Where Had All The Compact Phones Went?
A few years ago, compact phones where the norm. During that time, anything that went beyond the 5" screen size was considered large, and 5.5" screen size were easily categorized as “phablets”. Looking for a phone that went beyond the “phablet” category meant looking for a tablet.
However, gone were those days. Fast forward to 2018, “phablets” are the new norm — manufacturers are trying to bury the 5" and below screen size like nothing happened, as if those phones were simply a by-product of voracious innovation stipulated by continuous clamor for more.
Gone were the days when flagship phones were packaged in a compact 5" or below screen size — more than ever, the new norm is 5.5" and above. The notable consequence: phones keep getting bigger and bigger until two hands are required to smoothly operate these devices.
When I point out this fact, I’m not just talking about the phones’ physical dimension getting bigger. Recently, the trend of bigger screen-to-body ratio has took off, so that phones keep their physical dimensions while increasing the screen size. However, phones are still “big” in this perspective — what made them bigger is the fact that their screen size is bigger than before. Making our phones bigger seems a wonderful idea in theory, but is it really in practice?
One would agree that a possible explanation why our phones keep getting bigger lies on the motto that “the bigger, the better”. Of course, we are becoming more immersed in our phones, so that most of our tasks traditionally delegated to laptops and tablets are now done in our phones.
Who could have thought that having a phone in our midst would replace all of our bulky tools that we utilize to make everyday tasks bearable? To be clear, a phone’s portability is not defined in terms of its physical dimension or screen size, but rather, in its entirety of usage — one only need to purchase a phone to realize that they can replace a girth of bulky tools to conclude that it is truly portable. But that is not to say that compactness equals portability. As phones keep getting bigger, it is obvious that the compact form factor of our devices are diminishing.
For me, the less compact our tools become, the less it becomes easier for us to utilize it to a full extent. True enough, phones are becoming more of an unwanted liability than a desired asset designed to replace all other tools that we have accumulated to make our lives easier. The original promise of a phone — a tool that fits nicely into our hands an helps us in everyday lives — is quickly diminishing with the advent of bigger phones. Just imagine stretching your entire hand just to reach the top of a phone with a 5.7" screen!
Worse yet, imagine temporarily losing your sanity when you realized that your phone’s screen has cracked because it slipped from your grasp and dropped with the screen facing the ground. A phone is designed to be easily accommodated in our everyday lives, not to accommodate with them. Yes, bigger is better: bigger phones means better experiences. But in the first place, we intended our phones to augment our experiences, not to build our experiences with them. If that is so, bigger phones doesn’t fit this paradigm — it only serves to destroy this paradigm, if not redefine it.
Redefined experiences is not the only unforeseen consequence of having a bigger phone. The issue of accessibility also comes at hand. Today, I use my mother’s iPhone 4S and I’m delighted by the fact that I can use this phone with one hand. Everything is just easy to do — I can type in its compact keyboard without straining my hands too much; I can reach the notifications screen easily without assistance from the other hand; and most importantly, I can easily grab (and flip) the whole phone without fear that it would slip in my hands.
Holding a compact phone feels like not holding a phone at all — and that is why I like it, since a phone should always about augmenting our experiences. Bigger screen doesn’t really translate into better experiences if we factor in reachability. And that for me is the most important factor that should go in designing a phone — no matter how trendy a bigger screen size is, or how appealing a (hideous) notch is. (By the way, the notch is a phone design that every manufacturer seems to love these days, but in reality, they seem to be only surfing a faux wave generated by Apple itself!)
As I buy a new phone later this year, a question still lingers in my mind: where have all the compact phones went? Surely, there are still consumers wanting to buy a compact phone who wanted to avoid the unfortunate trend that had taken over: bigger displays, bigger phones, unwanted notch, etc.
So why are manufacturers abandoning this size segment? Are we doomed to forever “love” the 5.5" and above screen size as the new norm? Is it time to abandon our longing for compact phones that was superseded by phones with bigger displays and notches that many manufacturers conspicuously copied from Apple?
