No 3D touch is a very odd fragmentation. You'd think they'd want to shore up their devices to be completely compatible with this across the spectrum to motivate developers to use it as a key part of their UX.
Now when only X<80% of devices lack compatibility, I'm not likely to take the time to make 3D Touch a core interaction.
So your apps have to optionally use 3D Touch, Pencil, adaptive layout, fingerprint, and several other interactions that only cover fractions of their hardware line.
You know, until you mentioned it just now, I’d forgotten my phone even has 3D Touch. It had been literally weeks since I last thought to use force-touch for anything, mostly because there is zero indication where it will work.
And it is half-baked in the sense that when I do activate 3D Touch, it’s usually by accident. It is almost the same gesture as deleting apps on the home screen! I go to delete an app, press-and-hold a little too long and instead of squiggly icons with delete buttons I get...a menu? And usually I get that the 2nd time I try, too.
Force-touch badly needs something to make it obvious, and they need to work a lot harder on making it not overlap with anything else. Ironically, for an interface that loves gratuitous animation, force-touchable objects might have made a lot more sense with some fancy appearance or animation and they have none.
Pardon my ignorance, but what do you mean by "keyboard trackpad"? Is this on iOS or what?
Edit: HOLY WHAT!?! How did I not know that this exists?!?! I just figured it out. If you didn't know what it is, like me, then pull up any place where you can input text. Type something in and then Force Touch anywhere on the keyboard while it's showing. Your cursor will move with your finger like a trackpad. That's amazing.
I'd like to take the opportunity to point out that when people talk about how mobile touch interfaces have "low discoverability", comments like this are exactly what they're talking about.
But it should also be noted there's a difference of importance between the discoverability for basic functions, like opening apps or moving the cursor 'regularly' in a text field. Then you have the discoverability of the shortcuts, or 'power user' features which you can do without
Of course, this is all on a grade. Control Centre has a medium-low discoverability (given only a visual hint on the lock screen), and is more vital to the iPhone. The 3D Touch cursor movement is a lot less necessary (I know about it but never use it), and is a lot less discoverable. The 3D Touch-from-edge-of-screen-to-switch-between-apps gesture is there as well, but make slightly more discoverable as its easier to accidentally trigger it to learn about it for the first time.
An aside, I actually find the 'advanced' cursor movement, in both the 3D Touch form on iPhone 6s Plus and in the long-press form on the iPad Pro, to be next to impossible to use. I can never reliably figure out what triggers the different modes of it (cursor movement, text selection, etc) and thus barely ever use it.
This keyboard movement business is far from less necessary -- moving a cursor in text the traditional way, with that wonky magnifying glass and terrible snapping precision, can be borderline infuriating.
Pop-up tutorials always make me feel somewhat intruded on and break the transparent assimilation between me and the tech; being reminded you don't completely control this thing in your hand (or on your monitor -- websites fall in the same boat) dampens my trust of a tool.
Maybe including it in tutorials in the system app. But, yeah something would be nice.
This isn't even the end of it. Just to clarify, besides moving it like on a trackpad, you can force touch the "keyboard" while still holding down your finger, and it'll select the word underneath. Force touch again and everything will be deselected. All while you're still in the "trackpad mode".
I know, HOLY! As soon as I received my 6s I started pressing on everything and found this amazing feature. People bag on 6s force touch but I use it often and I'm a happy messenger for it.
Unfortunately the keyboard force touch only works about ~70% of the time, which is too unpredictable for me to start incorporating into regular use as a user.
It's odd that after ten years of development, Apple still hasn't made their keyboard just work. Selecting and manipulating text is still buggy and unpredictable.
I agree. I got really excited about the keyboard thing (when I edit code on my phone, proper cursor movement is severely lacking), but when I tried it on a friend's 6S I was severely underwhelmed. The activation force seemed random, and the cursor would never land where you expected. It was slower than using the little magnifying glass on the actual text.
Touch keyboards are a hard problem, but we use them so often (I'm using one now) that I think Apple would be smart to put some more thought into it.
That's an accurate assessment. I use the trackpad on my 6s+ frequently. 50% of the time it works perfectly. 50% of the time I apparently don't lift my finger in the speed or direction iOS expects, so the cursor moves forwards or backwards 1 or 2 characters from where I wanted it to stop. And I have to try again because there's no other way to nudge the cursor a character or two.
Just a little tweaking and it would be perfect. I don't have this problem with using the keyboard normally, which is quite accurate.
If you try to use the force-touch "trackpad" too soon after you've typed a character, the keyboard thinks you're still typing and refuses to do it. You have to pause for a bit or tap somewhere outside of the keyboard then try to force-touch. At least, that has been my experience. It's incredibly frustrating because I almost always want to use it to correct something in the word I just typed.
I have the same problem with the dictation icon. Sometimes I'll start typing a message and then realize that I'd rather dictate it. Once you start typing, the keyboard goes into "typing" mode. If you try to tap the dictation icon, it thinks you're aiming for the space bar.
I think that the keyboard is trying to be "smart" by altering its behavior based on what it thinks you'll do next. The problem is that those changes aren't reflected in the UI, so there's no way for me to know about them. I'm sure I benefit from that intelligence some of the time, but I only notice it when it when the keyboard stubbornly refuses to do what I want.
If you ever find yourself trying to activate the keyboard cursor but the phone thinks you're typing, simply let off on the pressure a little (without removing your finger from the screen) and then press down again. This will switch you into cursor mode. I've found this to be 100% reliable.
The 3d touch 'trackpad' thing on the keyboard is great, but i could never get it to reliabily work... but i think using this (slight push, then harder again) makes it almost completely usable.
I went through a period of thinking the same: sometimes it would seem to want to type a letter instead of triggering the cursor movement. I think the key is that you just keep your finger on the screen while applying a bit more pressure (press harder, then release the pressure without lifting off the screen) to trigger the trackpad mode. I now find it 100% reliable and can't figure out how to trigger the odd behaviour I was previously experiencing.
There are a few gotchas that you have to learn which come with practice and it really pays off.
There's a delay for how quickly you can use it after the last time you've used it.
The delay could/should be smaller, but don't get frustrated. Go slow and don't press too hard.
When you get used to the timings and pressures, it pays off and it's suddenly a pleasure to go and delete or correct something, or the whole input. Now I get frustrated on phones without it.
On the subject of keyboards, I have always found the iOS keyboard to be the most satisfying to use, possibly also the most accurate. What do other people like using?
I liked the windows phone keyboard, thought the Fire phone was okay, but am chronically unsatisfied with the Android typing experience. I have played with a few but settled for a while on Google Keyboard before moving onto Fleksy which isn't bad. Shame its broken for HTML text input fields...
SwiftKey on Android is still by far the best for me, but unfortunately other problems with Android (namely the dearth of high-end devices under 5") are probably going to force me to switch to iPhone.
The default Apple keyboard makes me incredibly frustrated, especially when used one-handed (which is 90% of my usage). No flow typing, and nearly all numbers, punctuation, and symbols are locked away behind layers of menus. I do find it the most accurate for typing in unpredictable plain text, but that's not very useful even for passwords (LastPass + most of my passwords have symbols in them).
Most of the third party keyboards are crippled shadows of their Android counterparts, but I can least get flow typing through them.
> SwiftKey on Android is still by far the best for me, but unfortunately other problems with Android (namely the dearth of high-end devices under 5") are probably going to force me to switch to iPhone.
The Xperia Z Compact line is, for my money, the most pleasant Android phone I've found. The Z3C is still plenty snappy and is my personal favorite, but after sacrificing mine to the pavement deities the Z5C is still pretty great.
You can access the second mode of the keyboard by tapping on the "123" icon, dragging your thumb over to the key you want to select, then lifting. This also works with capitalization + shift and international keyboards.
And the keyboard has exactly the same problem; force-touch uses space that already has a purpose and a gesture that is somewhat similar to that of the normal keyboard function. I tried it just now and there is a decent chance I will start typing random characters instead of activating it. That, to me, is a failure of an interface. I will admit that once activated correctly, the mini-trackpad is a better method for moving the cursor (although, almost anything could improve over the default text editing on iOS).
Yeah, kb trackpad is pretty much the only thing I knowingly use 3D Touch for. I randomly discovered it months ago, thought it was some confusing but at first, then realized what I'd done. The accuracy has always been slightly disappointing, though. As well as a few other little quirks, like losing its place in long text, getting stuck at the top/bottom without scrolling upward/downward, etc. but overall, pretty handy.
This app also exists for all jail broken users.
A swipe over the keyboard controls the cursor, and can select, move, erase, etc. Very smooth and natural.
Sorry I thought you meant that 3D touch made the keyboard selection the killer app for the iPhone platform.
It seems like a year and a half is a long time in mobile phone tech. Google apps have already said that the browser that Blackberry is out of date (which speaks about both the release cycle of Blackberry for a newish phone and Google).
Either way, the touch interface is very cool on Blackberry.
As a person writing a lot of non-english text, I hate this feature with a passion because I constantly trigger it by accident when I'm trying to press-and-hold over a key to get to an alternate letter with some diacritics on it.
With my muscle memory, I end up marking parts of the text and overwriting it afterwards instead of inserting that one letter with the diacritics.
The keyboard trackpad almost always lands me off by one character however. Something about releasing pressure changes how my finger contacts the screen. I love the idea, but I usually end up needing to do the long press after trying and failing 3 times to position my cursor where I want it.
For me and my stubby wildly uncontrollable fingers, this is worth the upgrade to the 6S almost all by itself. I use this multiple times a day and it's beautiful.
(I do use 3DTouch shortcuts as well and they probably save me a whole bunch of minutes over an entire day.)
It's a nice feature. However, I found it's hard to get it right to use kb as a mouse with 3D touch. Sometimes it just wont' register no matter how hard and fast I press down. Very frustrating.
I think 3D touch is a lot like a right-mouse click in the desktop environment, in that there is rarely anything to indicate where you can do it. You basically have to read about it or just try.
That said, I don't personally care for it. I also feel that iOS is getting too complicated.
A right-click equivalent already existed: a long press.
3D Touch is the long press controlled by finger pressure instead of time pressed. It took an already hard-to-discover feature and made it more nuanced (that is, more complicated).
It also doubles the bandwidth of that interaction. You had one slow and one fast interaction, and there now are two of each.
Big question seems to be what the best mapping between those interactions and commands is.
You want to map the most frequently used interactions to the fast interactions, but you also want the mapping to be learnable (consistency across applications likely is needed there), and 'intuitive' in the sense that the mapping starts feeling normal relatively easily.
From what I read, it seems it isn't even clear yet that there a good mapping exists under those constraints.
I do look forward to more experiments here, though. Multi-finger force touch? I can't imagine how that would work on an iPhone that you hold with one hand, but on an iPad, there might be some really useful application.
Cameras in the LCD screen that allow non-contact interactions? Apart from the "screen is a copier" use that Sun predicted in project Starfire (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfire_video_prototype), it seems hard to envision uses, but who knows? Signing to your screen could be easier or faster than typing.
The machine was rather difficult to operate. For years radios had been operated by means of pressing buttons and turning dials; then as the technology became more sophisticated the controls were made touch-sensitive—you merely had to brush the panels with your fingers; now all you had to do was wave your hand in the general direction of the components and hope. It saved a lot of muscular expenditure of course, but meant that you had to sit infuriatingly still if you wanted to keep listening to the same program.
Yes, that would be part of the challenge. A safe way would be to require some comtinuous physical interaction to activate the mode. More sophisticated would be a neural network that decides whether you are trying to communicate with your phone. Also note that it doesn't directly have to be an interface that allows you to accidentally detonate a nuke while you think you are waving to a friend passing by. Limited versions of this have been proposed for cars and trucks in the form of detectors that detect whether the driver is awake and attentive to the road.
>It took an already hard-to-discover feature and made it more nuanced (that is, more complicated).
I would argue that it fixed the long hold, honestly. Waiting for long holds is a total pain. Being able to reach the same level of contextual menus instantly without long holding is a huge source of relief for the user in apps that rely on that kind of interaction.
Long-hold was always one of the most annoying parts of smartphone interaction in my opinion. 3D Touch means you get instant feedback, which is more useful both when you know that a UI element supports it (so you don't have to wait when you know exactly what you want to do) and when a UI element doesn't support it (so you don't have to wait to find out).
Why couldn't long press do both? Make "wiggle icons" the top app shortcut or something. ("Move icon" would probably be a less silly name.)
You don't see how what you just wrote is drastically more complicated to the average user? Tiny differences in time and pressure determines two different features when pressing an app icon.
The overlap with the long press, and uses they got for it are not compelling.
It should be a way to displace content and move it to other apps, for example. Or to pierce through the lock screen to command a running app (like Spotify). Or to pierce the simple interface of an app to access advanced features or something. Just thinking out loud.
It's most useful implementation is peek and pop, to preview something without committing to going into that screen. That's nothing like right click. The only place it's at all similar to right click is on the home screen, and even that is totally different than any right click implementation I've ever seen. The most similar thing is right clicking an icon on the OS X dock and seeing recently modified documents relating to that app.
The only time I remember is when I tap a link just a hair too hard and it doesn't open because it went through a fraction of a second of the force touch action. I've never "hated" a feature on the iPhone. I very strongly dislike this one.
I dislike the 3d touch on the new macbook trackpad for the same reason. i try to move something but it decides to show me a dictionary definition of that word. does anyone use the dictionary that much for this to be the default behavior?
