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I got the iPhone X in November 2017. Before that, my main phone was the original iPhone SE. All my phones between 2012 and 2017 had a screen size between 4 and 4.7 inches, and I was content with the screen size of the 5 and SE over the iPhone 6. But there was a wild card – I already had the iPad mini from December 2013, and that was the big screen for four years.  5.8″ on the X and 8″ on the iPad…that’s roughly the same delta as 3.5″ on the original iPhone through the 4S in summer 2012 and 5.8″ on the X. The iPhone X essentially became the One Device for most of the time since I’ve had it, except when traveling abroad. Not that a big phone with a big battery wouldn’t be a great One True Travel Device, but if it’s locked to AT&T and too big to use one-handed, it’s not going to be great for those times when you’re trying to safely frame a shot of a glacier while hanging off the boat railing. And while the iPhone 6 with the battery case on it wasn’t the best thing in Japan, an unlocked phone with an eSIM and a similar battery case might just be. 

The trick is, I spent 2018-19 dithering between a 4” and a 5.8” screen. So maybe 4.7” splits the difference in a way that hasn’t been on the cards previously. I know I thought it was just fine on the Moto X in a way that it wasn’t on the iPhone 6, mostly revolving around an OLED display and the Kindle app. But the Kindle Paperwhite has long since displaced everything else for reading books anyway. And we’ll see if a smaller phone leads me back toward using that aging iPad at all, or if that’s just a Friv-O-List item that I keep lying to myself and think I’ll learn Swift on. 

A 4.7” phone might be enough. A 5.4” phone the same size is probably better…if it exists, if it ships, and if it works. I’d just as soon let somebody else go first, more than ever – now that the iPhone 12 is off to the end of the year, I’d really rather wait until fall 2021 to roll the dice if it comes to that. I think an A13 phone with AirPods Pro and the newest Apple Watch will do for everything – because I really want Siri and Shortcuts to be more and let me do more without pulling the phone out. And really, the Apple Watch 6 is the big goal now. Heart rate and sleep and blood oxygen levels, and notifications of all kinds and spontaneous Mac unlocking, and hopefully fast enough with a fast enough device behind it to make up for the shortcomings of Series 0 back in the day. After five years, maybe the Apple Watch has evolved to be good enough for my purposes. Certainly hope so, anyway. 

Well, first impressions coming tomorrow night, probably. Possibly. Who knows.

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