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Phablet Reviews: Before and After the iPhone 6
Velcroman1 writes Bigger is better. No, wait, bigger is worse. Well, which is it? Apple's newly supersized 4.7-inch iPhone 6 and the jumbo, 5.5-inch iPhone 6 Plus are a marked departure for the company, which has clung to the same, small screen size for years. It has gone so far as to publicly deride larger phones from competitors, notably Samsung, even as their sales grew to record highs. Tech reviewers over the years have tended to side with Apple, in general saddling reviews of the Samsung Galaxy Note – a 5.3-inch device that kicked off the phablet push in 2012 – with asides about how big the darn thing was. Are tech reviewers being fair when they review the iPhone 6 Plus? Here's what some of them said today, compared with how they reviewed earlier phablets and big phones from the competition.
I hate, hate, hate, hate large phones. If I needed a bigger screen, I'll pull out my tablet or my laptop. I'm a skinny guy, I wear tight-ish jeans (fiance hates it, but I gotta be me), and pulling a big-ass phone out of my front pocket is a pain in my ass, and that's with an IPhone 5S.
I'm going to pass on the 6 and hope they come out with a traditional-sized one for the 6S or 7.
Some of those phones are enormous.
I've seen people using a phone which looks around the size of my Nexus 7.
And using it as a phone almost looks like a sight-gag.
Kind of like when I got my first-gen iPad and a friend held it up to his head and started saying "can you hear me now?".
Some of these phones don't look like they'd be either easy to carry around, or actually use as a phone. Because it's like holding a paperback novel up to your head.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
...is worse for others. Guess it really depends on how big your pockets are.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Or something like that.
They're making pants pockets bigger. Maybe people's hands and fingers too, although that's just a guess.
What do people expect Apple to say when all they are selling are the smaller phones? OH THATS A GREAT PHONE SAMSUNG. No, they are going to describe how theirs is better.
Reviewers are shills for whoever is giving them free stuff so their reviews are useless.
The press is biased towards Apple? You don't say...
These aren't reviews from "before ... the iPhone 6", they're exclusively reviews of the Galaxy Note and S3 - the first "phablets". Writers' tastes haven't changed because they're duplicitous hacks trying to find a way to hate Android; they've changed because of experience.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
It's Phat Tablet!
.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
This seems to be a typical sort of response from a media that tends to bias Apple products. I make no criticism of Apple with that remark, only those responsible for reviewing their products fairly. I get the feeling that a huge number of these reviewers, rather that being classical "tech lovers" if you will, are more prone to have a brand or ecosystem identity that drives their judgement about a given product or product family.
This kind of trend is fairly common across all major phone manufacturers, across both iOS and Android, and also across Apple and Google themselves. It is why I rarely take a phone review seriously, be it for a phone that I actually am interested in or one that I'm not. Having information about specs and hardware is a good place to start when deciding between two pieces of technology, but past that, a huge amount of one's enjoyment of a device can come from external factors, such as previous brand investment, ecosystem size and saturation, and even things as "trivial" as what one's friends are using.
I try not to be terribly upset when I see Apple product reviewers exhibiting these signs of bias, since a large number of Android (and perhaps even some windows phone?) reviewers do the same things. I read and watch these reviews as I would watch news about politics: with a boulder sized grain of salt. While some truth may be found somewhere in the reviewer's statements, they still can and do fall prey to human shortcomings that affects us all.
I'm pleasantly surprised by the number of people in the article that basically said the same thing in both reviews. I couple of people magically changed their tunes with the Apple 6, but not as many as I thought.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I have a Samsung Galaxy Note 3
Its just small enough to fit in my pocket, but big enough screen to use as an ebook reader.
It also has a microsd slot that will take a 64 gig card - big enough for my music collection.
(I am probably not going to be buying much more music after Oct 1 since Amazon are going to start charging MN residents sales tax)
It just makes sense for many reviewers to be turned off by initial massize screen of the samsung... but then it becomes part of the accepted norm so it's not such a big deal later on. It almost becomes an expectation.
From now will be called fapblet.
(eom)
Before switching to x86: x86 sucks ass! PowerPC all the way!
After switching to x86: x86 is awesome! Glad we don't have PowerPC anymore!
They haven't released numbers yet, but the press reports seem to indicate that the 6 Plus demand is outstripping supply yet the chorus of people who think that even the 6 is too big let alone the 6 plus is as loud as ever. I think this is an interesting dichotomy.