You have to press pretty hard to trigger the second click... Once you feel it click the first time, don't keep pressing harder?
Assuming you haven't set this already, you can go into Trackpad preferences and change it from Medium to Firm. That'll switch from "you have to press pretty hard" to "goddamn dude, are you trying to break the trackpad in half?" If you're still doing that by accident, you can disable it completely.
If anybody has a force meter handy, I'm curious what the actual numbers are on these.
EDIT: QuickLook is the more useful function than Dictionary, IMO. I use it regularly.
I turned it off on my Magic Trackpad 2. It absolutely breaks drag and drop for me -- nearly 90% of drag and drop operations result in unintentional force click (which never does anything useful)
Yeah, the timing is definitely something that could use feedback.
I think they should have at least done something similar to the pull-to-refresh animation (where the shape isn’t “complete” until you’ve pulled far enough). Why couldn’t they pop up a tiny circle or something under your finger that turns like a clock and shows you how much longer you have to press to activate a 3D Touch?
I had that problem and almost turned it off before noticing that you could adjust the pressure sensitivity. At the maximum setting I never run into the issue anymore.
Re: a lack of indication where it will work, maybe it will be address in a future device that has an actual 3D display, where some UI elements hover over the "surface" closer to the user, apparent that they can be pushed in deeper. I wonder if Nintendo will implement that in their next handheld. :)
Before I learned the keyboard-trackpad thing, I just used it for that annoying Safari bug where you tap a link and it doesn't open; for whatever reason push-popping it with 3d-touch works.
It's because Apple has realised 3D touch is bad and it's also a very expensive feature to add to a phone.
The real question is if they will admit it was a misstep by removing it from their flagship model or just keep pretending and keep it in. Companies really hate admitting they were wrong so my bet is that they are stuck with it for the forseeable future.
Says who? 3D touch is an awesome addition. Granted it has discoverability problems but I think that adding a new dimension to the interaction is great. It is a nice way to avoid a cluttered interface while providing advanced power-user functionality.
If an expensive feature has discoverability problems, it probably doesn't sound awesome from Apple's perspective.
The current CEO of Apple is the former COO, someone well regarded for his prowess in managing Apple's supply chain and determining optimal cost per unit for Apple's products.
If only a small percentage of customers use 3D Touch and 3D Touch adds a substantial cost per unit, I can see why Mr. Cook would disagree with 3D Touch being an awesome addition.
I personally use 3D Touch to open links in new tabs in Safari, but that's only because 3D Touch interferes with the long press gesture.
Lots of Apple products have things that only power users can find/use, even under Jobs. The design philosophy is that it's not require to use, but it's there if you want it and know what you're doing.
but it's there if you want it and know what you're doing.
Yeah, but there is a difference between a software feature that, once written, would generally take more effort to remove, and a hardware feature that costs money for every unit you ship.
>If an expensive feature has discoverability problems, it probably doesn't sound awesome from Apple's perspective.
That seems to be a thing with Apple in general. For example, I just recently discovered that by holding "option" while clicking the "Format" drop-down on the Preview program's Export screen, you can get additional formats to appear, magically. For "advanced" users I'm guessing?
How the hell was I supposed to know that ??? Where else can I see additional things by holding down "option" ???
Yes, Apple is simple, but there's a lot of cute little hidden things that you can do by combining option/apple under the right circumstance. I feel like I'm playing Super Mario Bros. and jumping wildly into the air to hit some hidden block.
Discoverability is incredibly important though. I can see it being useful in games, but there's no reason it should be a core part of how normal apps function since it's not discoverable. Your average user is using over a dozen apps; absent UI clues, there's no way they are going to know which parts of each of the many different screens in each app can interact with it, and what specifically it'll do.
So far I have yet to discover an application that has a 3D touch function which is inaccessible otherwise. For me, the good use of the tech is shortcuts: It is great to force touch fantastical icon and directly create a new event rather than opening the app, going to the correct screen and then tapping the new event option. A lot of features on PCs have discoverability problems, I have, for example, encountered a few people that did not know the Ctrl/Cmd+A shortcut. But such features reward power users. I do not think that we can, at the same time, complain that the applications are getting dumbed down and oppose the additions of advanced, albeit hidden features.
How could I have forgotten that one? you are most certainly right! However, I would argue that this is the one case where there are actually no discoverability problems.
I think it's a pretty cool input mechanism that could be used well, but I find Peak and Pop to be completely useless. What is the point of peaking? It's too slow for previewing a webpage. If you peak at a full-width photo (e.g. in a Facebook or Twitter feed) the preview isn't any bigger. I don't get it. It's always faster to just click the thing and swipe back to get back.
I tend to agree. I mostly use it to Peek at an object then swipe it up to reveal a menu of operations that can be performed on that object. That can be kind of handy.
Says who? 3D touch is a horrible addition. It has lots of discoverability problems and is inconsistent across applications. We avoid cluttering the interface by adding easter eggs to the interface for features that everyone would like to use.
But people already CAN use those features, force touch is but a shortcut mechanism. If some applications uses it in a terrible way then that is not the Apple's problem (unless, of course, the app is made by Apple)
I have tried to let myself use the 3D touch a lot of times, but didn't really feel its useful. I wonder if it's just me that could not switch between the different type of gestures.
This is going a little off topic: But Microsoft's on-screen keyboard has the best trackpoint for doing that. Doesn't require 3D touch and works wonderfully.
The blue dot is always there, but the four way arrows only appear after you press it, and you can drag further away to move faster, or closer to move slower.
It is one of these things that after you use it you wonder why everyone hasn't copied it yet. Microsoft's keyboard is actually the best thing on Windows Mobile.
I still want gesture based typing (Swype) on the Surface Pro. The on screen keyboard is substantially worse on full Windows 10 than it is on Windows 10 Mobile, it makes no sense at all...
What the heck Microsoft? Why is a keyboard on a 5" device better than a keyboard on a 10" one?
This is yet another invention from PARC that was marketed/finished outside of Xerox.
The patent was initially filed in 1990 and granted in 1996. So it should have expired in 2013. It seems to be owned by Lexmark (which was owned by IBM.)
And I heard a while ago that Microsoft is working on bringing their keyboard to iOS. The 3rd party keyboard APIs on iOS are still awful, which would explain any delay/hesitance on their part. :(
Wow, I've had an iPhone 6S for months and didn't realize this existed.
Maybe I should check the documentation, but this also highlights the discoverability problem of 3D Touch. I guess I need to get in the habit of trying to "3D Touch" all over the place to find new features?
It's great when it works, but it's a shame that it barely works. There is clearly some state machine with lots of states that don't let you activate the trackpad.
It's really weird how you must wait a short moment after touching the keyboard until you can hard-press, or it will just ignore you. Then you let go, and now you accidentally typed a letter...
would have worked better with a button on the keyboard that turns it into a trackpad.
I wouldn't say 3D touch is entirely a bad feature. I agree with the argument that 3D touch features are usually hard to discover (took me a while to realize you could press the keyboard to get a "trackpad"). Some of the features you get from it are nice little quality-of-life things though, like quick app switching. It will be tough getting app developers to decide to implement 3D touch features when it isn't supported by everything, of course.
But that's kinda the thing; how do you end up finding out about them? Unlike buttons which appear on-screen, 3D touch interfaces aren't immediately visible and require special onboarding, which isn't always great even with conventional features.
Another example, a great feature in Google Maps on mobile is the ability to zoom with one hand. You double tap and drag (tap, tap-and-hold, drag), but I only figured this out because some blog talked about it. From what I can tell there are no instructions in the app that tell you about this feature, and I see this as being in the same vein as 3D touch. Sure it's great, but if people don't know about it or can't learn about it easily, they won't reap the benefits.
> From what I can tell there are no instructions in the app that tell you about this feature
It's fine for secondary controls (other ways to zoom). I'd say Google learned the lesson with the now discontinued Menu button on Android. Application authors would sometimes hide critical functionality behind a Menu button press, and sometimes the Menu button did nothing. This lack of discoveribility and inconsistency is bad for User Interaction
> Another example, a great feature in Google Maps on mobile is the ability to zoom with one hand. You double tap and drag (tap, tap-and-hold, drag), but I only figured this out because some blog talked about it.
This is a native Android gesture, by the way, and works in most apps and web-pages. It used to work on HN, but stopped when they changed the markup to be more mobile-friendly.
>But that's kinda the thing; how do you end up finding out about them?
Someone shows you, you see someone do it, you accidentally press and activate it, you watch the introductory "wizard", you see it in an iPhone ad -- there are literally tons of ways.
This is really no different than OS X, except that it somehow is different.
What I mean by that is that OS X has hundreds of small features, keystrokes and affordances that are probably documented somewhere, but that I and most other people tend to find either by accident or by being told about them.
Apple's products have always been this way, and I rather like it. It is similar to my learning experiences with physical tools - over time, I've found a lot of tricks and 'off-label' uses for various woodworking tools by experience, and the OS sort of mimics that process.
For whatever reason, it doesn't work as well on the phone. I suspect it is partly that I don't spend hours at end doing things with my phone - I look something up, send a text, call someone, whatever and put it back in my pocket. A second factor is I almost never do complicated things on a phone. I have edited code in vi and then pushed/deployed it from my 6s, but not by choice, and that's not even that complicated.
So I do think discoverability is somewhat worse on a phone, at least for the way I use one, and it seems like an indirect form-factor consequence. It isn't that the form factor can't be used for complex tasks, but it is much more comfortable elsewhere, so the phone stays relegated to simpler stuff, which doesn't lead to the same degree of discovery/experimentation/happy accidents.
Force-press the left edge of the screen, then swipe to the right. It can take a little bit of practice to get a hang of it. I find kinda rolling my thumb works well to trigger it. Swiping all the way across goes to the last app, just partway opens up the app switcher.
What about killing a tab in chrome? In android, I could hit back and it would kill that tab and take me to the previous one, which works beautifully for Reddit. With iOS it's like five clicks to get back to the previous tab.
I think it's more about segmentation. For people who prefer smaller phones, there is still a reason to go for an iPhone 6s with a higher price point anyway. If the se was exactly the same except screen size, it might cannibalize the 6s.
It works reasonably well on the Apple Watch, where screen real estate for touching "objects" is minimal. Force-touching on the notifications view, for example, is the only way to clear all notifications.
That said, I've never used it on the iPhone -- if anything, Force Touch only gave us some shortcuts to actions that long-time users have already acquired "muscle memory" to perform differently (and without significantly more steps).
Force Touch is perhaps the one thing I truly dislike about the Watch.
Force Touch is just a menu button. Only it's a menu button that's extremely fussy and difficult to use.
I actually struggle to save my workouts on the Watch because after a workout when I'm sweaty and breathing heavily, it's damn near impossible to bring up the menu and save the workout.
The Watch would be a better device if it had a hardware menu button instead of Force Touch.
Same goes for the iPhone. Force Touch is only useful for bringing up the app shortcut menu, and for positioning the cursor in a text field. Those are important but utterly mundane features. You don't need a sophisticated force-sensitive screen to bring up a menu for move a cursor, and those features would be easier to use if they were not implemented using Force Touch.
I hate it on the watch. I'm not that uncoordinated and always misfiring it and confused by what happens. For anyone actually disabled I'd imagine it must be a sick joke accessibility anti-pattern.
I don't understand this. I have such an easy time with Force Touch but yet you're definitely not the first person I've heard say this. I can hit the Force Touch menus everywhere with 99% accuracy. Most people that I've seen do this seem to press really hard to try and activate it but it's much more subtle than that. It's even hard to describe but the activation isn't because of a harder touch, it's because of a "deeper" touch. At least that's how I was introduced to it and now I absolutely love it.
1. Speed. The delay between a force touch and the haptic feedback is often measured in seconds rather than milliseconds, particularly when the watch has been inactive for a period of time. That kind of delay is frankly outrageous. The haptic feedback needs to be instantaneous to be effective, even if it takes the actual software longer to wake up and respond.
2. Tap vs. Scroll. Unlike the iPhone, the Watch does an especially poor job of distinguishing between tap and scroll gestures. If your finger isn't perfectly still the software will treat it as a scroll gesture, and no amount of force will override it.
Pairing those two behaviors can produce some frustrating user experiences.
On the original iPhone, Apple did an amazing job of producing a very fluid and responsive UI on very humble and underpowered hardware. They've been less successful at doing the same with the Watch hardware.
That's probably why I'm having so much success then. I scroll almost exclusively with the crown. I never have issues with taps being interpreted as scroll actions. My wife also got an Apple watch and kept having issues sending heartbeats and sketches until I gave her the same example ("deeper" not "harder" - giggity). Now, the only issues she ever has are when her nails get in the way.
The Force Touch on the trackpads is a fantastic step forward in UI interactivity. Haven't tried it on touchscreens but I think it would be great as well.
I'm seriously surprised at the amount of hate on here for 3D touch. I've been waiting for pressure-sensitive interfaces on phones since they came out! And now it's here and everyone hates it!
I for one hope they keep it around and just work to improve it's accuracy and discoverability in future iterations.
Honestly, I suspect they did it first for cost and second because they want to make sure it is only used to add a quick way to do small things. I would honestly be surprised if they weren't worried from the beginning that it could end up being an abused, overcrowded right click menu. Not in including it here helps ensure that it won't be used to add features unavailable in another way.
> they want to make sure it is only used to add a quick way to do small things.
