“Production is set to begin next month for the screens, which measure at least 4 inches diagonally compared with 3.5 inches on the iPhone 4S, the latest phone from Apple, the people said.” Cue the usual suspects twisting and turning to change the very fabric of space-time so that instead of 3.5″ being the optimal size, 4.0″ will be the optimal size. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the show.
Those hipster jeans pockets are to small
Are belt pouches ironic yet?
What all 220 million of them!
Dude when you start using terms like hipster in a derogatory reference to Apple’s customer base you just show how painfully out of touch you are with what is happening
The hipsters claimed they loved Apple and hated Microsoft long before loving Apple and hating Microsoft was cool. Unfortunately, that’s all of them. I bet some of them think Apple started out making iPods.
Ah, your next delusion – that each iPhone ever sold went to individual who previously didn’t own one (and presumably that each and every one is still in use).
I must say that’s curious, you thinking that iPhones have no repeated customers.
Edited 2012-05-24 00:12 UTC
I don’t know about the rest of you, but I like a phone that can fit in my pocket. I have relatively deep pockets, but even so, it seems as though this move to larger screens is going to present a few issues in that department. It will, of course, depend on exactly how big said screens are (at least four inches is not exactly a precise measurement) but I think we’re losing sight of the fact that phones should fit easily in pockets. Maybe the women are okay with carrying big purses, but I’m an old-fashioned fellow who prefers his pockets and to have my phone in easy reach. If the screen’s too big, I’ll be going for a 4S and I suspect there will be a lot of people doing the same. Note that I can’t say how big “too big” will be until I can actually get my greedy fingers on it.
Well, since the SII is considerably lighter (116g vs 140g) than the 4S, I find it far more pocketable. Size isn’t the only factor there.
Yes 34g makes a huge difference in your pocket.
And the trolling goes on…
It’s 25% lighter.
Not every argument against an iPhone is trolling.
It’s 25% lighter.
Not every argument against an iPhone is trolling. [/q]
Your house keys weigh probably more than 34g (excluding the keychain) and you’re saying that this difference in weight makes it far more pocketable. If that isn’t trolling than I don’t know what is.
But it doesn’t surprise me. Aren’t you one of the guys that argued on these forums that a 7inch tablet (compared to the then newly released iPad 1) makes way more sense because it makes it pocketable ?
It’s a shame Eugenia and David barely post anymore; they balanced the silliness coming out of you with some decent posts.
Have you, you know, tried to pocket a 7 inch tablet? When the original Galaxy Tab came out, I was working in a phone shop. My coworkers didn’t believe me when I said it was a conveniently pocketable size, and furthermore, it would fit in their handbags a whole lot easier than an iPad. To prove my point, I put two dummy units of the Galaxy Tab (that is to say, non functional but identically sized, shaped and weighted units), and my 5 inch Dell Streak into my left pocket. My perfectly ordinary black slacks had a big enough pocket for two of them and a huge phone.
I thought I did, but it turned out I was just happy to see you.
Edited 2012-05-17 00:42 UTC
Yes, they are pockatable. I had one, and I tried it several times – due to lack of bags with me in short notice. However, it is not comfortable, and I would not regularly use it like that.
This coming from the exact same person who, in another article comment, said that Thom was mysteriously silent about an issue, only to be shown later he had already submitted the article in question…
You apologized for missing the article there, but I said you weren’t really sorry because you didn’t have the intellectual honesty to get a more balanced view of someone before hand. I was right. You weren’t sorry. You were just going to continue to do the same hoping no one would call you out on it.
140-116=24…not 34….the difference is 17%, not 25%. That’s fairly negligible, IMO.
Yes either way it is negligible and it doesn’t really have a net effect on how pocketable it is.
But apparently for Thom (the guy insisting a 7inch tablet is pocketable) the difference is So significant that it makes it “far more pocketable”….
I do agree that screen size is not the only thing that makes it pocketable. Nor does the weight.
What does a phone to be more pocketable:
– size – it is a 3D device and being slimmer is very important
– form – rounded corners help a lot, so does Nexus S rounded screen (but the price is too big – no Gorilla Glass)
Also – not all dimensions are equal in importance – 2 mm are important to make a phone slimmer, but not important for screen size. Also 1 extra cm in wide might be a deal breaker, while in length is ok.
My personal opinion – 4 – 4.3 inch are comfortable in most pockets (all but the very tight ones). 4.7 – not so sure, but haven’t tried.
My opinion is based on the fact that I like to use a leather case to protect the phone.
Say what?
They may be able to stretch the screen while keeping the form factor of the device the same. My new iMac is smaller than my wife’s, yet I have a bigger screen for example.
Looking at my iPhone there is plenty of space in the vertical and some in the horizontal. There is even more room if they got rid of the home button.
