Apple Wins and Losses for Women & Small-Handed People

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Apple made a lot of changes to their lineup of personal devices this week— some announced and some more quietly. As an averaged sized woman with small wrists, I have some thoughts and feels about these changes. I’ve already talked about my preference to use a phone one-handed and not carry a purse here: Judge my hand by its size, do you?

So what changes did Apple make to their iPhone and Apple Watch lineup that might impact the fairer sex (among others)?

Wins

  • The only real difference between the fancy new iPhones are their screens and battery life.

    • The iPhone X 🅂 and the iPhone X 🅂 MAX have the same camera system

    • As far as we know pre-release, the iPhone X 🅂 and the iPhone X 🅂 MAX have the same computing internals

    • This is huge because it means that we don’t have to compromise at the high end to get the best phone in the smaller size.

  • The amazing and wonderful new Apple Watch is thinner with a larger screen

Losses

  • The hand-and-pocket-sized iPhone SE was removed from the Apple Store

  • The new Apple Watch actually takes up more space on your wrist

    • This is going to be a problem for my mother, who got an Apple Watch for it’s heart monitoring, but has the world’s smallest wrists and the Series 3 already takes up most of the real estate on her wrist.

  • The new non-flagship phone, iPhone X 🅁, only comes in a size that is between the two fancy phones (even bigger than the iPhone X 🅂).

The Upshot

While it’s great that the new, fanciest phones have the same internals and camera features, even the smaller iPhone X 🅂, like the iPhone X before it, is still too big and heavy for me to use comfortably. That means, I won’t be updating to the iPhone X 🅂, but it gives me hope for the future— it feels possible that a future, smaller phone might be feature-matched and fit in my hand.

I haven’t tried on the new watch to see how it fits on my wrists, so I can’t speak to that. The new, slightly bigger area design might look better on smaller wrists because it isn’t as thick, but I also don’t want it spilling over the side of my wrist.

It puts those of us who really prefer smaller devices in a “wait and see” mode. Again.