I don't understand this point at all. What does it have to do with not including the feature on a smaller device? "Because it might be used too much" makes no sense.
It's not "because it might be used too much," it's "because developers might bury tons of functions where no one will ever find them, because that's easier than designing a learnable/discoverable UI."
Whether you agree with the argument depends on how much faith you have in developers/designers to understand how average users will experience and learn their software, and in whether they might go for the lazy "shove it in a contextual menu" solution even knowing that it's questionable at best. 3D touch is supposed to be a "power user" feature; if you don't know it's there you can get by just fine. It'll take you an extra half second to open an email.
By holding it hostage on some new products, Apple can hope for more developers to say "I'll use this for time-saving shortcuts and other convenience features since the iPhone SE users don't have it." Once best-practices for that are more ingrained and many apps have implemented it in a way that lines up with Apple's vision, there's less risk of buried features when they eventually include 3D touch across the lineup.
Whereas developers and hackers tend to like a surfeit of user interface features, the mass market is not as comfortable with it. Apple really likes to be the party in control of the degree of minimalism in the UI expressed by iOS devices.
That's not a terrible theory. The UX of holding the screen down is terrible because it's completely hidden and requires you to guess. Not sure why they opted to include it in the first place.
It's kind of a shame to see so much hate for a neat feature. I think a lot of non developers gave Apple shit for 3D touch as just another gimmick because they don't see the fundamental interaction problem that it solved. Long holds on mobile are excruciating interactions for people, and 3D touch fixes that. It allows the user to reach a deeper level of contextual actions, without forcing them to wait like a long tap and hold does. Anything that empowers the user like that is a huge win in my mind.
I really hope apple sticks with it moving forward. As a developer I have been having a blast coming up with new and interesting ways to use it that legitimately increase a user's satisfaction and the usefulness of an app.
>Long holds on mobile are excruciating interactions for people, and 3D touch fixes that
But it doesn't provide an easier way to access long hold functionality, instead of provides different functionality that could be activated accidentally instead of long hold functionality.
e.g it doesn't make deleting apps less tedious, it instead adds a shortcut menu you might activate by accident when trying to delete the app.
In my view, a long hold was always basically a "secondary click"—but Apple didn't use it for much, since it was so tedious. So, rather than getting a menu, it mostly served to activate a single important secondary function on the item. (And devs came up with different solutions for menus, like side-swiping in list-views; and modal multi-select, with additional actions to apply to selected results.)
Force touch, on the other hand, isn't tedious, so it does what Apple wanted to do: it gives you a menu. I would expect that whatever a long hold does to an item should also be a thing on that menu. You could think of a long hold, then, as the "default secondary action"—like how shell object handlers in Windows use their "default primary action" from their context menu when double-clicked.
I don't understand why everyone is ignoring the simple answer that no 3D touch is simply a result of the same 5S screen being used? Presumably 3D touch requires a haptic layer on the screen so if that's not present, it can't exist.
Dare I ask why I'm being downvoted? As far as I can tell, [1] suggests that there's additional hardware involved in the screen to make 3D touch work. Is it that this hardware exists but just isn't being used? Is it that people think it's a trivial addition to revise the 4" screen to include this hardware and that Apple were just lazy?
I'm genuinely curious, because I have not seen anyone say "hey maybe they just used the same screen as the 5S and that's why 3D touch is left off" but I have seen a lot of "I don't understand why Apple neglected to include 3D touch in the SE".
Phone companies copy the best features from each other.
You didn't see apple implementing Samsung's "show your face to unlock your phone" feature because it was kinda slow and dumb. Likewise, I don't see any Android phones with 3D touch.
Yet when front-facing cameras came out, EVERYONE jumped on that feature, now your phone is dead in the water without it.
It was left to the history books the moment other manufacturers said 'meh, we don't need this right now'.
I went into the Apple store and couldn't even figure out how to get 3D touch to work and spent quite a while. After research it seems like you need to magically know which apps support it and even then which interfaces within the app. It is very obscure.
Apple is often first to market with new stuff, and sometimes I look on in jealousy (e.g. when Siri first shipped), but 3D touch is one of those features I never want Android to copy. I think it makes Apple's ecosystem worse and is opposed to their "simple and straightforward" UI strategy.
To be fair, some apps have implemented '3d' touch on android which is basically just a glorified long press, so you can at least access the same kind of ux purely through software.
Several apps came out within days of the Apple 3D Touch announcement, such as https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.casual_dev..., that were installable and worked on existing Android phones. Since it was basically evidence of another Apple copy-paste, this information was basically ignored by iGizmodo / iVerge / etc, so many people think that Apple "invented" pressure-sensitive touch events, despite getting them a full 5 years after Android.
I believe that the reason that pressure sensitive apps were met with a "meh" on Android is because long-click works great and people understand it. Click to do a thing, long-click to get a context menu on a thing. It works everywhere, even on many Apple-developed iOS apps that haven't been "upgraded" to 3D Touch yet.
>Yet when front-facing cameras came out, EVERYONE jumped on that feature, now your phone is dead in the water without it.
When do you think front-facing cameras came out?
The answer is, they were rather common in (non-touch) smartphones outside the U.S. before the first iPhone was even rumoured of, yet Apple only introduced one in the 4th generation of their phones.
As far as I'm aware, Apple has never removed hardware functionality on a future generation of that iOS device. I would expect the iPhone 7, 7S, 8, etc to all have 3D Touch. Now, whether they continue to integrate it into more places in the OS will remain to be seen.
Fair enough, I should have specified "iOS device". Though I would argue that the MagSafe change doesn't count as it still retains the same functionality, it's just a different form factor.
He's saying that USB 3 charging counts as the same functionality, which is a fair point that I had thought about but I thought I'd throw it in the mix anyway. :)
Great examples. Most of which were removed with the introduction of the iMac and Steve Jobs rejoining the company.
That said floppy drive was available for 14 years (128K->iMac) so that should give you some idea of the commitment Apple has to keeping technologies in place.
I don't think this counts, as the Lightning connector retained the same functionality as the 30-pin connector. Sure, you can't connect old 30-pin cables or accessories without an adapter, but no functionality was lost.
There's a subtle distinction though - the 30-pin connector and the Lightning connector can only be used to connect to or from an iOS device. If Apple removed the headphone jack and encouraged people to buy Lighting headphones instead, those headphones could not be used to connect to anything else other than an iOS device, and you would not be able to use any of the headphones that use the standard connector on the new device. Basically, the 30-pin to Lightning changeover swapped one proprietary port for another, and did not change any of the potential use cases for that connector.
It's not fragmentation. Pencil and 3D Touch were designed as optional features from the get-go. It makes perfect sense to reserve them for their premium devices.
Fragmentation is more like when apps run poorly on less popular Android phones because of all the differences (screen sizes, performance characteristics, etc.). But optional features like 3D Touch peek/pop aren't really essential to make apps run well. They're bonuses. And there's literally tens millions of people who can use 3D Touch already, so it's an optional feature probably worth implementing. And if you're building a design app it makes complete sense to support the Pencil, which is specifically targeted at that niche.
Also you're mistaken about Touch ID and adaptive layout. Touch ID is standard across all current devices, and adaptive layout helps you support them all with minimal work.
It's curious that the smaller phone is not a 'pro' device. I just want it to be smaller, not less powerful or even less expensive. There are of course size which limitations which dictate that smaller devices cannot cram all capabilities into the same space. But to the extent that is not true, let me pay for a powerful small iPhone.
I'm in the same boat. Updated year after year and got all of them up to the 5s. The 6 form factor annoys me, too big to hold it confortably and too small to actually replace the ipad. Wouldn't pay premium proce for the c device of a generation past, this se perfectly fits the bill of what a smartphone should be to me
Also a reason I won't be buying the SE, but will be holding out for the 7 instead or even get a 6S. If i'm to develop iPhone apps, I want the full set of UI tools at hand..
>No 3D touch is a very odd fragmentation. You'd think they'd want to shore up their devices to be completely compatible with this across the spectrum to motivate developers to use it as a key part of their UX.
1) 3D Touch is not that important a part of the UI anyway, as devices are fully functional without it.
2) Developers will add it to their apps anyway, to entice high end users -- it's a very competitive landscape for apps, so they can't afford not too, even if it's only in half the new iPhone models.
3) Eventually it will be present to all devices anyway. In the meantime, the cheaper SE models allows Apple to cater better to places like India without sacrificing much.
> 2) Developers will add it to their apps anyway, to entice high end users -- it's a very competitive landscape for apps, so they can't afford not too, even if it's only in half the new iPhone models.
App developer here. Patently false. I actually haven't implemented 3D touch in any app. Want to guess how many support requests I've received for it? Zero.
>App developer here. Patently false. I actually haven't implemented 3D touch in any app. Want to guess how many support requests I've received for it? Zero.
Well, I said "will add it to their apps anyway", Not "already have added it". And I'm talking about flagship apps , the kind everyone has on their home screens, not any random app or developer.
It's not a "no true scotchman" either. Obviously I know that not all of the smaller/casual/fart/etc apps are gonna get it -- heck, I've got several old apps that haven't been updated for even for far more important changes (like Retina assets or larger screen sizes).
So, if you make "Funtime Googly Eyes" or "Milan Metro timetables" you might not add 3D Touch. But apps like Facebook, Twitter, Gmaps, Dropbox, Gmail, Evernote, Instamatic, Flipboard, Procreate, VSCO, etc, are sure gonna add it. (and lots of smaller apps wanting to differentiate themselves too, but all the big ones are getting it sooner or later -- some already have).
From a product standpoint it doesn't really make sense. Maybe they're just refurbishing old iPhone 5's and they can't build in the 3D touch capability.
There's a good technical reason why it's not on their 4inch phone - lack of space, which AFAIK that sensor takes quite a bit. There's not a good reason why it's not on their iPad Pro lineup, their biggest and (at least for part of the lineup) most expensive iOS devices.
That's an interesting point, I haven't yet thought of that. Could be. Maybe you'd need a whole array of these sensors behind the screen at different positions.
$399 USD is great, but why are we still stuck with 16 GB of storage on base model phones? You can barely put a day's worth of music on your phone and you cannot always stream via services like Spotify.
Spotify accounts for 2 GB of traffic per month on my phone and some plans are barely affordable when you want more than that--fortunately I can do up to 6 GB before I am traffic shaped, but that isn't the say the same for all carriers in this country.
And as it turns out, Qihoo 360, one of the largest security software vendors in China [1], officially offers this iPhone NAND Flash memory 16GB -> 128GB upgrade service backed by a 30-day warranty under its subsidiary 360 Bang for RMB 399 (roughly $60).
360 Bang is a BestBuy GeekSquad-alike Mail-in repair service. [3]
That is awesome! I wish ifixit would train some people to do this.
I have an iPhone 4s that is "the kids phone" for my two-year old so she can watch YouTube and Netflix. I'd love to upgrade that so I could put all the other movies she likes on there as well.
Yup. Equipments and tools aside, the BGA IC chip soldering / desoldering skills you've seen fast forwarded through the clip are some serious skills that take time to practices.
PS: This technique has been around since April 2015. A Youtube search yields roughly 8000 videos. I wouldn't be surprised that there are dozens or even hundreds [1] of this "repair shops" in Shenzhen's huaqiangbei or Beijing's Zhongguancun [2] electronics market.
There was even a similar video tutorial made by iFixit Vietnam;) [3]
That usually requires significant soldering experience with SMT components and can possibly require soldering a BGA which is crazy hard (up to impossible) if you're not a machine.
Yup! The technicians shown in the video said they usually have around 50 "upgrades" a day done in the shop and this techniques has been around since April 2015.
Worst comes to be worst, Huaqiangbei has tons of vendors who sell iPhone scrape parts so an accidental damage can be easily "replaced" and fixed up.
And I wouldn't be surprised if some of the technicians were Foxconn trained workers.
16GB is enought for me. I don't watch movies, I don't listen to much music and I don't install apps. Just a phone with some basic apps and internet connections.
I also think 4 inches is decent size for my pocket.
I think I'll buy my first iPhone soon. Good job, Apple.
If this will be your first iPhone, you've picked a good one to get started with. My first and only iPhone, after nearly 5 years, is the iPhone 4S which is seemingly an identical body as this SE. And it is a rock-solid, perfect little machine. I've dropped it countless times on brick and cement and it has no scratches on it after all this time -- never even put a case on it. These larger, thin phones that have come since have been a lot more fragile.
The 4S was a real landmark in UI smoothness as well, as it was the first dual-core iPhone.
Previously, even if a developer was on his best behavior (putting expensive tasks on a background thread to avoid bogging down the main thread and causing a frame rate drop), it didn't really help, because you only had one hardware thread.
Even though the 4S is a "slow" processor compared to the latest phones, it's UI was way more usable than the 4 and 3GS because of the second processor core.
Well, I can see people buying this used because it looks good and fits in their hands. Thanks for the link. I run on 9 too - if it weren't for the SE which I'm going to buy I'd downgrade by now since it has become rather unbearable. I can load like one webpage into the RAM - switching to another app and going back to Safari will reload again - which, depending on connection and complexity of the page can take ages and you're also at the top of the scroll area again. Basically, this iPhone has become my E-Mail notifier and Podcast device (for which it's also at the edge of unbearable).
Yes, using a 4S at this point definitely changes your behavior. Like you, I was holding out for the SE and I'm really happy it's here and looks good (except for the 1GB RAM; that is disappointing.)