Most of us aren’t losing sight of anything, there’s not so much “this move to larger screens” but an option of choosing a handset with larger screen. Or not.
(that’s what “too many choices” with, say, Android are also about)
Well, perhaps unless you limit yourself to Apple – then you might at some point have no other choice than “the proper way”, I imagine.
Edited 2012-05-16 14:12 UTC
hp palm veer
’nuff said
There are other phones that exist other than the iphone who’s screen size is greater than 4 inches. You should be able to walk down to your local phone store to see how big they really are. Or, you can just get a visual clue for yourself at http://www.phone-size.com/
Edited 2012-05-16 15:08 UTC
Yeah, anything wider than N9 for instance is already not comfortable for pockets. N9 is 61.2 mm wide, compare it to Samsung Galaxy S II – 66.1 mm wide, and S III (even worse) – 70.6 mm wide. That’s a significant difference in width for pocket carrying, so a no go if you care about it.
So if AAPL changes, perfection changes. If a feature is removed, you didn’t need it. If a feature is added, it is innovative genius.
If a feature other phones have has not available on iPhone is a choice: 1) you don’t need it, or 2) AAPL is waiting to introduce this feature (which it thought up first and has always wanted) for hardware to catch up so that it can be implemented correctly.
In the case of larger screens I think we’re talking about 2) above. Clearly AAPL is not responding to what other manufacturers are doing, they are working on their own genius time table/long term plan, and were merely waiting for larger screens with high enough resolutions, screens worthy of the AAPL brand, prior to introducing them.
Aaaaaamen.
Why do so many people insist on using the stock symbols when referring to companies? It doesn’t make you look more intelligent or “in the know”. Just adds to the douchieness of the post.
I’ll answer that for me. I use the stock symbols to highlight that whoever it is, AAPL, MSFT, ORCL, RHT,IBM, T, VZN, GOOG, DELL, HPQ, whoever, they are just companies doing what companies do, for good or ill. They are not a religion, they are simply a bundle of commercial interests traded daily on exchanges. No passion, just numbers, sometimes up, sometimes down, always about profit. Their actions can only be truly understood in that light.
Good response
Thanks.
…to take a poke at the Apple Fanbois…
I find people make excuses for their weapon of choice, so yeah, the guys that claimed the iPhone was the right size might make an about face, but then, doesn’t everyone?
Personally, I think the Android phones in question are too big. I think the iPhone 4 I have is too heavy.
As a poster has already said, the phone itself may not actually get that much bigger, if at all. You have to remember that we are dealing with Apple here, not Samsung or what have you. The chances of them finding a way to get a bigger screen whilst keeping the form the same size isn’t beyond them. Personally I don’t care, I love the form of the iPhone now, just not the weight of it… My preference for a phone would be the same form as the iPod Touch. Lighter, slimmer and feels better.
Edited 2012-05-16 14:26 UTC
Everyone makes an about face. But Apple apologists will say they never doubted users wanted bigger screens all along. They will conveniently forget their conspiracy theories and assume that it was the secret Apple master plan all along and that they were merely helping the master plan* by not drawing attention to it.
* “Lord Jobs – witness my praise of your abilities and vision and reward me with free Apple products forever. Amen.”
Edited 2012-05-16 14:53 UTC
I’m not sure Apple actually ever said that the iPhone was the right size. They, well Steve, said the iPad was the right size.
Probably a number of factors gave the original iPhone its size and that may have caused other generations to keep about the same size making it easier for developers.
Personally when it comes to the iPad I think bigger is better, but not too big. The iPhone: smaller is better, but not too small.
Making a bigger iPhone AND a smaller iPad doesn’t make much sense to me. A phone needs to be ultra portable. Making it bigger limits its portability, yet it’s not as big as an iPad, so it doesn’t get its big screen advantage. Likewise making the iPad smaller doesn’t make it much more portable, but you take away its big screen and it still doesn’t fit in your pocket.
No, but several bloggers acted as though every choice made by Apple had a well researched/thought out reason for it, where normal people would see a lot of “choices” were just incidental.
Of course nothing is just coincidental when creating a technical device. Apple nor any other company works like that.
The choices Apple made were, in their view, the rights ones at that time. A larger screen sucks more battery. If batteries become better bigger screens become an option.
But they probably took also in to account the size of the device vs the eyes and hands of the users. I can’t be too small or too big.
So they choose a certain size, but one that also could hold all the components. Price is a factor too, making the coolest phone ever that nobody can’t afford doesn’t work.
I didn’t say coincidental. I said incidental, and I meant incidental. Of course choices were made, but they weren’t decrees, as they were treated. People were writing as though Apple discovered the touchscreen phone size equivalent of the Golden Ratio.
