Seriously, all of these things are massive. Just looking at them gives me carpal tunnel. Nobody needs phones this big. I certainly don’t. In fact, I want a very small phone, relatively speaking. The size what we had before we apparently learned better, and there doesn’t seem to be many convincing options.

Ideally, my perfect smartphone went extinct with 3.5" displays. I do like reaching the All of the screen without contorting my thumb like some kind of mathematical instrument. I know modern OSes try to work around this by letting you slide or squish stuff around but i don’t care. This is a regression, a fix that never needed a problem!

Ironically, Apple’s iPhone SE seems to be the closest modern technology I can muster to those halcyon days sans deformed digits at a comfortable 4.7", but those .2 imperial nonsenses do matter, slightly, and regardless I am not keen on Apple’s ecosystem. My wife has one of these and I kind of love it anyway. Android at least ought to have some options…? Well, sort of. I have done some digging ahd found a few models that might be OK. I know small beggars can’t exactly be big choosers but I am determined to find my glass slippers, damn it.

Cubot Mini/Pocket:

Oh shit. This is perfect! A 4" screen, be still my heart…! However, I am led to believe this entire line of phones won’t work in burgerland because this country hates everyone and everything. What?! angery

Unihertz Jelly Star:

Love the enthusiasm, but maybe this is a bit too far in the other direction… also, this thing is just kind of ugly. I do have a fondness for that y2k transparency; maybe if it were in a few other colors, but I just can’t get into it.

Palm Smartphone:

I genuinely had no idea Palm was still making phones. This actually might be the queen of the crop; 3.3" and from what I can tell, it fits my use case quite well.

And…that’s basically it. Everything else that exists won’t function with US carriers, near as I can tell. Am I just being a smartphone boomer? I can’t be the only one who wants flagship specs on sensible real estate… copium

  • infuziSporg [e/em/eir]@hexbear.netEnglish
    23·
    8 months ago

    It’s not so much that they’re bigger, it’s that they’re longer.

    16:9 is a good aspect ratio not because of anything to do with video, but because it’s close to the golden ratio. Half the screen is proportional to the rotated full screen, and there’s open space to use.

    These days there are no more 16:9 phones on the market, and 18:9 is the shortest they get. Many are even 20:9 or even 22:9. What are you going to do with a phone that is 2.5 times as long as it is broad? Sure, a 7" phone that’s 2.9x6.5" is less area than a 7" phone that’s 3.7x5.7". But it’s less practical too. You need a minimum width for a keyboard and other things, and beyond a certain point, more screen height is just not useful.

    Longer phones are really only good for scrolling- that activity we do in-between actually engaging with content. The assumption that customers actually like scrolling, along with how it’s easier to make a larger “screen size” (longer diagonal) by making the device longer, is a driving perverse incentive that makes the hardware worse- generally unpleasant to use. Not only does it not fit in a pocket, you have to choke up on the phone to reach the corners, you almost need to glance up and down to see the full screen.

    Any longer and we’ll have phones that look like NEOM.