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New iPhone SE

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Re: New iPhone SE

#971
I own iPhone SE and let's be honest, this phone is designed for people living in warm climate, not someone living in nordic countries. If it's around zero degrees celius or less, then you better not take your phone out of your pocket. The battery will uncharge and phone will shut off(sometimes in matter of minutes). I thought there was something wrong with my iPhone, but it turns out the battery can't stand the cold.

-- edit Otherwise I love iPhone SE. It's almost perfect.

Re: New iPhone SE

#972

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Lack of headphone jack is still unacceptable I think I'm in the minority, but I haven't really missed the headphone jack in my iPhone 11. I have the Echo earbuds, and those have been good to great for my use cases. This continues to feel a bit like the 3.5 floppy and CD-ROM removals from the Mac: a lot of people hated it, until it was a nonissue.

Might be that some people still remember the Bluetooth from 2010 or so. These days, I charge my wireless headphones once a week. When I turn them on, they are connected before I have opened the music app. The connection is stable. When I stop playing sound on my phone and start sound on my laptop, they automatically switch to that. Their microphone is perfectly fine for calling people.

In my experience with a fairly recent and expensive set of bluetooth headphones (Sennheiser Momentum 3), it works well most of the time, but in 5% of cases it does not. If you use your headphones a lot, those 5% get annoying very quickly.

Some issues I've noticed:

- My tv (flagship LG OLED) always has trouble connecting to the headphones. I usually have to turn them off and then back on again at least once. Macbook and iPhone rarely have trouble connecting. Connecting on Windows has always worked so far.

- When I'm connected to both my Windows laptop and my phone, in a skype conference on the laptop and get a call on my phone, the skype conference is automatically terminated. FOR ALL PARTICIPANTS. That's insane.

- To make the previous point even worse: except for the ringtone, the audio from incoming calls never even goes to the bluetooth headphones. The audio from outgoing calls does, however. This is all on an iPhone SE.

- Sometimes when I listen to music, or watch a video on a Windows machine, my bluetooth headphones will just pause the playback every couple of seconds. This only happens on Windows.

- If your headphones are connected to multiple devices, you have absolutely zero control over what is happening. You might be listening to music on your phone, but some notification from your computer will interrupt your playback even though the computer is set to silent.

I could go on and on and I've only been using bluetooth headphones for a month. There is a LOT of polish missing here. That being said, this could be a great technology and it's not too far off at the moment. There certainly are some advantages over wired headphones as well.

Re: New iPhone SE

#973

As a current iPhone SE user, here's my assessment: Pros: * Feature set in terms of processor, camera, etc., is exactly what I want * Continued presence of Touch ID is a huge plus, I don't like Face ID * Price point is, admittedly, fantastic Cons: * Lack of headphone jack is still unacceptable * Form factor is, candidly, still too big for my tiny hands * Color schemes aren't as nice as the SE's (can I contribute to CO…

My 5'1" college age daughter who still shops in the kids section of most stores uses a 4.7" phone and loves it. How small are your hands?

Re: New iPhone SE

#974
post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm with you on the size, which is why I still have the SE myself. It also bugs me that no one is showing a comparison of the new SE to the old SE, so here is an old article I found, 2nd photo is the 7 (5.5 in), 6 (4.7 in == new SE), and old SE (4 in). https://www.imore.com/iphone-6s-vs-iphone-se-whats-different... So the new SE is bigger, but still acceptably small for most people. It seems like Apple couldn't bring…

> So the new SE is bigger You can fit a bigger screen into the same space with the bezels removed. There is no compelling reason to have a 4.7" screen when a 5.something" can fit in the same form factor.

I did think it was odd to have such a large, ugly bezel on a contemporary phone, especially one from Apple.

I absolutely want a smaller device, and the trend towards phablets becoming the new "normal" really annoys me. But why does this have to be so damn ugly?!

Re: New iPhone SE

#975
post #247

Yes. I'm an Android user who is absolutely sick of phablets. I have a Pixel 3A (5.6") and it is way, way too big. I've been quite excited about this iPhone SE announcement. However, the lack of a headphone jack is a huge negative, and 4.7" is the absolute largest I think is reasonable. A little smaller would've been ideal. I'm undecided on whether to switch to the SE, but I genuinely hope it sells like crazy. Then ma…

My current phone has no headphone jack and it's been an absolute pain the whole time. Adapters are hit-or-miss and generally suck. Even high-end devices (mine was over $800) often have hissing due to the analog signal running fractions of a millimeter from a bunch of digital signals. Adding insult to injury, music objectively sucks with bluetooth. A good DAC takes space and power. Multiple drivers take space and powe…

I think Apple’s official Lightning to jack adapter is fine for mobile use. Sure, it’s not ideal, but a headphone jack comes with other trade offs which have been discussed to death. At the end of the day I’m under no illusions that audio people like me, who enjoy good wired headphones, are a niche group. Most people don’t miss the jack at all and I think having the adapter is an acceptable solution for everyone else.