So everything you wrote here – I agree with. As a result of all these considerations, they settled on the screen size they came up with. But some people were treating it as though it were some kind of universal constant, and that other companies only had larger screens because their designers were incompetent and not like Jonathan Ives.
Other companies probably had bigger screens as a selling point or the device had to be so big because of the internals that they might as well fill the space with a screen. And some people prefer bigger screens. Certainly if you have fat fingers and bad eyes a few inches extra can help a lot.
Our janitor has a Galaxy Note and he likes it for those reasons, although I haven’t actually ever seen him use it for anything else but making calls.
I haven’t actually read any bloggers glorifying the 3.5″ screens, but I’m sure they are about. On occasion I do read articles where people predict the past, the present and the future regarding Apple (they seem to be a favorite company for these kind of articles), but most of the times when they are regarding the future I don’t finish them, because well, it’s just guessing.
Personally I have no problem with the 3.5″ screen and only when browsing I sometimes wish the screen would be a little bit bigger. But the zoom function works fine, no so on my Lumia phone.
I don’t recall any phone user, be it iPhone, Android or any other kind, really complain about the size of the screen. Only when the janitor and his Note showed up people started making remarks about it. So I guess it’s mostly those bloggers, but they have to write something because that’s what bloggers do.
No, I really don’t think everyone does. Not everyone tries to make objective statements on subjective matters. Most rational people would say something along the lines of ” I prefer a smaller screen size”, rather than “3.5 inches is the perfect screen size for everyone who has ever existed and for all time, regardless of any future innovation”. The latter is stupid, and people should be made fun of for saying similar things to hopefully point out the folly of confusing objectivity with subjectivity.
Correct. There is no single perfect screen size. The fact that people are starting to demand differentiation among phones with respect to size shows that the market is maturing. With the advent of competition in the smart phone space, users have been been exposed to larger format phones. Some significant number of them have said,”Hey, this bigger size works better for me.”
Apple, like every other manufacturer, must decide which features it wishes to push in a competitive market based on anticipated returns. Will they make more money adding a size, changing the standard size or keeping things like they are?
Despite what many believe, AAPL is not watching out for the interests of anybody but AAPL. The app store is not designed to improve your app experience, it is designed to improve their bottom line. Ditto for the hardware. No unicorns, just the P & L statement. Just like every other OEM.
So, what we’ll know when iPhone 5 launches is AAPL’s considered opinion regarding what size phone people are most willing to pay for, not which size works best.
Well, Yes, but also No. Apple in the second Jobs era, has not been driven by the bottom line analysis of features. They really have just made devices and software how Steve Jobs think devices and software should be. They aren’t as traditionally bottom line, financial analysis driven as others. The problem is Steve Job’s tastes aren’t representative of everyone’s taste.
If they really are going to do something drastically different, there will be cries of people about how “Steve wouldn’t have let this happen”.
I hope that Apple has more features to offer than just bigger screens.
Otherwise I don’t see why it is worth an upgrade at all.
Hint: Maybe a bit more of openness won’t hurt, for example sending data over Bluetooth to other phones.
I think they could two do very different sizes and catch no attacks at all. keep the 3.5″ and do a 4.6-4.8″. nobody gets hurt, and size queens get a big screen.
going from 4.5″ to 4.6″ to 4.8″ doesnt mean the phone looks or feels huge. http://www.phone-size.com/?s=1%2C7%2C83%2C104
both htc one x and galaxy s3 are big 4.7″ and 4.8″ screens. sizes have been growing steadily over time, but wont pass galaxy note’s 5.3″. I wouldn’t be surprised if apple has found the ideal large size and launches this year. they’ve looked dated for long enough. but I also wouldnt be surprised if they launch a sissy 4.5″
if samsung hadn’t gotten the “note” name I feel like apple would have made ipad note or iphone note and changed the world forever. it is that good (galaxy note, that is)
That would be a bad idea imo. IPhone and IOS are developed in unity and both GUI and physical dimensions , screen resistivity, shape and hand hold-ability are all part of the same design.
This amounts to many factors. Finger reachability goes in line with common physical sizes and placements of common widgets, the keyboard and so on that users grow accustomed to. So unless IOS GUI is appropriately redesigned for new dimension the result will backfire.
I believe under SJ the move to larger screens would not happen. But the new CEO is more of a HW guy and leaned to the marketing hits Apple was getting from Samsung and HTC.
Edited 2012-05-16 15:47 UTC
So they’re just copying HTC and Samsung then?
I wouldn’t trust “sources familiar with Apple”, they make weather forecast or financial market forecast look like exact science.
Funny though how people are coming up with mockups all over the internet somehow always turn up wrong.
I’m really thinking of banning Apple of my internet news feeds. As “journalist” and bloggers use the brand more often as a click-bait rather than reporting actual tech-news (these being unfortunately mostly about ligation )