabled auto updates on my SE. Since you can't go back to previous iOS version, leaving it on is a bit risky in general.
I recently switched from an iPhone 16 to an Air and my experience is the opposite. I type way more accurate on the Air (even when both dictionaries are reset and have no screen protector what could make the touch less sensitive). I do not know why.
> The "usable screen" is where my thumb can reach, not whatever idea people have in their heads about the total size of the phone or anything, truthfully.
In the early days of the phablets I had an observation that has mostly held true all these years later. At the time I noticed you could accurately predict whether someone wanted the large or small form factor based on their usage patterns. Did they tend to use their device while sitting down? Or did they tend to use their device while on the move? This indicated whether or not they typically used 2 hands vs 1 hand.
It turned out the 2 handers dominated the market, unfortunately for people like you & I.
Apple follows the market. There just aren’t many people who want small phones, HN notwithstanding. If they sold like hotcakes they’d have a full lineup.
And I kind of get it. Philosophically I want a small phone. Realities of age and eyesight forbid.
The market is basically people who don’t read or watch videos on their phone, and who have excellent eyesight, and who don’t care about having the best cameras. 100% legit market segment, but that Venn intersection is too small to be worth it.
I don't agree with this. In my view, there are plenty of cases where the product changes are shoved down our throats.
I think the problem is that the product folks don't actually listen to the market. They read Jobs' biography and are convinced that they will tell their users what product they will like and that they will see the light later on.
The sad reality is: they are not Jobs (and even he was not faultless). So, we get Mac like Windows interfaces, we get mail clients losing features, we get AI in every single app you see, etc.
The iphone air isn’t popular either and yet here we are. They preferred releasing a huge thin phone than a tiny thin phone. Even if the % of clients is small, there are still millions of potential mini clients
I interpret the same facts differently: I see Apple realizing that the SE form factor doesn’t sell enough to be worth it, and trying something different with the Air. It sounds like the Air will likely go the way of the SE, with occasional updates but not every year.
Apple is very good at market research and understanding users… but not perfect. I think they genuinely believed the Air would sell a lot more than it did.
And “millions” is not necessarily a lot. Apple sells 250 million phones a year. A SKU that sells 3 million is a distraction with much lower ROI against R&D than a mainline phone. It takes just as much engineering to create and as much manufacturing to produce, so fixed costs are spread among many fewer units.
Am old. Am experiencing presbyopia. Am still very much tied to my mini on the default font size. When I can't read something I just pinch/zoom. Meanwhile it's easy to hold & use in one hand while walking down the street, and fits into normal sized pockets.
Until you hit 'Search' at the bottom right it shows you a preview result set - that can differ completely from the one you get then. Because two are not enough, they added a third with 'Siri suggestions' as top row. Which is not in the Search settings but in the ones for Siri. The iOS docs[1] misname it as 'Suggest App' when it is called 'Suggest Apps Before Searching' which only the iPadOS docs [2] get right. Did I mention they cut useful info from the iOSv26 version[3] and changed the URL?
Why do almost all phones have to be in that narrow band of 6.5 to 6.9 inches?
I wish there were more size choices on both ends of the spectrum.
While most people prefer more choice below 6", I would like some choice above 7", since I keep my phone in my belly pouch, and never use it one-handed. My current Huawei Mate20X is actually ok at 7.2" (but worse than the Mediapad X1 I had before which at 7" was actually wider) but is way behind on Android updates, and will soon stop running my banking app.
While I agree with the spirit of the thread and dearly love my mini, I think this reasoning doesn’t account for a substantial reduction in bezels: my iPhone 5S had more than a centimetre of black bars above and below its 4" display (altogether it was 5.4" in diagonal), I bet those phablets you mentioned had even bigger bezels and were closer to modern 8.5" phones.
Yes. It's the Apple's product first philosophy that Steve Jobs repeated again and again:
"A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them."
"Some people say, 'Give the customers what they want.' But that's not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they're going to want before they do."
"You can't just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they'll want something new."
"If I had asked customers what they wanted, they would have said 'a faster horse."
Is that the direction of causality or it's the other way around? Maybe people buy larger screens because they want to watch Netflix or TikTok on their phone more comfortably than on smaller screens. I do love small and light phones (an A40 right now) but I watch movies on a tablet. If I were often on the move or sharing home with many people, maybe I would use a larger phone.
I dived into a niche world of small phones recently while looking for replacement to malfunctioning Pixel 4a (which is apparently now considered compact phone). There's a few small manufacturers in China making some, with 4 inch or 5 inch screen, like Aiphor or Unihertz. And by "small" I mean "they use kickstarter to fund their R&D" small.
Other than that... Nobody's really bothering with compact phones anymore, in the US or in the rest of the world. Bummer.
> Nobody's really bothering with compact phones anymore, in the US or in the rest of the world. Bummer.
And the worst thing is that app developers do not bother with testing their apps on small phones. So even if someone would produce small phone, many apps would be broken on that UI. So there's no way back.
PS 4 inch is not a small phone. iPhone 4S had 3.5" display and it wasn't small, it was normal. Small is something like 2" screen I suppose. All modern phones including these "iPhone Minis" are egregiously huge.
I would not go as far as calling the iPhone Minis "egregiously huge", keep in mind that screen size is not a great measure for phone sizes across different generations. You could easily fit a 4+ inch display into the form factor of the 4S with modern technology, the bezels on those phones were huge. Unless my math is off, the housing of the 4S has a diagonal of just over 5 inches.
Yep. Aiphor's BlueFox NX1 with 4 inch screen is roughly the same size as original iPhone, but has a larger screen (iPhone had bigger bezels and the home button underneath). To me it feels a bit too small for things like typing/texting for example.
Unihertz Jelly Star has 3 inch screen, that's way too small for me.
We do, and it is a pain. It is incredibly easy to defeat any kind of design or in fact HID guidelines by cranking text size to the max on these smaller devices.
> Screen size is area (x^2) and battery size is volume (x^3). As battery life is a critical feature, a bigger screen supports (a nonlinear) better battery life.
