Comment by dragonwriter | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dragonwriter | Hacker News Reader

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> A phone just under 6". This is possibly the biggest disappointment about the phone. Its simply too large for the average user.

Quite a large portion of the people I know with phablets like the Galaxy Note series are petite women -- people with smaller hands than "the average user". While the line you present is the exact line that Apple kept trotting out while they were in denial about the market demand for large phones, I don't think there is much support for it. Its true that there are usage patterns that work for small phones and not for larger phones, but I don't think the evidence from actual consumer behavior supports the argument that these are as important to what people are looking for in smartphones as the people who keep trotting out the "too big" argument like to believe.

I think it has to do with one-handed use with smaller hands. A phone would have to be really small (i.e. iPhone 3 & under)) to be useful, but you lose screen area.

In contrast, phablets are a convenient mini-mini tablet that can also do calls and 4G data without additional costs of "tablet LTE".

> I think it has to do with one-handed use with smaller hands.

That's definitely the split, even with non-smaller hands.

It does seem to be the majority, from all the anecdotal evidence of that being what people complain about.

Maybe I'm weird. I don't care at all about one-handed use. For me the difference is being able to put it into my pocket without snapping off the headphone jack trying to waddle up a flight of stairs without bending at the hip.

Right, I think the threshold for one handed operation is actually closer to the iPhone 3 and once you go past that threshold you might as well go big or go home. People seem to be missing that. And I agree with the GP, you see a lot of girls with Note 3s because they just stick it in their purse or bag.

Isn't it slower to type or navigate apps one-handed, and isn't it more likely to result in dropping the phone (even one as small as an iphone 3)? How many coffee accidents has one handed phone use (while carrying coffee in the other) caused?

It might feel like using a phone one-handed is productive, but I rather doubt it. I also wonder if larger iphones have higher applecare profit margins (given identical hardware costs) because of a reduction in phone-drop accidents.

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