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Why does Apple decide to stay with a small screen?

onthecouchagain said:
And those that argue it's worth it because look at the fragmentation on Android's side.... Well, that's what the Nexus line is for. The Nexus nullifies this argument. Google is able to make drastic improvements (think Gingerbread to ICS) because of this.
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The Nexus line would nullify the fragmentation argument if it was the only line of Android phones but it isn't.

The fragmentation in Android, such as 80% not running the latest software, is part of the reason Android has malware that includes privilege escalation which allows for more serious banking related malware.
 
I find it funny people are blasting the android phones because of battery life. News flash, LTE eats battery not just the screen. All you iphone users will soon understand this and you will not be able to say you have a "better" battery.
 
munkery said:
The Nexus line would nullify the fragmentation argument if it was the only line of Android phones but it isn't.

The fragmentation in Android, such as 80% not running the latest software, is part of the reason Android has malware that includes privilege escalation which allows for more serious banking related malware.
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Which is why if that's that important to anyone, they should solely purchase the Nexus line.

How is a single phone per year from a single software design company different than what Apple is doing with iPhone/iOS?
 
onthecouchagain said:
Which is why if that's that important to anyone, they should solely purchase the Nexus line.

How is a single phone per year from a single software design company different than what Apple is doing with iPhone/iOS?
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What percentage of the Android user base has a phone from the Nexus line?

Most consumers don't know the difference between Android phone A and Android phone B except for the differences they see when the devices are right in front of them.

Different hardware design and different software UI is noticed; most don't understand the implications of the OS version on the phone.

I don't think the Nexus has the nicest aesthetics in terms of hardware design and software UI. But, if I bought an Android phone it would be a Nexus because it is more directly supported by Google.
 
I think us more informed consumers care about screen size but a titanic majority doesn't.

Combine that with the legacy apps to worry about and it makes it hard to change.

The only thing the competition can do is make bigger screens, not necessarily better devices.

Ideally we should get an option of a Jumbo 4.5 Retina iPhone for those of us that care about the media aspects of our phone, and this is still outside of the realm of an iPad.

And I mean yesterday.

They don't need to for profits, but they should for their customers.

I still can't believe they got rid of the 17.
 
I had several jumbo android phones with screens ranging from 4.3" to 4.65"...

I dumped them all for a 3.5" iPhone.
 
Coldsnow said:
Don't iPhone users also want a bigger screen??
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Oh, they will. After Apple tells them it's time for a bigger screen.

I've said this before, screen size isn't an iOS vs Android discussion. iOS would be glorious on a larger screen device.

All the worries about larger phones going the way of old cell phones, becoming bricks; or inability to fit into ones pockets; or inability to use it one handed... all this is pure obscurantism. We're talking about differences of millimeters. It's not going to ruin any of the above concerns. It will, however, go a much longer way in offering a better screen experience.

EDIT: And ignore the slew of "but the Galaxy Note is truly too big" posts that are going to come in response to what I wrote. The Note is blatantly trying to be too big for one handed use. I mean, they insist on using a stylus for goodness sake. And they advertise it as a Phablet more than a smartphone.

A 4.3-4.6" phone running iOS would be glorious.
 
lordofthereef said:
What have you done with the real Bobby Corwen? :eek:
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No seriously.

I remember before the iPhone I had an Audiovox PPC-6700 and I vividly remember the first time I loaded a WMV Music Video to it. I was bored alone in a car at night and I had my headphones in and I was just sitting there in the dark with the vivid and mind-blowingly bombastic experience of doing something normally reserved for Desktops/TVs, in my pocket (PC) and the future became clear. It was so cozy just being in the dark, screen super bright, headphones on full blast, fully immersing in sight and sound, -but just from a phone. It was the first time I felt like it would be impossible for me to ever be bored again anywhere I went as long as I had my phone on me.

Fast forward later to the YouTube era and now that vividness is expanded upon by the competition but Apple doesn't seem to understand this fundamental importance.

This isn't widgets, this isn't flash, this is SCREEN SIZE.

It's as fundamental as screen resolution, battery life, ease of use, and speed.