Yes, the 1GB is troublesome. However, judging by the 4S at least we know that half of it will be available for apps in iOS 9, since the 512 of the 4S is right at the edge of being filled by the OS. The question is of course how many upgrades it will survive - this smells a lot like planned obsolescence.
Any other cheap phone doesn't truly meet this requirement, aside from some Chinese mid-range Android handset (which have their own issues, typically, except perhaps the Meizu or OneTouch phones). Maybe a Motorola G would also fit, but there's something to be said for having what is basically a top-of-the range handset that works flawlessly and will continue to do so for years afterwards.
My iPhone 5S is 3 years old at this point, and is still perfect. I bought it 12 months ago, second-hand and couldn't be happier.
If you haven't actually had an iPhone before, I'm not sure I'd be so confident 16 GB is enough. My wife's needs are also quite basic, but she was always running into storage limitations on her 16 GB iPhone 5s.
If the 16GB phone would just treat the local storage like a cache for everything it would be plenty of storage. With rare exceptions the expiry rules for my usage would be quite simple. That app I use once every two months can be re-downloaded when I want to use it (it's probably less than 20 MB in size anyway).
That seems great in theory, but many people still have really restrictive data caps on their plans, so I'm not sure we are quite ready for that model.
It would also suck if you had an app on your phone like a star/constellation map, which you only use every once in a while when you are out in the middle of nowhere... To have your phone automatically delete that app, then try to re-download it when there isn't any way to do so would be a pretty awful experience.
Works well for something like the Apple TV - I don't think it's good for phones yet.
Well I'd want to be able to flag certain apps to not be expired, or to be restored next time I connect to WiFi if they were cleared for some reason.
Apps that take more than a second or two to download over LTE would be the difficult edge cases, but there are very few such apps, and even if they occupied 50% of the phone's storage and were never reaped the caching approach would be fine.
The big issue is the data cap, but things are trending toward unlimited data (I have it with T-Mobile now) and many of us are often connected to WiFi at least periodically throughout the day.
Most of the apps that are installed on my iOS device are ~100MB - slack (140) Snapchat (140) Spotify (100) viber(100) messenger (97) Airbnb (97) Etsy/Yelp/Starbucks/ are all roughly 70MB - Facebook is ~150 I believe. The worst part is that all of those apps are pretty much webviews...
This is partly why I just stick to the mobile version of the site. It's a slightly buggy sometimes (repetitious frontpage), but it works well enough and it isn't draining my battery in the background for no reason.
I realize that, but what aspects of it do you think are particularly hard in the example I used? Right now many people with 16GB phones have to go through a fairly painful manual process to avoid getting error messages/warnings about storage.
So while it is difficult, I think that from a product perspective there would be only upside to treating it as a cache compared with the horrible usability of a 16GB IOS device with a typical 2016 usage pattern.
France and Austria, unlike Canada are very much dense so the infrastructure required to setup an LTE/UMTS/etc network is less costly.
To travel from Vancouver to the next principal Canadian city (Calgary), it requires 900 KM of driving and there's only really one metropolitan area of sorts between the two, meaning that you're going to be setting up cell towers that handle only so much traffic in a day.
As a result, to get service where you end up with just traffic shaping once you go beyond 6 GB (beyond that there is no real limit really), you need to go with a carrier that only services the larger cities. So in my case, my carrier services just Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary, Toronto, and Ottawa, which are fairly dense areas with a combined population of 18 million or so, or just about half of the country's population. Once I leave the city, I have to piggyback on to other carriers however.
Hence why mobile carriers suck in Canada because the bigger carriers do not want to eat into their fairly large profit margins. They can afford to offer such plans, but they simply don't want to.
For the record, I pay $40 CAD/month ($30 USD or 27 EUR) for unlimited North American calling and text plus the "unlimited" data use.
> France and Austria, unlike Canada are very much dense so the infrastructure required to setup an LTE/UMTS/etc network is less costly
You are wrong.
Both countries have parts of the country covered by the Alps, high mountains that make cell coverage expensive and several areas still have very spotty coverage with often very old GPRS/Edge-only cell towers.
Also there is a competition going on with more than four telecom companies competing that lowers consumers monthly costs (cell phone data plans).
Additionally the former state based telecom copper cables infastructure aged badly and hasn't been touched for 15 years and the fiber network infrastructure connects just big cities, bit not small towns in the Alps. In many areas cell connection is the only option to get 1+Mbit data connection, as the copper cable infrastructure hasn't been upgraded since the mid nineties.
Agreed. This is a sad excuse used by mediocre gov't and corporate entities to offer poor service and value for money.
For example, when I visit relatives in the Frankfurt region (Mainz), I am always amazed by how similar geographically and demographically it is to the greater Toronto area in Ontario. Population and industry wise Toronto and Frankfurt are very similar -- similar financial sector jobs, similar population densities.
And yet their infrastructure is _far_ superior. I take the train from Frankfurt to Mainz in like 20 minutes. From the Mainz train station there is integrated light rail and bus to a whole network of suburbs and villages, right out into the countryside. If I want to go for a hike in a forest preserve, I don't even need a car necessarily, I can take a streetcar and a bus to many very nice places.
Accessibility of food -- groceries, farmer's markets, restaurants. All better.
And yes, the telecoms infrastructure is far superior value for the money.
North America has let itself fall behind for several decades.
Canada quite a high effective density -- something like 80 or 90% of the population live within 100 miles of the US border. Those statistics are not terribly convincing.
Better, I think, to note that Sweden has a high proportion of urban residents at 87%, compared to around 83% for Canada and the US.
Those damn socialists, with their paid vacations, short working days, good infrastructure, cheap services, and free school and healthcare. Not to mention all the wine, cheese, secularism and protesting. Heathens...
It's hardly unique. Here in Finland, the prices are comparable, though data caps are rare. 20€/mo gets you LTE with some bundled calls and SMS. Rest of the Nordics should be fairly similar. Currently I pay 18€/mo for my 50Mbps uncapped LTE, I use it as my home connection.
What impulse makes people think that comparing an isolated fact from something so multidimensional makes for an interesting contribution? Particularly considering this isolated fact is contributed to every tangentially related conversation, I really struggle to see the value in commenting with it.
* US population density: 35/km2
* Finland population density: 18/km2
It's not about the size of the country, it's because in Europe the infrastructure owners are required to let others in [1]. In US the operators are natural monopolies with very little incentives for competition.
Finland has a higher proportion of urban residents than the US. The US is also known for its huge number of small and mid-sized cities and population spread all over the country, whereas (proportionately) more of Finland is essentially empty.
That may be true but doesn't really factor in to the discussion of coverage and competition: even if essentially empty, Finland is still covered. Coverage maps for the two biggest operators:
Sure, but music isn't really the sticking point anymore.
Infinity Blade 3 is 1.7 GB. A single photo takes up more space than a song from an album. 40 minutes worth of 4k video maxes out the device (and that's optimistically assuming the apps that come with the phone don't take up any space).
For people like me who have no video, no games, and minimal music on their phones it's perfectly fine. I mostly just use a few messaging apps, instagram, snapchat, facebook, etc. The audience on HackerNews probably utilizes the space on their phones much more than the average consumer.
You think that the average consumer has no videos, games, or music on their phone? (And we forgetting photos and various other types of apps.)
You sound like when data plan providers say "Our average customer doesn't use that much data." Of course they don't. They try to stay within the ridiculous limits providers give them.
iOS 9 alone takes up a few GBs. The only reason the 16 GB option is the base option is because it anchors the price of iPhones. iPhones have an absurdly large profit margin, and price anchoring just provides the average consumer a psychological "out".
I don't want just 24 hours of music, I want a comprehensive sample of my entire music library. In my case it exceeds the 16gb (or whatever it's available after iOS + other apps) easily.
The problem with me is that I want high quality music on my phone (and I listen to it with high quality headphones all the time). Like, nothing except 320 kbps MP3 files and occasional lossless files that randomly find its way to my library. I have an Android smartphone that only supports memory cards up to 32 GB in size. It's a pain. I can't even get 1500 songs properly (keep in mind that the music is not the only thing that I have on the SD card, there's also my book library and some photos).
Streaming them in that quality for two to three hours in per day on average would take a lot of data.
Storage is one of the reasons why I could never get used to using my phone as a music player.
I keep my 50GB+ music collection on a separate device (FiiO X3), which allows me to stick to the lowest storage tier for any phone I'm interested in, and not have to worry about expandable storage (which seems to be on the way out as a trend, unfortunately).
Also, I'm a rather heavy user and my phone tends to only barely last the entire workday and commute before running out (if it lasts at all). Having a separate device for music means I don't need to feel guilty about wasting phone battery when listening to music.
The downside is you end up having to carry 2 devices instead of one, which can honestly be annoying at times, but I'm willing to make that compromise. YMMV of course.
I have an S4, and am planning to upgrade to an S5 when the price drops from the S7 sales. The only reason I use Samsung phones is for removable batteries and expandable storage. I have a 128GB sd card in my phone with 60GB of music and 40GB of movies on it.
I could never fathom using a phone without reasonable storage capacity. 16GB was bad in 2000. In 2016, anything less than 256GB is a joke, and the joke is really no laughing matter anymore. It has not been for at least a half decade in the mobile space.
Me, I'm the type of guy to have 10gb of music, photos and apps, and offload a lot of stuff to my PC and stream increasingly more. I'm okay with 16.
Is 16 a bit silly? Sure, but it's an easy way to pad the margins a bit and there's just plenty of people for whom 16 is just fine, to the extent that the upgrade option is a decent solution.
e.g. my entire office is on iPhones and they use it for mail and some other stuff, 80% of their storage is unused, will be unused forever, and it makes sense not to pad that even more and increase the base price.
I wish the price bump was a bit smaller if you want to increase your 16gb, more in line with their cost price, but... I'm not at all opposed to the notion that a 16gb base model exists.
At least for all them youngins, we all use soundcloud of bandcamp for the most part. Depedent on data? Yes, but with that you get live updates of new songs or reposts from your favorite artists.
I know this is the case for many people but I'm not a big fan of streaming media to my phone. It's expensive, unnecessary (for my use case) and too unreliable to my liking. I sometimes do it but I just don't rely on it.
It might be a YMMV thing. For a lot of edm, soundcloud+bandcamp is more than enough. It's reliable enough for people with good bandwidth (I am lucky enough to be in that group), not to mention the collection is endless and well beyond anything I could fit on my phone...and it's fresher, as in when my favorite DJ/producer has a new song, I see it immediately, like it, comment to tell him/her directly, and so forth. This works well for EDM which doesn't quite follow the traditional "let's sit in a room and write 8 songs and release an album over a couple of months to years" production model. For EDM, where the rate of production is much quicker, streaming + the community makes a large part of the experience, so much so that without those social aspects, you're almost missing out.
Moreover, as many have noticed here, there are only so many minutes in a day, so the actually amount of data you'll download is limited anyway, and the fact that its SC gives you the variety, so I find myself missing very little.
However, for genres where the SC model doesn't work (or at least it isn't present), this doesn't help. When I want to listen to doom metal or psychedelic music, I'm left out and having to resort to what you do. And since I hate poor quality recordings and use flac when I can, my phone runs out of space quickly when I resort to carrying around a music collection.
Depends on your use case. I use Dropbox for storing photos, since my network connection is generally good enough for it to be fast and seamless (I guess they send resized photos). I do keep music on my phone, but I don't need my > 500 album collection, just some new stuff that I change every couple of weeks.
Among computer illiterates in my family it also doesn't seem to be a problem. My mother has been using 16GB iPads and iPod Touches for years and never ran out of storage.
Sure, if you play lot's of > 1GB games (which seems to be typical these days), you don't want a 16GB model.
It's cheaper to get the $100 upgrade to 64G. Bigger data plans get expensive in a hurry here. Given that you're using a phone for at least a couple of years, paying an extra $40/month for the big data plan vs. $100 up front for enough storage not to need the upgrade just doesn't make sense.
Of course if Apple didn't have to skimp so badly on the base phone the upgrade wouldn't be necessary. Shame so many Android phones are also 16GB. My experience with using microSD cards for more storage is a bit less than spectacular as well with so many of the stupid cards dying suddenly and without warning.
Also apps using sd for storage is on an app by app basis. So say if Google turns that off for Play Music - as it seems they just did - well, now I have to cancel my subscription for that service and find something else to use my 64gb sd for. ffs.
USD 399 for an unlocked new iPhone (with latest hardware!) in an of itself is a great, almost revolutionary price regardless of storage capacity. To the degree where I actually wonder whether it's going to have negative effects on their iPhone 6(s) sales.
I'm sure Apple has been running very sophisticated simulations on different model pricing, but 399 has so far been really the ballpark of Android phones.
Therefore I think what we're observing here is nothing less than the beginning of a new phase of iPhone strategy: They are starting to reach down from the top into the middle class segment whereas everybody else in the smartphone industry is trying to move up segments (so far with very limited success). Now Apple's brand is playing for them as they move down whereas everybody else's brand is playing against them as they want to move up.
I assumed it was 16gb because that obviously isn't enough and then they basically force you to spend another $100 for the next bump up in storage, which costs them essentially nothing. Most people will buy the more expensive version, but they can advertise the lower price.
"and then" implies a sequence of events that doesn't match reality. This has been the price structure for iOS devices for many years. In any case, I don't think Apple has moral qualms making cash grabs, being that they are so into profit.