I think the 6 Plus is fine -- I find more screen better than less screen, even if the increased size limits one-handed usage. I don't think there's an "ideal" size for any phone unless you toss in some usage requirements, like one-handed use or pocket storage complaints. I know some people who would use a full-size iPad as a phone if they could because none of the one-handed use or pocket issues apply to them. I think it's just a matter of personal preference.
I do think it's interesting that Tim Cook's Apple is responding to market demand instead of imposing a Jobsian design fascism. I also think that for a decent chunk of people, the 6 Plus is meant to take over some of the things they'd use a tablet for. I'm mostly happy with my iPad 3 (even with iOS8), but I think with a 6 Plus I'll reach for it less and put off upgrading it until it runs out of iOS updates.
And I think a lot of people who want both but can't swing it financially will find a 6 Plus a reasonable universal device. This is what surprised me about the 6 Plus release as I'm pretty sure it will eat into iPad Mini sales and even some full-size iPad sales.
What would be nice and I don't know if we'll ever get there for lots of reasons (technological and sales/marketing) would be a watch-sized device becoming the root device with the phone or tablet being the kind of screen/user interface, tethered to the phone for network access. That way you could pick your "phone" based on size preference, or none at all if all you wanted was bluetooth audio and phone calling.
Is that it's well... rudimentary and crude.
Standard journalism often has to reflect on the articles they have written in the past in order to look at their viewpoints and editorial on subjects in the past, explain how those might have changed, and then reflect that in the new editorial they are writing.
Perhaps it's not just tech journalism. It's probably just ALL journalistic standards that have basically gone down in the era of FOX news and infotainment, that we don't pretend to want that intellectual honesty that perhaps once was there. The press is complicit in most things for access -- it's true of Apple's press events (and how Walt Mossberg fawns over anything Apple does), as much as it is true of traditional press fawning over the sitting President in the hopes of better access.
The Verge isn't at fault because they are Apple fanboys; we are at fault for not looking at them with a harsher eye. As Bill Clinton said, people are now more accepting than ever, unless they have a viewpoint they disagree with. And everybody LOVES Apple. It's just not cool not to (apparently).
Of course I'm a weird guy with a Windows phone because I wanted a better camera (at the time), so what the hell do I know...
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
The original Galaxy Note got some pretty bad reviews, some even calling it a fad, due to its size. But then it sold like hot cakes, flying off the shelves.
Then review sites learned ther lesson and gave the Note 2 a decent spin and gave it the top reviews it deserved. Now the LG G3 is getting all the 4.5-star reviews.
It was always meant to be the other way around (i.e you read reviews to help you make an informed purchase), but sites need ad money and realized it's un-cool to hate on phablets.
I replaced my old broken Note 2 with a tiny Nexus 5 and I'm suffering with the cramped 4.95" screen. Next time, I'm going medieval on screen size.
Have you actually tried them? I mean I understand not wanting a Note 4 or iPhone+,
but have you actually tried phones in the Galaxy S5 class (~5")? The rounded back (which the iPhone 5 hasn't got) helps a lot.
I was actually surprised how little you feel the phone considering it's size.
I went from a Galaxy Note 2 to a HTC One Max. And then I went and put an Otterbox around the thing.
I carry it in my front pants pocket. It snags not more than any other rectangular deice (because it's always the corner that gets snagged by a fold) and I can actually use it to browse the web without unusable mobile versions of websites and without pinchzooming like a deranged person.
I don't have to carry a second device, either, that needs a daily recharge... I could have been talked into carrying a phone and actual tablet if, and only if, there was a Nokia 6210, with nothing more than phone, sms, contact list, 3G/4G and Wifi Hotspot/Tethering capabilities. But such a thing does not exist, at least not at a price that would make you better off buying a smartphone all the same.
I love the size... finally it doesn't feel like I have to pinch a teensy, tiny device between my not even that enormous fingers and be afraid of it slipping away. That's why I dig the Otterbox too, by the way. The HTC is so thin, I was constantly afraid of inadvertently flicking it through the room.
YMMV, but I love these things to death. If I could have had the HTC with full metal body and twice as thick (and therefore with a battery in the 6Ah range), I would have bought that instead.
Exactly.
Different people want different things.
This is not news.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Anyone using Wave Charging *did* buy a brick with the Apple logo on it.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Wait, I thought hipsters were the guys who liked the new things?
