This is a fascinating Reddit post that looks at screen sizes. Take the op-ed parts with a grain of salt, but if you are considering the iPhone XR, this is worth your time. One excellent point:
The XR will show exactly the same amount of actual content as the XS Max, just slightly smaller and less sharp. If both phones were opened to a site in Safari, they’d show exactly the same chunk of webpage. I think that’s pretty nice, PPI be damned. This is the most compact Plus phone ever made. I’m on board.
I will say, I do find it amazing that $749 represents the new price of a budget phone. Wow.
I do wish Apple would consider updating the iPhone SE for folks with smaller hands, and smaller budgets. Same with a smaller Apple Watch for people with smaller wrists. It does feel like some part of the Apple loving crowd is being left behind.
Actually, Apple is still selling brand new iPhone 7/7Plus, and iPhone 8/8Plus. So the entry price for a new iPhone is in face well below $749, like hundreds of dollars below
Drop the simile in the last sentence. People like me _are_ being left behind. Full stop. Not sure whether the right decision for me is to find a new SE on a “while supplies last” sale to replace my 5s or start looking for another phone platform.
” I do find it amazing that $749 represents the new price of a budget phone. Wow.”
No. In two years, it’ll be the budget phone in the line-up.
The iPhone 7, and to a lesser extent the iPhone 8, are the budget phones.
Even more so, the used market is where you find the budget iphones.
This is why the SE was the aborration in the iphone marketplace. Every other iPhone in the lineup was at one point a top of the line item.
Note that Apple dedicated itself to devices that last longer. They can do that without hurting sales, as there is a robust used market for iPhones enabled by the fact there is no cheap phones being made by Apple.
You know, some of us don’t want or need a tricked out playstation in our pocket. A simple phone, which can show maps, work as an alarm clock, has a good web browser and a decent camera will do just fine. I can count the number of phone apps I use on my fingers, and half of them actually have better, more usable versions of themselves on the web. I want something that can function smoothly within the Apple ecosystem, but I don’t want or need tiny screen that’s more powerful than my laptop yet can’t replace it (at half the cost of that laptop). Some of us just want a phone.
I am disappointed that they are seemingly abandoning 3d Touch or at the very least continuing to fragment the market for it. They could put it in last years iphone 8 I was hoping that after the SE was gone everything has 3D touch so developers can finally just assume it is there but now it will take another 5 years or so before they can assume that.
As I’ve done every year since 2014, I watch an Apple iPhone presentation and feel like Dave is referencing. The 5c was my favorite iPhone, for reasons that have been left by the wayside, now completely.
What I liked about the iPhone 5c, in no particular order:
–Its size. I was even hesitant to go to the taller phone from my 4S, but it was fine. Unless there is a new SE in winter, that’s it for sizes I prefer. And because of its size, the sleep/wake button could be on the top, where it is well out of the way of unintentional presses. Where it should be.
–Its thickness. No camera bump. I could go caseless, place the phone on the table, no wobbling. That would drive me crazy.
–Its heft. This one may not be such an issue at this point. The iPhone 4/S had the perfect feel: it felt solid and dense, substantial, without being terribly heavy. It may be that the X family is heavier than the 5 was, which felt like a stage prop. The 5c was also much lighter than the 4/S, but it was heavier than the 5/S.
–Its materials. I’m not generally a fan of plastics for their own sake or that they are the right material for a phone…but I loved the plastic on my 5c. The frame underneath made it feel not flimsy. It’s still the only iPhone I’ve owned that I was not worried would just slide out of my hand: the smooth plastic had just enough surface grippiness with my skin.
–Its hand feel. To hold the 5c was a pleasure. all smooth unbroken lines. I never used a case with my 5c (nor with the 4S before it). It felt perfect in hand.
–Its colors. I loved the color options. There, I said it.
–Touch ID. I understand that Face ID works well and magically, but I feel like there is some control lost. Looking at my phone is something I do many times a day, and it doesn’t necessarily mean I want it unlocked or Apple Pay authenticated. Touch ID is nearly as easy, and is a distinct action that would be very difficult to mistake for another action.
For the most part all of this has been abandoned. The SE kept most of it, but I’ve always found it to be less comfortable to hold. I have a case on it just for that reason only. But now that’s gone too, and we’re left with several iPhones that have a design I’m not over the moon about, with camera bumps that would make me want to cover the design anyway, in a size that requires the sleep button be on the side, and with Face ID instead of the more comfortable Touch ID. For a while the colors were gone. They’re back on the Xr, but on a phone that throws out everything else I listed above.
It feels so so so unusual to me to look at an Apple product and not want to have one. I mean, it’s been a long time since I needed to upgrade anything, but I could still look at a Mac or an iPhone or an Apple Watch and anticipate that owning one would be a pleasurable experience in most or all respects. Even if I had no plan to purchase, I could envision a pleasant experience.
I no longer think that with any of the iPhones, and it really feels weird.
I used an SE until July. It’s a fantastic phone.
Yeah, that.
$749 is the price of the cheapest brand new X-line phone.
Not the price of “a budget phone” from Apple.
“A simple phone, which can show maps, work as an alarm clock, has a good web browser and a decent camera will do just fine.”
That’s great!
Buy a used 6S or something, or a cheap Android phone.
Because that market segment is actually very small, and Apple is right to not address it; too many customers would buy that “because it’s cheaper” and then hate it because they do not actually want such a deeply limited device.
It is small in terms of profits, however, and that’s what Apple optimizes for. Apple most explicitly is not pursuing marketshare.
Your memory about iPhone pricing is complicated by the fact that these were carrier-subsidized prices. The original iPhone, which was not subsidized, started at $499. I remember walking out of the Apple store after handing them > $650 with tax for a 8GB device.
As Sigivald said, get a used iPhone or an Android phone. There’s nothing wrong with that.
The problem is, the iPads never had 3D touch, so developers who write combo apps (of which many do) still can’t assume it.
Sadly, I think the 3D Touch market has mostly sailed. It’ll remain as a convenience mechanism, but press-and-hold is nearly as good.
That market is not small. That market is why Android phones outnumber iPhones (even old used ones) six to one. The only time Apple even half-heartedly tried to address that fact was the 5C – and it failed. Why? Back then, the price difference between the 5C and the 5s was negligible (~$100, which was an impulse buy even then), and even the top of the line iPhone models were $400, not $1000 to $1400. It saved the buyer practically nothing to buy a less powerful phone. The market is very different now.
Apple is also very different now. It derives a large part of its profits from Services now: it’s even expected to earn HALF of its profits from Services in about five years. Accepting the idea that a customer buys less powerful hardware but keeps paying for services (possibly even more, since the less powerful hardware would encourage more cloud-based support) is a better plan than losing a customer completely because they won’t/can’t pay for the latest and greatest hardware.
As much as you wish Apple would make a smaller watch for people with smaller hands, imagine how frustrating it is for people with large wrists, who just want larger bands. It is even more frustrating that they make a larger band but only sell it is two colors.