Quartz:
Call it the Church of Apple. Steve Jobs once called big phones Hummers (like the cars) and said that no-one was going to buy them. (He was sitting next to the current CEO, Tim Cook, when he said that.) Only a year after the iPhone 4S, the iPhone 5 was released with a 4-inch display and it sold like hotcakes. The Apple fans bought it and loved it. And the same thing is happening again. So what gives?
To me, it’s about acclimation. The move from the iPhone 4 to the iPhone 5 form factor was an easy adjustment. The iPhone 5 was lighter and longer, but still easy to use with one hand. The move from the iPhone 5 to the iPhone 6 is a bit more of a leap, and the move to the iPhone 6 Plus form factor is truly dramatic, challenging our preconceived notions about the aesthetics of phone size.
The time for calling the iPhone 6 a “sleek, sophisticated rounded rectangle” compared to the Galaxy S5’s “bulky, hideous rounded rectangle,” as The Onion put it, has passed.
As Apple releases their sales figures, we’ll get a true sense of how people really feel about the iPhone 6 Plus. No matter what the short term sales figures reveal, I think people will get used to the larger size.
Walt Mossberg said this back in 2012:
As a mobile phone, the Galaxy Note is positively gargantuan. It’s almost 6 inches long and over 3 inches wide. When you hold it up to your ear, it pretty much covers the entire side of your face. You look like you’re talking into a piece of toast.
That toast reference is now being thrown back at the Apple community in commercials and countless blog posts. I completely understand the impulse. Enjoy the moment.
See here’s what I don’t get when commentators pull out quotes like this as evidence that someone was wrong (lord knows it doesn’t apply solely to Apple this one): time has passed and the world has changed.
In this case that comments was made back in 2010. I don’t know about anyone else but for me the things I use a phone for have changed significantly in that time. If I look at my current battery useage it goes Instacast, Safari, Mail, Calendar, Twitter as the top five and the ‘phone’ app doesn’t get a look in. While it’s nice to be able to access those five apps one handed in four out of five cases a bigger screen (both physically and in resolution) brings real benefits. They also tend to be used more when I’m not walking down the street so, again, one handed use has become less important to me over time (out and about I’m usually using Bluetooth headphones for music / podcasts so can do 90% of the changes I need via the headphones anyway).
Of course that’s just me but I don’t think I’m alone in this. Think back to the iPhone intro and Steve said it was “a widescreen iPod” (cheers), “a mobile phone” (massive cheers), “an internet communicator” (silence). Fast forward seven years and for most users the last part is by far the most important, albeit often in the form of apps rather than the web browser itself. Media playback is likely in second place and actually making calls a distant third.
Some people bought 6 Plus not because of bigger screen but for the most premium iPhone 6. I, on the other hands, will buy 6 because 6 Plus is definitely too big. (6 is a bit too big already. I guess 4.3-4.5 is the sweetest spot)
Or maybe Steve Jobs died and told Tim not to worry what he would do and “Just do what’s right.” That’s a pretty good explanation for this turnaround, right? As for the size, 3.5″-4″ is optimal for one hand, but here’s the problem: most people use their smartphones with two hands. I see them all the time using the cradle technique or two-hand texting. Not everyone uses their phone the same way, and Apple is now accommodating the crowd. That said, the 4.7″ is bigger than one-handed use for me. I’m hoping that Apple keeps the 4″ size in the mid-range: iPhone 6 mini in 2015.
My issue before was not that bigger phones were stupid, but that a bigger screen was a stupid reason to buy an inferior phone.
That’s a very good point, time isn’t static. Steve Jobs said no one would watch a video on an iPod. Until perhaps it came time to where he felt that they would. It didn’t have to be true at both time points.
I was watching the 2007 iPhone introduction the other day, and I noticed the same thing about Steve Jobs’ intro, but I hadn’t thought about that the mild greeting for “internet communicator” would be opposite today.
I’ve always used it two-handed, and not thumb typing. I never learned thumb typing before the iPhone, and I never felt the need to pick it up afterwards. I’ve always held the phone in my left and hunted and pecked with my right middle finger. Only when I’m hands-constrained do I do it one-handed.
Obviously the 6 ans 6 Plus will be a hit, but I hear from many iPhone users that they never needed the size increase. My wife is even disappointed that an updated 5S-sized iPhone is not available, since her current 5S is already the maximum size she’s comfortable with in her side pocket.
I remember seeing these people use a very large phone before. It fully filled your hand, almost too big for a child to hold. It was just a big piece of plastic, curved on both the back and front face, with a big plastic keyboard embedded into the center of it. You had to use a special code to type letters. It had an enormous cord coming out of it connected back to a base station that was either attached to the wall or connected to a somewhat mobile unit, but the mobile unit had to be attached to an even longer, albeit thinner cord that connected it back to a receptacle on the wall. Virtually prehistoric!
People looked very strange holding these large pieces of plastic up to the sides of their heads, trapped near the wall they were connected to by a cord. If a call came in and you weren’t home, most people’s devices just rang and rang until the person on the other end just hung up with no answer.
Of course this was the 70s and 80s, the things were just called “phones,” and they had replaced even larger devices with huge cylindrical shapes at each end of the handheld device for you to listen and talk through. Oh how far we’ve come to comment on how odd it looks for someone to hold a large phone up to the side of their head.
That’s cradle technique, although I don’t usually see people flip the bird to do it. 🙂
OK, who among us hasn’t held a piece of toast to their face instead of a phone after blearily waking up following a night of heavy partying?
Really? I’m the only one with butter and crumbs in my sideburns?
lol I have to make sure my index finger is also extended for that exact reason! “Oops, I’m flipping people off.”
“Apple fanboys are finally admitting…” Command-W. I stop taking you seriously as soon as you start using juvenile descriptors.
He lost me at “church of Apple.”
“Nobody wants to use form-factor A for activity B” is every bit as amusing to look back upon as “640K ought to be enough for anyone.” Both were true—at least within a particular cultural group—until they weren’t.
Agree completely. That’s why I got the 4.7″ iPhone 6.
Unless you’re talking about TV vs. mobile device. Nobody wants to use their living room TV to check Twitter or Facebook or email. Google TV (and WebTV) have proved that.
“Nobody”? I disagree. I would – in very narrow situations. But I can see a want/desire for it.
And Google and WebTV didn’t prove anything more than people didn’t want crappy UI.
Yes, the world is a different place than it was a few years ago. We use our phones differently, and have also gotten acclimated to the idea of larger screened devices with the arrival of things like the iPad and larger Android phones. Lots of people thought the original iPhone was too big, which seems ludicrous in hindsight. I do wonder if phones will be getting much larger though.
You say “acclimation”, I say claim chowder.