Re: New iPhone SE

#976
post #874
post #854

1163 Comment right now, ~800 Are about Size of Devices. I thought there was another important point. The current entry level iPhone; iPhone SE 2020 with A13 is now faster in Single Threaded performance than ALL current shipping Android, including Flagship Android. And judging by the Qualcomm roadmap, this will likely remain the same in 2021 as well. This is important if you are doing or using Web Apps like Discourse…

I'm not sure why you cite Japan as an outlier regarding size preferences and smaller-than-average hand sizes, which I generally do not believe to be true and could not find any hard data to cite (source: I live there). Regardless, the iPhone SE did not sell _as_ well in Japan due to a variety of factors, not the least of which being that the iPhone 7 introduced built-in Suica support. Suica is a mobile cash card tech…

Sony Xperia compact series are the best versions of this.

Re: New iPhone SE

#977
post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My current phone has no headphone jack and it's been an absolute pain the whole time. Adapters are hit-or-miss and generally suck. Even high-end devices (mine was over $800) often have hissing due to the analog signal running fractions of a millimeter from a bunch of digital signals. Adding insult to injury, music objectively sucks with bluetooth. A good DAC takes space and power. Multiple drivers take space and powe…

I absolutely hated not having a headphone jack so I finally gave in a bought a pair of AirPods Pro. They are literally my favorite thing I've bought in the last decade. I know it's an extremely expensive solution, and it's super shitty that Apple is basically forcing you to buy them, but now that I have them I love them.

> I know it's an extremely expensive solution, and it's super shitty that Apple is basically forcing you to buy them, but now that I have them I love them.

That’s an exaggeration. As mentioned in another comment Apple’s lightning to jack adapter is cheap, well done and enables all your high end headphones to be used with the iPhone. Just leave them attached to your headphones if you keep forgetting to bring them with you.

Plus, there are countless non-Apple wireless headphones options if you really don’t like adapters. Airpods are by no means mandatory.

Re: New iPhone SE

#978
post #854

1163 Comment right now, ~800 Are about Size of Devices. I thought there was another important point. The current entry level iPhone; iPhone SE 2020 with A13 is now faster in Single Threaded performance than ALL current shipping Android, including Flagship Android. And judging by the Qualcomm roadmap, this will likely remain the same in 2021 as well. This is important if you are doing or using Web Apps like Discourse…

Thanks for this! I know A certain portion of HN/twitter/reddit etc user base who comment are super anti bigger phone sizes. Which I don’t care about. Happy there’s some bigger threads to read not just about the size.

Re: New iPhone SE

#979
post #183

Yes. I'm an Android user who is absolutely sick of phablets. I have a Pixel 3A (5.6") and it is way, way too big. I've been quite excited about this iPhone SE announcement. However, the lack of a headphone jack is a huge negative, and 4.7" is the absolute largest I think is reasonable. A little smaller would've been ideal. I'm undecided on whether to switch to the SE, but I genuinely hope it sells like crazy. Then ma…

There have usually been smaller androids available. But people didn't buy them in enough numbers to make them a thriving sector AFAICT. Samsung used to do the Galaxy Mini line, Sony always had smaller xperia's... But most folks seem to want a bigger, shinier screen. That's not to say you're wrong in your desires, it's just they might not be widely shared. I also hope this does well. It's a nice looking unit.

It seems to me there's room in the market for one or two high-end compact Android phones. It's not a big enough segment for every company to sell one profitably, but if someone really nailed that niche....

Lower-priced sports cars don't sell well lately either, but Mazda continues to do well with the MX-5. There's a lot of value in finding an underserved niche and making a product that fills it perfectly.

Re: New iPhone SE

#980

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1163 Comment right now, ~800 Are about Size of Devices. I thought there was another important point. I'm surprised about 1100+ comments, since this is, you know: just another phone

No it's not. The HN crowd has a vocal group of people who advocate for phones like the iPhone SE. The main complaint of this group is that other phones are too big. So a new release of the SE brings a lot of hope for extending that experience. The fact that this phone is bigger doesn't sit well with this vocal minority, because they want a small smartphone and now see that medium is the only available in stock. Expec…

Phones like the SE are mostly about corporate customers and people who don't want to pay a premium. Nobody gives a hoot about the small phone crowd, as shrink introduces other design issues.

The SE is a replacement for the iPhone 7/8, which is a huge seller as it's near zero cost for big corporate accounts. It's also cheap enough to undermine the resale market for many customers. Apple will setup a production line somewhere and churn these things out for years at low cost -- I wouldn't be surprised if this is also tied to a factory-in-a-can model where production can be ramped up in places like India.

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