Apple resumes selling iPhone SE at lower $249 price on its clearance store

I'm also on an iPhone 7, and don't even really want a premium version of the iPhone SE, I just want an SE-sized phone with water resistance.

If it had nicer specs (e.g. hardware on par with iPhone 8 and a better display) that would a bonus. However, I wouldn't want a high-res display necessarily. I think they should keep the pixel density of the current SE. What I would found after briefly using an SE is that the low-res display coupled with the CPU/GPU from the 6S resulted in amazing UI performance -- much better than the 6S and maybe even the 7. Getting rid of the bezels would be nice, though that might detract from one of the advantages of the SE, that you can firmly grip the phone while being able to touch any part of the screen with your thumb, but it would be worth the trade-off I think.

I spent a week with an SE, after having used the 6 and the 6S before doing so, and I found I quickly adjusted to the smaller screen, and could even type faster since there was less finger travel needed (relying heavily on auto-correct).

Battery life on the SE is also great (at least it was for me), and I'd like to see that replicated on a newer small phone, with whatever tradeoff is necessary to accomplish it (e.g. low-res display, thicker phone).

Sony cancelled the XZ4 compact :(

I'm hoping to get the Sharp Aquos R2 compact announced back in November; but it doesn't seem to have hit the market yet. Probably will during MWC 2019?

Go to Korea or China and you'll see there's no particular correlation between hand and phone sizes. It's mostly cultural.

North-America, Europe and Japan are over-saturated. Markets that are still growing drive the demand for bigger phones, it's really as simple as that.

I think you are confusing people that want a small phone with people that want a premium small phone.

If you go with the small phone concept then your life might not revolve around your 'hand rectangle'. You also might have bought your phone ages ago and be in no hurry to upgrade.

A lot of the older folk are okay with the relatively basic phones they bought five years ago. So long as the camera is good enough for messages to close family members and the phone works for voice calls then there is no problem. These phones did have smaller screens and, for this demographic, there is no perceived point in upgrading to the expensive, fragile giant hand rectangle. Consequently they are not a vocal crowd. All slowness is them fumbling around or connection speed, the latest and greatest CPU is not important and the screen is adequate for their eyesight.

I run a basic small screen phone myself and I am toying with spending the £3.29 to get the cracked screen replaced. I could get a better phone but I would be looking at something equally small and underpowered as what I currently own, something that wouldn't even be considered a phone by most people here. 4.5" screen with plastic back and replaceable battery, with SD card slot. It will cost a tenth of the price of a premium hand-rectangle and I will probably own it for much longer than how long a premium phone is owned for.

So yes there is 'low demand' but lots of it. This demand is met by products that don't even appear on the radar of the HN crowd as 'viable'.

> Not a single one is making small high end phones.

This is not quite true - Sony still is producing the high-end XZ2 Compact with the Snapdragon 845 and 4GB RAM - https://www.sonymobile.com/us/products/phones/xperia-xz2-com...

Sony is the only manufacturer I'm aware of that is still producing smallish phones. It is rumoured to be replacing this phone with the XZ4 Compact, but Sony is not particularly good at marketing or distributing its phones.

> Is every manufacturer blind to market demand and/or stupid?

Quite possibly. Mobile phone manufacturers seem to slavishly copy each other and copy Apple especially, as can be seen with the recent stupid copying of the removal of headphone jacks and the use of notches in many phones after Apple made these changes in its iPhones. Was the market demanding these changes? I doubt it. Were these changes necessary? No.

If everyone wants phones with larger screens, why are so many consumers holding off on upgrading their iPhone? Apple recently blamed its battery upgrade program for a $9 billion loss in revenue, but its very possible that a reasonable percentage of the users of these older iPhones simply don't the larger-screened and more expensive iPhones currently on offer.

> you'll need to explain why every phone manufacturer has come to the opposite conclusion

I suspect that manufacturers are making phones with larger screens as many consumers in what were faster-growing smartphone markets such as China and India preferred phones with larger screens so they could have a single 'smart' device, rather than buy a phone and a tablet as many consumers in developed economy markets did.

I suspect also that the lack of diversity amongst smartphone product managers and engineering staff is also having an important influence on these changes. Men are physically larger than women on average, and are over-represented in the staff of smartphone manufacturing companies. More women, older and disabled people in their staff would likely help to produce devices that suit the needs of a wider range of people, and not just young men with high levels of physical dexterity, good eyesight and higher than average interest in 'working out' how to use overly complicated smartphone interfaces.

I hope that mobile phone manufacturers can regain their ability to segment the market and produce a wider range of devices and form factors like they did until a couple of years ago. Innovation in the smartphone space has slowed dramatically, and it's no wonder that smartphone sales have also slowed.