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iPhone SE

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Re: iPhone SE

#571

Post by LeoNatan25 »

madeofpalk wrote: post #535
Kronopath wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to take the opportunity to point out that when people talk about how mobile touch interfaces have "low discoverability", comments like this are exactly what they're talking about .

But it should also be noted there's a difference of importance between the discoverability for basic functions, like opening apps or moving the cursor 'regularly' in a text field. Then you have the discoverability of the shortcuts, or 'power user' features which you can do without Of course, this is all on a grade. Control Centre has a medium-low discoverability (given only a visual hint on the lock screen), and is m…

Deep pressing on the keyboard triggers a cursor movement (keep pressed to continue moving the cursor). Press deeper to toggle cursor selection.

Re: iPhone SE

#572

Post by samstave »

devy wrote: post #506
yuvadam wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That usually requires significant soldering experience with SMT components and can possibly require soldering a BGA which is crazy hard (up to impossible) if you're not a machine.

Yup! The technicians shown in the video said they usually have around 50 "upgrades" a day done in the shop and this techniques has been around since April 2015. Worst comes to be worst, Huaqiangbei has tons of vendors who sell iPhone scrape parts so an accidental damage can be easily "replaced" and fixed up. And I wouldn't be surprised if some of the technicians were Foxconn trained workers.

Are you in China? (This is not a criticism) your grammar sounds as though you may be Chinese.

I wonder how many people in the China tech scene read HN?

Re: iPhone SE

#573

Post by tbabb »

makecheck wrote: post #419
tsunamifury wrote: post #35

No 3D touch is a very odd fragmentation. You'd think they'd want to shore up their devices to be completely compatible with this across the spectrum to motivate developers to use it as a key part of their UX. Now when only X So your apps have to optionally use 3D Touch, Pencil, adaptive layout, fingerprint, and several other interactions that only cover fractions of their hardware line.

You know, until you mentioned it just now, I’d forgotten my phone even has 3D Touch. It had been literally weeks since I last thought to use force-touch for anything, mostly because there is zero indication where it will work. And it is half-baked in the sense that when I do activate 3D Touch, it’s usually by accident. It is almost the same gesture as deleting apps on the home screen! I go to delete an app, press-and…

Cursor navigation with 3D touch is very nice, and a long time coming. Tap and hold the keyboard when typing to move the cursor around.

Re: iPhone SE

#574

Post by phinnaeus »

abvdasker wrote: post #526
ccozan wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Xperia Z5 is really marvelous. Unlucky for me, my Moto X 2013 is still going so strong, that I have no reason to change it...

I've also got a Z5 Compact and couldn't be happier with it. There is literally no other phone in the same size category with flagship specs at the moment. Add to that an SD-card slot, heroic battery life, water-resistant body, fingerprint reader, plus solid design and you've got what I consider to be among the best phones on the market. Unfortunately, the Xperia brand is not doing well in the US. Sony has completely…

I love my Z5 Compact as well, primarily for the small size. I completely agree with your comment about the Sony brand here in the US. Totally anecdotal but at least 90% of the comments about my phone are asking if it's a Windows/Nokia phone. Although that could be because I got the yellow one.

Re: iPhone SE

#575

Post by 1123581321 »

maxaf wrote: post #46
giarc wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not upgrade to a 5 or 5S now though? The 4S is quite a ways behind, and with the 5 and even the 5S being out for so long, you could get some great deals.

It all comes down to AppleCare: I don't want to own an aftermarket phone that isn't covered for damage by anything other than my own wallet. The 5/5S can only remain a viable option for me if they're sold directly by Apple & allow me to purchase AppleCare. Anything less means I take on the risk of having to keep repairing/replacing the phone every time it breaks. Unfortunately, this happens far too often.

I think your math is a bit off. A refurb or MNVO 5S costs about $200 right now. AppleCare costs $99 + $79/replacement up to two on top of the phone. So, if Apple sold you a new 5S for $250, you'd pay $349 for it, $428 if you had to replace it, and $507 if you had to replace it twice. Replacing once sounds nearly breakeven until you factor that the price of a refurb 5S will continue to fall but the deductible on your replacement will stay fixed.

Two breaks would still justify AppleCare, but the odds are pretty low.

I understand if you just greatly value getting service from Apple and want to pay for that privilege, but if you won't buy a 5S only because it's risky, then you should reconsider.

