Why do people want a smaller iPhone?

TidBITS Talk
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I’m seeing a lot of complaints here about Apple not making a smaller phone. I find this puzzling, especially as so many are clearly older individuals (based on their comments). As I get older and my eyes get worse, I want the biggest screen I can get! What is the appeal of a smaller phone? It seems like the complainers are the same ones wanting huge 27" or bigger screens for their Macs – yet they want postage stamp screens for phones?

I have used a Max for a couple of years now and it doesn’t seem big at all to me. It’s not small, I get that, but it’s not cumbersome or awkward to hold. I see some comments about one-handed use and bigger phones making that impossible, but I don’t get that. First of all, how often do you use the thing one-handed? I use my Max that way quite often, but I’m only doing it for simple things like clicking OK or scrolling to the next post. I would never do anything complicated (like typing) with one hand no matter what size phone I had. What are you all doing one-handed that requires a smaller phone?

Or is there some other reason you like a smaller phone? It fits in your pocket better? The weight is less? (I can imagine Adam, a runner, wants a smaller phone when running – except an watch would be even lighter.)

Note that I’m not being critical – I’m just really curious. I just haven’t seen any justification for the smaller phones other than people saying they want it and will use their mini 13 or SE or whatever until they die.

(I have a friend with an SE and when I use it, it makes me feel like I’m using a Mac SE with a 9" screen again and I want to scream in frustration. I have no idea how you stand it. Help me understand. :blush:)

I do understand that people want a choice and I am slightly puzzled Apple doesn’t want to make a smaller phone. The sales must truly be abysmal. There’s talk of a folding phone for next year. Maybe that’s the solution. The phone could have a 5" screen size that is doubled when opened up, giving you a small form factor with a bigger screen. (I am personally not interested as I hear the phone won’t have Face ID, which is a dealbreaker for me. No way I’m going back to Touch ID.)

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I’m not a ‘complainer’ - I’m fairly happy with my iPhone 14 Pro - but the appeal is clearly the size. Having a big screen Mac is not a reasonable analogy for a phone as you’re not carrying it with you everywhere. I’ve adapted to the 14 but I’ve always felt the sweet spot for me was the iPhone 5 size.

I have friends who were adamant they wanted the 13 mini and have not upgraded since. TO each their own, there is no right or wrong. As for Touch Id vs Face ID, I would go back to Touch ID in a heartbeat - I’m not a fan of Face ID at all.

As I’m not in the market for a phone there’ll all moot points, but I suspect there’s a still a market for smaller phones - it may just be a small market (pun intended).

I think I may just give my current phone a good clean, new screen protector, new case and ‘unbox’ it again for the novelty of it feeling new again. Within a few months any new phone I buy would feel just like my current one but I can enjoy the novelty of feeling like new :)

Oh, one more thing. I’m pretty sure every iPhone I’ve owned has been black. Silly as it sounds, I don’t think I’d get a 17 Pro as there’s no black, and my 21yo son said the same thing.

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As someone who is getting along just fine with a 15 Pro, it’s this. I want something reasonably sized and with a lighter weight. I could and have run with just a watch in the current smartphone era, but I find it too compromising not to have a phone. I listen to podcasts, and using the watch for this is compromising. I also run and hike in places with very poor cellular service, and the watch is always worse at maintaining signal compare with the phone. Plus if something happens to me, I think EMTs would find more useful info about me more easily from my phone than from my watch.

That said: I’m fine with the size of the current phones and pro phones. I think the Air and Max are too big, and I’m still waiting to see real-world testing of the battery life of the Air in use, particularly in poor coverage areas. Particularly because I keep phone for 2.5 to 3 years.

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Yes, pocket fit is a big deal. With the iPhone 16 Pro, it’s not uncommon for me to have to adjust the phone in my pocket when I sit down to avoid having it jab me. Smaller iPhones didn’t do that. Plus, there’s just a nice hand feel to the smaller phones. I have an iPhone 6s stting on my desk and even in a slim leather case, it’s shockingly smaller, lighter, and feels better in the hand than my iPhone 16 Pro in a Smartish case. Sports and running has fairly little to do with it—if I were exercising seriously, I wouldn’t carry any iPhone.

The other thing, and I think this group skews towards people of the guy persuasion, as Dave Barry would say, is that when I talk with women, particularly smaller women, a lot of them complain about how the phones are too big for their hands and certainly too big for what passes for pockets in women’s clothes. That fashion has slowly been changing, but the fact remains that Tonya, who’s an aspirational 5’ 3", just has less room on her body for a large phone. Her hands are smaller, her pockets, when they exist, are often smaller, and so on.

