Friday, February 1, 2013

"Apple Absolutely Has To Make An iPhone With A Bigger Screen"

Apple Absolutely Has To Make An iPhone With A Bigger Screen, article, BusinessInsider

That bigger screen is awesome.
Apple's stock has cratered 35% from its peak of five months ago. This fall is the result of a lot of factors, but the biggest one is this: After five years of having the best smartphone on the planet, Apple has arguably fallen behind the competition. And the biggest and most obvious reason Apple has fallen behind the competition is its stubborn insistence on sticking with a small iPhone screen.

Yeap. Well, I don't care about Apple's stock price, it matters only to investors, not even to Apple (and I doubt the screen size is *that* strong a factor there), but I do care about usability.
I've said it before, and I say it again with tears in my eyes: Once you've tried a five-inch screen for reading and video (and I guess gaming, but I wouldn't know), then the current iPhone starts to look like a five-foot basketball player.

I said this first back in 2011 (I even predicted it before I acquired the excellent 5.3-inch Galaxy Note):

I think the future of the phone is in the 5-inch size. Apple may be slow to go there, since they didn't invent it, and they can be a bit stubborn about such things. But I think it's like with desktop monitors, why does Apple no longer make a 15-inch or even a 17-inch iMac? Because everything else being equal, bigger is better. Once you could make screens cheap enough, they grew.
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The Note is an excellent ereader. The iPhone is usable as such, but only just.



4 comments:

Bruce said...

It could happen. I think it would probably go along with a brand new 3.5 inch iPhone that has LTE and a Lightning connector. That would change their phone product line from 1 new plus two older phones to three new phones with different size screens.

I don't think Apple wants any devices with the old style 30 pin connectors in their lineup by next Christmas. That would mean eliminating or replacing the iPad 2 and the last generation iPod touch this year.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Yes, absolutely.

Bruce said...

Oh I forgot the iPod classic, which Apple still sells. Should Apple put a Lightning connector on that as well?

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

I'm sure they will, in the next production run. But it may not even be mentioned.

The iPod has been replaced by the iPhone. Which I just read yesterday, was the very reason why Apple created a phone, otherwise somebody else would have stolen the iPod market with a phone.
I hope they will continue to make an iPod with physical buttons. A touch screen is flexible, but you can't operate it by feel, and for me that's a really big sacrifice.