@jimmac yeah... I'm a bit horrified that now my "small" phone has a 6" screen, and I can't really use a virtual keyboard on a smaller one comfortably anymore.
Bring back physical keyboards and smaller screens!
@michelin @jimmac
Ah, and you think your eyes will suddenly get better when your mobile gets smaller?
The reality is that the use cases for mobiles nowadays are more like pocket computers than phones.
If you look around, you'll see surprising many people in public actually talking on their phones in a hands-free mode, not bothering with putting it to their ear. Or that the public is not really interested in following their call.
That's an uncomfortably accurate statement @jimmac
@jimmac who’s the baby?
@laescude The baby is the ideal form factor of a phone. Palm Pre with a physical keyboard and an aesthetic that still feels appealing as it was 15 years ago when it released. I love it.
@jimmac I should have scrolled up! thanks for the answer. My husband was so sad to have to trade his old iPhone SE for an SUV one.
@jimmac @laescude it was the very embodiment of frutiger aero in practice: synergy made everything accessible in 1 app, just type let you find what you were looking for, touch to share actually instantly beamed stuff between devices, everything had an incredibly clear layout with transitions meaning you understood the whole phone and every flow was seamless, swiping up to card view flowed right into a second swipe that opened the app drawer...
my first phone was an HP Veer (the panda) and there's been nothing like it tbh... it wasn't perfect but it was so much more intuitive than its pale imitations from android and iOS multitasking and gesture bars. also it had better homebrew with preware than android or iOS and using the konami code to enable dev mode was just great!
I even wrote patch files on it in the car to make bigger text for my mom and unlike modern phones you could do proper text editing because the keyboard had all the symbols a normal one did AND let you do easy selection by holding the modifier key and dragging on the screen + copy and paste shortcuts... the keys were small but the bumps made them easier to hit proprioceptively.
@jimmac @archenemy That opinion demonstrates a total lack of understanding of the needs of those of us with poor/impaired eyesight. Hint: I *NEED* a big phone, I can't easily read text on a regular sized one. (Don't tell me to pinch-zoom, then I only get to read about 4 words on screen at a time.)
Pixel art is illegible to me: emoji are just a confusing blur.
@cstross @jimmac hey, I work in accessibility, I do understand the needs of visually (and otherwise) impaired people!. still, it's a somewhat reasonable observation: the default, most frequent smartphone you can buy today in any store is a 6in big slab, just as the SUV is now the default vehicle you're offered when you look for a new car.
nothing wrong with big phones though (not so with SUVs), but more variety and diversity in designs would be cool.
@cstross (also, fan moment: i'm a big fan of your books, and hoping you can get your eyes fixed soon, I just caught up with your last blog posts this morning)
@archenemy @cstross
How do I put it nicely.
At some age, eyesight gets worse. 40-50 is not a bad guess.
If you are lucky, you can correct it up to a point with glasses.
If you are unlucky, you are in a surprising big minority that is losing their eyesight for real. There are a number of real sicknesses that pop up with age, which many people only realize when it hits them.
@cstross @jimmac @archenemy Exactly.
And these people that do not test websites on mobiles with scaled up fonts/general scale, shall be banished to a hell below the lowest levels of Dante.
@cstross @jimmac @archenemy What if it was the same size and pixel density of your current phone, but _also_ had a slide out portrait keyboard?
@mdm @jimmac @archenemy You're talking about the Astro Slide 5G, right? It's neat, but arrived half-baked and two years late after the ODM went bankrupt in 2022. Meanwhile, gestural/swiping keyboards make touchscreens usable (sort-of).
NB: don't try to buy an Astro Slide, I have no idea if they're actually shipping and the software is half-baked (I speak from experience). Great concept, but I really want it as an iPhone.
@cstross @jimmac @archenemy Oh -- no, wasn't thinking about a specific model, though I love the form factor of that Astro Slide. Sad to hear it wasn't succesful.
Now that I think about it, one of the new "foldable" phones might work (if they weren't so expensive).
Partially fold it, and use half the screen as a keyboard.
(Based on this link, it looks like this might already be a possibility: https://9to5google.com/2022/06/30/gboard-split-keyboard/)
@cstross @jimmac @archenemy I am a similarly decrepit individual. The perfect form factor for me is the iPad mini. I would love it if Apple implemented CarPlay features with headsets and more voice-controls so I could send and read messages from my iPad in my backpack instead of grabbing an iPhone.