Now, that’s said, she was forced to upgrade to an iPhone 16 from her iPhone SE, and she says she does appreciate the larger screen. Before, she would read books in Libby almost entirely on an old iPad; after the upgrade, she uses her iPhone exclusively. However, she carries the iPhone on her body primarily when wearing running shorts (women’s running shorts did get the message about phone pockets). Otherwise, her iPhone is lying somewhere around the house on a table or counter at nearly all times—she uses the Find My iPhone sound triggered from her Apple Watch at least once per day. When going out (she almost never carries a purse), she recently discovered that an old Apple Specialist badge holder we had from an ASMC conference holds the iPhone perfectly. Apple’s new cross-body strap is pretty much the same thing.

Now, your point about a foldable iPhone is interesting. If a phone could be physicall smaller but open up to provide more space when you wanted it, that could be compelling.

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That is why to me a flip style could be attractive. But all the rumors I’ve been seeing lately indicate Apple is doing a fold, not a flip. I don’t want an iPhone X that becomes an iPad mini, I’d like an iPhone mini at most. And if that could then flip shut to be even smaller when stowed, even better.

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For me, it’s a genuine preference for the smaller phone. I don’t hate the larger phones. I had an iPhone 14 issued by my employer, and it was fine. My personal iPhone 13 mini just felt better in my hand and was a little easier to use with one hand.

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My 27" iMac sits on my large, sturdy desk and is never moved, so physical size and weight are largely irrelevant. It’s also operated by mouse and keyboard. It’s where I do most of my work, so lots of screen real estate is a must.

My iPhone SE 2 I carry in my pocket, so physical size is important. I also primarily operate it with one hand. It’s not used for “real” work, mostly reading, texting, and yes, the occasional phone call :slightly_smiling_face: (I do test my company’s web site on it, but then having a small screen is an advantage).

Basically, for me at least, a desktop Mac and a phone have completely different use cases, and I want devices that fit those use cases as closely as possible. Neither a small screen desktop computer nor a large screen phone fit as well as what I have now.

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Imagine if Apple only sold 16" laptops, or even the 17" PowerBook from back in the day. Some people love those, but for me they are too big, too bulky, too expensive.

That’s how I feel about the current phone sizes too. My phone is not my primary computing device and it’s never going to be. I want quick bits of utility – text a friend, check the map, maybe sift thru a few emails if I have to wait. The rest of the time I want the phone to disappear.

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Text size is adjustable independently of screen area.

Yeah, I mean, If I had to carry my Studio Display around, I wouldn’t be happy with that, either.

In fact, I chose the smaller of the two Macbook Pros because I find it more convenient while on the road. But I hook it into a big monitor and keyboard at home and at the office. My use cases for my sprawling Mac setup at home are very, very different from those of my phone, or even my laptop on the road.

Your hands are probably bigger than mine.

It’s more about having my other hand free to do other things – carry things, jot notes, manipulate things that are greasy or dirty. Imagine I’m on my back, waist-deep under my washing machine, looking at repair instructions on my phone on my left hand with a nut driver in my right. Something like that.

Yeah…I can’t imagine using a compact Mac these days, either. But a Mac and a phone are not the same. Not then, and still not now, even though they may share certain components and software frameworks.

This is the only frustrating thing to me. Between the new 17 and still-available 16, Pro, Max, Plus, Air and e, Apple has 7 different variants…but only 2 different screen sizes between them all.

I don’t begrudge big-phone people for having big phone options. Of course Apple should cater to that demand.

And I get that the mini wasn’t a huge seller. But the people that liked them really liked them. Reintroducing a mini isn’t going to set sales records, but they would keep a segment of Apple’s customer base very, very happy.

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Yeah, but there are limits to how large you can scale it. And if the text gets too large on a small screen, you end up with only 2-3 words per line, which is really annoying to read.

I don’t do productivity work on my phone. I take/place calls, access Messages, occasionally take photos, read web pages and play some puzzle-type games.

I do not edit any content on my phone and I don’t post content to any site.

I rarely watch videos, and when I do, it’s usually while lying in bed, with the phone close to my face. If I want to watch videos in some other setting, I use my computer or my Apple TV.

In other words, I don’t do the things that would require a larger screen.

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I went from a 4s to the original SE to a 13 Mini

I love the form factor. It fits in my hands well. It fits in my pockets well. You may not have run into this before, but women typically have smaller (or less) pockets in the same style clothing as men. So this is important.

Yes I have a large monitor on my desk, two of them. But that’s where I work. I don’t - and won’t - work on my phone.

