I'm a guy who prefers big phones (Pixel 4a 5G, Pixel 6, Honor 9x) and have no problems putting them in my back pocket or using them with one hand which I do 85% of the time. I held the largest iPhones made at Best Buy and thought they were no big deal in size.
No problems reaching the top right corner with your thumb on the Pro Max to access Control Center? No problems swiping through the keyboard to write quicker? Well, in that case you’re privileged with your huge hands.
There's no way you are reaching the back button with one hand/thumb without major shifting the phone completely in your hand.
The Pro Max is roughly the same size as my Pixel 4a 5G. No problem handling a Pro Max with one hand. You just learn to adapt and position your hand differently. One of the nice features about Android is that your back button is now a gesture. Swipe left from the screen edge within any app and it mimics the back button. That’s a feature I would like to see Apple implement into iOS or iPadOS. It’s really handy.
I tried a phablet phone for one upgrade and loved the phone on the whole but the issues with portability were a complete pain. It looked like I had a roofing tile on my thigh and whenever I sat down I’d have to take the phone out my pocket. Downsizing to the 6.1” iPhone 12 was a good feeling. The screen is big enough and for anything bigger I own an iPad.
The back pocket is a no no for me. I’d sit on it without doubt and wouldn’t want to have to keep taking it out just to sit down. Plus the back pocket isn’t practical in towns and cities in the UK as your phone would be nicked in no time at all.
I do not want to be 1 generation behind in chips, and I also do not want to have 3 cameras.
What specifically about the SoC requires that you have the latest? Hundreds of millions of iPhone users are on A series SoCs that are 5 to 8 generations behind. They are able to still do 98% of what most smartphone users do. I’m still on an iPhone X which Apple is likely to support for a few more revs.
Yeah, you’ll see that dramatic jump if you are going from say an A9 or even A11 to an A15. But I don’t think going from a A15 to A16 will get you much in the way of dramatic performance.
The question is what performance gain in regards to a smartphone? Those teens I see walking around on the ave aren’t doing business intelligence on their phones. Even if they were, most of that would be server side. Sure, if you are trying to future proof the phone it might be an advantage to have the latest SoC. I think even Apple is seeing a bit of redundancy with having a faster SoC every year with nominal gains. Android phones are just catching up to the A11 from 5 years ago. The pressing issue is user experience.
I don’t think it’s the applications on the phone since those have to be loaded into RAM and once they do they pretty fast already. Also remember too, devs might not be optimizing the app, you might also need to replace the battery which can affect performance. Where I’m starting to see performance issues on my iPhone X is when I’m loading my photo library.