@Seanochicago @jimmac @archenemy I doubt Apple will do that: our best hope is the persistent rumour that they're working on a folding phone—but it probably won't surface before 2026 and will cost more than an iPhone *and* an iPad Mini (because why wouldn't they price it high).
@cstross @jimmac @archenemy The folding phone fad reminds me of the palmtop rage that happened right before the iPad was released. I will bet money that a iFold is not in the immediate stars.
@Seanochicago @jimmac @archenemy i'm certain Apple is tracking the folding trend and has prototypes ... and equally certain they won't sell one until (a) they can make it more reliable than Samsung/Google/etc's rather crappy offerings and (b) can sell it for the price of an iPhone Pro Max *and* an iPad Mini combined (because it will cannibalize the market for at least one of those devices).
@cstross @jimmac @archenemy you dont seem to understand that there arent any "regular" sized phones anymore in the market, and if they are, they come with limited capabilities (eg: I cant open my bank account app on them because its not a device they support)
@evnnbd that's vendor specific though.. The now "old" iPhone12- and -13mini were on-par with their regular and plus sized versions in everything but battery runtime and they had almost the same resolution just with a higher pixel density. They're still supported by all apps these days and were the best form factor we had in ages for people that have hands on the smaller side of the spectrum or which like to hold their phone to their head when having a call.
They just got taken off the market because most people prefer to buy ever bigger phones as status symbol and vendors follow that train.
*Note: yes, there a re valid uses for extra large screens, especially for people with impaired vision but I'd wager a bet that the majority of people that fuel the cycle of ever larger phones have perfect sight.
@cstross @jimmac @archenemy pre 3 was bigger! same rounded pebble like shape
@cstross @jimmac @archenemy I'm pretty certain Jakub isn't complaining about the existence of large phones, but about the disappearance of small ones. Even medium-sized phones don't exist anymore, and since many years now your only options for new smartphones are large or very large ones.
@cstross @jimmac @archenemy A side effect of that is that now everything is designed for large form-factors, so if you need something larger to see correctly, you have no choice but to get a gigantic device that isn't even pocketable at this point, or you'll have very broken layouts. It wouldn't happen if smaller devices still exist and had to be designed for.
@KekunPlazas
> I'm pretty certain Jakub isn't complaining about the existence of large phones, but about the disappearance of small ones
Not to mention the disappearance of dumbphones ("feature phones"). I'd really like a 2000s-style flip phone that just does calls and SMS, and maybe a few other basic features like alarm, calendar and calculator.
@jimmac The only dissapointment that I had when switching from Samsung S10e to Motorola Moto G52 was the size. Phones now are so damn BIG!
@jimmac I miss webOS and the Prē, definitely one of my favorite OSs.
@jimmac some months ago I tried this one https://www.amazon.es/Alcatel-5031G-2022-Smartphone-Ampliable/dp/B09W66WQPC (it was ~50 € by that time) because of its size and I am happy with it. There are some trade-offs, but the overall experience is good enough :-)
@jimmac What shocks me is how much of the screen real-estate on the smaller device is wasted due to unnecessary padding and poor alignment of elements. Must make it meaningfully more annoying to use.
@jsbarretto @jimmac not really, floating buttons mean if you've seen the content peaking out from around them then object permanence means you know where they are and potentially what they are!
@jimmac Nah, those are minivans :)
SUVs are extremely bulky, but have surprisingly low amounts of space on the inside. They're like a reverse tardis.
Modern Smartphones, while also rather huge, have more capabilities than one would expect from the exterior
@jimmac My brother showed me his Light Phone when he was visiting last week. It's limited in terms of apps, but it's quite small and has an e-ink type display.
For strictly text-based use, it does have a certain appeal.
@jimmac What's so entertaining about this to me is that throughout the '80s and '90s the race was to get even more stupidly small with ever iteration...
...and now we're racing to get the biggest possible phones.
@jimmac I spoke about this the other to a buddy. Phones have lost their character from the past. The swivel days... The flip days... The days where you dropped the phone and put it together yourself.
@jimmac Its interesting how we went from the era of how much smaller and powerful we can make it to, I just don't care anymore, lets put a cinder block in our pockets. #tech #smartphones