My 80GB 5th gen video iPod (that's right, the clickwheel one) just gave up the ghost. Right now I'm limping on with an old 4GB iPhone 3 hand-me-down that I'm using as an iPod, since my Nexus 4 doesn't have the storage, nor battery capacity to be my music listening device.
At this point I've started to come to terms with the fact that for the next few years, my phone will not be able to be my primary portable music device because of storage.
On that note, are there any reasonable high-capacity alternatives for a portable music device that don't require streaming? I want a small form factor, large HDD with a headphone jack and a good battery and solid interface. I'd considered a new iPod Touch, but to get even 64GB is $300, which seems a bit much.
I'm using a fii0 x1, which has a sd card slot for up to 128gb of storage, and it has decent battery life and a very nice UI. Also has a dac for great quality sound, and supports lots of file types including flac. Bit more pricy than some cheap mp3 players, but it's very durable and will last a long time I imagine.
Been using a FiiO X3 1st Gen here for quite a few years now, and it's still going strong. I got it before the X1 came out, and if I were to buy a new player I'd go with the X1 as well.
Wonder if iFixit pricing on the iPod fix would be worth it? I have that exact same model, still going strong for car music (my Sienna's BT implementation sucks bigtime).
It's going to be $559 in Denmark. I had to check the prices on the other models, the cheapest 6S is $875. I never realized how expensive an iPhone is. Why anyone would buy an iPhone at those prices are beyond me. Sure, most will be buying via their carrier along with a subscription, but in most cases that will just make the phone more expensive.
The current exchange rate for $400 USD is $525 CAD. The price in Canada is $580/$710 CAD for 16GB/64GB (which is before taxes). The Nexus 5X 16GB is $440. The Nexus 6P 32GB is $650. The Nexus 6P 64GB is $700.
It's always funny to me how people blame corporations for paying as little tax as possible, but do the exact same thing in their daily lives. If the law allows you to pay less tax on something, of course you are going to do it.
>Though which comparable device would you suggest at a similar price point?
I wouldn't know, I won't pay above $30 to $40 for a phone or above $10 per month for my cellular plan. While a phone/smartphone is insanely useful, I just don't think the price is justified.
People don't buy smartphones to use them as a phone. Think of that as a secondary function to a global internet device and the price makes a bit more sense if you value internet everywhere and want power/battery/screen size etc. If you don't, stick with a normal phone.
What does "taken advantage of" mean in this context? No one is forcing them to buy anything. If someone doesn't feel the price is justified, for anything, they shouldn't buy it.
All Apple products hold their price very well. I just sold an iPhone 4S for 100€ yesterday - a five year old device.
It still runs the latest iOS, albeit a bit slower. Show me 5 year old Android device that can run the latest Android version WITH CARRIER SUPPORT, without any 3rd party hacks or rooting.
Depends on how much you prefer the experience of an iPhone versus an Android. There's a reason someone might choose an Audi versus a similarly equipped (engine wise) Volkwagen - it's a different experience, at a price, that some prefer.
I was speaking more to the entire apple product line. Laptops, PC's, phones. Apple users easily pay on average 1/3 more for comparable hardware. Their software used to be of higher quality, but that is no longer the case.
The only iPhone (actualy iOS device of any kind) I've ever bought that's not still in active use is my first, a 3G. My daughter still uses my 3GS to this day. The screen is cracked, but it's fully functional and she can even still download compatible apps from the App Store. Even ones that are no longer available for sale, but which I bought back in the day (I'm thinking of Lemonade Stand).
I've got excellent value for money from every iOS device I've ever had, with regular software updates years after they were bought.
A while ago I bought a Sandisk 64 GB USB flash at Costco on clearance for what I thought was a good price. I wanted to use it to back up a laptop on which I don't have too many files, so 64 GB was just right.
Big mistake! Huge!
I formatted the flash and started backup and it was pathetic. A MB per second write speed. If that. I gave up after a few hours.
I went back to my tiny Apricorn backup drive, which I love, and which uses a 1.8" hard drive internally. Zoom. Easily 10x faster than that Sandisk flash.
I see it as a rather significant error on their part. And to be honest, I am not quite sure why there has not been a massive revolt by app developers, content creators, and companies in general.
With the OS taking up a huge chunk of that 16GB and basic functionality like messaging taking up another 700MB-1.5GB, and not even counting photos and videos than can almost take up infinite amounts of storage; little is left for actual music, movies, apps, and other content.
Tinder alone is basically a 1.5 GB app. If you want to watch a movie and it's another 1 GB. If you want a decent sized music selection you are down another 5-10 GB. With every damn poorly coded app being around 100 MB you quickly run into situations where people with 16 GB are having to make choices and are dissuaded from purchasing Apple music and video content, let alone purchasing apps and playing games. Apple is essentially cutting into various app developer revenues by introducing artificial limits.
I, as a 16 GB iPhone user, would not be able to download or keep various apps on my phone that would be available for use if I had to trade off with taking pictures of my life. So app developers are losing out on revenue because Apple is putting these artificial limits on things for utterly retarded reasons. Please, someone provided me a single rational and irrefutable argument for there even being a 16 GB version, let alone a 32 GB one. Do you want people to buy Apple content or not, Apple. Do you want app developers to make money or not, Apple. I suspect apple is going to screw around again until their retarded greed leads to innovation that results in them having to buy some shitty company for 3.5 BILLION dollars again ... Beats. It's far less obvious how that would happen, but the effect they are causing is still there, pent up, who knows how it will burst free.
Stop being assholes, Apple, let people have enough space so they can actually use your ecosystem's products services without having to make hard trade-offs. You greedy bastards.
I don't. I listen to music at home, from my desktop. I don't really have a use case for listening to it on the road.
> I, as a 16 GB iPhone user, would not be able to download or keep various apps on my phone that would be available for use if I had to trade off with taking pictures of my life
Sure. So don't buy a 16GB iPhone.
It's ok that there are phones that don't suit your needs, as long as there are also phones that do. Moving the base-level storage to 64GB has a cost, and assuming that Apple is determined to keep its industry-leading margins - and why wouldn't they? - then I don't want to pay that cost for 48GB of storage I don't need.
It's fine that the 16GB model is not for you. It really is. You don't have to call people bastards because they made a phone you don't want to buy.
You're right, but he's also right. 16GB base is a pretty poor experience in my experience. I'm constantly having to manage my apps and uninstall ones I don't need or use to free up space for a relatively small photo library (with most of it in iCloud Photos). It's a constant balancing act.
Then again, it's livable, and it's just annoying enough to make me want to upgrade to 64GB, so in that sense it's an ideal product segmentation for Apple, and in the end I don't mind paying what amounts to $50 more on contract for the 64GB version for the increase in utility it gains me.
They would also buy the same spec for half the price. Or an entry level for the same price with 128GB. More realistically : would it be better to have a more expensive entry level with 32GB? Maybe. Just because apple might be technically able to offer the product configuration you want them to for the price you want them to doesn't mean it is the right thing for them to do.
Here's the thing. You don't get to decide what is right, or what is better, for anyone except you.
Apple may be doing this mostly for product differentiation purposes; they may not. But whatever the rationale, it is working for them, well enough to pretty much define the category of premier smart phone. Arguing that this is somehow irrational comes across as either sour grapes or naive.
What you and everyone that is voting me down seem to overlook for some rather crazy reason (The only thing that makes any sense is protective defensive excuse making for Apple) is that they are shooting themselves in the foot. Sure, people buy the 16GB phone, usually thinking they are getting 16GB and thinking that is a lot without realizing that out of the box it's only 14GB and once they install some things and want to buy some music and take some pictures they are running out of room on double time.
Now they are stuck with a phone that is of an inadequate size in order to not only fully utilize it, but also it impacts developers and sales and companies that are constantly trying to push their incidental apps onto people.
I don't get your opposition to bigger storage when the increased storage would probably cost Apple literally next to nothing. Do you understan that the delta between the cost of 16 and 32 GB, let alone even 64 GB is basically negligible for them? It does not seem at all to be about cost, it's all about perceived price maximization, but I am rather certain their calculations either don't quite make sense or they are not properly considering and weighting their inputs.
I also don't understand why developers are not up in arms because Apple's foolishness keeps their app from being installed and used, which leads to decreased revenues. It really undercuts the whole ecosystem because people with 16 GB phones are not installing the hilton app, not installing the app for every airline, not installing health kit apps, not installing care kit apps, and not installing various other incidental apps that the ecosystem really requires you to have installed but take up way too much space to justify keeping installed on a regular basis.
I don't have any opposition to bigger storage, where did you get such a strange idea?
Clearly you are much smarter about this than Apple is. Their failure to understand the market as well as you have has undeniably lead to shrinking margins and market share, eventually to their exit from the premium phone market. It's a shame nobody buys their phones anymore.
More seriously - there are good criticisms that can be made of apples strategy, but they aren't the ones you are making. Your complaints show a naivety about how such markets work, and why.
In many markets, price is not a function of cost but a function of value (perceived or otherwise). In fact, this can be viewed as the defining characteristic of markets a company like Apple wants to be in, vs. those it doesn't want to be in. Competing in a commodity market is brutal.
That isn't to say that there aren't good arguments about why 32GB base would be better, but COGS delta isn't one of them, and focusing on it demonstrates a pretty fundamental lack of understanding of what market this phone is in.
Beyond all the aesthetics and usability issues, I believe its more of business and ideology standpoint. Let me explain:
Reality 1: If there were memory card slots, easily accessible to users, then they would immediately see it as a way to put data "into" the phone. Data, here is mostly going to be movies, music, apps, etc.
Apple's Strategy: iTunes, and now iCloud. Period.
Reality 2: If users put data "into" the phone, then Apple would lose its money-making resource of "selling" data to the users, thus iOS would not be the most profitable ecosystem; "piracy" increases at atrocious rates; the industries (music, movies, apps, etc) will lose money; they could probably revolt against Apple for letting this happen, even when it did not intend to do so.
Apple's Strategy: No memory-card slots. Period.
Reality 3: Apple has cleverly involuted its strategies in such a way that it makes people pay for content; making iOS the best ecosystems for developers all over the world; influence the industries in a positive way; make people realize that there is joy in spending; selling cool new devices with really usable, useful, and necessary features.
> With the OS taking up a huge chunk of that 16GB […]
Funnily, I just noticed on the 6SE tech-specs site that Apple's "premium" Apps (Garage Band, iPhoto, etc.) come pre installed on the 64GB version. It's like them admitting that 16GB is just to damn small.
OTOH I bought a 64GB iPhone 4S when it came out (that thing just quit on me 2 weeks ago) and I'll never ever in my life want to sync that much music again. So for me, it'll probably be the larger option, but I'll fill it up with photos and videos of my cats.
I think iOS has this application caching issue. Apps seem to always be caching data to the storage, but there is no option to erase, or remove it as needed.
the issue that ive found when i was troubleshooting clients phones for "where is all my storage" is that the system does not automatically remove cached files like music/ spotify offline etc.
i never have seen the clearing text on my iPhone, although i figured it would be automatic.
If the math is still accurate and figure half your storage is music (7GB) we're talking 750-1750 songs. At 2.5 minute average runtime, 750 songs would be ~78 minutes of music per hour over 24 hours. So, you could skip 5 songs and still fill an entire day. And if you figure average 4 minute runtime like that poster did, that's 125 minutes of music per hour, or skipping 1/2 of the songs that come up.
A lot of folks aren't power users and don't need big storage on the phone. It's okay to offer them an option.
It's not. You need great ears and even greater hardware to distinguish it from uncompressed in AB testing (on recent enough LAME encoder).
But if you must, go 192k/256k, which is pretty much guaranteed to be indistinguishable for almost all wetware/hardware combination in the world and would still get you about 12h in a gigabyte.
That's part of the reason I switched to Android. I spend $250, get a micro sd slot and pretty much all the features I want or would use. The camera is the only thing I miss from the iphone but it's not the end of the world as the camera in the Android isn't exactly terrible.
Coincidentally it's also why I went off contract. Much cheaper to buy phone outright and buy 3gb of pay as you go data a month than get locked into an absurd and useless contract.
That's how they raise their average selling price without raising the base price. For many use cases like kiosks and classrooms little storage is needed.
I wonder how well this will work: wife has an iPhone 5C but hates it because it's an 8GB model. Facebook already takes up 500MB with its caches and she's constantly removing apps. Pictures also take up room - with Photo Stream on there are 4 copies of each pic on your phone...
In addition to making a buck through market segmentation, there are probably challenges sourcing NAND flash that meets Apple's power/performance requirements in sufficient quantities.
Going for 16GB storage on my 5S might be what makes me upgrade...otherwise the phone still seems fast / good enough for most tasks after 2.5 years of ownership.
I bought a 5s recently (iPhone 3G -> iPhone 4 -> Nexus 4 -> Moto X 2013 -> Moto X 2014 before), because I had too many problems with Android. Mine feels incredibly snappy.
I think the use case is older people (my parents..) that mainly use it as a phone and not much else. It wasteful though as it really kills future functionality and makes the phone get tossed earlier. (although they can be recycled I'm betting a lot aren't). Especially interesting given the keynotes emphasis on recycling/renewable resources.
on the plus side, they kept the headphone jack (no new headphones required).
I'm one of those hold outs. I had a iPhone 6 for a month and it literally gave me anxiety because I couldn't thumb around Spotify and other apps like I was used too. I traded it in for a 5s and have been using it ever since. I figured I would have to keep it until they stopped putting iOS updates on it. Really glad they did this.
