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iPhone 17e

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Re: iPhone 17e

#421

Post by dgellow »

layer8 wrote: post #158
dgellow wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get an SE 3rd gen!

The SE3 is only half a year younger than the 13 mini the parent comment mentioned (and it’s larger and heavier than the mini), so I don’t really see the benefit there.

Right, I missed that part. Then get the mini if you prefer it. I’m in the camp of people who hate large phones, the day they remove the SE form factor is the day I switch to android. IMHO the 5S form factor was perfected, any change after that is unnecessary. And I also love having a physical button on my SE, I hope that device will survive for a very long time as I’m not optimistic we will have such options in the future :(

Small form factor and security updates are literally my only criteria for phones.

Re: iPhone 17e

#422

Post by NoLinkToMe »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #321
NoLinkToMe wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come on, the iPhone had: - no app store - no video recording at all - no copy/paste function - no selfie camera - no GPS Just to name a few. I won't even go into things like touch/faceID, wireless charging, iCloud, any form of water resistance etc. And then in terms of the specs on what it did have that got better, processor, memory, storage, screen quality, battery life, camera, it's all orders of magnitude better.…

It took about three years to get all the features in your bulleted list. It's been another fifteen and a half years since. Touch/faceID is cheap, wireless charging is cheap, the free tier of iCloud is cheap, water resistance is cheap. Yes the specs have increased a ton. When asking for a model under $500, the idea would be giving up some of those specs. And that's clearly possible; even low end phones these days are…

Yes it was the iPhone 4 and it was $649, or $968 in today's money for 16gb of storage.

That mean's today's cheapest iPhone is 40% cheaper than this base model you're referring to, as well as being tons better. If you don't think 40% is a hefty price drop then idk what to tell you.

That's for the 16gb by the way, the next year's 64gb would've constituted a 53% price drop today.

And that's still for a wildly different phone. You're getting way, way more value today. Longevity alone is easily twice as long, meaning the cost-per-use or cost-per-year can be halved, leading to >75% price drops.

The idea Apple should be going even beyond that to make low-end new phones for a company that positions itself at the top of the market, is just silly. Apple has a long line of phones available for purchase on the secondary market, refurbished market, old-model market, is known to replace batteries 7 years after discontinuing the sale, and can be replaced with non-official batteries as well.

Like you could literally buy an iPhone 12 on the secondary market for $50 and do a $39 battery replacement, or buy it fully refurbished for $150. You can buy a million android phones at any spec level. The idea that Apple should compete at this budget with its own old phones and android phones is a bad idea and the idea Apple entry level phones aren't much cheaper, have more longevity and have wildly better specs than before, is empirically not true.

Is it technically possible for Apple to create a $400 phone that's still much better than the original iPhone? Obviously I agree with you that it is. Does it make sense for Apple to do it? Obviously not.

In this thread you'll have people saying 60 hertz is ridiculous in 2026 on an iPhone 17, and people saying they're completely fine with iPhone 12 specs in 2026 and wanting to get more discounts for fewer specs (ignoring the fact you can indeed simply buy that iPhone 12). The remaining market is so slim it's not worth getting into, but you can't please everyone with a lineup of 5 phones.

Re: iPhone 17e

#423

Post by patall »

crossroadsguy wrote: post #264
higgins wrote: post #206

the only thing i search for on these announcements is phone width. bring back the mini

I learnt it the sad way that no one wants it except very very few people.

I do not think that is really the case. What actually happens is that smaller phones are often worse, i.e less battery life, worse processor, worse camera. Because there is less space in the device (and manufacturers think that people will buy a slightly thicker phone) and the screen doesn't use that much energy, the battery has to be smaller impacting performance. And users do not accept that. So unless someone discovers that you can make a full feature, big battery phone by increasing depth and weight of the small device, it wont happen / be popular. But once one company makes one, other will probably follow. Which again reduces revenue per producer...

Re: iPhone 17e

#424

Post by u1hcw9nx »

carefree-bob wrote: post #365
danielvaughn wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People make fun of me but I'll never skip a chance to complain about how large these phones are. I hate it so much. I have a standard iPhone, not a max, and it causes real pain in my wrist if I use it too much. Was honestly thinking about downgrading to the last SE model even though it's several years out of date.

I want to +1 every comment in this thread. Phones are too big now. I don't understand Apple's weird obsessions, first trying to make all the phone so thin you cut your hand holding it, and then making it too big to fit comfortably in your pocket unless you are walking around in camo pants. You know what I would like? When I tap on the search and type the first few letters of an app on my phone, and the app appears, a…

It's not an obsession. Its calculation. They noticed bigger phones lead to customers buying more services and apps.

