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

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

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of them are a full inch larger in screen and most even larger in bezel.

Some people will never be pleased. When Lenovo came out with that throwback laptop the HN thread was full of curmudgeons nitpicking every little detail they thought was wrong about the retro laptop they always said they wanted Lenovo to make. The same thing would happen if somebody made a new small premium phone. Such people are impossible to please and there isn’t much point trying.

> Some people will never be pleased.

If the main ask is that the phone be small, the phone being over an inch larger than specification hardly seems unreasonable to complain about.

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

#62

Beautiful design- but it’s effectively dead on arrival due to iOS being too bloated for dated hardware, and it’s only going to get slower as newer iPhones get faster.

I recently got a new battery for my SE and disabled the peak performance throttling.

Performance is perfectly fine. Keep in mind the latest iOS release is actually faster than the previous. Phones have gotten to the same point as modern computers where they don’t need to be continually upgraded.

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

#63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the demand really is that low. People who want a smaller phone in 2019 are a very small yet very vocal minority. If there was a large untapped market for smaller phones, then the limited number of small phones on the market would be selling a lot better than they actually are. Somebody would notice and start making more of them. Like phones with physical keyboards, phones with small screens have become a niche p…

Do you have any insight as to why? I'm part of that minority and small phones seem better in so many ways. My hands are relatively big I think, but even with "small" phones now I can barely use them with one hand. The smaller screen uses less battery. Larger phones don't fit in pockets very well and result in a spot that wears through on my jeans where the corner of the phone pokes out from my pocket. I'm really stru…

There has been a drastic increase in how much people use their phones. according to a 2017 study by comScore, the average American adult spends 2 hours and 51 minutes per day using their phone. Other research has returned even higher numbers; a large proportion of people spend more than a quarter of their waking hours looking at their phone.

Given such heavy use, it makes sense to use the biggest practical screen. There's a reason why books aren't the size of an index card. Screen sizes in the west have historically lagged behind middle-income markets, where smartphones leapfrogged laptops as the primary computing device for most users. Indian and Chinese customers were demanding 6" 'phablets' at a time when most manufacturers were ambivalent about breaking the 5" barrier. A 6" device is roughly the upper limit for average female hands and average trouser pockets, making it a natural point of convergence.

An iPhone SE has a screen area of 44.1cm². A phone with a 6" 16:9 display has a screen area of 99.2cm². That's still tiny compared to a paperback book (~195.8cm²), but it's pretty much the sweet spot.

https://hackernoon.com/how-much-time-do-people-spend-on-thei...

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

#64
post #7

Why does everyone love this phone so much? Clue me in?

Size. Great for one-hand operations. Easily fits on pockets or anywhere. Apple Pay & Touch ID. A9 chip. Relatively disposable. Got it for $99 at Walmart, 32 GB version. Screen size is not as important for me.

Been very happy with it for about 2 years.

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

#66
post #54

I guess it's time for all those HN people who were moaning about iPhones being too big/expensive/lacking in home buttons/etc... to put their money where their mouths are. It's a 2016 model, so it should remain supported until at least 2021. Not far off, but still better than some (many?) Android phones. I'm not sure how $299/128GB compares to Android products, but it's cheaper than its previous $449 price. I'd pick o…

Hauwei Honor: $250 128GB new https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Global-Version-Huawei-Honor-...

cant really compare global edition prices to us phones, since the global editions don't pay qualcomm.

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

#67

I guess it's time for all those HN people who were moaning about iPhones being too big/expensive/lacking in home buttons/etc... to put their money where their mouths are. It's a 2016 model, so it should remain supported until at least 2021. Not far off, but still better than some (many?) Android phones. I'm not sure how $299/128GB compares to Android products, but it's cheaper than its previous $449 price. I'd pick o…

They are out of stock now.

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

#68
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, the demand really is that low. People who want a smaller phone in 2019 are a very small yet very vocal minority. What are you basing that on?

Manufacturers not making/pushing them is a pretty good sign they're not super popular.

Hmm don't think I buy this, at least in Apple's case.

They have a monopoly on the operating system, which is what people really want with both the iPhone and the Mac.

People will still spend $3000 on a 15" MacBook Pro that they hate (because of the ridiculous touchbar) because it's the only high spec'd laptop available with macOS.

There's no way for consumers to tell Apple "we prefer no touchbar" purely with sales data because they aren't given the choice.

I think that same factor is huge with the iPhone. I have bought multiple 4.7" iPhones now, all of which I hate because of the size, but it is the smallest (correction: smallest premium) phone Apple makes/made. So looking at the data, it looks like I love the new iPhone size because I bought it, but the reality is I had no choice if I wanted to keep using iOS and didn't want to deal with a horrible experience performance-wise from aging hardware.

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

#70

The upcoming sony xz4 compact may be the only small phone with premium components, and it's extremely frustrating. It's not even /that/ small. You can find small phones but they have terrible cameras, sub HD resolutions, and bargain basement SOCs. Is the demand for a premium (or even mid range) small phone really that low?

Yes, the demand really is that low. People who want a smaller phone in 2019 are a very small yet very vocal minority. If there was a large untapped market for smaller phones, then the limited number of small phones on the market would be selling a lot better than they actually are. Somebody would notice and start making more of them. Like phones with physical keyboards, phones with small screens have become a niche p…

> Like phones with physical keyboards

I disagree with this point. I think other manufactures simply realized it's cheaper to not include a keyboard, and since no one else is anyway, easy enough to get away with it.

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