I take pictures with it when I don’t have my real camera. But I’d rather use my camera
Make phone calls/texts
Do web surfing when I’m bored (like in a doctors office). But Solitaire works for those times too
Play music on it through my car
GPS through the car
Mobile check deposits but I don’t get many checks these days.

When I’m biking, my SO can track me if I need help. He can also track my Garmin but unfortunately to do so, it needs to be connected to a phone.

I wholeheartedly believe there are people who bought bigger phones when they had no other options, not because they wanted a bigger phone

What will I do when the mini finally stops working? I’ll take a look at what’s out there across the board. It’s kind of sickening how much I’ve paid over the years to carry something with me that has the ability to annoy me so much, while neglecting my actual computers that help me earn a living.

Cheap flip phones anyone?

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Well, though, Apple doesn’t sell the smallest possible laptop, does it? There are lots of 10 & 11 inch “ultrabooks” (neé netbooks) on the market but none from Apple.

The trend away from mini-phones is not an Apple thing – it’s an industry wide thing, which suggests strongly that they don’t sell well, whatever the anecdotal evidence is. And I say this as someone who owned multiple minis in my time.

Moving off this, one of the things I note is the last two cycles move away from focusing on the iPhone Pro. The consensus best upgrade the last two times was the base iPhone, which suggests that that’s the one that Apple’s selling in droves.

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Maybe it’s like houses, there is a sweet spot in profit and the small ones aren’t it.

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A few random comments.

My wife and many of her friends want and use small iPhones. My wife has a 12 mini, before that an iPhone 4. She has no interest in a larger phone and I don’t know what she will get if the 12 mini dies. She and her friends prefer the mini size; much of her wardrobe has no (or tiny) pockets and she doesn’t carry a large purse when she has one. (She was somewhat intrigued by the cross body strap, although she still prefers small phones)

The release of iPhone 12 mini and 13 mini was timed unfortunately— the SE came out shortly before and was a much less expensive iPhone. (The SE started at $399 and the 12 mini at $699) Apple sold millions of minis but that was only about 6% of iPhone 12 sales. ( a very small number for Apple )

Other people wanted a mini Pro model — they wanted Pro model features in a tiny iPhone. There is still a small but vocal cadre of people who want such an iPhone.

I’m on the iPhone annual update program and will be getting a 17 Pro although I was impressed by and considered the Air. I think it is a very attractive package but the Air lacks too many features I value.

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My read on the demise of smaller iPhones is that the segment has a combination of a small user base—for Apple, anyway—and limited growth opportunities. I think for a signficant portion of Apple’s customers and potential customers, especially outside of the US, their phone is also their computer. So more screen space is important. Plus, looking forward, Apple may be hoping small phone lovers will buy the iPhone Fold (that may be wishful thinking given the anticipated ultra-premium pricing).

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This is IMHO the crucial point. If the entire issue were simply that Apple didn’t sell many mini units, then by that same logic the AVP would have already been declared DOA and canned to be forgotten just like the Apple Car or Ping before it. But apparently, Apple also sees little potential for growth with <6" phones. I personally disagree (I stuck with Macs all through the 90s so I’m used to being a minority), but I can see how they can make a valid case for that stance.

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I am one of those people. My current phone is a 12 mini and given Apple’s current lineup I will hold on to it as long as possible. If it breaks I would rather buy a refurbished 12 or 13 mini than any of the newer phones.

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I can imagine switching my secondary line to a flip phone at some point. Verizon in my area offers quite a few at at significantly less than $100, though you need to dig through the website or use the search tool for “feature phone” to find them.

I recall a thread where people were discussing phones without cameras. I noticed several feature phones via Verizon’s search tool that didn’t have cameras. Interestingly, they were relatively pricey at around $250. They appear to be ruggedized, so I guess they are intended for use in the field.

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I thought of that as well. I was thinking of just using a phone as a phone, and use some other device (a small iPad, perhaps) for running apps.

But I found that since my contract is a family plan, and my other family members want to keep their smart phones and unlimited data, I would only save $10/mo to downgrade my line from a smart phone to a feature phone.

For that price, it’s just not worth it.

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The USB connection on my 13 Mini no longer works. So I have to charge it wirelessly and fortunately I had it set up to use WiFi to connect to my Mac.

I spent a long time looking for alternatives yesterday and the most attractive were folding phones. They look like a good size, but the ones I liked were all over $1,000 and they were Android. I just hate the large phablets that seem to be the only choice these days.

I found my original iPhone the other day and it’s so dinky and smooth and curvy :slight_smile: