500ish Words: ‘The “iPhone Mini” Revisited’

Small. Medium. Large.

You offer an iPhone XS Max, an iPhone XS, and an iPhone XS Mini. Or Micro. Or Nano. Or whatever. You already have the “medium” and “large” options, so you give the people what they actually seem to want: a “small” option too.

I could not agree more with this excerpt from a fantastic article by M.G. Siegler. He nailed it.

I have an iPhone 7 Plus, mainly because at the time that I purchased it I wanted the dual-camera module for depth mode. I still love the phone but miss the days of Apple’s famous ‘thumb-reachability’. Yes, I could spend the money on a new iPhone XS and technically have more screen in a smaller form factor, however that’s a lot of cash to replace my current and still very capable iPhone. I feel that this is part of the current issue of Apple’s maturing iPhone market. They’re so good now that it doesn’t make sense for everyone to upgrade every two years, as was once the norm with telco contracts.

Considering how successful the iPhone SE was due to both its size and price—almost everyone in my office has one as their official work phone—I don’t see what Apple’s mental block is to releasing its spiritual successor. Giving the old SE the iPhone X treatment by taking the screen all the way to the edge would be a very exciting development for small-phone devotees. Not to mention, the design of the SE (based on the 5 and 5S before it), is now actually closer to the hardware design of the new iPad Pro models. Jony Ive and his team would have almost no work to do.

Check out Siegler’s article here.