They liked the new things that coincided with their generation hitting their prime. The new things as the next generation hits its prime, the new things that are different than "their" things, not so much.
Skinny jeans are becoming passe, soon to be laughed at when seen in photos, "OMG, look at those pants, can you believe we/they wore those". At least for guys. Tight jeans for women will always be fashionable.
Yes there will be die hards. Every generation has those too.
Like if you had an iPad and an iPhone you were a hipster, but if you had an old Android and a Lenovo laptop you were a legitimate human being.
Poor analogy. The iPhone vs Android thing is strongly correlated with zip code, in other words income. Its simply a matter of getting what you want vs getting what your finances force you to settle for. Sure there are a few who shriek about the "walled garden", a loud minority, sort of like Linux desktop users.
Perhaps I'm being a little hard on the Linux users. Many of those at Linux conferences are carrying MacBooks.
I bought an iPhone 6 recently figuring I'd skip the obviously too big 6+. While I like most of the features I've found even the base 6 is a too big. My thumb doesn't even reach all the way across the bottom of the screen and only about half way to the far corner if I'm holding the phone in a good stable grip. Even reachability mode doesn't get everything in close enough. I wish that it shrunk the screen slightly as well. I find that I either have to carefully balance the phone or use two hands. I've already drop it a few times trying to reach the stuff just a bit to far, and the area between my thumb and rest of my hand hurt the first few days after I got the device from trying to force my thumb to reach across. To be honest I was expecting it to be a bit big as there is a small part of an iPhone 5 screen I can't reach without shifting the phone but that bothered me only occasionally. Going to stick this one out, but not sure I want another large phone, especially since I carry a tablet* with me most of the time. Granted I guess I have short hands, my thumb is almost 1.5" long.
* - Okay, sometimes I carry up to 3 with me so that I have Android, iOS and Surface covered; as part of checking to see how stuff runs on different OSes. And yes tablets are much bigger, but they are two handed devices.
I've had a galaxy note 3 for the past year, and i've concluded that the larger size sucks. When the planets are aligned and I focus really hard, I can actually use one hand to deal with it, otherwise I'm sure to drop it.
In the meantime I got an iphone 5s for work (my first apple anything) and I plan on getting an iphone 6 (in a few months), but not the plus. Had the bigger iphone been a little smaller than the note 3 i gladly would have gotten that. But larger!? Hell no..
>> driving force is consumers who want/need to do computing tasks with their phone, but can't afford or don't want to pay for a secondary tablet
For the price of an iPhone, you could have two decent Android phones and a couple of cheap tablets.
I have an HTC One Max that fits in the front pocket of Levis jeans fine. I don't know how you have an issue with an iPhone unless you're wearing spandex jeans.
what you want vs getting what your finances force you to settle for
These are not the only choices.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
I think I'd rather hold a paperback novel to my head than a taco, though.
I sometimes ask revealing, often ignorant-seeming questions. Maybe they're harder to answer than you think.
Sony Xperia Z3 Compact
Maybe I’m getting old, and my eyes are getting worse. Or maybe I’m stuck in Apple’s reality-distortion field (help). But something strange happened this week. I started to like a phablet.
– Lauren Goode
This turn-around is nothing more than Apple's reality distortion field. Now that Apple has given in and is selling phablets, of course their entire marketing effort is focused on it. They will make us love it the same way they made us love everything else: the Apple fanboy rumor mill hyping the next big thing, hyping the big media event, where the Apple CEO stands up and tells us how awesome and exciting this is, describing in simple terms the design problems they were trying to solve and showing the solutions. An Apple keynote is basically a hyped up lecture on why the next Apple product is great, and if you buy one you get an A.
Sure, we might be ready to give in to huge phones, but it seems to me that the change is really that Apple has thrown in the towel. Traditionally they haven't given the customer what the customer asked for; they tried to figure out what's actually best for the customer and sell that. Apparently, some marketing trends are just unstoppable.
I sometimes ask revealing, often ignorant-seeming questions. Maybe they're harder to answer than you think.
In 2012, the Note and S3 had the same number of pixels. The iPhone 6 also has the same now as those two did then. In contrast, the iPhone 6 Plus has full HD 1920x1080 resolution. You actually get something for the larger physical size! The 2012 Note was pointless.
