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Nobody designs for small iPhone devices anymore

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Re: Nobody designs for small iPhone devices anymore

#21

Post by forgotmypw17 »

skohan wrote: post #10

Why would you? There are a tiny share of small screen size phones out there, and often you need a substantially different design for a small screen. Basically you are doubling the layout effort on your designers and app developers (or let's say 1.3 times modifier at least), and those designs have to be maintained as well. The alternative is to really have a "one size fits all" design, but this will likely mean making…

why?

pride in worksmanship, perhaps...

because 1% is still quite a few users for whom the experience sucks...

or perhaps just plain old empathy...

because not every customer can just replace their device...

or... i dunno... just avoiding someone posting embarrassing screenshots of one's app looking like shit on hacker news?

Re: Nobody designs for small iPhone devices anymore

#22

Post by Wowfunhappy »

skohan wrote: post #10

Why would you? There are a tiny share of small screen size phones out there, and often you need a substantially different design for a small screen. Basically you are doubling the layout effort on your designers and app developers (or let's say 1.3 times modifier at least), and those designs have to be maintained as well. The alternative is to really have a "one size fits all" design, but this will likely mean making…

Important note: the author is actually talking about the 2020 iPhone SE. There has got to be tons of those + iPhone 8/7/6S’s still in use.

Re: Nobody designs for small iPhone devices anymore

#23

Post by formerly_proven »

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.

Apple devices are full of dark patterns (to get you to enable "upload everything always to iCloud") and bad UX. Even super basic stuff like the alarm clock ("bedtime") has become a Rube Goldberg-esque nightmare, and good UX elements have been replaced with garbage in other places as well. For example, setting the time of an alarm requires you to drag in a 5x5 mm area for hour and minute, respectively. Not only is that a way too small area for a touch interface, but you are also not seeing what you are setting it to. Utter garbage.

Re: Nobody designs for small iPhone devices anymore

#24

Post by mattmanser »

forgotmypw17 wrote: post #21
skohan wrote: post #10

Why would you? There are a tiny share of small screen size phones out there, and often you need a substantially different design for a small screen. Basically you are doubling the layout effort on your designers and app developers (or let's say 1.3 times modifier at least), and those designs have to be maintained as well. The alternative is to really have a "one size fits all" design, but this will likely mean making…

why? pride in worksmanship, perhaps... because 1% is still quite a few users for whom the experience sucks... or perhaps just plain old empathy... because not every customer can just replace their device... or... i dunno... just avoiding someone posting embarrassing screenshots of one's app looking like shit on hacker news?

And then you make it suck for everyone else.

Mobile first often made the experience suck for desktops.

Tiny screen first just makes the experience suck for everyone.

The author says: Also, I don’t care if the statistics for small devices is less than 1%, it’s just pure respect for those users.

But that's a false dichotomy.

Re: Nobody designs for small iPhone devices anymore

#25

Post by afavour »

skohan wrote: post #10

Why would you? There are a tiny share of small screen size phones out there, and often you need a substantially different design for a small screen. Basically you are doubling the layout effort on your designers and app developers (or let's say 1.3 times modifier at least), and those designs have to be maintained as well. The alternative is to really have a "one size fits all" design, but this will likely mean making…

> Basically you are doubling the layout effort on your designers and app developers (or let's say 1.3 times modifier at least), and those designs have to be maintained as well.

Judging by the screenshots in the article this really isn’t true. Devs just need to bother to test with these small devices, they’d see the padding and offset issues immediately and it would be an easy fix.

Re: Nobody designs for small iPhone devices anymore

#26

Post by dreamer7 »

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 but my phone will show lag and artifacts while scrolling through an infinite scrolling screen.

Re: Nobody designs for small iPhone devices anymore

#27

Post by paulcole »

forgotmypw17 wrote: post #21
skohan wrote: post #10

Why would you? There are a tiny share of small screen size phones out there, and often you need a substantially different design for a small screen. Basically you are doubling the layout effort on your designers and app developers (or let's say 1.3 times modifier at least), and those designs have to be maintained as well. The alternative is to really have a "one size fits all" design, but this will likely mean making…

why? pride in worksmanship, perhaps... because 1% is still quite a few users for whom the experience sucks... or perhaps just plain old empathy... because not every customer can just replace their device... or... i dunno... just avoiding someone posting embarrassing screenshots of one's app looking like shit on hacker news?

> someone posting embarrassing screenshots of one's app looking like shit on hacker news

The horror!

My mom will for sure delete her local bank’s app if she sees the post showing that the padding is a few pixels off on a phone she doesn’t own.

Re: Nobody designs for small iPhone devices anymore

#29

Post by kawsper »

iamben wrote: post #14

We've had this discussion on HN before and I'll make the same point, because this is very similar with responsive websites as well. All too often I see designs that don't think about odd size tablets, or (as here) phones less than 375 or 414, or whatever else. It absolutely boggles my mind, especially when you can attribute a "this is how much these users spend" amount to it (an ecom store, for instance). Most of the…

> It absolutely boggles my mind, especially when you can attribute a "this is how much these users spend" amount to it (an ecom store, for instance).

It also happens the other way around, they break it for odd-sized devices and then they go look at their numbers: "It's less than 1% of our revenue", WELL OF COURSE IT IS! It's broken!

Re: Nobody designs for small iPhone devices anymore

#30

Post by formerly_proven »

endemic wrote: post #12
fouc wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still using the iPhone SE (2016) as my daily driver. I find overall it's fine, only occasionally does a button get cut off by the screen size with no recourse.

I’ve been confused by the “share” window where the screen dimensions cut content off perfectly, and there is no scroll indicator, so you don’t realize there’s more to the UI.

GDPR "consent" popups are sometimes not usable on the first gen SE, because some of them position: absolute with a fixed size that's larger than the screen. Coincidentally, the "Accept all" button is always reachable, with the "Settings" or "Deny most" button conveniently located below the unreachable fold.
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