I like wide phones more than big phones. I've never used phones one-handed, and stow them in a belly pouch.<p>I loved the original Note, and as it grew old, kept waiting for a phone just as wide. Instead manufacturers made phones taller. I'd say comically tall. The aspect ratio is out of whack for use as a phablet.<p>I ended up replacing it with a Huawei Mediapad X1, which is
a true phablet, with the same nice 5:3 aspect ratio as the Note, but now full HD resolution at 7".<p>When it came time to retire, I couldn't find anything in that aspect ratio anymore, and went with a Huawei Mate20X. Although its display sounds bigger at 7.2", the 18.7:9 aspect ratio makes the display area much smaller.
Anecdotally, as my friends age I have noticed a few getting larger phones so they can accommodate a bigger font size and not own up to needing glasses. This correlates with them having more disposable income so is a market the manufacturers want to go after.
I am looking to buy a new phone now, and with every previous phone purchase I've got a slightly bigger phone because, as the article says, phones just keep getting bigger.
Now it looks like 6.5" is "small" and you might find a 6.2" here or there.
I'm not opposed to a slightly bigger screen, but my current phone is 5" and it looks like whatever I upgrade to probably won't pass the pocket test which is a bit annoying.
More powerful CPUs and GPUs for the games and the monstrous modern web pages --> larger batteries to feed them for hours --> larger screens to cover the larger body --> more pixels to drive --> larger CPUs and GPUs...<p>We now have 6-core and 8-core phones, with more CPU power than lower-end laptops, and often a comparable amount of RAM, say, 4-6GB. Also, the radio tract is not getting any simpler, or less power-hungry, with adding more and more standards and frequencies, without dropping the old ones.<p>How do you house all that? How do you power all that?<p>My idea is that the only way to get a smaller phone is to make it have <i>fewer</i> features, <i>less</i> resources, and thus lower weight and size. If you want the 4" size of iPhone 5C, prepare to the feature set not far exceeding that of iPhone 5C.
I spent a dozen years as phones became more and more manageable and light, from the almost-bricks of the very-late 80s to the small, shirt-pocket 'chocolate-bars' of the mid-noughties.<p>Just when I was happy with the size of my mobile phone, they started getting larger, less-manageable, and heavier again. I fully expect them to become as heavy and large and unmanageable as the half-bricks of the 80s in the near future.<p>At the moment I am refusing to upgrade my iPhone 5S because that's the largest size I want to go to.
"inch" metric is broken since all smartphone manufacturers start using non-16:9 displays since 2016. Manufacturer should put display height/width on spec instead of diagonal inches.
subtitle: "Android phone manufacturers have stopped making smaller phones. What gives?"<p>answer: Maybe the market has spoken and people simply like having big phones cause they can see and do things they like one them while still fitting in their pocket.