This does not square with especially Apple's unending obsession to make phones as thin as possible. Which is doubly stupid when it makes them so fragile that the first thing you do after taking it out of the box is to wrap it in a thick rubber shell.
What obsession about making thin phones? iPhones are pretty thick and have been that way for years. The Air being an outlier, of course, but it's an intentionally thin phone in a lineup of thick and heavy ones.
I think it’s even better than that. Your cellular modem (on all the time) scales at O(1) with phone size. Same for on-board tasks that do not involve the screen. Powering your RAM (also on all the time) is similar, but larger (more expensive) phones may tend to have more RAM.
I have found the iPhone Air much easier to hold than the iPhone 13 Pro it replaced because of how light it is, even though the iPhone Air has a bigger screen.
The 17e weighs roughly the same at a smaller size, and the mini weighs significantly less. Not to mention the first SE, compared to which even the mini is heavy. Yes the Air is lightweight compared to the Pro, but that’s a low bar.
The other thing with the Air is that you can’t really use it one-handed, which is what most people who like small phones are after, besides pockability.
The first SE was the best form factor I've ever owned.
Incredibly small. Incredibly light. Pretty thin, even in a case. Had a headphone jack, Lightning and Touch ID.
The only thing I like about the new iPhone designs is the action button. Having an automation which automatically turns silent mode off or on based on whether I'm home or not is pretty cool. You can't do that with a physical switch.
I don’t think anyone should make fun of you for it but I’m in the opposite boat. I’m so glad that they make the pro max variants because most smartphones are so small that it hurts my fingers to bend them in the unnaturally inward way it requires to hold and interact with them.
It wouldn't be so bad if both options were available. By all means, have your giant pro max or whatever if you want, but that shouldn't be the only reasonable option.
I switched from a pixel 3 to a pixel 9 pro over a year ago, and I still miss the smaller form factor. the pixel 3 really was the perfect size for me and I am sad I can no longer get a smallish phone with a high end processor.
I switched from Pixel 4a to Unihertz Max (5G phone with 5 inch screen from a small Chinese startup). Love the form factor, I can keep the phone in my front pants pocket again, next to my keys or wallet. I'm somewhat reluctant to put anything sensitive on that phone (like my email), but happy overall.
I still have my Pixel3. I use it without a SIM for random stuff, and miss the small form factor. It is half the thickness of a Pixel 10, my current phone!
I’m still running an SE2020. I was expecting the latest update (with liquid) to be the death of it. But performance has actually improved significantly! Very unexpected.
I did downgrade back to my SE (from iPhone 16). Big selling point (aside from its size and rounded corners) is the physical button with fingerprint. I missed that even more than I disliked carrying a big phone around.
Funnily, the large display is the most important thing for me. I find my efficiency directly proportional to display size (which holds for laptops too).
If a 30 second task can be done in just 20 on a device with a larger display, that's absolutely worth it for me.
Also larger device tends to imply longer battery life too.
If the task can’t be done in a few taps I feel I’m better off opening a laptop anyways.
However the market agrees with you so I must be missing something. I used to think it was driven by media consumption on phones, and that I try to avoid, but this isn’t the first time I have heard people tout phone productivity gains from a slightly larger screen.
The expression 'fat fingers' concerns the phenomena where users (including myself) lack the eyesight and finer motor skills required to type accurately on a small keyboard, so a slightly larger display makes all the difference.
Perhaps you simply have those fine motor skills (and good eye sight) so a larger device isn't necessary to prevent typos and remain productive.
I was able to thumb type at high speed and accuracy on the 3.5 inch iPhones. On modern iPhones, I produce more typos than ever, because apparently Apple thinks it knows which key I meant to hit better than I do, even with all the autocorrect and suggestions turned off.
I've banned social and don't use my phone much anymore, so it's less of an issue than it used to be, but it's really frustrating when I'm clearly hitting the right key and it insists on pretending I hit an adjacent key.
It’s so strange. Like, the obviously correct thing is to have a small ML model that learns the user’s typing patterns, which of their own typos they fix, which auto- and suggested fixes they reject, what rare, made-up, and jargon words they use, what acronyms they use, etc.
Instead, after 20 years of iPhone usage, I am not allowed to type the names of projects I use all the time without fixing the autocorrect every time, or (as you say) carefully hitting the left side of the F key because dead center will produce a G.
My preferred conspiracy theory is that larger, brighter screens hold attention better, so everyone involved in the whole “user experience” (phone manufacturer, application developers, advertisers, etc.) prefers (whether they consciously realize it or not!) phones to have a larger screen. Smaller phones make fewer demands; who would want to make a device like that?
Yes I can just print out directions on Mapquest before I leave home, tell people to page me and I will call them back from the nearest pay phone, carry around my Walkman and my Polaroid camera with me.
Have you ever thought that with 80% of web traffic coming from mobile, you might be the outlier?
What next? The old Slashdot meme “I haven’t watched TV in 20 years. Do people still watch TV?”
I said you don't have to do every task, not do no tasks.
> Have you ever thought that with 80% of web traffic coming from mobile, you might be the outlier?
Wow, snark too. In recent years, I've taken a much more luddite stance against mobile device usage for my own mental wellbeing. Maybe other people should follow suit.
"You should do your taxes on the train". No, I don't think that I will. You're free to stress yourself out like that. Have fun.
So park_match is the arbiter of what tasks should and should not be done on your phone?
> You should do your taxes on the train". No, I don't think that I will. You're free to stress yourself out like that. Have fun.
I along with 90% of the taxpayers in the US take the standard deduction - meaning my taxes are stupid simple.
I logged into the TurboTax app, it offered to download my w2’s, I answered five questions, entered the date that I wanted IRS to take out the taxes we owed and we were done. I don’t have to even file state taxes for the state I live in?
How would that have been easier from a computer? In fact it would have been harder if I had to use a computer because the other option I had to submit my W2 was to take a picture of it.
I believe the GP was talking about trying to do “real work” on a phone, which is something many people try to do — but which many others find a repugnant idea, as they currently use the excuse of the impracticality of doing work on a phone as a lever to push back on letting work intrude on their personal life.