I laugh at the 6+ just like I laugh at the old bricks
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/08/31/article-1210159-063CF50E000005DC-828_468x638.jpg
Problem of the phablets is price. The iPhone 6+ is probably the most expensive phone ever. Galaxy Notes also tend to be more expensive than Galaxy S.
He pretty much HAS to start responding to market demand, vs. dictating what he thinks people SHOULD want. He's not a visionary with a head full of tech ideas to roll out to the masses. He's a former supply chain management guy.
Personally, I think Apple needs to find a "sweet spot" between the two, to find the greatest success. Jobs was a big believer in the concept that people don't really know what they need or want. You can survey them and they'll give you responses, but they're generally based around what they've already seen and already know exists.
I think there's something to that, but it's less relevant when you're just revising existing products. That's what you've got here with the iPhone. Everyone knows what the product is and what it does, and it's gone through 6 major releases (and all the smaller interim updates like 3gs, 4s and 5s). It's best, at this point, to find out what its users (or potential users) want to see changed with it, and try to accommodate it
Fair? HAHAHA! You MUST be new!
*Tech reviewer goes back to slobbing the Apple knob*
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
And they can afford to pay for the service plan, but can't afford $200 for a Nexus 7? My only price consideration for purchasing a phone is how much the plan costs. The cost of the hardware is inconsequential. Over the roughly 3-year life of a phone, my service plan costs about $3,000.00.
yeah, but then you end up with several crappy devices in place of one device. winning?
I looked around, and could not find two tablets and two phones that were $500 and "decent". Do you have some links?
Counterpoints:
1) For some people two devices is a hassle
2) You're not factoring in the cost of mobile data plans for 2 devices vs 1. I know you can tether/mobile hotspot, but then you're back to point #1.
3) For users already invested in the Apple garden of products, then what Android has to offer doesn't really factor into it. (Although I personally agree that Apple prices are outrageous, but the market seems to think otherwise)
Now that Apple has joined the phablet bandwagon, we have another problem: manufacturers are only offering their premium devices in phablet, or near-phablet, sizes. Want the "smaller" iphone? Sure, but you have to give up camera features. Most of the Android phones are in a similar boat - you can get a 4-4.5" screen phone, but you'll give up memory, or speed, or camera functionality, LTE, or any of a number of other features. Smaller screens mean lower price points and cutting corners.
Wouldn't it be nice it you really could choose a 3.5-4" screen phone that did everything else the larger models did?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
you know, my wife and I saw the phones in the apple store and we didn't like them. they looked cheap. not because of the materials or build quality, but because they look like other cheap phones.
I have an iphone 5. maybe later this year I'll upgrade to 5s, or maybe I'll keep the 5. I hope in coming years they won't abandon the original form factor.
I'd have gotten the Galaxy Mega except that it's considerably inferior (less RAM, slower processor) to the Galaxy Note 2 that I wound up getting. I have it in an Otterbox Defender case that at least doubles, if not triples, the thickness of the phone.
I have no difficulty holding and using it. I can do it 1-handed when I want for simple things like dialing, but I prefer 2-handed operation in general most of the time. A smaller phone would be very hard to use that way. Even the Note feels annoyingly cramped compare to my 10" tablet (HP Touchpad running CyanogenMod); the 15% bigger (linear) screen of the Mega would have been preferable. Dunno offhand whether there's an Otterbox-type case available for it; that's a dealbreaker.
I'm not cutting edge. I got the Note 3 because my old ass Nexus was getting.. too old. My choice was a toss up between the LG G2 and the Note 3. The price through promotions was about the same at the time so I went with the Note 3.
I am not someone that flaunts or plays the "look at what I have". The first month I had my Note 3 I got a lot of "What the hell is that thing" from friends and co workers. This was casual observation by someone seeing me using it. I just said, yeah it's kind of big but you get used to it and went about my business not furthering the discussion.
After the first month or so that started to die down and in the past 6 months or so, not a single word from anyone about the size. People are getting used to seeing a larger phone.
I have a $8 protective cover on it with a pull out kickstand and it works great for watching movies on the train/plane. There are places my old phones used to fit that this one does not like my front zippered pocket on my backpack and my bag under the seat on my bike. Oh well. When I pull out my Nexus or even my wife's LG G2, I think man, that thing is small. I used to use something that small? I'll never go back.
Apple has made bigger phones the new normal--thanks to quality design, materials, and craftsmanship and a catalog of a million apps that work well with the new devices, thanks to many thousands of dedicated developers.