I predict they will sell a ton of the SE's. I'm in the same boat, the 5S was great and the 4.7" and larger screens just seem too big. I have been waiting for the SE to come out.
Agreed. My 5S broke over winter, 4.7" was too big as a replacement. I tested a 6 in my jeans pocket and it felt odd to me. I immediately purchased another 5S instead.
I could have upgraded a few months ago but held out as rumours of this phone have been around for awhile. I'll be happy to upgrade as I suspect the iPhone 7 will be a 4.7 or 5.5 and those are just too big for me.
Double tapping the home button makes the top of the screen reachable
That being said, I too still use iPhone 5S & I don't think I'll make the switch, 4K video & 2nd generation Touch ID are nice but I WANT 3D Touch. I understand why they're not there yet --- they had to shove some of the battery on the 6S to fit in the 3D hardware.
EDIT: seems they stuck with the first generation Touch ID? (6S and SE) [1]
Yeah, but the process to using "reachability" in my experience is always something like: reach for the button because I can totally make it, accidental palm-press on the bottom-opposite corner, undo mistake, try again with different hand angle, do it again, undo it again, then remember about reachability shortcut, double touch home button, reach button.
It is annoying that I'm constantly loosening my grip on my phone (and potentially dropping it) so my thumb can get the reach it needs to hit the back button.
I've dropped my iPhone6 too many times to count and I'm just lucky my screen hasn't shattered. I can see how someone might get anxiety from this.
To elaborate since I'm apparently being downvoted and can't edit: In Australia, which I'm assuming the parent is part of since they specified AUD$1400, Apple specifically allows for a 14 day return policy [1]. You could drop AUD$1400 on the phone, find it does not suit your needs, then return it and get something else no questions asked.
In that sense, Apple specifically alleviates that anxiety of dropping AUD$1400 on a new phone and as a result I don't necessarily understand why the parent would find it anxiety-provoking to find it doesn't work for them when they can easily receive a refund.
For two years Apple _didn't sell_ a flagship 4"-or-smaller phone. So that "something else" was an Android phone. Which, if you're locked into the iOS ecosystem (or just plain like it) ... would be a bit anxiety inducing.
Fair enough, though you could revert back to a new 5S and be no worse off. It's a bit sluggish here and there but I'm typing this post on one and it's still my only phone and holds up for 95% of tasks.
Same here I went from a big Android phone to a smaller 5s two years ago and haven't looked back. I never upgraded to the 6s because it's too big. I can finally upgrade, yay!
Put me in with the 'likes smaller (or what I'd call 'standard') phones' crowd. Props to AAPL for keeping a very pocketable chassis size in the line up.
I, too, am hanging on to an older phone (Moto X 1st gen) because there's nothing left that runs naked Android that's small enough. I feel like the pendulum has swung too far into tablones (never 'phablets'!).
I'm hopeful that either (a) Google comes around to making a normal sized Nexus, or (b) other high-end manufacturers start to ship pure (or close to pure) Android OS on some of their devices. We don't need no stinkin' TouchWiz/Sense/Optimus/&c crud.
I've also got a Z5 Compact and couldn't be happier with it. There is literally no other phone in the same size category with flagship specs at the moment. Add to that an SD-card slot, heroic battery life, water-resistant body, fingerprint reader, plus solid design and you've got what I consider to be among the best phones on the market.
Unfortunately, the Xperia brand is not doing well in the US. Sony has completely neglected marketing their phones here, so very few people know the Z5 Compact even exists. There has been a good deal of speculation that Sony might stop selling Xperia in the US entirely or even carve off their ailing mobile division.
I love my Z5 Compact as well, primarily for the small size. I completely agree with your comment about the Sony brand here in the US. Totally anecdotal but at least 90% of the comments about my phone are asking if it's a Windows/Nokia phone. Although that could be because I got the yellow one.
Agreed! I've never been an iOS user but I certainly believe that they still drive a lot of the market demand. Google/Android will be releasing some 'small' phones to compete which I've waited years for. I went from a Samsung S2 to a Nexus 5 and even that was a tad large for my preferences; worse when I put a sturdy case around it.
I'd really like to see this as well. I enjoy my Nexus 6, but it's at the upper limit of what I can comfortably use, and I've seriously debated whether I care more about screen size or one-handed usability, since the Nexus 6 sacrifices some of the latter for me. And people I know with smaller hands could really use something closer in size to the iPhone 4s or iPhone SE, which the current generation of Nexus devices completely ignore.
I was going to jump to the 5x, but a limit of 16GB storage with no external storage in this day and age of high-end phone cameras, video, app bloat, etc. is just flat out unacceptable for me in a phone at this point.
It's a shame they have such an awful UI, because Samsung is doing some really great stuff with their Galaxy line on the hardware side of things.
I've been holding on to my S4 mini for years now. Samsung keeps growing the size of the phones in their Mini line which is ridiculous. If you keep increasing the size of the phone it stops being "mini" at some point and becomes just an expensive, underpowered, flagship lookalike.
Same here. The S4 mini is also easily rootable and compatible with a wide range of custom ROMs. I'm running Cyanogenmod 12 on mine, and planning to upgrade to Cyanogenmod 13 now that it has been marked as stable.
I still have mine too. I wouldn't mind going even a bit smaller, since I spend so much time in front of a computer, which I use to get anything 'serious' done.
The 5X is still a very big phone though. Sure, it's `only` a 5.2" screen, but the bezels are big. It's about the same overall size as the oneplus one, which is a 5.5" screen and was classed as a phablet when it came out.
In Europe, I noticed that the cell phone shops carry many more small (4 inches and below) Android phones than you see in the US. Unfortunately, these models seemed to have very sub-par specs.
(Had he said that, it would have been a remarkably ironic comment, as he spent years fighting his oft-survivable pancreatic cancer not with the best current science, but with the healing power of a high fruit diet. A terrible diet for anyone, but also a particularly terrible diet for managing cancer, being very high in fructose. By the time he finally started taking the advice of cancer experts, it was too late.)
I remember Jobs talking about never making a larger phone. I really wonder if it was a case of him caring about "taste" over "giving people what they want."
There was some leaked Apple internal document where they said that people wanted larger phones. The post-Jobs Apple created larger phones to meet market demands.
One thing that always makes me giggle, though, is the fact that if you double tap the home button the screen slides down so you can reach the navigation bar at the top of the screen. If you have to provide a hardware solution like that, isn't it proof that the larger phone provides a worse user experience?
I'm excited about the smaller phone. My iPhone 6s is overly difficult to maneuver.
This is a user preference thing. I cannot stand using the smaller sized iPhones, my fingers and thumbs are too large to accurately use the screen. My vision isn't very good either so I wind up having to squint and/or hold small phones very close to my face.
I love my gigantic Nexus 6, some people hate it. I like that I can make the text big and still see enough of it on one screen. I can accurately input text, and comfortably hold the phone in my hand.
At this point if somebody told me that my large phone was a poor user experience and I had to use a smaller phone, I would be very upset.
I'm a smaller phone fan, and that's perfectly fine with me. You're welcome to your large phone if that's what works for you; I just wish more manufacturer would also make high-end phones that are under 4.5" screen size, i.e. with good screen, memory, camera, speed, etc. I've never had an iPhone, but I'm glad that Apple is making this. Hopefully some of the android manufacturers will follow suit, or I might seriously consider switching.
> isn't it proof that the larger phone provides a worse user experience?
I think it's proof that they weren't willing to make some significant changes in iOS to account for this size change. The back button being in the top left of the screen is, in retrospect, a pretty bad idea. Android gets many things wrong, but having a back button easily accessible in the bottom bar is very user-friendly.
Instead iOS has this double tap thing, and also added swiping to go back. It's better than nothing, but buttons at the top of the screen still feels like a mistake.
I'm a woman with small hands, and I hardly ever use the reach-ability feature on my 6S Plus. I don't seem to notice that I can't type one-handed, I just type holding it and use the other hand to peck, but I love the larger screen size. It's very comfortable for me and you couldn't pay me to go back to a smaller size.
tl:dr; we all have our individual preferences. Glad there's now products for us all.
> isn't it proof that the larger phone provides a worse user experience?
The thing is, at this end of the technology lifecycle there are always tradeoffs to be made. For me, the 4" (and to a smaller event the 4.7") devices sacrifice too much in the way of screen size, battery life, and keyboard usability. In exchange for those things, I sacrificed one-handed use for some use cases.
There's a lot more to 'user experience' than just the # of hands I need to send a text message... And it turns out that with my watch I do about 70% of my messaging (by far my most common 'quick one-handed' use case) with my phone in my pocket anyway.
I bought the phone with the largest battery and thus the longest battery life and the fewest "Oh, shit" moments when I'm traveling to conferences or out on my mountain bike. The phone with the largest battery happened to have a larger screen glued to its back.
I'm sure I'm representative of a market segment, although possibly not the only market segment.
Battery cases solve that for me. I have the largest phone with the largest battery but it's still often not enough.
I could carry an external battery like many people but I've watched them (a) forget the cable (b) forget the battery (c) forget to charge the battery. Having a battery cases solves all those. No cable needed, no chance to forget it (well except forgetting the entire phone) and no forgetting to charge since it charging one charges both.
It does make the phone larger, thicker, heavier and means I can't have one of the sexier cases but I choose usefulness over looks for this situation
> I remember Jobs talking about never making a larger phone.
It's consistent with the Jobs style to completely dismiss the idea of a product that they are not currently announcing or selling, even when history proved he knew it was a good idea.
I've no doubt Steve was mentally locked into small form factor because it was the ideal for the product they were trying to build. The original iPhone sized to fit the market that existed at the time. It was a smarter mobile phone. The current iPhone is a pocket computer with cellular networking and a phone app. This transition was so subtle that most people didn't even notice it at the time.
Only Apple would launch a new phone that looked physically almost identical to one that has been out for two and a half years.
Similar to keeping the design language of the MacBook family the same across generations of the product, it's a reaffirmation of Massimo Vignelli's famous quote "Styles come and go. Good design is a language, not a style."
I still kind of wish they'd bring back the iPhone 4 industrial design; as far as I'm concerned it was their high point. The 5/5S is a close second, though.
Cook's design heuristic seems to be some combination of faster/smaller/bigger/thinner - which leads to exactly the kind of line fragmentation that Jobs hated.
The overlap between the MacBook Air, the MacBook, and the iPad Pro is making less and less sense from a customer POV. If you just want a content consumption, browsing, and email device that maybe supports some basic text/photo editing - which is the use case for most users - which should you buy?
As indicated in the keynote, Apple views iPads as the future of personal computing. This was said multiple times by multiple people. I wouldn't be surprised to see the MacBook lines continue to stagnate.
Developers are the ones creating the apps for the majority of customers.
Ignoring the tools that developers and creatives use to create and sustain this thriving ecosystem is a very dangerous move on Apple's part. Skylake chips for the Macbook lines have been available for months and the Mac Pro hasn't been updated since 2013. OS X itself continues a long list of bugs and this only grows with "customer" features inevitably introduced down the line. El Capitan was supposed to give Apple a year to slow down and fix things but we have found it has been a huge problem in our work environment.
Datacenters don't run on iPads stacked in a rack, media companies don't play stuff out of an iPhone with a dongle. Xcode alone is the single reason OS X is still incredibly relevant. I don't see Jony Ive designing the latest iOS devices on an iPad for years to come and ignoring these professionals is not a good move.
Here's to WWDC, when the Skylake chips suited for the Macbook line were introduced 9 months prior.
I'm not sure I agree that XCode is the reason OSX is preferred by developers. Maybe some?
Most of the developers I know prefer OSX because of the close-enough-to-linux terminal experience and compatibility of most libraries. Rails, Scala, Node, JAVA all run pretty similarly on local machines as they do on the servers.
I suppose it just depends which flavor of developer you hang with!
I would say that OSX is preferred by any power user who needs/wants access to a "desktop"-style UI, a complete filesystem experience, layered windows, etc. The bizarre opaque filesystem on iOS drives me crazy, and is one of the biggest reasons I've had trouble committing to an iPhone.
I don't know of many people working in an office environment, much less as a developer, who would be satisfied with an iPad Pro as a daily driver when it comes to getting the amount of work you can get done on something like a Macbook Air.
Perhaps I just don't understand iOS well enough. I'd love to see a video of someone actually working and multitasking effectively on an iPad at the speed that is possible on a Macbook. Most of the videos that Apple releases show work that is limited to video capture, editing and illustration.
Early adopters are equally important as a majority though. Lest you forget that developers account for what really makes the iOS platform profitable and bloom - the app ecosystem -- and Apple requires Mac/MBP/MBA to develop for it.
Look at the Windows Phone. Fine device by all accounts, but it's biggest gripe from potential users is the app ecosystem -- or lack thereof. Take care of early adopters and take care of the people who keep your mini-economy running. It is short-sighted of them to fall flat in this arena. Arguably though, they've not been doing anything terribly impressive for quite some time by way of product.
Just look at the number of apps in the App store, as far as Apple is concerned getting developers on board is fixed (even though most developers would disagree).
Model Reco. Days since release
------------------ --------- ------------------
MacBook Caution 346
MacBook Air Don't Buy 378
Retina MacBook Pro Don't Buy 307
Curious that the Sensors list does not include a barometer. It used to be the case that the A9 with coprocessor carried a barometer inside it. Has this changed for this phone? That would be incredibly sad if they removed sensors. Did the M9 iteration of the coprocessor remove the barometer?