Have you thought that a lot people work remotely and don’t sit at their desk all day? I have deliverables and deadlines to meet like everyone else. But sometime I would rather go for a swim in the middle of the day in the heated pool when the sun is still out - benefit of living in Florida in the winter - and work late and be contactable (wearing my watch) or go to the gym during the day (downstairs). Business traveling is also a thing (much less than I use to), working with people in different time zones where I’m not going to refuse to answer a message from a coworker in India if they need me.
It’s a fair trade off. My company gives me a lot of leeway during the day and I am flexible about time zones.
Is this really a driving factor for people? If I anticipate tasks that I can't wait to get back to a good work environment to do, I'll bring my laptop and tether on my phone. It's a fantastically more productive setup than trying to ssh in via a phone keyboard or even write a long email. 1 inch extra on the phone screen diagonal won't move the needle there for me.
It's not feigned. I'm astonished to learn how hard people will work for the (seemingly to me) false convenience of doing things on their phone which would be (to me) much more straightforward to do on a more suitable device.
So I tend to assume that these stories are often the outliers, and that my personal experience is more common. I recognize the fallacy, and I suspect we're both wrong and we're both right. I just honestly don't know which one of us is more of which.
It probably devolves to a question of what kind of work we're talking about. The work that I do (or the way I do it), I do not believe could be done effectively on a phone or tablet, most of the time. I work with people whose work can be done there. And there are probably more of them that there are of me. But that does not mean I could become one of them.
(addressing your comment on another subthread): if music, camera, and web are a person's "work", then sure. But that does not resemble "work" for me in any way.
Again, you can look at the worldwide penetration of cell phones vs laptops, where most web traffic comes from, the amount of resources spent on mobile development vs desktop, the amount of revenue globally of phone sales vs PC sales, etc
I also don’t spend all day working and I definitely don’t take out my laptop when I’m not working
Worldwide is not relevant, and mobile-vs-desktop dev is not relevant.
Mobile-vs-web dev is probably a better metric. And developed, mature markets only. Anything else introduces the second- and third-generation tech gap inconsistencies.
> Anything else introduces the second- and third-generation tech gap inconsistencies
This is completely responsive to your thread if you think countries that use their phones more than the US is some type of signal they are 3rd world countries.
Only about 70% of Americans even own a laptop[1]. Factor in many of those being ancient with 15 minute battery life, plus user preferences… it’s hard to see how that could be the majority use case.
It‘s also generational. My 18yo sister in law is now applying for colleges and the word “application” immediately made her look for an app. That the whole process happened on a (not mobile friendly) website was rather surprising to her.
I am 51. The amount of Ludditism on HN shouldn’t come as a surprise to me. But it does. Most older 70+ year old people I know don’t own a computer at all and would never use one. But they do know how to get to things they need on their phones.
It's not feigned ignorance, it's disbelief that people are comfortable working in such an inefficient and frankly unpleasant way.
Can I file my taxes on my phone? Probably. But I could also set myself on fire, and I think that might be more fun. Why would I not want to use a tool that is 100x faster and 1000x easier to use for any task more complex than writing a sentence?
I'm a developer. I've heard of developers SSH'ing from their phone and developing that way. It's impressive, in the same way removing all your fingernails is impressive.
Really? I did file my taxes by phone. It took me all of five minutes.
90% of taxpayers claim the deduction - meaning their taxes are really simple.
I launched TurboTax, it offered to download my and my wife’s W2s, I clicked through a few buttons on a wizard and I was done. It had all of my information from the prior year so it already knew my employer.
As far as speed, have you compared the speed of the fastest iPhone to a low to midrange x86 PC? The latest A series chips in the iPhone are faster in single core performance than an M1 MacBook Air which is no slouch. But all that is besides the point. How fast of a computer do you think you need to file taxes? There was tax filing software for the 1Mhz Apple //e in 1986. You just had to print it out.
I entered maybe one number?
I live in a state without state taxes so I didn’t even have to file states.
FWIW, I also shopped for, did all of the paperwork before closing, for the house we had built in 2016 from my phone.
The things that require more than a few taps to do aren't things that need to be done at a moment's notice. Those things can wait until I'm at my laptop.
Just Thursday, I left home at 6AM got in an uber, waited at the airport got on a plane for an hour and half , waited at another airport, got on another plane for four hours, uber to the Airbnb and while I was out to dinner that night, my wife and I were planning a trip we were taking during the summer.
Are you suggesting that o just queue everything up until I set my laptop up?
Again you realize you’re the odd one right with most activity these days taking place on mobile?
Is there anything you need to do during that time? Or are you looking to fill that time with whatever to keep you occupied and enjoy whatever?
If it's the former, you lead a very different life from me. There are very few things in my life that show up and require immediate action (or action within 24-ish hours for that matter. Most things can wait). If it's the latter, I try to fill that time with reading.
Again, are you so much in the HN bubble you don’t realize that most people don’t wait to get home to their laptop (if they even have a laptop) to get things done in 2026?
Is it really that hard to look at stats and realize that you might not be the normal one?
I'm sure they do it that way. I'm also not convinced there's any actual need to do it that way.
You also didn't answer my question. Nothing in your travel scenario there, if I were in your shoes, would need me to use my phone for more than a few taps per actual task, while the rest of my phone use would go to mindless browsing or reading. What specific tasks are you imagining popping up here that I would then queue to my laptop?
I'm not trying to say my way is superior. On the contrary, I'm asking what use cases you have that you are unable to solve. If you have a genuine need to send emails from your phone at a moment's notice, then I can't argue with that; if you can't wait to respond to the emails you receive, there's nothing else to really do about it. That's why I'm asking what needs you have. I'm trying to better understand your situation, trying to put myself in your shoes.
But if you have no desire to actually respond to my inquiry, I shall remain in the dark.
> Yes you will if you think most communication personally or even work related is happening via email…
The same principles apply to Slack, Teams or whatever else you may use. I don't do work outside of work hours, so what would I know. Email was just the example I thought of in the moment. Again, I'm asking you a question out of a desire to better understand your situation.