Re: iPhone SE

#577

Post by Someone »

Swizec wrote: post #567
Someone wrote: post #560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also doubles the bandwidth of that interaction. You had one slow and one fast interaction, and there now are two of each. Big question seems to be what the best mapping between those interactions and commands is. You want to map the most frequently used interactions to the fast interactions, but you also want the mapping to be learnable (consistency across applications likely is needed there), and 'intuitive' in t…

The machine was rather difficult to operate. For years radios had been operated by means of pressing buttons and turning dials; then as the technology became more sophisticated the controls were made touch-sensitive—you merely had to brush the panels with your fingers; now all you had to do was wave your hand in the general direction of the components and hope. It saved a lot of muscular expenditure of course, but me…

Yes, that would be part of the challenge. A safe way would be to require some comtinuous physical interaction to activate the mode. More sophisticated would be a neural network that decides whether you are trying to communicate with your phone. Also note that it doesn't directly have to be an interface that allows you to accidentally detonate a nuke while you think you are waving to a friend passing by. Limited versions of this have been proposed for cars and trucks in the form of detectors that detect whether the driver is awake and attentive to the road.

Re: iPhone SE

#578

Post by canadev »

fiatpandas wrote: post #32

As a stubborn iPhone 4 user, I was excited for this press conference because of the return to a smaller form factor. I'm not sure the SE is going to push me over the edge just yet, despite the price. Think I can hold out for a couple more months, just in case something amazing happens with the 7.

Just in case you don't know about this feature that scrolls the top of the screen down the screen: http://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-use-reachability-on-iphone...

Re: iPhone SE

#579

Post by g4k »

Esau wrote: post #480
makecheck wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, until you mentioned it just now, I’d forgotten my phone even has 3D Touch. It had been literally weeks since I last thought to use force-touch for anything, mostly because there is zero indication where it will work. And it is half-baked in the sense that when I do activate 3D Touch, it’s usually by accident. It is almost the same gesture as deleting apps on the home screen! I go to delete an app, press-and…

I think 3D touch is a lot like a right-mouse click in the desktop environment, in that there is rarely anything to indicate where you can do it. You basically have to read about it or just try. That said, I don't personally care for it. I also feel that iOS is getting too complicated.

The worst thing is that 3D touch made the iPhone 6s very heavy. Hopefully they get rid of it in an upcoming iteration.

Re: iPhone SE

#580

Post by metheus »

I'm perplexed by all the suggestions that 3D touch is a misstep. Arguments center around it being useless, hard to discover, or a source of platform fragmentation and therefore confusion.

1) "3D touch is useless."

3D touch adds a new affordance to interacting with screen elements. Perhaps you do not use 3D touch, perhaps applications have not yet incorporated the feature in a compelling way, but 3D touch is no more useless than analog pressure sensitivity in game controller buttons. I would be shocked if driving games available for iOS didn't adopt pressure sensitive accelerator features this year. Ditto drawing apps; Pixelmator has already added support.

Additionally, 3D touch means that interactions that previously had to depend on introducing latency (long-press) can now happen more quickly. 3D touch also promises a high degree of real-time feedback to a user, for example in the case of peek and pop.

Application shortcuts are also very convenient and hold even more promise as apps become more powerful and complex, and if anything serve to highlight that Apple needs to improve the springboard environment.

2) "3D touch suffers from poor discoverability."

I agree somewhat, but it doesn't make the feature bad. There is room for improvement here, and hidden features can still be good features. The solution is to improve the extent to which the elements embody press-ability.

My guess is that future iOS versions will incorporate more visual cues for the interface elements that afford 3D interaction. Consider, for example, how the lock screen camera icon bounces when you tap on it -- suggesting that it should be swiped up (IIRC it used to launch the camera when you tapped on it). At the moment it's pure conjecture, but, just to toss out some ideas, elements could appear to depress slightly when touched normally, or be given a (very) minor 3D treatment... or down the line, haptic feedback could simulate texture (see http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=H...)

(Are any 'discoverability' critics emacs users?)

3. "3D Touch is confusing because some hardware supports it and some do not."

Other people have already argued very effectively against this point. Also...

Some mice have more mouse buttons than others. Some iPhones have processors that support power-free "Hey Siri". Some cars have built-in GPS. In general, people are not confused by higher cost/prestige features being absent from some models of a product.

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