You’re way too cynical and have let your cynicism cloud history.
The first phablets were probably the Galaxy Note line starting in 2011 which was met with some skepticism due to the size of them. These were well before the edge to edge screen days. So you had 5.7 inch screens with a bezel.
They were huge but I would routinely see small women pull these things out of their hand bags and press a device that obscured almost their whole face and start chatting.
Things steadily got bigger from there. The general population WANTED this.
Parent's take is not whether bigger phones shouldn't exist, it's why smaller phones stopped being produced, which is a fairly different angle.
> women
To note, the initial smartphones were already too big for he taste of many: a clamshell feature phone was almost a third of the size of the original iPhone. From that POV, going to a phone that is twice as big is less of a barrier, as they had to keep it in a bag/purse in the first place.
The return of foldables is also pretty well received in that regard.
Just tonight, I saw a friend of mine, pull a new foldable Razr from her purse.
They are cool phones, but I do iOS. I still use a 13 Mini, and will continue to do so, for quite some time.
As to the point of this article, I seem to recall a couple of very small Android phones, some years ago (about credit-card sized). I guess they didn’t sell well.
IMHO this is just not viable in the current world.
I agree with line the article sets (5"4 for 1080p, almost the size of the Pixel 4a), as mainstream apps will properly work at that size. I still have a working 4a, and some banking apps are getting pretty cramped for instance. And many websites already need furious panning and zooming.
A credit card size phone would only work for people who basically hate their phones I think.
Completely agree. Although not even on "small phones", my S23 isn't small but the design of these apps has regressed so much that I barely see any useful information.
On my old WAP phone I could see bank balance and maybe the last transaction or two. Now half the screens taken up with upselling account levels, invest in shares, buy crypto, you've been pre-approved!
It's the padding! And the UX teams that add them into the designs!
My cynical take is that an unholy pact was formed between FE devs and UX designers:
By adding in "design" and "user experience" you essentially reduce features, complexity and general "dev time" of every single user-screen or page or component. They're no longer cram-packed with oodles of features, toggles, buttons, menus, etc. Most pages are glorified lists of things, with maybe a menu on each item if you are lucky. Devs dev less, have less bugs, just use FE-library of the day and go home happy because they made a CRUD screen essentially.
Meanwhile, UX designers get to play around and constantly fiddle with design because let's all be honest, nothing will ever be truly good and in a perfect "user experience" space because complexity and functionality are never what the user is happy about having, until they need it.
>A credit card size phone would only work for people who basically hate their phones I think.
Probably. It's people who know they have to own a smartphone for so many things like park their car but don't really want one.
This was a number of years back but I know a then tech executive who got a phone (I think it may have been a feature phone at the time) only because their nanny absolutely insisted.
I don't think so. Yesterday I was browsing phones and there was a Google Pixel 9 Fold on dislpay, closed and showing something. That has a display on the outside and a foldable display on the inside.
I opened it, and most of the screen looked like a big, roundish black blob of ink, centred on the fold, on top of the Android animations working perfectly underneath, but only visible at the edges. I was impressed that the rest of the screen around worked perfectly, but it was unusuable due to the size of the black blob.
Something had broken at or near the fold while it was on display.
All other devices were in great condition; it was a well-maintained store.
Apple did a horrible job marketing the mini. I ran into a lot of people who saw my 12 mini and said they would prefer that size, but didn’t know it existed.
When I went to buy it, and the case, the employees at the Apple Store questioned me and tried to push me toward the normal iPhone. This is the first and only time I’ve ever felt Apple Store employees steering purchasing decisions. I had to go in there knowing what I wanted, and had to assert that it was what I wanted repeatedly.
Are people buying big phones because they are addicted to their screens, or are people addicted to their screens because of big phones?
When I went to buy it, and the case, the employees at the Apple Store questioned me and tried to push me toward the normal iPhone.
Probably because they knew that customers would come back to complain about the abysmal battery life of the Mini? I had a 12 Mini, I loved that phone, but man was it hard to get through the day on a single charge.
I generally only charge my 13 mini every other day or so.
The only time I recently struggled getting through the day was when on vacation and constantly using google maps & translate. But that is with a 3 year old phone.
Worth noting that (so I've heard) the most impactful hardware change between the 12 mini and the 13 mini was improvements to the battery life. I've never struggled with the battery life on my 13 mini, either, but the handful of people I know with a 12 mini have always bemoaned it.
