iPhone SE
March 22, 2016 at 9:29 PM by Dr. Drang
As someone who’s always been in favor of Apple including a 4″ phone in its lineup, I was happy to see yesterday’s announcement of the iPhone SE. But I was even happier that it came out now instead of last fall.
Had the SE been in the product mix back in the fall, I might very well have taken the safer (and cheaper) way out and bought it instead of the 6S. That would have given me a phone with the squared-off edges I prefer, but would have left me with a less capable device overall. Yes, the 6S is a little harder to use one-handed than the 5S was, and I do occasionally wish I had a smaller box in my pocket, but unlike John Gruber, I know I don’t want to go back to a 4″ phone.
- Five rows of apps (excluding the Dock) instead of six? No, thank you.
- The tiny vertical space for text in Drafts above the keyboard, the suggestions, and the extended keyboard row? No, thank you.
- The mishits in PCalc because the key size in my preferred layout is just a skosh too small for my diminished fine motor skills? No, thank you.
- The loss of thumb typing in portrait mode, which I was never able to do on the narrower phone? No, thank you.
- The constant need to pinch and scroll in Mobile Safari because badly designed sites (i.e., most sites) have text that’s just a bit smaller than my comfort zone? No, thank you.
No, I’ll be sticking with my larger phone and waiting for the day when Jony Ive decides that squared edges are fashionable again.