Personal correspondence doesn't take many taps to do. It's rarely more than 25 characters at a time in my experience.
> You know sending email via mobile has been popular since 2003 right?
'sending' and 'popular' are doing some pretty heavy lifting here. Reading, sure, I'll buy that. Sending? I'm not sure sending emails longer than two sentences from any device without a keyboard has ever been popular, for values of. It's probably more popular than ever given that touch keyboards make it reasonably possible, but James S. Casual isn't sending a lot of emails from his phone just through the sheer power of not sending many emails to begin with.
And 'popular' for that matter. Possible, sure, but how many people ever even had a mobile device that could send email before the iPhone came out?
I'm sure sarcasm and implying I'm stupid are great ways to convince your interlocutor, or the unseen masses for that matter.
I’m not implying you are stupid. I’m saying straight out that you’re feigning ignorance (ie not that you are ignorant) and you know how the world works in 2026.
Myself personally, I work remotely. I might be running errands during the day and still be monitoring Slack so I can be on a call at 6 or 7 at night with someone in another time zone.
I also travel for work - consulting - and travel personally during the work day and may work after I land. Even if not for work, do you wait to get to your computer to respond to text messages? Check HN?
Believe it or not, I'm not feigning ignorance. I just lead a very different life from you.
> Myself personally, I work remotely. I might be running errands during the day and still be monitoring Slack so I can be on a call at 6 or 7 at night with someone in another time zone.
> I also travel for work - consulting - and travel personally during the work day and may work after I land.
See, I would never do this. A.) I don't work remotely (not out of a desire not to, but it's just not viable with my current line of work), and B.) If I did, that work would be zoned off away from my personal life. If there's downtime, I can kill time by browsing whatever, but I wouldn't be out and about but also 'at work' at the same time. Work-time and personal time basically never mix in my life, and I'd like to keep it that way.
If you're 'at work' for 48 hours at a time, while travelling, then having to respond instantly at any given time makes a lot more sense, although I'd probably still want to defer those responses until I can get some downtime during any given travels to then type up my responses on an actual keyboard. I can however understand if that's not really viable in your life of work.
> do you wait to get to your computer to respond to text messages?
I've never(?) sent a text message longer than maybe 100 characters. Most are a fair bit shorter than that, and I don't send that many to begin with. Same goes for Discord, although confirming that is harder, since it's contaminated with messaged written with an actual keyboard.
> Check HN?
To read? Sure. I even read books on my phone. Respond to a comment? Not unless my response is really short.
You're being pretty defensive / aggressive about what some might call a phone addiction.
Most on HN know the data: healthier people tend to enforce boundaries with their devices. The average person is addicted, yes, but I'm not sure being "the odd one" in an era of actually decreasing literacy and numeracy and attention span is the insult that you seem to think.
I was ready to agree with you, as that was my belief. (I also agree it's a sign of a dangerous addition, but just like everyone in the 60s smoked, everyone today use phones)
Then I cam across this, showing about even split between laptop and phone
Yes I’m sure that using my phone for things that in the before times I would have used a desktop computer to do over a 2400 baud modem is a negative for my life. Those negatives are around social media
Yes, during our first night of our 45 day stay in another country and she got a text from someone she is meeting on the first leg of our trip during our summer 45 day domestic trip asking could we come 3 days earlier. We were looking at our calendar, our Hyatt points, flights etc. while enjoying live music and planning our next get away.
I’m sure you would have thought we should have waited to take out my laptop when we got back home.
I don't understand why are you downvoted. Are people in this thread really pulling out a laptop and trying to get it connected (or pay for one with a cellular modem) every time they need to respond two words to an email, call a uber or look up where is the nearest coffee shop that is open at an odd hour?
HN seems to have some really weirdly prescriptive view of how people ought to use their devices in a way that is almost like Steve jobs.
> I don't understand why are you downvoted. Are people in this thread really pulling out a laptop and trying to get it connected (or pay for one with a cellular modem) every time they need to respond two words to an email, call a uber or look up where is the nearest coffee shop that is open at an odd hour?
Because some of us read the original comment and thought maybe the discussion should be responsive to it:
> If the task can’t be done in a few taps I feel I’m better off opening a laptop anyways.
Talking about Uber, email and directions in Maps are literally "task[s] that can be done in a few taps". Perhaps being less "weirdly" defensive and taking the time to think about the discussion you're about to jump into would be helpful?
Surely your laptop has a mic on it and probably a camera. It also has blueteeth, wifi and stuff. Your phone has much the same and can act as a proxy to whatever is missing on your laptop and vice versa. Obviously, getting your laptop to fit under or within your "lap" is a bit of an ask!
Things like KDE Connect provide a direct bridge and a bit of imagination does the rest.
If your laptop isn't cutting the mustard then ditch it ...
... Oh your phone has a tiny screen and a shit mic and speakers, unless you stick it in your ear?
Oddly enough, I don’t carry around my laptop in my pocket all of the time. You do realize that in 2026 most people do most of their day to day non work tasks on phones don’t you?
At least for me, the effect is real, and is driven not by media consumption but ergonomics of use. But at the same time, I'd say you're not missing that much. I always preferred large screens because of productivity gains[2], but even as screens kept getting larger, the set of things that "I feel I’m better off opening a laptop" for remained the same for me.
That is, until I switched to a foldable phone (Galaxy Z Fold 7) half a year ago, and - I kid you not - I haven't used my personal laptop since that day.
FWIW, I still have a proper desktop PC; In the past decade+, I've been using a PC at home, and a "sidearm" on the go / away from home: always a 2-in-1 Windows laptop with top specs[0]. Being always with me, this laptop often replaced use of PC at home too, because of convenience & portability.
So by amount of productive use, for past 10+ years it was sidearm >> PC >> smartphone. But getting a foldable flipped it around. Having twice the screen size of a regular (large) phone is a big productivity win[1], but it's folding that makes the actual qualitative difference. Folded, the device becomes a regular smartphone - i.e. something that fits in my pocket, meaning it's always on me, in my hands, or less than 1 second away. Contrast that with tablets, whose form factor makes them basically just shitty laptops (same logistic as ultraportable, but toy OS of a phone).
