… but what is the best way to sharpen it 
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Meanwhile, they keep insisting that the 51% of the population with smaller hands (and no pockets!) just have to lump it with bigger and bigger phones.
Why not offer two physical types of phones and see which one sells more? I’ll take thicker but smaller, thankyouverymuch.
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One word: titanium!
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The pocket thing really needs to be fixed. Whatever strange tariff, regulation, restriction created the conditions where “no pockets” was advantageous needs to be eliminated. Pockets for all!
It’s not an exact comparison, because there are other specs that are different too. However, the smaller SE versions of the phone have traditionally sold less volume than the other versions available at the same time. Still sold, just less. Which creates a sales scale problem. While some other company might love that sales volume, in comparison it seems like not enough for Apple. 
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Came here to say this. As someone who just replaced an iPhone 10 by a new iPhone 15, the one thing I would change about them is the size. The iPhone 4 was an ok size, but they just kept making them bigger and bigger after that. Why? I really wish Apple would offer a smaller size; Maybe they will realize this over the next few years before I buy a new one again. And no need to be super thin, I’m not going to use it without a case!
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Is anyone outside of designers asking for thinner phones? I want battery life. And no dumb notches or hole punches in the display, but bezelphobia isn’t going anywhere it seems. I think back on my beloved Droid X with its (at the time, gigantic) 4.3" screen, weirdly asymmetric case design, and pleasingly tactile matte finish, which never made me feel like it was about to slip out of my hand like a bar of soap, unlike my current S20+. If I could get that phone with a modern screen and camera, I would never use anything else ever again.
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Those same stiffening structures also serve as heat spreaders so while they do still take away from battery capacity (as does making the device thinner) they do more then just let someone try to bend it (along the long axis) without success.
The thinness also tends to lead to lightness which more people appreciate then thinness (I mean you can make the product lighter just by having more air inside and less battery, which would make it easier to get somewhat better camera systems without a huge camera mesa…).
In particular for the iPad Pro it means the “new” magic keyboard designed for it has a much less awkward cantilever and the tablet flyover zone is smaller so they can fit a row of Fn keys on it.
The modern equivalent is a battery case. Alternately you can use one of those magnetic battery packs that don’t have a case. I guess that is the modern equivalent of the old Nokia with the normal sized battery plus a great big huge extended life battery you could put on it when you knew you were going to be “out for a while”.
They did. The “iPhone mini” sales were apparently “disappointing”. Unfortunately. It is entirely possible they were robust enough to have made any company that wasn’t Apple or Samsung deliriously happy, but they were still low enough that Apple hasn’t made another phone in that form factor. It is likely the sales were lower than the “SE” model. If we are lucky they will try it again though.
Very few people are asking for thinner phones. Almost everyone wants lighter phones though, and thinner phones are pretty much always lighter.
Yep, a popular request. You can add more battery life with a battery case or an external magnetic battery. That tends to be bulkier then having the longer life battery built in though. So as much as I want to say “if they make a thin+light phone without enough battery life for you, that is something you can fix for like $70 while if the phone with enough battery life for you is to bulky and heavy for other people they can’t fix that”…it isn’t exactly the same because for you to get +70% battery life you are generally looking at 5x the thickness and 2x the weight.
I mean it works out great for me because I only rarely need the extra battery and I can throw the Anker662 on the back and I get my battery life and most of the time I don’t need to pay the weight or bulk…but anyone who want more battery life almost all the time isn’t well served. (also the Anker622 isn’t all that much extra battery, but I got it a few years back…and more for the stand then for the battery…)
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I have a bad history with a battery case that plugs into the phones port. A dropped phone ended up with the plug from the case breaking the port in the phone. 
As a bonus, this completely solves the breaking the port problem. Both initially, and as a way to charge if you’ve already broken it.
The forward march of technology means, they come with twice the battery for the same current prices of the Anker622 these days, probably half what you paid back then.
You could go all out with something like this , but that makes even the brick phone look small. Probably get all week though.
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i can’t put down my pixel on any surface that has an angle. of any degree. one missed call with vibration turned on sends the thing flying off the table. it’s beyond annoying.
i hate cases. but i have often thought of super gluing some foam to the outside of the damn thing.
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Glue it to the lower part of one of your forearms.
Problem solved and cool [science-fiction franchise of choice] vibes at no extra cost!
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The inductive charging coils are not all that efficient, though, and the heat it generates has to go somewhere- usually the battery, which also gets warm from the juice being shoved into it.
The correct answer is a swappable battery, but that’ll never fly- even the cheap pre-pay feature phones are going to a non-removable battery pack.
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They’re intentionally making them more difficult to repair
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Yeah. The only reason I have a case on my phone to improve my grip on it.
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Thinner = bends more easily. Designed to fail, if you ask me. Before these pocket computer radio cameras came into existence, I always figured they’d eventually be about 3/8" to 1/2" thick.
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Interestingly I have a similar device from a company with the hyper amusing name “Jackery”. I have done tent camping for a full week with it charging my phone, my wife’s phone, and providing power for some LED lights. I have a small solar panel for it (40W?) that I had planned to plug in when I got down to half power, but over a full week I only ever got down to half on the last day and it didn’t seem like worth setting up by then.
I mine is about 170Wh v the 299Wh for the one you pointed out (mine is 3+ years old though). It has also helped in a few power outages.
Fair criticism. My phone lives in my shirt pocket most of the time, and in addition to the weight it absolutely feels warmer with the battery on it. A pleasant bonus in the winter, not so much in the summer. It also literally uses a lot of the magnetic batteries power on heating things not charging the phone, like a third.
The various magnetic batteries I have are also all USB-C batteries, so you could “just plug them in”, but then you lose all the convenience & may as well just have a straight up USB battery at a significant cost savings.
Yeah, those days appear to be gone and not coming back, but I do remember the convenance of having the extended life pack. I also remember back when vibrating phones were not a thing you bought the battery with the rumble pack (oops, game controller reference, it was indeed marketed as a vibrating battery).
You could magnetically align actual contact pads and pass power that way which would cut the heat output, but I imagine have a lot of other drawbacks.
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That was just a random example that I found. Specifically, an example with a LiFePO4 battery and wireless charging. Meeting two requirements mentioned up thread. Although, it wasn’t a magnetic hold on the phone, just charging.
Also a bit silly. 
Definitely not a recommendation for a power bank/solar generator.
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I wouldn’t be so hard on your joke pick. Despite the advert saying it is light and portable at 12 lbs it isn’t most people’s idea of something they wonder around town with. On the other hand as part of a van life or tent camping item, or even just a “get us through the occasional longer then a half hour power outage” device they are very nice, and looks like the price has come way way down.
Sure it would be kind of awful to solve the problem of “my phone only gets through 3 hours of my 12 hour day”, but not every problem is shaped quite that way 
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Some people agree that a return to removable batteries is a good idea:
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I refuse to buy an accessory for a $1000 phone, that doubles its thickness, to fix an issue that making it a millimeter thicker would have solved. As for lighter phones, I don’t need a nearly 7-inch screen on my phone. Give me a 5.5-inch screen on a phone that’s 9mm thick. Problem solved. If I want a tablet, I’ll buy a tablet.
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