Apple revealed its latest iPhones earlier this week, showing off better cameras, liquid displays, and bigger screens, but the company has received backlash from feminist campaigners.
The iPhone XS models have a screen width ranging from 5.8in to 6.5in, making the new designs considerably larger than the older SE phone, which had a screen size of four inches.
The technology company announced it was discontinuing the SE, causing campaigners to complain Apple is not designing its products with women in mind, claiming the new phones are ‘too big for women to hold’.
The company removed the SE from its website following the announcement of the new phones, along with four other iPhone models.
Critics pointed out the XS models would be more difficult for women to use because the average female hand is an inch narrower than the average man’s, suggesting handling the phone with one hand would be more of a challenge for women.
Feminist campaigner, Caroline Criado Perez, explained she’s suffered with Repetitive Strain Injury from using her iPhone 6.
Caroline told The Telegraph:
I genuinely have RSI [repetitive strain injury] from having an iPhone 6, and it went as soon as I switched to an iPhone SE.
It genuinely does affect women’s hand health – women do buy more iPhones than men – it just baffles me that Apple doesn’t design with our bodies in mind.
We should be furious about this, we are paying just as much money for it as men for a product that doesn’t work as well for us.
Jess Phillips, the Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley, expressed how companies tend to design products with men in mind, rather than women:
In so much design and technology development the default standard is always that which suits a man.
Companies have got to get better at recognising that their idea of normal should account for all their customers.
Other people have suggested the the lack of women in senior positions at Apple could be the reason these kinds of issues have arisen.
Leader of the Women’s Equality Party, Sophie Walker, said:
Apple’s UK headquarters has a gender pay gap of 24 per cent, and men’s bonuses are 57 per cent higher than women’s.
So do I think the boys at the top consider women when making design decisions? No.
The tech giant has not announced whether it will release a new phone to replace the smaller ones it has now discontinued.
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Emily Brown first began delivering important news stories aged just 13, when she launched her career with a paper round. She graduated with a BA Hons in English Language in the Media from Lancaster University, and went on to become a freelance writer and blogger. Emily contributed to The Sunday Times Travel Magazine and Student Problems before becoming a journalist at UNILAD, where she works on breaking news as well as longer form features.