I didn't expect this. I didn't even feel this change - I only noticed two months later that my laptop has been sitting unused on my desk, covered by a pile of stuff. Doing "laptop tasks" on a mobile device is still annoying (no keyboard, toy OS), but combining tablet-sized screen with portability of a phone makes them less annoying than logistics overhead of a laptop - and at least in my case, this eliminated the entire[3] space between "smartphone" and "PC".
--
[0] - Think Microsoft Surface, except I could get better specs at half the price if I bought an off-lease but pristine Dell or Lenovo.
[1] - It's not immediately obvious to people, but as things are today, a foldable phone isn't any better at media consumption than regular one, because almost all cinema, TV, videogames, etc. are all produced for widescreen - meanwhile, the inner screen of my Fold is approximately square, so e.g. for most TV, half or more of it is black at all times. However, all that extra space allows to effectively use multiple (3+) apps on screen, not to mention makes spreadsheets actually usable.
[2] - Bigger screen = less scrolling and tapping in menus, but also with text size scaled to minimum, my previous phone (S22) had a big enough screen that running two apps in split-screen became useful on a regular basis.
[3] - Well, almost. There are some tasks I really like physical keyboard and larger screen for - but for those, I just plug the phone into the screen via USB-C, and volia, it turns into a regular desktop. A shitty one, but good enough for occasional use.
That's interesting. I knew foldables have been selling well, and I assumed they were basically the promise that tablets were trying to sell but as you said- usable this time. I've never heard anyone's actual story laid out like this before though.
Now I'm having second thoughts on what I'll do myself because I would have never guessed a foldable would be ideal as you described.
I've been trying to avoid building an $8,000 tech stack of redundant devices that I don't need. Which is what Apple is all about, and then some. It's not the initial investment that bothers me, it's calculating replacement costs over time. It's pretty quickly that you have half a new vehicle in redundant electronics. It leaves you asking: why?
So while I appreciate the longevity and durability of my iPhone 12 mini, along with seamless Airdrop and the Airtag network being as handy as it gets, I'm thinking about going back to Android for docking support. This is a feature I don't think Apple will ever add until the end of time, so I may as well bite the bullet now and get another OS switch over with.
I'm not entirely convinced I would love a foldable like you do, but I am rethinking that now. I've been on the idea that Microsoft's partnership with Samsung for Phone Link features will make my life delightful at my desktop battlestation, and DeX with a lapdock will cover any mobile needs. A lapdock really does create an alternative to the battery life offered by the M-series Macbooks, while leaving me with only two devices to maintain and replace with my desktop and phone.
It's amazing with the flexibility and options offered in the Android space, whether it be my proposal or your foldable experience, how they don't have more marketshare. I think the issue is marketing, people need to be shown what they can do with a product and Apple makes Continuity and closed ecosystem features seem like a value add. When it's kind of a lure to an iCloud subscription and $8,000 personal tech stack.
What, ummm, efficiency benefits are you finding on a smart phone? Is it related directly to the keyboard size when typing? That's kind of all I can think of, other than a really tiny display + big fingers being an issue.
I find my efficiency directly proportional to the distance from my smart phone.
Same. The Pixel 4a was the perfect phone for me: Light, screen exactly the right size to navigate with a single thumb whilst holding the phone in one hand, enough battery life, small enough to fit in my jean pockets comfortably.
But people buy big phones in preference to small ones, so that’s what Google & Apple manufacture. Nobody (from the POV of Apple/Google decision makers) buys these smaller phones.
Former small phone person here: I went from a small iphone to a large one just to substitute not having to carry around my ipad. I really wish iphone fold is here sooner.
I don't think that's true. Every iPhone user I've texted in the last 6 months at least has had rcs turned on, and that's including some very non tech savvy friends that I doubt did it manually
Yeah, I wish they would commit to doing a mini every x years. Last year I bought a 16 and this year I bought an Air. I returned both after just a few days. I can't reach across the phone with my thumb, meaning I can't use it one-handed.
The new phones have some neat tricks (satellite connectivity comes to mind), but the on-device AI seems pretty mediocre and I value pocketability and one-handed usability more than the new gizmos.
When I asked myself if I would rather keep the new Air or go back to my 13 mini with an extra thousand dollars in my pocket, it was no contest.
> I wish they would commit to doing a mini every x years
The problem is all the tooling is pipelined for annual releases. You can't just find a team to do the mini; it has to always be there, and parts of it have to always be working on the next one. Your vendors will get grumpy because it doesn't fit their product cycles.
I have large hands but the 13 Mini is roughly the maximum I can use one-handed without doing the weird finger balancing act to shift the phone around. I get why most people like large phones - media consumption - but not everyone is into that.
I don't even mind large phones if they're done right. My favorite phone of all time is the BB Passport which you have to use two-handed, but it was actually designed around that and amazing to use.
Sorry but if that’s the case you definitely don’t have large hands. If you did you’d be able to use the Pro Max one handed and reach everything except the top left corner by swiveling your thumb (Reachability enables you to reach top left corner)
This depends entirely on how you hold your phone in your hand. For some positions, someone would need a 5” thumb to reach the corner. You can’t make such sweeping statements for something with such variation.
> Reachability enables you to reach top left corner
I thought it goes without saying that poorly made accessibility features don't mean the device is very usable. The existence of that feature by itself is already evidence against that.
I've a lot of unexpected behavior from the faceid thing. Lots of unexpected swipe-ups that drop me out of an app and put me on the home screen. Can't unlock in the dark, too close to your face, off to the side, in your pocket. Lots of "I saw your face an unlocked" that I didn't know had happened.
fingerprint sensor unlocked when you wanted it to, with haptics. switching apps was a button operation, not happening when you didn't expect it.
Plus, fingerprint scanners can be activated without breaking eye contact with the person you're talking to. It's very anti-social technology.
It makes one look completely like a tool to pull out their iPhone and stare at it for ten seconds while checking out with a cashier. Deeply embarrassing and very annoying.
