Daily Archives: April 8, 2010

The Incredible Shrinking iPhone “Nano”

I like to try as a hobby to anticipate Apple’s next move. If you had asked me two weeks ago, where the next steps in terms of the design evolution of the iPhone needed to go, I would have told you with 100% certainty that they needed a smaller iPhone – an iPhone Nano as it were.

I always felt that the iPhone was a little too large and a little too heavy and a little clunky to hold in one hand and felt like it needed a half-inch trimmed in both dimensions. A little more like a Palm Pre in terms of height and width.

Well now that I have my two iPads, it seems as though I am getting what I wanted all along and at no additional cost to me. After about 48 hours of having both an iPad and an iPhone, my iPhone started to shrink. It physically became smaller and the icons were smaller and the screen started to feel small and cramped when I tried to read something.

As of yesterday, it had gotten so small (in my mind) that it started feeling “too small” and I was thinking that perhaps Apple should release a slightly larger version to get away from this sense of packing all those icons into such a tiny space.

The good news is that today the iPhone seems a little larger – and actually right now it feels like it is almost exactly the right size. It is large enough that you can read things if you really have to and the iPad is not close and it is small enough to fit in your pocket and have with you all the time when you leave the iPad on your desk as you go to lunch.

So I am pretty pleased how the iPhone was silently upgraded from “too large” to “just right” simply because I purchased and started using the iPad.

I wonder how many other people are experiencing this “free iPhone upgrade” because they are using their iPhones right next a new, shiny iPad?