13 mini here, also not charging every day. My screen time is around 2 hours a day, which IMO is still to much. I try to keep battery between 20 and 80 percent.
Yes, and people are using their phones for what they previously used TVs, laptops, music players and other dedicated devices for. It's a bit of a cycle.
There's also the accessibility factor. Many people become farsighted later in life. It's much easier to see things on a big phone, especially with increased zoom. (I see this all of the time when I fly.)
> There's also the accessibility factor. Many people become farsighted later in life. It's much easier to see things on a big phone, especially with increased zoom. (I see this all of the time when I fly.)
Or for those of us with higher end myopia whose lenses effectively “shrink” everything they see. I’m -6.75 in each eye and my glasses make my everything seem significantly smaller than it is.
Sometimes I look at my phone or monitor without my glasses and am momentarily shocked at how large they seem and then saddened when I put them back on.
The other problem is that more and more content now is designed for (or only tolerable on) larger phone screens. Go to any website these days on a smaller phone like an iPhone mini and more than 50% (being charitable here) of the screen will be taken up by garbage like ads, cookie banners, popups, etc.
It's a vicious cycle. Phone manufactures make the screen bigger, app and website developers realize they can cram more junk on the page, consumers demand larger screens as a result, return to step 1.
This is HN. OP is 100% right to be flabbergasted that people on this site are not using the best and brightest of the ad blockers available. I know I am.
Ironically, I have the opposite problem with website design. So many sites are clearly designed for mobile screen sizes, with a teensy-tiny strip of text on my large monitor. It's very unpleasant to read lines of text that short, so on a lot of sites I have to go into dev tools and set the text width to 1200px to make it an actual comfortable reading experience. I should not have to mess with CSS to make websites readable, but here we are.
I want larger phones because I am at that particular stage of middle age where I should probably start using reading glasses, but I'm also damned if I'm going to start carrying reading glasses everywhere with me.
I’m even older, walking around with reading glasses on my head all day. Had an iPhone 13 mini, miss the form factor, would prefer a mini as my next phone. But for most mobile use, on the couch, watching videos, etc, I use an iPad, not my phone. For me a large phone is mostly a tablet that’s too small.
> The general population wants larger phones because they are addicted to their screens.
I would rephrase that to: The general population wants a larger phones because phones are defacto PCs these days. They can watch movies, browser the news, listen to music, FaceTime, Maps, ..
Outside of business applications likes Word / Excel, phones basically handles 90% of people's requirements for "computers".
I’m not sure if your comment is sarcastic, but in case it isn’t: my friend group had a get-together two days ago, three out of six had a laptop with them, and it even came in handy when I started talking about the problem I’m working on, somebody got interested and I was able to show the plots and calculations. Also we have PowerPoint Parties somewhat regularly, where most of us bring their computers to make last minute changes or simply have a known environment.
Not sarcastic at all. I have never seen people (not even my nerdy friends, least of all normies) bring laptops to a friend hangout. People might bring laptops if they were getting together to work on stuff, but then that isn't just hanging out any more, there's a purpose to the gathering. I would be astonished if someone could show that non-techy people ever brought laptops when they would hang out. Techy people (like your friend group), maybe. But not your average person.
When I was still working full-time, a co-worker told me their kid had told them they didn't need or want a computer. Probably changes at some point with long writing assignments, etc. but still.
I do increasingly think about whether I need to bring a laptop on various trips. It can be handy but I try to pack light and another few pounds is a lot for me. I've experimented with a newish tablet but it's a bit too in-between for my taste.
I remember people would always be surprised about how home computer ownership was not that high but smartphones (well, Japanese "garakei") were were ubiquitous.
Well, do you think this is a good state of affairs? On one hand, phones are pretty accessible devices, on the other hand there are many aspects of phones that are objectively pretty terrible for consumers (talking about cost and difficulty of repair, walled garden ecosystems, and generally being geared towards consuming things and a lot less effective at producing them than laptops and desktops.)
(Tangential: of course I don't blame anyone for bringing their phone with them everywhere but if you're going to go to a friend group hangout, consider how annoying it is when you're trying to talk to someone and they're clearly checked out browsing some slop on Twitter or talking to someone else entirely. Take a damn break from the phone!)