The physical home button is, no bullshit, one of the greatest pieces of UI ever. No, I am not kidding, I really think that. It’s crazy to me that they abandoned it, the gestures that replace its functionality are overall-worse and cluttering the gesture system with even more of them is bad for the overall UX.
I agree with this, while also thinking it was basically physical-enough that the home button still served the same UI purpose about as well as before. But yes it was a step down from the real button.
The haptic sensor is almost as good as the physical button, and the trade off of not having to worry about it breaking (which was likely after a few years with the physical ones) is well worth it for me.
What I don’t like about FaceID is the premature unlocking. If you pass your phone to someone else it can unlock, especially for taking photos. And to allow strangers to make photos is intentional that’s why the camera app doesn’t need an unlock.
Aside from that all the gestures, positions and holding points are annoying. The usage of TouchID is simpler.
Apple could at least fix the security issue by unlocking only after swiping up. FaceID? Isn’t fast enough? Well. Than TouchID is better.
I get that getting rid of touchid haptic eliminates dead space but still blows my mind they couldn't or refused to figure out screen-based touch id as an option at least. Samsung has it...
Under-screen fingerprint readers are definitely inferior - slower and less reliable. I (Android user) wish they'd revert to back-of-device readers, which were amazing.
(I also wish for smaller screens and no-adhesive battery swaps though, neither of which seems likely to happen.)
Me too, but I’m going to have to upgrade. The lack of storage on my phone (64GB) is killing me - every time there is an os update I have to delete almost everything to make room
I'm also a touchID / iphone 8 size fan, but the nice cameras/zoom in flagship models are hard to give up. At least Face ID has improved significantly from the early days of iphone 10 -- it's faster and more reliable than it was on the older models if you tried it back then.
The thing I've come to like about FaceID on my 13 mini is that I can require it for certain apps to open that don't require it - e.g. messaging as opposed to banking which generally require some kind of auth by default - which is much better security in case someone snatches it out of my hand while it's unlocked. It's pretty seamless because I'm generally looking at the device anyway, and it's much less faff than it would be with TouchID.
I think the way the Pixel does it is strictly better across the board. The fingerprint sensor doesn't sacrifice screen space, and the platform offers face unlock as well.
My iPhone 12 mini is hobbling along. A few rare apps are not usable because UI is clipped, the battery is throttling and making it sluggish, and it overheats all the time as a GPS.
Many mobile websites are unusable.
But I love the form factor and I'm going to keep it going as long as it is reasonably secure.
I stuck with my 13 mini for a long time, and had recently put a new iFixit battery in it too. I did finally make the jump to a Pixel 10 but sign me up with everyone else who misses reasonably-sized phones.
i send them an iphone mini request every once in a while through the feedback form hoping it will make a little bit of difference: https://www.apple.com/feedback/
still holding on to iphone 13 mini hoping they bring back the perfect size. also trying very hard not to accidentally fat finger a ios 26 update.
That's why they stopped making them, because the people who buy minis are willing to stick with them for 5 years, whereas Apple wants you to buy a new phone every year.
Every single person I know who uses a phone of more than 4 years old, uses an iPhone 13 mini. Without exception. Now I'm sure there's plenty of HNers who use other 4+ year old phones, but I'm talking about non-tech people.
> That's because they haven't came out with another small iPhone in more than four years.
They also haven't come out with another iPhone with a headphone jack, yet no one kept using those.
I get what you're saying, but what I think is that the average mini buyer is inherently someone (on average!) who changes their phone a lot less often. They're less likely to be glued to their phones. Bigger phones = more infinite scroll addiction, and so on. Apple doesn't want to cater to the mini buyers.
> That's because they haven't came out with another small iPhone in more than four years.
I kind of agree with the previous comment. I think if you spend a lot of time on the phone, have a lot of apps then it makes sense to upgrade your phone more frequently and also makes sense to have a larger screen and better battery life. So conversely, there is a correlation between people who have smaller phones and upgrade less frequently.
I have my iPhone 12mini for 5-6 years now, and I'd upgrade it now if there was a new small iPhone. But I would upgrade it 3 years ago.
The release schedule was crap, as well as the 12 mini being an objectively bad phone.
Spring 2020, they released the iPhone SE 2020, 4 years after the previous iPhone SE. This satiated a lot of the demand for people holding out for a smaller phone. Then came the surprise with 12 mini in September of 2020, except the battery life and performance sucked, garnering bad reviews.
Then, finally in September 2021, they released the 13 mini, an objectively good, smaller phone. But over the previous 18 months, a lot of the buyers for the 13 mini had already bought the 2020 SE or were burned by the 12 mini.
> The release schedule was crap, as well as the 12 mini being an objectively bad phone.
I still use my 12 mini; it's by far my favorite iphone I've had since my 5s. It might have had sucky battery life but I was just happy to have a phone that could fit in my pocket.
I've replaced the screen twice, battery once (by myself) and I have really very little intentions on moving to anything newer than the 13 mini.
I'm not sure why Apple doesn't care about the mini apple users. My friends, when they pull out a 17 pro look absolutely ridiculous, constantly having to pull the phone out when doing any real work since the phone just keeps getting in the way.
Spring 2020, they released the iPhone SE 2020, 4 years after the previous iPhone SE. This satiated a lot of the demand for people holding out for a smaller phone.
Count me in this group. I wound up buying the 13 mini right before it was going to be discontinued because I knew that would be the last small phone they would produce and I'm keeping it until it dies (or I can't get a battery for it).
Also, the mini had worse cameras than the larger screens.
Camera quality is the second most important thing to me (after not needing finger enhancement surgery to hold the phone).
So, they designed it to fail, and it still was 3-5% of sales vs. ones that actually got good spec bumps every year. (If you’re upgrading the phone every 12 months, why buy the one with cameras a few years behind the curve?)
Anyway, I like my mini. I wish it had touch id instead.
The Minis had the exact same cameras as the non-Minis. The Pros had the only camera improvements. In my experience all were worse than the contemporary Pixels though.
