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iPhone 17e

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Re: iPhone 17e

#461

Post by whizzter »

pinnochio wrote: post #385
whizzter wrote: post #383

Ah dang my typical luck, just bought a 16e on friday since my old 2020 SE broke down (same price as I would've paid for a 17e also since I got the 256gb version).

Not sure where you are, but you should be well within the return period?

Bought from a retailer that has "no returns on phones with broken seals", and honestly with all accounts and everything else setup on the device now, the time taken to go exchange it and setup everything again, I'm gonna lose money by swapping it compared to possibly buying the next phone one year earlier instead.

Re: iPhone 17e

#462

Post by brookst »

u1hcw9nx wrote: post #424
carefree-bob wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That’s an entertaining construction of “people are more likely to buy things they get more utility from” that somehow removes agency from consumers.

Re: iPhone 17e

#463

Post by drillsteps5 »

vbezhenar wrote: post #298
drillsteps5 wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dived into a niche world of small phones recently while looking for replacement to malfunctioning Pixel 4a (which is apparently now considered compact phone). There's a few small manufacturers in China making some, with 4 inch or 5 inch screen, like Aiphor or Unihertz. And by "small" I mean "they use kickstarter to fund their R&D" small. Other than that... Nobody's really bothering with compact phones anymore, in t…

> Nobody's really bothering with compact phones anymore, in the US or in the rest of the world. Bummer. And the worst thing is that app developers do not bother with testing their apps on small phones. So even if someone would produce small phone, many apps would be broken on that UI. So there's no way back. PS 4 inch is not a small phone. iPhone 4S had 3.5" display and it wasn't small, it was normal. Small is someth…

Yep. Aiphor's BlueFox NX1 with 4 inch screen is roughly the same size as original iPhone, but has a larger screen (iPhone had bigger bezels and the home button underneath). To me it feels a bit too small for things like typing/texting for example.

Unihertz Jelly Star has 3 inch screen, that's way too small for me.

But they exist and so do people who buy them.

Re: iPhone 17e

#464

Post by jmye »

pibaker wrote: post #242
raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have my phone with me all of the time and it has an always on connection. My laptop has neither trait

I don't understand why are you downvoted. Are people in this thread really pulling out a laptop and trying to get it connected (or pay for one with a cellular modem) every time they need to respond two words to an email, call a uber or look up where is the nearest coffee shop that is open at an odd hour? HN seems to have some really weirdly prescriptive view of how people ought to use their devices in a way that is a…

> I don't understand why are you downvoted. Are people in this thread really pulling out a laptop and trying to get it connected (or pay for one with a cellular modem) every time they need to respond two words to an email, call a uber or look up where is the nearest coffee shop that is open at an odd hour?

Because some of us read the original comment and thought maybe the discussion should be responsive to it:

> If the task can’t be done in a few taps I feel I’m better off opening a laptop anyways.

Talking about Uber, email and directions in Maps are literally "task[s] that can be done in a few taps". Perhaps being less "weirdly" defensive and taking the time to think about the discussion you're about to jump into would be helpful?

Re: iPhone 17e

#465

Post by gmac »

Aloha wrote: post #282

I wonder if CarPlay will work on that, its still broadly broken on my 17.

Must vary by car — not had any problems with my iPhone 17 + Renault.

Re: iPhone 17e

#466

Post by create-username »

brookst wrote: post #457
carefree-bob wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Apple follows the market. There just aren’t many people who want small phones, HN notwithstanding. If they sold like hotcakes they’d have a full lineup. And I kind of get it. Philosophically I want a small phone. Realities of age and eyesight forbid. The market is basically people who don’t read or watch videos on their phone, and who have excellent eyesight, and who don’t care about having the best cameras. 100% leg…

The iphone air isn’t popular either and yet here we are. They preferred releasing a huge thin phone than a tiny thin phone. Even if the % of clients is small, there are still millions of potential mini clients

Re: iPhone 17e

#467

Post by coldpie »

alabhyajindal wrote: post #419

I wonder if the Small Android Phone project has moved forward since the last time it was posted here: https://smallandroidphone.com

So... there is a 4" Android phone out there. It's widely available, and from a major manufacturer. It's very usable, and it runs mostly stock Android. I have it, and I like it very much. Brace yourself for the reveal because you're not going to like it.

It's a foldable. It's the Motorola Razr+ or Razr Ultra (I have the 2025 Ultra). The outer screen is 4" and you can use it for almost everything you want to do. I use the outer screen probably 80+% of the time, since I prefer small phones. Every once in a while you run into an app or website that just wasn't built to function on a 4" display, but for almost everything I've tried it works great. You can then also un-fold it into a full-size 7" phablet when you need to do high-detail stuff like Maps.

There are downsides: it's expensive; it's a foldable, so reliability is a concern; and Motorola's OS support promise is not great at only like 3-4 years. But if you're willing to make those compromises, you can get a genuinely very good, small phone, right now today.

Once you get over the shock of having a foldable suggested to you (I was initially skeptical, too), give it a look. It's really genuinely a nice phone for small-phone-likers.

Re: iPhone 17e

#468

Post by Angostura »

thoughtpalette wrote: post #8

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

I’m in exactly the same situation. My wife just upgraded from a iPhone 11 Pro to a refurbished iPhone 13 Mini. My daughter just bought a refurbished 13 Mini too.

The second hand market for these phones seems pretty buoyant

Re: iPhone 17e

#469

Post by brookst »

pinnochio wrote: post #389
nomilk wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I must be missing something I wouldn't assume that. The expression 'fat fingers' concerns the phenomena where users (including myself) lack the eyesight and finer motor skills required to type accurately on a small keyboard, so a slightly larger display makes all the difference. Perhaps you simply have those fine motor skills (and good eye sight) so a larger device isn't necessary to prevent typos and remain produc…

I was able to thumb type at high speed and accuracy on the 3.5 inch iPhones. On modern iPhones, I produce more typos than ever, because apparently Apple thinks it knows which key I meant to hit better than I do, even with all the autocorrect and suggestions turned off. I've banned social and don't use my phone much anymore, so it's less of an issue than it used to be, but it's really frustrating when I'm clearly hitt…

It’s so strange. Like, the obviously correct thing is to have a small ML model that learns the user’s typing patterns, which of their own typos they fix, which auto- and suggested fixes they reject, what rare, made-up, and jargon words they use, what acronyms they use, etc.

Instead, after 20 years of iPhone usage, I am not allowed to type the names of projects I use all the time without fixing the autocorrect every time, or (as you say) carefully hitting the left side of the F key because dead center will produce a G.

Re: iPhone 17e

#470

Post by brookst »

quesera wrote: post #259
raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and even though you haven’t watched TV in 20 years ((c) Slashdot) people still watch TV. The feigned ignorance on HN that most normal people don’t pull their laptops out to do everything in 2026 is amazing

It's not feigned. I'm astonished to learn how hard people will work for the (seemingly to me) false convenience of doing things on their phone which would be (to me) much more straightforward to do on a more suitable device. So I tend to assume that these stories are often the outliers, and that my personal experience is more common. I recognize the fallacy, and I suspect we're both wrong and we're both right. I just…

Only about 70% of Americans even own a laptop[1]. Factor in many of those being ancient with 15 minute battery life, plus user preferences… it’s hard to see how that could be the majority use case.

1. https://www.statista.com/statistics/228589/notebook-or-lapto...

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