Following the release by Apple of new iPhone images yesterday, internet rumour mongers burst into action claiming that the iPhone had ’shrunk’ since it was first announced in January. Our take on this is simply that Apple chose to hire a different hand model this time around, someone with bigger hands so that the iPhone would look more compact in the photos.
However, in order to work out just how big the iPhone really is in your hand (well, one of our hands), we’ve mocked-up this scale comparison between Apple’s new handset and Nokia’s 6680. We might be one or two pixels out but roughly speaking this is how it should look:
And, for comparison, here’s Apple’s press shot from yesterday:
And the original one from January:
We say: first shot from Apple, the new one, is of a guy’s hand, and the second shot, from January, is a woman’s. Nothing more to it than that.
Dimensions for comparisons taken from Nokia and Apple’s websites.
- iPhone dimensions: 115 x 61 x 11.6mm/ 135g
- 6680 dimensions: 108.4 x 55.2 x 20.5mm/ 133g
If you want a definitive size to be shown… simply hold it up next to a ruler. Holding it in your hand really tells us very little. Advertisers use hand models with varying hand sizes intentionally, depending on what they want us to see/believe. While it does help to know the iPhone is similar in size to the Nokia 6680, more people know what size a ruler is than what size a Nokia 6680 is.
I mocked up a side-by-side of the two differing hand models:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bar-art/542906626/
Talk about a reality distortion field.
bottom line, pick one of these things up in your own two hands.
The aspect ratio is off too… The second iPhone is wider than the first one.
I think the second pic is rendered. NOBODY has nails THAT perfectly coloured… :p
Hi Dave, we should have mentioned that we checked the original press photo by overlaying it on the new one and found that both images exactly the same aspect ratio and size. Agreed, though, that it does look wider. Not sure why that is. But it’s not — they’re exactly the same.
Hi Yonderboy, we did think about dropping in a ruler but actually we thought that giving a ‘real world’ example of how big the iPhone looks next to a popular Nokia would be more useful. It’s a bit hard to judge how big a long, thin ruler is compared to a (relatively) short, wide handset.
We thought Apple’s phone ended up looking surprisingly small — especially when you consider that the iPhone is 9mm-thinner than the 6680.
look at the size of your hand versus the model’s hand. I think the whole point is that they used a guy with a ridiculously large hand to make the phone appear smaller, not that they changed the size.
if anything, your hand compares more closely to the women’s hand from january.
That’s what we’re saying too. Apart from the bit about our hand looking like a woman’s hand. Except a bit hairier.
We were just trying to find a better point of comparison, rather than relying on what a given model’s hand looks like. We were trying to give people a ‘realistic’ view of how big the iPhone is compared to a fairly common Nokia.
i love ayman jani