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Nobody designs for small iPhone devices anymore

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Re: Nobody designs for small iPhone devices anymore

#121

Post by layer8 »

skohan wrote: post #38
solarkraft wrote: post #17

> Also, I don’t care if the statistics for small devices is less than 1%, it’s just pure respect for those users. Thanks. This attutude of respect on the UI side is why I'm tempted by the Apple platform. Unfortunately it looks like it's not as perfect as hoped initially and there's a lot of disrespect on other ends.

What's the cutoff? If you have a single user who's running iOS 7 and you have to slow down feature development 50% to support them, do you have to do that out of respect?

You should at least support what the latest devices support, e.g. iPhone 12 mini with Display Zoom turned on and large fonts. Incidentally, that will also mostly take care of the iPhone 5/5S/SE1 screen size.

https://hacknicity.medium.com/how-ios-apps-adapt-to-the-vari...

Re: Nobody designs for small iPhone devices anymore

#122

Post by hanniabu »

tinus_hn wrote: post #45

A big part of the problem is people just not following the guidelines. If you have a toolbar with buttons that have labels, it’s not going to fit. But if you’re following the guidelines, you don’t have labels and it fits. If you have a list with a refresh button on the bottom you have to scroll to see that button on a small screen. But if you use the standard pull to refresh control, you don’t even need the button. I…

> If you use these smart hamburger menu overlay or scroll controls, they look bad on untested devices. Don’t use hamburger menus.

What is a good alternative to a hamburger menu? I can't think of anything that wouldn't have the similar issues.

Re: Nobody designs for small iPhone devices anymore

#123

Post by snarkyturtle »

tinus_hn wrote: post #45

A big part of the problem is people just not following the guidelines. If you have a toolbar with buttons that have labels, it’s not going to fit. But if you’re following the guidelines, you don’t have labels and it fits. If you have a list with a refresh button on the bottom you have to scroll to see that button on a small screen. But if you use the standard pull to refresh control, you don’t even need the button. I…

Icons with labels are best practice for accessibility.

Re: Nobody designs for small iPhone devices anymore

#124

Post by jiofih »

dreamer7 wrote: post #26

This is not true. We still use my iPhone SE with a 4" screen as the primary testing device for our iOS app - https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/vendi-buy-sell-verified-phones... There are many advantages to it. If it looks good on the SE, we can be reasonably sure it will look good on everything else (though this was affected by the introduction of the notch). Also, flagship iPhones can easily handle badly designed apps b…

Not true for you, true in general - “nobody” being just hyperbole.

Re: Nobody designs for small iPhone devices anymore

#125

Post by iamben »

enlyth wrote: post #57
skohan wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most of the time it's not much extra effort to make it work properly I strongly disagree - with smaller devices you might be talking about an entirely different layout, and maybe a separate set of assets. More time for designers, more time for developers, and a whole category of tests for QA to verify during regression tests. You're talking about widening the entire development pipeline.

Most people on HN think UIs should be autogenerated from backend code and that peak UI was Windows 95. Anyone worth their salt doing some real UI work knows how difficult it is to accommodate every arbitrary resolution and aspect ratio.

To reply to you both - I'm specifically talking about the web. I have no experience building apps, so can't comment there. But for the web, I'm absolutely happy to argue it's not that much more effort.

Re: Nobody designs for small iPhone devices anymore

#126

Post by layer8 »

TrueGeek wrote: post #111
tambourine_man wrote: post #86

> Well, if you’ve been rocking the iPhone SE 2020 you would know If you’ve been rocking the original SE you’d know even better. Such a shame, it’s the best size phone I’ve had.

Have you tried the new Mini? I switched from the Pro and love it.

I have, and it is noticeably heavier and less “thumbable” than the SE1 (and the screen scratches much more easily). The mini size is better than the 6/SE2, plus the return to flat edges, but it’s still a compromise in usability compared to the 5/SE1.

Re: Nobody designs for small iPhone devices anymore

#128

Post by Nextgrid »

tinus_hn wrote: post #88
tyfon wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The custom buttons without labels are a pet peeve of mine actually. I can never guess what the buttons do when they only have pictures and each app use their own icon set. There are some apps that use standard buttons that I recognize but far too many want to be fancy and roll their own making the app practically unusable unless you guess correct or press all buttons to see what they do. But you are correct in that i…

But if you consider the app in the example, the ‘Globe’ carrier app, you’ll almost immediately see that the problem is that it is a confusing navigational spaghetti that is designed to force users to explore an app littered with ‘promotional offers’. Why else would you need a special ‘discover these precious diamonds’ button in the toolbar, with the useful paths hidden in the hamburger menu and then patched over with…

The main problem here isn’t that apps/services don’t follow the guidelines per-se but that more and more software is designed not to solve a particular problem efficiently and get paid honest money for that effort but to waste as much of the user’s time as possible showing them “offers”. The industry calls this “engagement” and a large chunk of people’s salaries and careers (including mine at the beginning) is based on that.

Re: Nobody designs for small iPhone devices anymore

#129

Post by tinus_hn »

faitswulff wrote: post #93
tinus_hn wrote: post #45

A big part of the problem is people just not following the guidelines. If you have a toolbar with buttons that have labels, it’s not going to fit. But if you’re following the guidelines, you don’t have labels and it fits. If you have a list with a refresh button on the bottom you have to scroll to see that button on a small screen. But if you use the standard pull to refresh control, you don’t even need the button. I…

I would find this a more compelling argument if some of the apps in question weren’t from Apple themselves (Apple Shortcuts, Apple TV). If Apple can’t get it right, then how can we expect anyone else to?

The Apple TV example looks a bit disingenuous, the huge black space normally holds an image promoting one of the shows. That’s why it has so much space. I don’t know why in his situation the header is empty but that has nothing to do with layout on small screens. You could complain the promotional image is too large but it’s really obvious you can scroll down to reveal the rest of the content and I don’t think anyone is contesting the conclusion that yes, a small screen fits less content without scrolling.

The Apple Shortcuts (which by the way is an acquired app that was not originally designed by Apple) problem indeed is a bug in the way the sheet works, probably because of the custom keyboard like icon picker at the bottom, which is really poorly designed anyway. If you have an iOS device, here’s a riddle:

If your device has a larger screen than the one in the article and you try to recreate it (on ‘My shortcuts’ navigate back, then tap the add folder button), you can choose from a larger set of icons. Someone with an even larger device than yours would see a palette with even more icons. But on your device you can get to these icons as well, try to find out how!

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