Apple themselves use it to count the number of flights of stairs you climb. Google uses it in Android phones for faster GPS and for indoor location mapping.
I'm using it to forecast the weather by crowdsourcing billions of live atmospheric pressure measurements at Sunshine (https://thesunshine.co).
Other use cases are for migraine headache prediction/prevention and other health-related issues. The primary and most exciting use case however is weather forecasting!
Edit: Basically, barometers are useful for any altitude-related task, as their error margins for relative altitude changes are very small. Additionally, if you can filter out the altitude data as noise, you're left with atmospheric data, which has immense applications when crowdsourced at scale.
It's also used for emergency phone calls. When 911 calls are made, the barometric pressure is also relayed to give the emergency operators an idea of how high someone is, which is especially useful if the call is made from inside a building.
E911, or Enhanced 911, is much more than just a voice call. For some time, E911 calls have sent sensor data from smartphones to the 911 dispatch, such as latitude and longitude. Soon, the FCC is going to mandate all barometer-carrying smartphones to send the barometric pressure when an E911 call is made.
Your app looks great on paper so I downloaded it from the app store.
It requested me to allow location access, even while in the background.
This is a deal breaker for me for battery life and privacy, so I will not be able to use it.
Edit: Upon checking in settings, I can choose "while using the app only". I understand you probably prompted with "while in the background" to improve your crowdsource data.
I'm glad I will still be able to use it, thanks for allowing this!
GPS is bad at figuring height, can be off by 30-100ft. Think 911 trying to locate your cellphone in a multi-floor building. Barometer data is very good at figuring height.
Yes, but is there any data about the ambient pressure inside a building VS outside? There's a whole lot of horsepower dedicated to HVAC units, do they really hit a zero equilibrium?
I would be surprised and I'm curious too. I always assumed a barometer was how the iPhone measures flights of stairs climbed without expensive GPS calculations.
I think you can pretty easily distinguish stairs climbed using just the accelerometer, but I could be way off. I'd be impressed if a barometer had enough resolution to indicate smaller (~10ft) altitude changes.
The barometers in Android and iOS devices can usually detect altitude changes as small as a few centimeters! Although I wouldn't say that deltas that small are reliable. I think you can get a reliable, trusted altitude delta as small as about half a meter.
Could it be that they moved the barometer to that 3D touch sensor block, which isn't included in the SE? Do digital barometers take up significant space?
The processing power wall. The difference in processing power is extremely negligible between the latest models. What application are you going to be running on your phone that needs more power than the A7/A8, which can load webpages almost instantaneously? More processing power at this point seems like it will only be abused to allow sloppier code to slip through the cracks.
Additionally, innovation in the app ecosystem is basically dead to me at this point.
Differentiation through size, color, camera stabilization, 3D touch, fingerprint reader, lower price point, etc. is cool...but not really $500 cool to me as a user who would like (more than) 64gb on a phone.
It's also interesting that they are still pricing the phone at $400 and not really making it an accessible play for growth markets where Android reigns supreme...maybe we'll see another "C" version made of plastic that will continue Apple's push into the lower-price-point markets. Interested to see if the tradeoff of market share for product focus and brand value is worth it in the long run, and how the market reacts.
Paradoxically, increasing processing power actually improves battery life, which is one of the most important features of a smartphone. If the CPU can finish its tasks extremely quickly, it can spend more time in a low-power state. Also shrinking transistors usually causes both an increase in performance per watt and a reduction in the number of watts used.
So, 6mm longer than the iPhone 4, but 1.7mm thinner. And with an A9 processor.
Seems like a good size - I haven't cared for their "thinness at all costs" trend lately, as it makes the phone hard to hold onto. This appears to be much more hand-friendly.
Plus battery life is the first thing to go when they aim for thinness.
I know they've improved battery life in the SE, but still, overall the trend is thinner with a smaller capacity battery (but more efficient components, so you ultimately break even).
I have a phone with a 3100 mAh battery @ 5.1" 1080p, it isn't the thinnest phone around, but boy does it last three or four days. It is super nice. We need more phones like that.
It seems to me like Apple almost wants you to charge your phone almost daily... I do not know... I do not see the reason for them too keep slimming their phones when it noticeably affects the battery. I kinda dislike their attitude. Expected to do the same as they did with laptops, for example, where MacBook Pro came so light and thin that I was like, it's a little heavier than Air and a little thicker, but hell it works better! They didn't sacrifice anything at brought amazing performances both in terms of raw computational power and battery life. What bugs me is that iPhone SE got thinner... WHY?! Why Apple didn't fill that space that saved by battery... Nobody would say, HEY CHANGE IT! Never enough battery power
If the battery lasts 1.5 days, people have to start charging their phones in the middle of the day - which is usually a bad time and a huge inconvenience. If you have to charge it every day, you don't notice it, if the battery runs out in your lunch break, you will curse Apple for the bad battery life.
In contrast, if you charge your phone daily anyway, you don't gain anything by 0.5 days of added battery life.
Except that when they claim 1 day battery power, it's actually at most 0.5 days, with slightly above average usage or after the phone has aged a year. I'd love to have something that's designed for 1.5 days, so that I could actually get a full day out of it!
It's so much less harrowing, though, to get home with 33% of your battery left than 5%. Not to mention those days when you go out for dinner or drinks after work -- you have to carry a battery?
It looks like it's the exact same case dimensions as the iPhone 5/5s to me. I'm pretty tempted to get one... my iPhone 6S just feels a smidgen too big.
As a stubborn iPhone 4 user, I was excited for this press conference because of the return to a smaller form factor. I'm not sure the SE is going to push me over the edge just yet, despite the price.
Think I can hold out for a couple more months, just in case something amazing happens with the 7.
Yes I understand 7 is going to be bigger than the 5S/SE size. I'm willing to go bigger if there something really compelling about the 7, so I want to wait.
I wonder if reverting to the iPhone 5 design indicates that the design of the 6 is viewed as a flop by Apple.
I've dropped my 6+ so many times that I love the design (it's indestructible) but perhaps Apple's market research is showing that some people love the look of their 5 and are avoiding upgrading for that reason.
I'm guessing it was just more efficient or cost effective to continue using their existing manufacturing infrastructure for the 5s body and only upgrade the internals, rather than adapt the 6/6s body design to the 4 inch size.
Not indestructible at all--I run a repair shop, and 6/6+ are the most common phones we repair. The bigger the screen, the easier it is to break, in general.
You may have gotten lucky, or you may have a good case on it (a good case and a glass screen protector do go a long way.) But we've had people bring in phones even in very high-end Lifeproof cases with broken screens, bent frames, etc. It happens a lot.
Apple launched this phone because of the huge number of iPhone 5/5S users who didn't want to upgrade because they felt that the 6/6S was "too big." There was a fairly large/high-demand secondary market for 5S phones for this reason. Apple's hoping to pick up some of that market with the new SE.
The reason the 6 breaks so easily is because it can really easily fall directly on the glass. There is a little thin hard rim around the glass on every other iphone, whereas the 6 glass wraps around the side.
They've never built a 6-style model with a 4" screen. Seems more like a case of just taking the old chassis and upgrading a few components. Not that I'm complaining, but in a perfect world, it should match the design language of the current generation.
I used to be in your camp but honestly, after using iPhone 6 (not PLUS) I am okay. I actually don't use my phone all the time. It is mainly sitting on my desk or in my pocket on the go. My hand is not huge per se, just regular size, like any grown up male in his 20s. Comparing to the old model with smaller screen, the larger screen does increase read space which is quite pleasant. Give it a try.
If you really want to use an iPhone 6 or 6 Plus with one hand, just double-tap (not press, tap) the home button and the software adjusts the display size for you.
Except IME it's not very good because (with a 6S) you have to hold the phone very low to reach the home button comfortably enough for a double tap (which is lower than extending a bit for a firm press), which makes the phone top-heavy and much less hand-safe. I've dropped my 6S a lot, I've probably dropped it more in the few months I've had it than I dropped my 4S (at all)
I expect a Plus has an even worse hold and I wouldn't be able to use it 1-handed at all.
I'm not sure I follow. I just sat here with my 6S trying various ways of holding it for a good 10 minutes, and I can't figure out for the life of me what you're talking about when you say that you have to hold it lower to double tap the home button than you do to firmly press it. If anything, I find the exact opposite to be true: I need to support the bottom of the phone less when I am simply double-tapping on the home button, while I need to have more support towards the bottom of the phone if I want to firmly press it.
This seems to make sense, intuitively, as well: I'm applying way more pressure to the bottom of the phone with a firm press of the home button than I do when I lightly tap it, even if I have to tap it twice.
I think hand size is important to consider here. In order to reach the majority of my 6S screen I have my hand close to the centre of the phone. If I try to double tap the home button with my thumb it cannot reach unless I move my hand further down which involves readjusting my entire grip and I often come close to dropping the device.
Yeah but the beep had an envelope to it. There was definitely a strong attack followed by a less-than-square wave rather than a uniform beep. Though whether that was part of the sample (which the mac SE definitely could've played) or an artifact of some analogue circuitry I don't know.
Not sure what process generated that tone, but it really was a bell-like BINNNNGGGG and not a flat PC buzzer-like BEEP. At least, that's the sound I remember from the 512K and the Plus - I never had an SE myself, so I am assuming it used the same sound as the original models.
I would buy it if there was a 128GB version. It's the only form factor that works for me. I can't reach the whole of the screen with a single hand on the 6s and 6s plus.
You're probably already aware, but there's a nice feature on the 6s and 6s plus which somewhat handles this: double touch the home button (without pushing it down) and the screen moves down by half, leaving only the top half of the screen visible. Makes it a lot easier to reach options located at the top of the screen.
They say it has the same general dimensions of the iPhone 5s from 2013. I quote two specs of that phone (source Wikipedia)
Dimensions 123.8 x 58.6 x 7.6 mm (4.87 x 2.31 x 0.30 in)
Weight 112 g (3.95 oz)
I'm about to buy a new Android phone (or an iPhone SE if I could flash Android on it :-) ) and the problem is that there are only mid (few) and low range (many) phones with that size and weight. Hopefully the SE will sell well and in a year Samsung and the like will start selling again something with the size of a Galaxy S2 which was their flagship in 2011 - a few months before the iPhone 4s. Apple is proving that you can do it with modern chips and modern amounts of RAM and storage. What's closest to that in the Android world now are Samsung's A3 and Alpha and the Sony Z5 Compact, but they're not really there on all specs.
If you haven't guessed it yet, I really don't care about the size of the screen, I care more about the dimensions and weight: I've got a tablet and a PC at home when I need a large screen, I want something small and light for when I'm outside.
I haven't looked at an iPhone in a while but doesn't the SE look a lot thicker than people would like in 2016? Is that because of bigger battery or Apple wanted to differentiate on thickness?
It's good to see they are making a $399 model available - but I am not sure it had to be this small and this thick. A 1080p 4.7" model would have been the sweet spot at this price point.
Actually, being too thin is what I hate most about the iPhone 6. Instead of making phones thinner, they should use that space for the battery. If they had the thickness of an iPhone 4 (which in my view was perfect), the battery might last twice as long!
Why not upgrade to a 5 or 5S now though? The 4S is quite a ways behind, and with the 5 and even the 5S being out for so long, you could get some great deals.
It all comes down to AppleCare: I don't want to own an aftermarket phone that isn't covered for damage by anything other than my own wallet. The 5/5S can only remain a viable option for me if they're sold directly by Apple & allow me to purchase AppleCare. Anything less means I take on the risk of having to keep repairing/replacing the phone every time it breaks. Unfortunately, this happens far too often.
I think your math is a bit off. A refurb or MNVO 5S costs about $200 right now. AppleCare costs $99 + $79/replacement up to two on top of the phone. So, if Apple sold you a new 5S for $250, you'd pay $349 for it, $428 if you had to replace it, and $507 if you had to replace it twice. Replacing once sounds nearly breakeven until you factor that the price of a refurb 5S will continue to fall but the deductible on your replacement will stay fixed.
Two breaks would still justify AppleCare, but the odds are pretty low.
I understand if you just greatly value getting service from Apple and want to pay for that privilege, but if you won't buy a 5S only because it's risky, then you should reconsider.
The last 5S I've owned got replaced five (5) times. I'm not joking! Every apple device I've owned since my first PowerBook G4 in 2003 completely justified the purchase of AppleCare.
Wow, okay! You are in a special class; I think my math does apply to the normal curve. :) Isn't that more replacements than AppleCare allows for one policy?
I wasn't aware of a specific limit. Those were very legit "QA lapses" (to quote one Apple genius). I had three iPhone screens separate from the housing despite never having been dropped, and two other iPhones lost all cellular connectivity. I diligently collected data points and such until another genius told me to LOL forget it, and replaced the phone.
I could be wrong but I believe Apple is still selling the 5S's (can't check now as the apple store is down). Could also likely buy through carrier and purchase applecare through them as well.
This really good news. My iPhone 4S has never had a case on it and is still in like-new condition after close to 5 years. Those were built like little tanks, and this SE appears to have the same body. Great news. I like a phone that fits in a pocket easily and these monsters they've made since just aren't for a lot of people. Yay for the SE.
I think they're taking a cue from the way car trim levels are marketed. Consumers have learned to associate meaning with concise trim names, e.g. SE (standard, small, sporty), LE/LX/LS (luxury), etc. Names are concise and global* without directly pointing out the fact some editions are inferior to others ("Limited", "Standard", "Plus", "Super").
