The ‘iPhone Mini’ Revisited

M.G. Siegler
500ish
Published in
6 min readJan 17, 2019

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Would someone tell me how this happened? We were the fucking vanguard of shaving in this country. The Gillette Mach3 was the razor to own. Then the other guy came out with a three-blade razor. Were we scared? Hell, no. Because we hit back with a little thing called the Mach3Turbo. That’s three blades and an aloe strip. For moisture. But you know what happened next? Shut up, I’m telling you what happened — the bastards went to four blades. Now we’re standing around with our cocks in our hands, selling three blades and a strip. Moisture or no, suddenly we’re the chumps. Well, fuck it. We’re going to five blades.

It is one of the best Onion articles of all time. Hell, maybe the best. After all, as with all the greatest satire, this ended up being true. We now live in a world of five blade razors.

This article immediately jumped to mind when I saw the headline that Apple will be adding a third camera to the next iPhone, according to The Wall Street Journal. “Fuck everything, we’re doing three cameras,” one could imagine Tim Cook saying.¹ Actually, I’m not sure anyone could imagine Cook swearing. But I digress…

The extension of the joke is funny because it also works. In the age of smartphone maturation and saturation, innovation now often comes in the form of “more” — more screen, more pixels, more RAM, and yes, more cameras.² Sure, I’m being somewhat flippant — Apple’s camera system on the iPhone has been and remains amazing.³ And it’s a part of our phones! It is in no way a stretch to say that the company has vastly expanded the field of photography. But there’s also directional accuracy in the joke.

Anyway, what struck me was the reaction to the joke on Twitter. Not just one, not just two, but a number of people had the exact same reaction. And actually, it was the same reaction that many people had to the reports that the iPhone XR hasn’t been selling well. Or at least as well as Apple had hoped.⁴ The common refrain: Apple should make a smaller iPhone.

It’s sort of amazing for a few reasons, actually. First, ever since the dawn of the original iPhone, people have been clamoring for an “iPhone mini” or “iPhone nano”. This, despite that fact that looking at it now, that original iPhone is tiny. A 3.5-inch screen! The screen on my iPhone XS Max is 6.5-inches! As it turns out, Apple did make an “iPhone nano”, they just made it in hindsight…

And actually, years into the product line, Apple did take a step in this general direction with the launch of the iPhone SE. Apple clearly meant the device to be a one-off 4-inch option.⁵ But they were also clearly taken aback by how well it sold on launch in 2016.

Yet the march towards mega (sized-phones) continued unabated. Of Apple’s newest devices, the smallest screen size is now the 5.8-inch screen found in the iPhone XS. The iPhone XR screen is 6.1-inches. Yes, you can get a smaller screen, but it means buying an older device.⁶

My (purely anecdotal, of course) data points suggest Apple should focus less on “more” and focus more on “less”. That is, they should once again create a smaller screen iPhone. A new iPhone SE — or “iPhone Mini”, as it were.

There are certainly arguments against this. It’s more of a pain for developers to have to tailor apps to so many distinctive screen sizes, for one thing.⁷ It’s also undoubtedly harder from a supply-chain perspective for Apple.

But come on, this is Apple. They’re already cutting so many screen sizes out of LCD and OLED sheets. We currently have four different sizes of Apple Watch screens being offered.

No one is asking, but if I’m Apple, I’m scrapping the “XR” strategy of LCD vs. OLED (and a few other tweaks such as the camera and color — which already didn’t work once in iPhone history). And I’m doing it in favor of a far more obvious selling strategy. Something quite tried-and-true.

Small. Medium. Large.

You offer an iPhone XS Max, an iPhone XS, and an iPhone XS Mini.⁸ 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.

And guess what? The pricing falls in line as well! The “Max” is the most expensive iPhone. The “Regular” is in the middle. And the “Mini” is the least expensive (Apple would never dare say “cheaper”) model. Or, at least, the least expensive new model. You could still sell the older models at a discount, of course. Such options would seem to make more sense than this:

To me, this makes almost too much sense. What on Earth am I missing? Why hasn’t Apple done this? Instead, they made a seemingly great, but confusing device — the XR. It’s not the best iPhone. It’s not the cheapest iPhone. In a way, it just serves to highlight a more macro problem that Apple seems to have right now: it’s the “good enough” iPhone.

For that reason, it may in fact be selling well! But I would bet that an ‘iPhone Mini’ might sell even better. Even without three cameras. Or an aloe strip.

Update: Parker Ortolani had a very similar idea a few weeks back and pointed me to his mock-ups for such a device on Twitter. I’m reposting them below, with permission — my only small quibble is with the notion that the ‘Max’ model would be the colorful one. I could see a world in which the ‘Max’ is kept simple (black, white, and gold — for China, of course) but the ‘Regular’ model is given some options to spice up the middle child. Though I could also see Apple letting the ‘Mini’ have all the fun, like the iPod days!

¹ Though, actually, to keep the joke intact, Apple would actually be doing four cameras here, because three is just the number after two, after all. And that would be playing it safe. But wait, there’s already a Samsung phone with four cameras. So, fuck it, Apple should do five!

² Not to mention more money!

³ Yes, we can quibble about if the Pixel phones have surpassed the iPhone in terms of quality — certainly on the software side with certain features.

⁴ It’s still unclear how accurate these reports are — Apple has refuted them, at least indirectly — but there sure is a lot of smoke…

⁵ Though they did upgrade the amount of storage on the device one year later. Still, it was called SE — “Special Edition” — for a reason…

⁶ The iPhone 7 & 8 are still for sale with their 4.7-inch screens… Still much larger than the 4-inch found on the iPhone SE.

⁷ Though Apple’s developer software has made this much easier over time. And, of course, there are still many people actively using the iPhone SE and other smaller devices.

⁸ This almost makes the “Max” name less silly in this context. Almost. This could also lead to a more simplified: iPhone Mini, iPhone, and iPhone Max naming structure — dropping the exceedingly confusing numbering system (is this year iPhone XI or XII or 11 or 12?). It could also open the door to: iPhone Mini, iPhone, and iPhone Pro

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Writer turned investor turned investor who writes. General Partner at GV. I blog to think.