Even worse, he's talking about *four* devices (which I don't even think you can find four devices that sum up to under $650).
I've never been convinced it's well defined.
It's not. It's basically an ill defined pejorative for "people who do things I don't like" with a dash of a superiority complex thrown in. They think the other person has a superiority complex so they beat them to the punch with their own. Basically if you call someone a hipster you are probably covering up your own insecurity and couldn't think of a more creative insult.
For the price of an iPhone, you could have two decent Android phones and a couple of cheap tablets.
I'll bite. First question is which iPhone are we talking about here? 5, 5S, 6 or 6plus? With what memory capacity? Second, go ahead and prove it. Find me two "decent" (meaning similar specs to the iPhone) Android phones and two "cheap" tablets at unsubsidized prices that cost the same as an iPhone. Only restriction is that it has to be something that is actually useful because I cannot fathom any reason to buy something that will gather dust.
He pretty much HAS to start responding to market demand, vs. dictating what he thinks people SHOULD want.
If that were the case then he should start offering thicker phones with a bigger battery. The fact that companies like Mophie actually have a business model strongly indicates there is a demand out there for phones with enough batter to last more than half a day.
Jobs was a big believer in the concept that people don't really know what they need or want.
And he is largely correct. If I were to go around my office and ask people what they would like that would make their job better, I will largely get blank stares or some extremely modest improvement to something they were already doing like a more comfy chair. People are REALLY REALLY bad in general about being technology visionaries. Henry Ford said it best when he said "If I asked customers what they wanted they would answer a faster horse".
Where this viewpoint is most often wrong is when you are talking about incrementally improving an existing product they are already familiar with. People often have well formed and informed opinions in that case. They can tell you that they like a bigger or smaller screen on a device they already know and use. They have NO idea if they will like something totally new (or seemingly new) like ApplePay.
Cool iPhone 6 Plus Feature Lets You Bend Phone Just by Sitting http://nymag.com/daily/intelli...
Better duck!
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
After switching to x86: x86 is awesome!
My feeling at the time was that it was nice to have it be faster, but I still didn't like the mess underneath that was x86 instruction sets... but since I didn't have to deal with it that was OK.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I ordered the Six Monolith, even though I am quite sure it's too large.
I write iOS applications for a living, and I need it for testing, so I will suffer the thing to have the newer form factor to test on.
The one aspect where I'm thinking I'll like the size more and not less is for photography. For a long time I've been wishing they would put larger cameras into the iPad, now they have...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I have 4.3" phone and my wife a 5".
They are both the same OS which is designed from the ground up to be a single handed phone. I find the 4.3" screen to be far superior granted the 5" phone is a much nicer phone. I can wait for Blackberry to refresh the Z10 to be a little nicer. Then I'll have an awesome phone to replace it.
I would love one the size of a 4s. Is there a petition out there to support this sentiment?
Apple has released over EIGHT iOS systems in even fewer years. Android in that period? One with four .point releases.
Goes to show just how much Apple is playing catchup these days.
I guess I'll never understand the incessant, infantile need of some to combine terms into cutesie baby-talk terms.
But why get upset about the size? If people like it, they'll buy it and use it. If not, it will die of its own accord.
Better to offer a wide range of shapes and styles so at least there's some semblance of choice.
This is (almost?) reminiscent of OS wars, laptop versus desktop versus tablet wars, and even portrait versus landscape wars.
My first true smartphone was an original Note. Yeah, I can be behind the times. I use both hands to use it. In fact, I used both hands when I used a flip phone. I use both hands when I use my son's iPhone. After the Note died, I now use the Moto G, which is one of the smaller phones out there. Guess what? I still use both hands.
I plan on getting the Note 4 or the Note Edge, just as soon as I can get both of them in my hands to check them out (and I know what the price of the Edge is going to be...).
If you must use your phone with one hand, then by all means, get a smaller phone, the phone that fits your hand and your use.
Phones the size of the Note fit my hands, and I'm rather used to the stylus as well, even if it didn't work with the Moto G. I've been happy with the Moto G, but I'm not liking the lack of some of the sensors and the lack of LTE, which I thought I could live without, has been something that has me wanting a new phone. So, a new Note will be in my future. The Edge intrigues me at the same time it screams that I probably won't use it anyway. But if the cost differential isn't that much, I'll go with it anyway.
So a big phone is what I'm going choose as my marketing choice.
Anybody else is free to make their own choice.
Bryan