It's up there with all the fundamentals we usually get from Apple.

This needs to be a luxury we get because as I illustrated in the first paragraph, it's a very delicious advantage. It's part of the fundamental multimedia elements which is part of what the core of the iPhone is about.

Being able to sit there and just watch YouTube and netflix in a more glorious experience makes me want that feature an the idea that we can't maximize on that (4.5 screen) makes me concerned.

We need to sacrifice any legacy apps for this issue ASAP.

The competition has a more immersive experience when watching video (wherever they want on a whim) and I want The Satisfaction of that superior immersive experience too. The video was by benni benassi btw.
 
I find Android phones to be too wide for comfortable one handed operation.
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Please don't bring back those cholo baggy pants with big pockets just to hold a giant phone.
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Bigger screens mean more power consumption, which would need bigger batteries with higher capacities.
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I hate the phones with bigger screens. They're too large and I can't operate them with one hand.
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I like a phone that can fit into my pocket. I mean have you seen the galaxy note.... Forget about putting that in your pocket...
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fragmentation on Android's side...
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These are the most ridiculous arguments ever... :D
 
ThatsMeRight said:
But did you dump them because you considered 4.3" (or 4.65") too big? Or did you dump them because you preferred iOS?
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Technically I dumped them because I was fed up with android, but I did regard the 4.5" Sprint GSII as too big, and the 4.65" GNEX as being obnoxious.

At the time I changed over, I appreciated the comfort of the i4S, but if iPhone 5 went up to 4" or 4.3" at most, I would not complain.

I will say that I think the 4" Nexus S, was and is the most perfectly sized phone ever. It has great proportions, looks and high comfort.
 
onthecouchagain said:
Agreed. Most, if not all, are pure obscurantisms.
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Not really.

Those are valid issues for some but not necessarily the type of things everyone would worry about.

Once you consider there are at least 2 groups of types, (minimalist utilitarian vs entertainment oriented modernist), you realize their needs differ.

There are some who seriously don't want to sacrifice ergonomics for entertainment and they are not crazy. To dismiss them is biased.

The very existance of these groups shows the need clearly in my mind: there shouldthe two models. It's so obvious to me. Just like with their other lineups, they should give the choice, the market paradigm split is clear and significant. Whatever needs to be done needs to be done on their technical/logistical end.
 
I've always thought the "one hand" argument is a bit asinine.

I don't have big hands, and I'm a normal sized guy (5'10", 180). Holding the phone with my right hand, I can extend my thumb about a full inch BEYOND the left edge of the iPhone. And I can extend my thumb about 3/4" BEYOND the right edge of the iPhone. Would a few millimeters or so of extra screen width on each side REALLY force anybody who currently uses the phone one-handed to then use the phone with two hands? I highly, highly, highly doubt that. It certainly wouldn't be the case for me.

Another observation - the vast majority of girls I've ever seen using an iPhone already use it with two hands anyway when texting. I realize I don't know all the girls in the world with iPhones and I'm not trying to stereotype/generalize by any means, but this is just my observation over the past 5+ years.

The bottom line is that there is virtually no way that anybody who currently uses the iPhone one handed would not be able to continue to use the phone one handed with a slight increase in screen width. And an important thing to keep in mind is that an increase in screen width does NOT necessarily mean an increase in overall phone width like a lot of people are assuming. :rolleyes:
 
greygray said:
how big do you want your phone to be? just to put a bigger battery in a bigger phone just to have a bigger screen. seriously??
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I would love a phone i could use extensively without having to recharge it once or twice a day but once every two days. If it means that this phone diagonal has to be 4.5" or 5" I dont mind
 
Aside from this debate being beaten into the ground....

The "Women's hands" argument makes no sense. I don't know what kind of women you guys hang with, but where I come from women come in all the same shapes and sizes that men do. Yeah they have a few more curves, but the size of their hands varies just like every other animal.

Also when it comes to threads like this, people use a lot of adjectives without understanding that interpretation will vary greatly from one person to the next.

We haven't even received confirmation on the next iPhone's dimensions and we are still debating this tired non-issue. There are a ton of good phones out there with "large" screens. You don't have to sit around and complain that Apple won't make you a custom iPhone with your preferred dimensions.
 