Ah true. It came down to Pro vs. Mini for me because I usually just buy the best iPhone without regard to price. (I don't care about spending an extra $200 for a device I'll use for 4-5 years, but Apple's cheapest phones were also the best back then.)
Tenth of millions of devices were sold (somewhere between 20 to 35 Million?). You could build multiple plants for it, with government funding in Europe.
The MBAs at Apple noticed:
* Big size is a status symbol in Asia. And TV replacement. Their a lot of people in Asia.
* Due to vendor lock-in people need to purchase anyway. So just sell them the standard phone.
They got the sales anyway. We don’t have a “functional market”. But Apples marketing was weird. They named it Mini instead of Compact or Air. And launched it against the SE? A lot people already refused to move from the SE 1st Gen to the Mini, to due the increased size and missing TouchID.
So Apple assumed people want even bigger Max or Air. The Air which is actually much thicker most other phones. Both seem to fail.
Crazy people fixate. It’s why you get people talking about how 4o was the best AI model ever and crying for it to be brought back. (It had no internal thinking process and would believe you are the messiah without question)
Have you replaced the battery? My 13 mini shows 90% battery health but I can’t use it for the full day (and I don’t game or anything, just light use). I wonder if the battery is really ok and it’s the software that is to blame.
I still have my 12 Mini, changed the battery in a Apple store a year ago (and they broke the screen in the process so got a new screen too) for I think 99 EUR, now the battery still last ~2 days, easily worth it. Maximum capacity says "87%" right now although I don't know what exactly that's based on.
I'm keeping this phone until either Apple releses a new mini or until Motorola released a GrapheneOS phone, whichever comes first.
> changed the battery in a Apple store a year ago (and they broke the screen in the process so got a new screen too)
Huh, I had a 12 mini and had the same thing happen at an independent repair shop I used to frequent. I've been pretty salty with the shop, but I guess it's an easier fuckup than I've been giving them credit for.
Just replaced my 13 mini battery this past week which was at 80%. Noticeable improvement. I'm not a very heavy user but did find that I was getting to the 20/10% range at the end of most days. Now its 30/40 and I'm happy! Many more years in the old steed yet.
My 13 mini on iOS 26 shows 83% maximum capacity but makes it through the day with light-ish use (Spotify (although generally offline playlists because of lossless audio) NYT games, email, messaging, browsing, Instapaper). I do have lots of accessibility settings enabled to stop things like transparency and animations though. See my comment here for more details: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45544554
I got the base 13 at launch day whose battery health now states 86%. While I have noticed degraded battery performance, the stated health has been stuck at 86% for quite a while now.
I guess it's bugged out and would opt for a battery change if you're feeling the battery pains, I'm thinking of upgrading to the new base model this year for the usb c and 120hz display.
I did! I ended up buying a kit off ifixit IIRC. It was super cheap and works great! If I did it again, I would splurge for the Apple verified battery as a third party one doesn't work with the new Battery app features.
I showed my Costco membership QR code to the cashier the other day, and they suddenly exclaimed, “oh my! What a cute little phone!!”
It took me a second to even process why someone might say such a thing about my case-less generic 12 mini. Most of my close friends have 13 mini’s so I often feel my wife’s “regular” size iPhone is the odd one out.
My next upgrade if my 12 mini gives up will be an 13 mini. And from there I will probably just stick to refurbed 13 minis until a good alternative comes out.
I highly recommend hunting down a 13 mini now (with a lot of battery left) so you can switch when you have to. I did last summer and was glad I didn´t have to organize one on short notice. And if you avoid ios26 - make sure the ios18 on the device is updated because now you no longer get updated within ios18
I moved off the mini to get satelite messaging which I use while hiking. But now that T-Mobile/starlink support satelite on the 13 mini, maybe I’ll go back.
Finally moved on from my 12 mini, but I still have it sitting in my office and when I pick it up I think "wow this feels like a phone from the future."
Wish they made a new mini instead of the Air. A friend bought one of those, and frankly I just don't get it.
The screen is too big to use it one-handed, and thickness is really the only one of the three dimension of the phone that I don't care about how small it is (within reason). They probably spent billions of dollars shaving off half a millimeter and what do we get with that technology? Phone that's too big.
If this keeps up in another 5 years I'll be looking at flip phones and a separate camera.
I think that's it exactly. Hopefully we're not looking forward to "phone that's too big, and unfolds to be even more too big."
I can see a large unfolded phone being desirable if it had a stylus and I could use it like a small notebook, but just as a "watch Netflix bigger for $2000" device, no.
Especially if it has the worst camera of all of the phone models like the Air does.
Somehow not a problem I have - still have my original 2018 iPad stylus, and I don't lose regular pens either.
Suspect this is a mindset thing if you mostly use 10 cent Bic pens you'll never care to make a habit of keeping them, and then when you're using an expensive gadget pen those habits carry over.
Even a pen that costs a few bucks (Signo UM-151 for instance) I know where they're at.
Still loving mine as well. I held out with the 2016 SE for 8 years. Sadly it's looking like I might have to do that again with the 13 mini! It boggles my mind that Apple thinks it's worthwhile to sell the 16, 17, 17 Pro, and 17e all in basically the exact same form factor. And then the Air and Max in very similar form factors. Vary it up! I don't need a new mini every year, but something in the 5.4" form factor every 3-4 years would obviously have an audience. I don't care if it's a Pro or an SE/e model, I just need something that'll keep me on the latest iOS for security updates.
Sigh. Maybe the Clicks Communicator (at 13cm tall) will get my money.
I'm on my 8th year of using my 2016 SE. Have replaced the battery and screen a few times over the years. A fair few of the apps I used stopped supporting iOS 15 so I've got old versions of those apps installed, but WhatsApp, Signal and my banking app still actively support iOS 15 so it works well enough for me, for now.
I have an iPhone 13 mini sitting in a drawer for when I need to switch.
The SE3 is only half a year younger than the 13 mini the parent comment mentioned (and it’s larger and heavier than the mini), so I don’t really see the benefit there.
