Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple said the mini iPhones underperformed, but they were not some sort of commercial failure. They sold millions of units. Numbers most Android OEMs could only dream of for a single flagship model. Current day Apple is all about optimizing and determined that still wasn't enough, and I imagine the manufacturing for small, specialized display panels certainly took a chunk out of those margins, so Apple decided to pul…
The number of people who aren't vocal tech people who actually want a smaller phone is a very small part of the market. In HN-like circles they're a notable minority but among the general population they are a smaller percentage. Especially when you consider huge segments of the market where your phone is your only computing device: a smaller phone is a massive anti-feature in large parts of the world. Plus almost ev…
Re: Pixel 10 Phones
#711Manual transmissions have no practical benefit aside from arguably being easier to repair. A better car analogy is pickup trucks (and cars in generally really) — they've gotten huge over the years, compact pickups have disappeared, and you hear the same arguments about it being a niche audience. The reality is that as soon as something sells well (big trucks in this case), these big corporations go all in on it and alienate large segments. Now 25 year old compact Tacomas are selling for as much as their MSRP and manufacturers (Toyota, Ford, Hyundai) are all scrambling to ship a compact. It's the same with small phones — the industry over-rotated on big phones and as soon as someone ships a good small phone, it'll be a hit and small phones will come back. iPhone Mini was a crippled device compared to the Pro line and it still sold millions. Google and Samsung haven't even tried to make something compact, let alone compact and good.