Or "system expansion" as in the Mac SE which followed the Mac Plus with an internal hard drive and developer accessible bus. (It was followed by the SE/30 which was a great machine. Things went downhill in naming from there.)
The market is probably ignoring the announcement. Anything less than a 1.5% change is pretty much noise and random jitter (APPL is currently down .5%).
Too bad; I would love to have a smaller form factor than my 6S. I waited for awhile to upgrade from my 4S to see if they would introduce something like this, but with ad-cluttered pages, web browsing can be really painful on 1 GB.
Yeah, that's about the only reason I wouldn't buy this thing. I hate 3D touch so the fact that it's missing isn't a concern to me, but the missing ram is a huge problem.
I think it is one of the first times Apple couldn't bring the best out of a specific technology/concept.
As you can see from very beginning, Apple most of the time took an existing technology/concept, made it better and made it so user-friendly, usable, and simple that it always took off and became a standard. People loved it. Look at touch screen phones, tablets, buying music online, beautiful keyboard design (mac) and etc.
With forced touch technology, even though it really is promising and advanced, Apple's user base did not really consider it as a key feature yet. It has been some time and you don't feel like you are missing something if you don't have it.
I guess we will see with the iPhone SE if Apple thinks the same way. They may still think that it is an essential technology and put their time on it and I believe forced touch will be great if they continue working on it.
You guys are crazy. 3D Touch actually makes a screen full of apps useful. Instead of needing to have a million folders that I classify by behavior I can just have apps sprawled across a few screens and then apply a little more force on the app and then get a few actions that are related to the app.
I'm actually shocked that I'm seeing such a Luddite response to something that's objectively better. I agree that the software needs improvement (for example, what makecheck says about deleting apps) and there are a few things that are kind of stupid. For example, one can't move a full window of apps as you can with Android without moving each individual app (which is pretty ridiculous). Apple definitely seems to be falling behind but 3D Touch is a great, solid feature. It was a mistake for them to omit it from this model.
I was really really hoping for the 5c plastic body. It was great being able to drop the phone and not have to worry about the screen shattering on the vast majority of drops.
Why are we still using the same designs / ideas approved by Steve Jobs in 2016? Its been 5 years and the new iPhones look almost exactly the same as the old ones - aside from some obvious local optimizations like processing speed and screen quality. It would be great to see something different come out of Apple, but right now it seems like the company is scared of coming out with anything truly revolutionary.
VAT is included in the list price, the sales tax is not. Excluding the VAT, the UK price is ~300 GBP, which is roughly 430 USD. All we have is ~30 USD difference.
A great play by Apple for growth in developing markets. Not so flash elsewhere, don't judge by your own standards.
Clearly only low on device capacity to keep a low price point (No 3D touch - same reason). Capacity on board device is not really necessary anyway - thats the reason that Apple have been developing the iCloud.
No 3D touch shows you how important Apple views it. It adds a level of inconsistency amongst their phones meaning developers can never depend on it which means it'll likely get used less and less.
Oh well it was a neat idea but adding multiple dimensions to a 2D screen always seemed kinda awkward to me.
Why the exact same shape as the iPhone 5S? I feel like a significant reason people buy new iPhones is the idea that people will notice you have the newest model. With SE, it will just appear like you have an out of date iPhone 5. Why not round the edges like the iPhone 6?
I'm happy to hear that the dimensions are the same, since I have some existing accessories that would probably not work if the size were a bit different.
I probably will too (currently on an iPhone 5) given that my current strategy is to replace my phone every 2 years by buying a refurbished model with 12 month warranty for ~£150 from eBay. I usually get ~£50 or so for each old phone so the physical phone only costs me £4 a month.
4GB data (4G), unlimited texts and unlimited minutes for ~£20 a month here in the UK. Was always amazed at the price of plans in the US, luckily I never had to pay my own bill when I lived there.
I think Apple doesn't want this iPhone to seem new. Otherwise you might get a bunch of people upgrading to the entry-level model instead of the more expensive iPhone 6s.
I definitely see your point, but when thinking about my grandparents / parents who are 60 years of age and older, I think a lot of ppl in that demographic really don't want a "big" phone and mostly use it for phone calls, text messaging and light web browsing. I see this as a real win for Apple and a way to score a big portion of that demo.
The iPhone 5/5S was arguably their best industrial design (I prefer the look and feel of the 4, but the glass back posed a practical problem, as did the external antenna). It's very popular. I'm considering getting this to replace my 5S, because I really don't like the 6/6S design and size very much.
I'd even call this a statement of confidence in the longevity of Apple's own industrial design. There's a clear implication that Apple's design doesn't date easily.
Ha. No. Not in many countries outside the US. Here in Belgium most people don't even have a contract, and almost all contracts don't come with a device.
Just in time! My iPhone 6 just broke and its about time to get a new one. I have no problems going back to a smaller phone if it still carries the class and power of the phones that have recently come out. Not to mention the price makes me happy as well :)
Weird they didn't call this the iPhone 6S Mini, but I'll be getting one. Downgraded from an iPhone 6S to a 5S because the big screen is hard to use with one hand, so I'm ecstatic they released this.
I found 7 occurences of sentences starting with "And", it seems a bit too much to my ears. Having one or two may add some weight to something important, but if everything is important, nothing is.
I'm excited about this phone, especially the screen size. Not having 3D touch is not a deal breaker for me. I'm going to buy it as soon as it becomes available.
This phone's naming convention (which at least seems better than the confusing iPad names: mini, Air 2, Pro, Pro) brings back fond memories of the Mac SE.
That said, I think Apple has too many devices now. I remember reading the book "Insanely Simple", in which the author lauded how simple Apple's lineup was. While it's not too confusing, it's definitely going in that direction.
Of course, I am being hypocritical. The 5s is my favorite iPhone, so this new product is what I wanted all along.
The NEW in 9.3 is a big step back IMO from all previous versions' widgets that had line graphs; the NEW in the researchkit page looks like a reasonable improvement...
Yes, you are right. Although given how phones are now pocket computers I expect them to have additional storage options that are not cloud based. I find it that paying $500 for a device that does not allow additional physical storage is absurd. Given how good of a camera it seems to have.
The problem is that if you add an SD card slot, you have to eliminate something else (or decrease something else).
I feel that between cloud services and 64gb+ phones, I wouldn't want an SD card slot. Accessing files on an external storage device is slow, so I wouldn't want to save direct to SD. You wouldn't want to save any apps to the SD for speed issues. So you would be limited to accessing photos and music. I just don't see a need for it, and if I did, there are plenty of android phones out there that would allow me expansion for storage.
Good points. I feel that we are discussing the same issue from two different sides. You are OK with an iPhone device that does not have expandable physical storage and I am not. I do want an iPhone (even though I develop for Android) but that keeps me away. :)
Yes, I worked at a company that developed that for SanDisk. It was pretty nice but requires that extension you mention. I was hoping SanDisk would develop a cover that included the extension and an SD card slot after the project ended.
I'm perplexed by all the suggestions that 3D touch is a misstep. Arguments center around it being useless, hard to discover, or a source of platform fragmentation and therefore confusion.
1) "3D touch is useless."
3D touch adds a new affordance to interacting with screen elements. Perhaps you do not use 3D touch, perhaps applications have not yet incorporated the feature in a compelling way, but 3D touch is no more useless than analog pressure sensitivity in game controller buttons. I would be shocked if driving games available for iOS didn't adopt pressure sensitive accelerator features this year. Ditto drawing apps; Pixelmator has already added support.
Additionally, 3D touch means that interactions that previously had to depend on introducing latency (long-press) can now happen more quickly. 3D touch also promises a high degree of real-time feedback to a user, for example in the case of peek and pop.
Application shortcuts are also very convenient and hold even more promise as apps become more powerful and complex, and if anything serve to highlight that Apple needs to improve the springboard environment.
2) "3D touch suffers from poor discoverability."
I agree somewhat, but it doesn't make the feature bad. There is room for improvement here, and hidden features can still be good features. The solution is to improve the extent to which the elements embody press-ability.
My guess is that future iOS versions will incorporate more visual cues for the interface elements that afford 3D interaction. Consider, for example, how the lock screen camera icon bounces when you tap on it -- suggesting that it should be swiped up (IIRC it used to launch the camera when you tapped on it). At the moment it's pure conjecture, but, just to toss out some ideas, elements could appear to depress slightly when touched normally, or be given a (very) minor 3D treatment... or down the line, haptic feedback could simulate texture (see http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=H...)
(Are any 'discoverability' critics emacs users?)
3. "3D Touch is confusing because some hardware supports it and some do not."
Other people have already argued very effectively against this point. Also...
Some mice have more mouse buttons than others. Some iPhones have processors that support power-free "Hey Siri". Some cars have built-in GPS. In general, people are not confused by higher cost/prestige features being absent from some models of a product.
I wouldn't mind something closer to the Nokia E70 (loved that phone), with a syncing to my google account for docs, keep and contacts, a modern camera and not much else. Yes, I use my phone for a lot more, but that's almost as much a bad thing as good
The E70 was my last not-smart-phone, replaced it with the original G1 (first android phone). It was great for taking notes, and imho was a better form factor than blackberry.
The slow march to phone commoditization continues. There are only so many "hardware" features a phone can get, incremental spec upgrades each year really wont excite people and value shopping will slowly become the norm. This isnt a good trend for apple.
The A9 chip is at the core of this smaller iPhone, which gives it the same power as iPhone 6s. It brings impressive responsiveness and speed with its 64-bit desktop-class architecture.
iPhone SE has clearly merged the best of both worlds by merging the features of iPhone 6s and the beloved design of iPhone 5s, that too at a lot cheaper price.
Great Price, great specs. Really loving the SE so far. I can't wait to put my hands on the device. I thought this was smaller in size but really is the same as 5S
Now if they ditch the flat UI nonsense and back to the original look & feel, they may actually see me upgrade from the best iPhone ever made - the iPhone 4.
I had my iPhone 4 for three years and dropped it not once. I'm used to my 5s now, and appreciate the bigger screen, but I agree with you. The 4-inch screen is a trade-off. I'll admit to preferring it, but the form factor of the iPhone 4 was superior in terms of hand feel.
I don't like the touch id and touch pay that they're pushing. Fingerprint scanners everyone is probably not a good thing. I'm sure they're all going to end up in a database somewhere.
Your failure to research the feelings behind this statement is obvious. Fingerprints on an iOS device are stored in the Secure Enclave, a hardware module on the device itself, used for checking fingerprints, answering yes or no to the question "is this the user's fingerprint?"
As for Apple Pay, your card details are used once -- exactly once -- to generate an obfuscated alias card identifier, again, only useable by the device.
There is no database. Fingerprint data doesn't leave the phone. No one stores your credit card details.
It seems dangerous to have the scanner on the device and I don't trust it to be safe. It's the print I'm concerned with not the hashes and crypto that connect you to payment. This is something enticing to authorities and I'm sure they'll want to figure out how to get it.
The Touch ID module hashes fingerprints as part of its scanning process, so the representation of a fingerprint would be of limited use if stolen. In addition, the hashes are stored within hardware that is not accessible by the iPhone's processor, so liberating the hash from the phone would require physical access and sophisticated tools.
My impression is that the Touch ID (on the iPhone at least) stores the fingerprints locally, and it's pretty hard to get at them, but I admittedly haven't done much research on it.
Note how they say, "A beloved design," not, "The S5 design." Whenever a company is not detailing what their customers already know in order to emphasize that their devices are SO good that they're revisiting the old design, it's to avoid saying, "We fucked up."
I still don't understand how people can spend so much money on a small device like this. I guess I'm not so much on the move, but to me, $200 is the most I would spend on such device format. I have a $60 Huawei, and yes it's not the best android, but I'll always think that software should be adapted to take less cycles, instead of just having a umpf-ier CPU. HTML is a good example of that. There should be HTML formats that are optimized for smartphones, like preparsed HTML.
Maybe expensive patents will expire soon, which might make smartphones cheaper and cheaper, but still.
I don't care how small the device is - I use my cell phone a lot every day, and my business depends on it. For a lot of people it's the primary computer, primary communication device, primary camera, etc.
>I still don't understand how people can spend so much money on a small device like this
I don't think the size is really relevant, but yeah, that's an insane amount of money. If you need it for work, and generally use your phone a lot, it can make sense to pay a premium for a better device, but for the average person, I can't see it being justified. The marked penetration of the iPhone is way to high compared to the price, suggesting to me that to many people are spending their money recklessly.
Apple, you are usually good at slogans and titles, but this one... At least three flops in one sentence:
"The only camera" - so no more Canons, Nikons and Leikas?
"...you'll ever" - so there will be no more innovation ever, even from you, Apple?
"...need" - so you are confident everyone needs a camera?
I thought Apple wasn't quite for "average consumers" though.
Again, I used to bring Apple as an example of good, minimum-BS, no exaggerations, well though out marketing. "Your iPhone is beautiful. Give it a complement." Nice, to the point, with a neat pun (complement, as in accessories).
The phrase about the camera is awful. I don't know why I'm getting downvoted so much.
Now when only X<80% of devices lack compatibility, I'm not likely to take the time to make 3D Touch a core interaction.
So your apps have to optionally use 3D Touch, Pencil, adaptive layout, fingerprint, and several other interactions that only cover fractions of their hardware line.