ThatsMeRight said:
He says that cost is not part of the equation. I tell him it is. Apple is more about maximizing profits: there where other companies would immediately have put in 512 MB RAM in the first generation iPad, Apple decided to put in 256 MB of RAM to save costs.

Use any first generation iPad. You'll find out it runs out of memory all the time. You can barely load two or three pages without them refreshing automatically all the time. And multitasking? At best a few apps that will stay in memory.

Hardware always stays important. Of course manufacturers use it for marketing. "Super AMOLED Plus Extreme" sounds great... because it's super AMOLED... the plus variant... and the extreme variant. But at some point we'll have more power processors in our smartphones - not just for marketing, but because the Operating Systems become more demanding. Apps become more demanding (think about more advanced games, or augmented reality becoming even more advanced).

RAM is one of the critical things for iOS to run smooth. An iPhone 4S with 256 MB of RAM would run terrible. Apple gave the first generation iPad just 256 MB of RAM - the device was released in April of 2010. At that point, they were long aware that iOS 4 would get multitasking. At that point, they knew an iOS device with more RAM would be able to deal better with multitasking (after all, the iPhone 4 did get 512 MB of RAM).

Apple is in no way holy to me. They make great products, but I do believe that sometimes Apple prefers to bring down the price of a product with $1 instead of making a product run (even) smoother.

EDIT
And oh, the links you asked for.

- https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/914175/
- https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/904353/
- https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/898131/
- https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/967493/
- http://www.ifans.com/forums/threads/stop-safari-auto-refresh.306343/
- https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/889756/
- http://www.mactalk.com.au/57/83140-256m-ram-not-enough-ipad.html
- https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1031798/
- http://forums.digitalspy.co.uk/showthread.php?t=1719147
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The total post count in all of the threads listed are such a small fraction of sales that it becomes a big so what. Poor code practices, app memory management and webpage practices are identified in some posts. If you really believe any large consumer company known for user experience would cut costs 25 cents and severely harm the experience for the majority of users, well back away from the pipe sir. carry on:cool:
 
Re: one-handed usage.

One difference with iOS devices as compared to Android devices, is a lack of a physical Back button underneath the display.

Instead, the onscreen Back button is most often at the upper left.

Even just elongating the screen, as is rumored for the next iPhone, moves that Back button further away from most users' thumbs.

--

A lot of people also bring up multi-touch, which usually requires two hands.

Personally, I find myself using voice input more and more often to save time and my poor fingers :)
 
kdarling said:
Re: one-handed usage.

One difference with iOS devices as compared to Android devices, is a lack of a physical Back button underneath the display.

Instead, the onscreen Back button is most often at the upper left.

Even just elongating the screen, as is rumored for the next iPhone, moves that Back button further away from most users' thumbs.
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Extremely valid point. This is the hardest thing to reach on the iPhone and I what I HATE most about the UI. This is a compromise we all must live with because of Apple's insistence on a single, mechanical home button. And, that upper back arrow will be that much harder for people to reach if the screen goes taller. Sounds like a solution you'd expect from a company that introduced a one button mouse.
 
Sedrick said:
Extremely valid point. This is the hardest thing to reach on the iPhone and I what I HATE most about the UI. This is a compromise we all must live with because of Apple's insistence on a single, mechanical home button. And, that upper back arrow will be that much harder for people to reach if the screen goes taller. Sounds like a solution you'd expect from a company that introduced a one button mouse.
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I don't find it to be a problem and I have average size hands. If I hole the phone in my left hand the upper back button directly under my thumb. If in my right, it is an easy stretch.
 
Coldsnow said:
Why is Apple retaining the small screen size when Android users get the luxury of indulging a big screen?

What's the point? And why are people saying it's going to boost sales?

Don't iPhone users also want a bigger screen?? Is there something I'm missing? :confused:
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Carpal tunnel is a luxury these days?

The idea of the iPhone was that you can use it in portrait with one hand comfortably instead of the all too familiar looking two hand peck method that I see Galaxy Note users doing.
 
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