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by jrflowers 1001 days ago
This is a shame. I am going to have to migrate to an Android-based handset for the first time in 15 years because of this change.
5 comments

How could this possibly be the deciding factor? I know this is Hacker News but that seems like the smallest possible thing to care about.
It's satire. This article being posted on HN is a small unimportant and uninteresting thing. The reply is in the same vein.
I guess that's the joke. Nobody cares about phone rotational inertia, the fact that someone would measure it is funny as is.
The point of the article is that Apple made the phone feel much lighter than a straight up mass reduction would indicate.

It's actually something that Apple's design team is really good at. If you've ever held an IPP or ipad air without its case you'd know what the guy was talking about.

Alas, reading isn't a required skill for commenters.

People actually care, this got investigated because early reviewers “felt” the phone was much lighter than it actually is (which is quite welcome). The lower moment of inertia is the cause of that difference.
Reviewers are not just "people", they are people desperate to squeeze out as many words as possible praising and nitpicking the product in exactly the ordered proportions.

I refuse to believe anybody at all cares about how light or heavy their phone weighs or how light it "feels".

The points that you don't care about is not essentially the points that other people don't care about. If you are strong the weight may not matter, but otherwise there is a significant difference imposed on fingers & wrists. I at least know a few of my friends who care about this more than the fancy cameras & dynamic island.
> I refuse to believe anybody at all cares about how light or heavy their phone weighs or how light it "feels".

My vision’s poor, so I hold everything closer to my face than the average, to get a better look. For items with a lot of text (or other reasons for prolonged near-face use), this can put a small yet noticeable strain on my wrists, elbows and shoulders. You’d think that years of repetitive phone ise would have built up small muscles to compensate, but it hasn’t. I would definitely appreciate a light phone.

> Reviewers are not just "people", they are people desperate to squeeze out as many words as possible praising and nitpicking the product in exactly the ordered proportions.

Nice IMAX you got there.

> I refuse to believe anybody at all cares about how light or heavy their phone weighs or how light it "feels".

Oh yeah, it’s really unbelievable that people would care about the weight of something they carry and move around a significant fraction of their day and people definitely haven’t been complaining about how heavy the 13P / 14P design is since they were released (https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/pw875n/does_anyone_e..., https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/13-pro-too-big-and-heav...) but hey I’m sure you can just call them weak shills or something.

>Nice IMAX you got there.

Sorry, what?

10%/19g reduction is about as little as few coins or variation of a t-shirt weight, it's beyond negligible. Drinking an extra glass of water will weigh you down tenfold. What would you say about moment of inertia? That people twist around with phones all day?

?? that's the exact reason I didn't buy an iPhone 13 Pro. A heavy phone is really annoying and paying more for it is even worse.
Phones are a toy that people have in their pocket 24/7. They’ve put fidget spinners out of business already. If they’re going to be worse at serving this market, well, there are lots of Android options.
You want to shift to Android because you want higher moment of inertia and/or higher weight in your phone ? You would be a dream customer to many phone companies. Or perhaps you say all this in jest.
My daily driver weights nearly half a kilogram and has a 13,200 mAh battery that literally actually truly lasts for four days of mixed use on a charge.

I also have an iPhone, but be fucked if I can keep hold of it, it's so light I can seem to actually get a grip on it for longer than about two minutes at a time.

I've had my eufges phone for over a year and still haven't broken the screen. I mate dropped his, same brand, different model, from a second story access platform from where it fell face down on concrete, the glass screen protector was cracked but the phone was fine.

I do not understand the obsession with lightness and thinness, but that's just me, and I suppose the other few thousand who've bought phones that aren't ultra light ultra thin ultra breakable.

> My daily driver weights nearly half a kilogram and has a 13,200 mAh battery that literally actually truly lasts for four days of mixed use on a charge.

> I also have an iPhone, but be fucked if I can keep hold of it, it's so light I can seem to actually get a grip on it for longer than about two minutes at a time.

Your half-kg phone has trained your motor neurons in such a way that they are not prepared when you hold a ~100g phone. I suggest mixed-interval training. Use both phones regularly (you mention the half-kg one is your daily driver). An anti-slip silicone case for your iPhone should also help.

When I hold an iPhone, it sometimes feels heavy to me. I would say my experience is more representative of the general population than yours.

You're wrong.

I had exclusively iPhone's for ten years prior, I couldn't keep hold of any of them. A pop socket help a lot.

And I'd argue I'm not alone, how many phone screen replacements do you reckon repair shops across the globe perform every day?

They're too fragile, and too difficult to take care of.

Mixed interval training for phone holding, I sincerely hope that was a joke, but judging by the last paragraph, I'm not sure :-D
Mixed interval training for phone holding was indeed meant as a joke. Means “use both phones regularly” and you’ll get used to holding them both competently.
I have a 13 Pro, the small one. It lasts a day fine. Put a TPU case on it and it's not slipperly. I dropped it at least 100 times, once down a mountain in central asia. It's fine.

As for battery, stick a powerbank in your bag. Anker do some nice ones. I got 9 days out of one.

This is easily solved with a tough protection case.
Right.

So there’s a proven market for a rugged iPhone.

Maybe there is a market for iphone 15 cases that correct the loss of rotational inertia by adding weight around the phone.

Potentially there even is a secondary market of YouTube reviewers that discuss handling properties of lead vs tungsten cases.

SerntimentAnalysisRumorsObserverReport notes that the reception to this phone was unpopular.
Can you give more background? Why?
Parent doesn't actually care; it's all just spin.
It is an edge use case.