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0 pointsfrenchie41116y ago0 comments

> That and a belief that they didn't want to be glued to their phone all the time.

This made me think of another reason they are cutting smaller form factor phones, maybe not valid.

It could be that manufacturers of mobile phones are optimizing for engagement (see: apple switching revenue to services), and the engagement metrics on smaller form factor phones are lower, so they want people using less of them. They only want you to be able to buy a larger phone, because they want you to engage with your phone more.

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10 comments · 3 top-level

cmrdporcupine6y ago· 5 in thread

The bigger the phone, the larger the surface area for the battery that they can put on it. I suspect that's the primary engineering concern driving it, and it just so happens that customers either like, or haven't balked, at large screens.

tspike6y ago

Wouldn't a smaller screen with a thicker phone last longer? Less screen area to light up.

I'm curious what the tradeoff is on increased energy consumption is with the larger screen / larger battery / thin phone setup.

akiselev6y ago

Yep. A screen's power consumption grows with the surface area of the screen (w * h) whereas a battery's capacity grows with the volume of the battery (w * h * d).

I think the dominant market pressures so far has been practical concerns like phone thickness and battery life so manufacturers - who are all also competing with their past products - are forced to sacrifice screen size options to compete. Now screen size is becoming unwieldy and screens/batteries have steadily improved so we might swing back the other way.

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derefr6y ago

On the other hand, given an OLED screen, where energy cost only grows proportionally to the number of pixels receiving power, you could slap a big screen on the phone "for watching movies" but have the phone display a smaller screen centered on it (with black bars around) most of the time. I have a feeling this is the direction the industry would go, if battery life truly became a concern.

Ididntdothis6y ago

I would be happy if they added 1mm thickness to my SE and left the rest. That would allow for quite a bit more battery.

sjwright6y ago

The impractical aspect to that idea is that it would mean creating a new accessories variant. Keeping the same physical dimensions as a previous phone means compatible cases are already available from hundreds of accessory makers.

scarface746y ago· 2 in thread

Why would any phone manufacturer beside Apple care about engagement? No other (non Chinese) OEM makes money from services after the phone is sold.

duncanawoods6y ago

Do the bundled bloatware deals depend on engagement?

frenchie4111OP6y ago

Yeah, that's fair.

tomaskafka6y ago

They absolutely do, services are a larger and larger part of Apple's income.

I believe that's a reason why Screen Time is so bad - it's not a feature, it's just marketing's objection killer.

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