Yeah and I also remember how Apple fans said "this is ridiculous, nobody needs a screen that big that doesn't fit in your pocket easily", and here we are 15 years later mourning the iPhone Mini/SE.
10 years ago, if your phone was bigger than 5 inches, it looked ridiculous. You'd pull it out and people would look at you like you'd just escaped from a nut house
I am 6ft tall and feel like my hands are above average in size. I have a regular iPhone 16 pro. I still don’t understand how people use bigger devices.
Do they like using two hands? I can’t single hand a phone any larger without having to shift it in my hand.
I don’t want to use two hands on my phone outside of typing.
People type a lot though. It's also better for video, games, reading, general browsing. If you value one handed operation above all that though, then obviously smaller is better.
I just refuse to accept that the first phablet I ever saw, the Galaxy Note, which covered the person's face and looked absolutely comical in their hands, was smaller than my current, very regular-sized phone.
The Samsung Galaxy Note (the first one) had a screen size of 5.3 inches.
The Samsung Galaxy Note 2 had a screen size of 5.5 inches. I had one and regularly had strangers ask me if that was really a phone. I had friends say, "Give me a call on your tablet" as a joke.
I loved it. Now my 6.1 inch iPhone feels on the small side.
The Dell Streak (shoutout to the other 3 people who bought one) had a 5 inch screen in 2010, a notable jump from contemporary phones like the iPhone 4 which was still 3.5", and other Android devices like the HTC Droid series which were around 3.7" and slowly starting to creep upwards to differentiate themselves from the iPhone. I think the largest Android devices you could get at the time were still smaller than 4".
I remember Dell showing this off at the All Thing D conference and Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal asked the Dell spokesperson to put it up to his head, and told him it looked like a waffle. To this days it’s all I think of when I see someone holding a massive phone up to the side of their head.
That thing could really stand out in a crowd. I was at a baseball stadium for a concert that year, and spotted someone with a Dell Streak as I was heading down to the field. In a sea of people that was the one phone I spotted. I stopped to ask the guy about it briefly.
I remember Steve Jobs berating phablets as "the Hummer of phones" and dissing 7-inch Android tablets as too small, and disparagingly saying users would need to "file down their fingers" to use them - without considering how much smaller Apple users' fingers would need to be to use 3.5-inch iPhones.
I also remember the viral, doctored image showing the reachability of phone screens which "proved" that 3.5 inches was the "ideal" phone size.
It's amusing how people try an memory hole their negative reaction and pieces written about the Note. People's mocking web pages have disappeared. Arguments based on the size of the human hand completely forgotten. The very notion that a 5.7 inch screen is big an unwieldly is now met with disdain.
When I first saw the ad on tv, my reaction was "Holy moley, wow, who's going to buy that monstrosity?"
And then a few weeks later I bought one. All the guys in my office laughed and said "Wow, look at that huge thing, it's ridiculous". I chuckled and agreed, though I was quietly enjoying the larger screen.
Smaller phones has always been limited in performance, batter life, the app support and the camera quality. Camera is the most important factor and battery is the second.
General population doesn't buy phones every year and they don't want a nerfed phone when they have to pay 500-1000 $/€s. So they gravitate towards higher end ones.
Companies including Apple has always treated the small size as an entry to mid segment phone. The only exception I know is Sony z3 and z5 compact which suffered heat and battery swelling issues due to Qualcomm messing 810 series SoCs up.
Companies also want you to buy the most expensive phone. So they market the premium models and train their store personnel to sell more of the premium line. If they stop intentionally nerfing the smaller phones, I think there is a market there. However, it will still be smaller.
I used to lug a dedicated camera around all the time. Except for special purposes I just bring a phone these days. And I'm not the only one. I do know people who do a lot of nature photography but I also know people who always had a camera with them who now reserve them for "serious" portraiture and things like that.
It helps, but less than you'd think. The main board's power doesn't dramatically change, and because the full space under the screen isn't battery, reducing the screen size by 40% might cause the battery size to be reduced by 60%
The first phablets were probably the Galaxy Note line starting in 2011 which was met with some skepticism due to the size of them. These were well before the edge to edge screen days. So you had 5.7 inch screens with a bezel.
They were huge but I would routinely see small women pull these things out of their hand bags and press a device that obscured almost their whole face and start chatting.
Things steadily got bigger from there. The general population WANTED this.