Right, I missed that part. Then get the mini if you prefer it. I’m in the camp of people who hate large phones, the day they remove the SE form factor is the day I switch to android. IMHO the 5S form factor was perfected, any change after that is unnecessary. And I also love having a physical button on my SE, I hope that device will survive for a very long time as I’m not optimistic we will have such options in the future :(
Small form factor and security updates are literally my only criteria for phones.
That's where I'm at, it's about time to replace my 12 mini and it's looking like it's time to go back to Android. It was form factor (iPhone 5) that moved me to the iPhone to begin with. That and back then, iOS had a lot more advantages like longterm support and higher quality apps. Most every advantage that isn't a bald faced attempt at lock-in is gone now.
Same. This would be an obvious upgrade for me, if the overall size was anywhere close to the Mini. Oddly enough, the announcement doesn't even list the screen size, but I'm sure it's 6" +
It will be even shorter than the mini, but also wider than the Pro Max. The aspect ratio is different from a normal iPhone. The weight should be in the Pro range, and of course it’ll be relatively thick. Not a mini replacement in my book.
I’m in exactly the same situation. My wife just upgraded from a iPhone 11 Pro to a refurbished iPhone 13 Mini. My daughter just bought a refurbished 13 Mini too.
The second hand market for these phones seems pretty buoyant
iPhone 11 here. Chugging along just fine. Though after the latest liquid glass update the responsiveness has noticeably degraded. They've added lot of animations & moving elements which my poor old 11 doesn't seem to handle all that well.
Worst part about big phones are that fingers cannot reach around the whole screen when using one hand, so you are forced to always use two hands. They also fall out of pant pockets easily and have no holes for lanyards.
Are there any androids with a similar form factor?
Ideally, degoogled android, of course. (Or even not android?)
The 13 mini probably still has a few years of security fixes coming, but after that, I’m going to consider jumping ship, and would like something that’s privacy respecting.
One can only hope... My 13 mini's performance, especially for the Camera and Safari seem to have hit new lows with iOS 26. I'm sticking with the mini for its size, but also its weight. So far the Air is the only alternative I think I could switch to, but apparently that's also on Apple's chopping block due to poor sales.
Been thinking of doing the same. My 12 is showing its cycles, but it’s either I have a phone that lives in my front pocket, or I can go phone-less.
I refuse to have a phone I have to constantly carry, hold, or move from back pocket when I sit. This damn thing is in my hands enough, I don’t need to increase the surface area for potential distractions.
Same. And so do many people around me. And many still cling to their 12 minis.
Maybe that’s why Apple won’t make them anymore, people like us tend to keep them forever.
> Running deepseek 6B on the Private LLM app on the iPhone 13 basically set my phone on fire
Hey, I’m the author of Private LLM. I hope you’re joking about the phone catching fire. Btw, there’s no DeepSeek 6B model, you’re likely talking about the DeepSeek Distill 7B model.
Yeah, I agree. Really hard to fit anything larger on the 4GB of RAM on the iPhone 13 of which, only about (depending on what iOS version you're on) 2.1-2.5GB is usable by apps.
I stupidly downgraded to a 17 from the 13 mini two-weeks ago and I hate it. It’s the first time I have been earnestly tempted to just get a dumb-phone and be done with it. The constant growth of mobile phones is perplexing to me but I don’t doubt Apple knows what sells.
my wife upgraded from a 13 mini to an Air and she loves it. She thought she hated the larger size of new phones, but after holding the Air in her hand she realized the weight and thickness was the issue for her!
It’s a tough call though because the Air has a lot of pros and cons! My wife never takes nature photography or macro photography, so she was OK with the 1 camera compromise.
If you truly want a shorter phone, my condolences lol. Apple seems to be ignoring this user segment.
I can relate. I actually used to be jealous of the ladies because they always have a convenient purse to put things in. These days I wear a light weight cross-body “sling” bag, and i’m happy as a peach.
Easy way to bring my phone, sunglasses, wallet, keys, etc with me. Pockets can be pretty annoying.
I tried the Air and went back to the mini because of the camera compromises. One big issue for me was losing Cinematic video, which I use all the time.
You can obviously bypass them, but having precommit hooks to run scripts locally, to make sure certain checks pass, can save them from failing in your pipeline, which can save time and money.
From an org standpoint you can have them (mandate?) as part of the developer experience.
(Our team doesn't use them, but I can see the potential value)
The checks in those pre-commit hooks would need to be very fast - otherwise they'd be too slow to run on every commit.
Then why would it save time and money if they only get run at the pipeline stage? That would only save substantial time if the pipepline is architected in a suboptimal way: Those checks should get run immediately on push, and first in the pipeline so the make the pipeline fail fast if they don't pass. Instant Slack notification on fail.
But the fastest feedback is obviously in the editor, where such checks like linting / auto-formatting belong, IMHO. There I can see what gets changed, and react to it.
Pre-commit hooks sit in such a weird place between where I author my code (editor) and the last line of defense (CI).
> Then why would it save time and money if they only get run at the pipeline stage? That would only save substantial time if the pipepline is architected in a suboptimal way: Those checks should get run immediately on push, and first in the pipeline so the make the pipeline fail fast if they don't pass. Instant Slack notification on fail.
That's still multiple minutes compared to an error thrown on push - i.e. long enough for the dev in question to create a PR, start another task, and then leave the PR open with CI failures for days afterwards.
> But the fastest feedback is obviously in the editor, where such checks like linting / auto-formatting belong, IMHO.
There are substantial chunk of fast checks that can't be configured in <arbitrary editor> or that require a disproportionate time investment. (e.g. you could write and maintain a Visual Studio extension vs just adding a line to grep for pre-commit)
There's an AppleTV app for it, which makes it trivial to connect a BT controller and finally finishing that Donkey Kong Country that's been holding you back,
Built a scheduler with pretty much all my moment/moment-tz questions answered through ChatGPT. One of the things it excels at, crawling long lived API documentation, answers, etc.
Must be a partial outage then? I was using Music earlier today as well. On my phone I download most of my music so I might never notice an outage though.
It was such a fun game! My friend group got really into the Shifter mod, you could build defenses for your base like walls and turrets. It was a blast!
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