Re: iPhone 17e

#425

Post by pja »

danielvaughn wrote: post #61
thoughtpalette wrote: post #8

Still holding onto my 13 mini. Dreaming of another small form factor release one of these announcements.. :'}

People make fun of me but I'll never skip a chance to complain about how large these phones are. I hate it so much. I have a standard iPhone, not a max, and it causes real pain in my wrist if I use it too much. Was honestly thinking about downgrading to the last SE model even though it's several years out of date.

Same. The Pixel 4a was the perfect phone for me: Light, screen exactly the right size to navigate with a single thumb whilst holding the phone in one hand, enough battery life, small enough to fit in my jean pockets comfortably.

But people buy big phones in preference to small ones, so that’s what Google & Apple manufacture. Nobody (from the POV of Apple/Google decision makers) buys these smaller phones.

Re: iPhone 17e

#426

Post by dncornholio »

danielvaughn wrote: post #61
thoughtpalette wrote: post #8

Still holding onto my 13 mini. Dreaming of another small form factor release one of these announcements.. :'}

People make fun of me but I'll never skip a chance to complain about how large these phones are. I hate it so much. I have a standard iPhone, not a max, and it causes real pain in my wrist if I use it too much. Was honestly thinking about downgrading to the last SE model even though it's several years out of date.

I did downgrade back to my SE (from iPhone 16). Big selling point (aside from its size and rounded corners) is the physical button with fingerprint. I missed that even more than I disliked carrying a big phone around.

Re: iPhone 17e

#427

Post by dncornholio »

brightbeige wrote: post #395
danielvaughn wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People make fun of me but I'll never skip a chance to complain about how large these phones are. I hate it so much. I have a standard iPhone, not a max, and it causes real pain in my wrist if I use it too much. Was honestly thinking about downgrading to the last SE model even though it's several years out of date.

I have a pet theory about increasing phone sizes > Screen size is area (x^2) and battery size is volume (x^3). As battery life is a critical feature, a bigger screen supports (a nonlinear) better battery life. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44588733

I had a Sony Xperia Z1 mini, that was close to the size of a SE but had double the battery lifetime.

Re: iPhone 17e

#428

Post by dncornholio »

watersb wrote: post #284
danielvaughn wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People make fun of me but I'll never skip a chance to complain about how large these phones are. I hate it so much. I have a standard iPhone, not a max, and it causes real pain in my wrist if I use it too much. Was honestly thinking about downgrading to the last SE model even though it's several years out of date.

I'm typing this on an iPhone SE (2020). It runs the latest iOS, although it's likely missing some of the new bits. I prefer the size, although the screen that spans the entire front surface would be the superior device; I like the iPhone 13 Mini.

I rather have the fingerprint button!

Re: iPhone 17e

#429

Post by cachius »

carefree-bob wrote: post #365
danielvaughn wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People make fun of me but I'll never skip a chance to complain about how large these phones are. I hate it so much. I have a standard iPhone, not a max, and it causes real pain in my wrist if I use it too much. Was honestly thinking about downgrading to the last SE model even though it's several years out of date.

I want to +1 every comment in this thread. Phones are too big now. I don't understand Apple's weird obsessions, first trying to make all the phone so thin you cut your hand holding it, and then making it too big to fit comfortably in your pocket unless you are walking around in camo pants. You know what I would like? When I tap on the search and type the first few letters of an app on my phone, and the app appears, a…

Until you hit 'Search' at the bottom right it shows you a preview result set - that can differ completely from the one you get then. Because two are not enough, they added a third with 'Siri suggestions' as top row. Which is not in the Search settings but in the ones for Siri. The iOS docs[1] misname it as 'Suggest App' when it is called 'Suggest Apps Before Searching' which only the iPadOS docs [2] get right. Did I mention they cut useful info from the iOSv26 version[3] and changed the URL?

[1]: https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/about-siri-suggestion...

[2]: https://support.apple.com/guide/ipad/about-siri-suggestions-...

[3]: https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/turn-siri-suggestions...

Re: iPhone 17e

#430

Post by badpun »

promiseofbeans wrote: post #420
GCUMstlyHarmls wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anyway; hit recognition of the keyboard is so far behind where it was in the iPhone 4/5 generation that I doubt modern iOS would even be functional; even if you excused the padding issues that would inevitably be an issue Right?? It is worse than I remember right? I'm not crazy.

Using the iOS 26 keyboard on an iPhone SE 2/3 is a truly miserable experience now. Upgrading from 18 was a terrible mistake

Luckily, hearing all the complains early adopters of 26 had, I disabled auto updates on my SE. Since you can't go back to previous iOS version, leaving it on is a bit risky in general.
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