The Best iPhone • Hacker News Board

Re: The Best iPhone

#71

Post by vgel » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 11:53 PM UTC

hardwaresofton wrote: post #43

clairity wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's not the same, but apple could add the home button on the side, even if they remove it from the front. it could incorporate the fingerprint sensor like the ipad, or they could use an in-display fingerprint sensor, combined with the removal of the front camera, and voilà, their holy grail single slab of glass iphone! i still use my trusty 6S because i prefer the fingerprint scanner and home button, plus having a r…

> it's not the same, but apple could add the home button on the side, even if they remove it from the front. it could incorporate the fingerprint sensor like the ipad, or they could use an in-display fingerprint sensor, combined with the removal of the front camera, and voilà, their holy grail single slab of glass iphone! This is such a huge design question -- the button layout of the phone is now muscle memory for m…

Not GP, but I also still run a 6S(+). I recently replaced the battery using an iFixIt kit, which fixed my main complaint with it.

It still runs dog-slow, especially on modern websites, which is both bad and good in that if I keep the Reddit app uninstalled and use New Reddit, the memory leaks crashing my Safari tab is a good indication to stop using it :-) Unfortunately HN doesn't have such a feature...

I didn't hear about the iOS 16 dropping support rumors until now :-(. But apparently the security updates will keep coming for a few years. I guess once apps start dropping support for iOS 15, I'll have to switch.

Re: The Best iPhone

#72

Post by initplus » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 11:54 PM UTC

wlesieutre wrote: post #46

commoner wrote: post #24

> It is a crazy strategy of Apple to put the “brains” of its most expensive phone, the iPhone 13 Pro Max (+USD 1.099), in its entry model, low cost (USD 429). No other company does this. The $449 Pixel 6a, which was released today, has the same Tensor chip as the $899 Pixel 6 Pro. This is advertised prominently on the product page: https://store.google.com/us/product/pixel_6a

Though if the iPhone SE 2016 and the Pixel 3a are anything to go by, the new iPhone SE will probably have software support for 2x or longer than the Pixel 6a.

Even on the latest model Pixel phones Google still refuses to commit to more than 3 years of Android updates... They have at least lengthened the security update timeline to a whole 5 years.

I bought an iphone around the launch of the Pixel 4, which is now nearing it's end of support. Meanwhile Apple has provided the latest updates to devices that launched 7 years ago.

Re: The Best iPhone

#73

Post by kube-system » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 11:55 PM UTC

mauvehaus wrote: post #69

The problem with the new SE is that it comes on the heels of the old SE. My first smartphone was a 2nd gen SE that I bought around July 2020. I plan on keeping it as long as I kept my previous dumbphones: 4-6 years (i.e. however long the battery lasts). If they keep releasing SE's at the current pace, my next phone will be a 4th or 5th generation SE. There is literally no feature they could add that would entice me t…

On the other hand, the delta between the resale price of an old SE and the purchase price of a new one makes upgrades very cheap.

Re: The Best iPhone

#74

Post by MereInterest » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 11:55 PM UTC

simonmales wrote: post #19

notRobot wrote: post #2

I would pay a decent chunk of money for an iPhone SE clone that runs Android. I'm so tired of big phones. I can't do this anymore. Past discussions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31411191 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30405011

Running Asus ZenFone 8. Screen size is relatively normal compared to the monsters that other manufacturers ship.

I'm on the Pixel 3, which at 5.5" is right at the upper limit of what I consider acceptable. Looks like the ZenFone 8 is 5.9", and is being described as "compact".

Re: The Best iPhone

#75

Post by polishdude20 » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 11:56 PM UTC

I'm still rocking my pixel 2. Best phone I've had and still going strong with the original battery. Great android experience, not too big and the photos are still awesome.

Re: The Best iPhone

#76

Post by toomim » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 11:57 PM UTC

ramesh31 wrote: post #7

The (actual) perfect phone is the gen 1 SE. I literally just returned my gen 3 and ordered two new sealed in the box gen 1 SE’s on eBay for $150 a piece. I’ve been using this model for 8 years. I’m set on phones for the next decade. I’m hoping and praying that Apple will someday make a modern 5G phone with the dimensions and features of a gen 1. But until then this is my phone. It is literally perfect and there’s not…

What do you do about the battery life on old SE's from ebay? Do you upgrade the battery?

Re: The Best iPhone

#77

Post by greenthrow » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 11:59 PM UTC

LeoPanthera wrote: post #12

I bought a Mini with great excitement, thinking that it would take me back to the glory of the "my phone fits my my pocket and I can type with one hand" days. I kept it for 3 months, and then traded it in for a Pro. It turns out that the world has moved on. Web pages are getting harder to read on small screens. I had to squint a lot. The phone's short height means that it often doesn't charge "vertically" in Qi charg…

> The "Max" is still stupid.

It's a lazy, bad name but it is objectively a great product. It is extremely successful.

Dismissing it because it doesn't work for you is as absurd as dismissing shoes too big for you or pants made from a material you don't like. Other people do, the world is not about you.

Re: The Best iPhone

#78

Post by AzzieElbab » Thu, Jul 28, 2022, 11:59 PM UTC

rpgbr wrote: post #23

I knew I wasn't the only one fond of small, cheap-but-great phones! :) Btw, this is my first post in English. I cover tech here in Brazil for +10 years and run a +9 years old independent, self-sustainable publication written in Portuguese. Now, I decided to give it a shot in another language, despite still feeling uncomfortable with my English. (I hope I haven't misspelled anything!) If you enjoyed this brief iPhone…

I would go for cheaper phone but I really value good screen. I read books on my phone. I don’t like owning multiple mobile devices just to read books

Re: The Best iPhone

#79

Post by jrm4 » Fri, Jul 29, 2022, 12:00 AM UTC

Can we officially lay to rest the egregiously stupid, but often parroted economic notion of "consumer preference" being the ultimate driver of everything? By now it's quite clear that "the range and variety of cell phones people would buy" is far wider that what we actually have.

Re: The Best iPhone

#80

Post by bri3d » Fri, Jul 29, 2022, 12:01 AM UTC

Besides the economic / niche issues - I love my iPhone mini, I loved my Xperia compact, apparently people on HN also love their minis, SEs, and compacts, but nobody else does - there are real technical problems with making small phones.

We seem to have reached a local minima with phone mainboard/CPU size. Generation over generation, the last 2-3 years worth of phones share similarly sized logic boards. So, as more and more internal footprint is dedicated to camera hardware, less and less is available for battery.

As phone chipsets appear to have also bottomed out on TDP and idle power, this means that either battery life gets worse, cameras get cut even more, or phones get bigger. Unless or until Apple make a small-phone _specific_ processor and introduce a new process with a stripped-down CPU (which will make the same HN readers mad, eye-roll), we're back to giant phones for now.