8 ms·
We've gotten to the point of peak absurdity where 5.9" is considered "ultra-compact". I'm in the market for a new phone right now, and it's baffling how ridicu
by diego_sandoval 4y ago
We've gotten to the point of peak absurdity where 5.9" is considered "ultra-compact".
I'm in the market for a new phone right now, and it's baffling how ridiculously big most phones are right now. I only use mine for instant messaging and browsing Hacker News. 5" is more than enough for that.
- enlyth 4y agoOn the flip side, I have wide thumbs and find it hard to type on smaller phones, so I welcome this trend
- wildmanx 4y agoYeah, this is ridiculous. Notice how all the models on the page have big to giant hands? One of my earliest smartphones was 4.2". That was already problematic for my hand. 5" is too large, 5.9" is out of question. I don't want a tablet for a phone. I want a phone that I can use with just one hand and still reach all corners of the screen comfortably with my thumb from a firm grip (i.e. not from the side, but with the bottom right corner firmly tucked in the palm of my hand, if that makes sense). And my hands are not even small.
- lopis 4y ago> One of my earliest smartphones was 4.2" The phone, or the screen? The Nexus 5S was the last phone I owned that I could comfortable hold and had a 4.9" screen (diagonal), but with a 70.8% screen-to-body ratio (5.43 inches tall). This Zenfone 9 has a 5.9 inches screen (diagonal) but is less than 1cm taller, and exactly as wide as the Nexus 5S.
- docmars 4y agoThis comparison makes me even more excited for the Zenfone 9 — I miss my Nexus 4 and 5 specifically for their one-hand-friendly usage.
- llamaLord 4y agoBe careful though, that 1cm extra height means the one handed balance will be super top heavy and it will fall out of your hand much easier.
- andrepd 4y agoIt's absurd. I need to buy a new phone (as in, my 6-year old 5" phone is really falling apart and I can't find parts to replace) and my only option is pretty much a used Pixel 2, 3, or 4a.
- kadoban 4y agoMost of those are not real options, they're about to stop getting security updates, or already did.
- andrepd 4y agoI don't run spyware OS anyway, Lineage+microg is the bare minimum. I've found unofficial maintainers give better support for their custom roms than manufacturers.
- vivab0rg 4y ago>. I've found unofficial maintainers give better support for their custom roms than manufacturers. This is so true. Typing this on a Mi A2 Lite released in 2018 rocking a custom A11 ungoogled ROM and squeezing almost 3 days of battery life out of it. It's screen size is 5.84" and it's perfect. I refuse to go any bigger.
- kadoban 4y agoI could never bring myself to trust microg.
- nathell 4y agoCome rally: https://smallandroidphone.com/ https://smallandroidphone.com/
- tauntz 4y agoWanted to "sign up" there but getting a 404: NOT_FOUND after submitting the form
- ad404b8a372f2b9 4y agoThe requirements are <6" display, that's not exactly great. The Zenfone 9 would qualify.
- input_sh 4y agoIt's way bigger than iPhone 13 mini that is mentioned on that website. It's pretty similar to a non-mini iPhone 13.
- craftkiller 4y agoI can't sign up for that because they include a bunch of criteria beyond "small" that I, frankly, do not want. 1. They want OLED which has nothing to do with the phone size. I strongly prefer avoiding OLED because I prefer longevity / not having burn-in. 2. Hole punch front camera: I'd like to avoid any sort of notch/punch/deviation from standard rectangularish screens. 3. 2 rear cameras: I don't care. At least this one isn't a bad choice like the others, I just don't care. and that is in their "must have" section, so I cannot commit my support.
- 4y ago
- russianGuy83829 4y agoWhile phones have gotten bigger, screen size is not a good indication of that. It’s more useful to compare physical dimensions because of slightly different aspect ratios and border widths/roundness
- ksala_ 4y agoThis, really. While screen sizes have been getting bigger, the aspect ratio has been getting taller and the bezels/body of the phones has been getting smaller. While I agree that regardless of all of this modern phones are too big, you can't just look at the screen size. Here is a comparison between a few phones: https://phonesized.com/compare/#1784,1862,1863,365,632,126 https://phonesized.com/compare/#1784,1862,1863,365,632,126 (the Zenfone 9 is not in the database yet, but it's almost identical at the Zenfone 8). What I find more interesting is that their website focus so much on it being compact, but it's actually just pretty much the same size as the regular iphone.
- vlad00 4y agoYes and the iphone is one of the very few competent phones that are not (that) large. I like it how in your comparison that these modern "compact" phones are almost the same size as the Note 3 which was a phablet when it came out.
- inportb 4y agoOkay, but the "physical" outer dimensions must be bigger than the screen size. If 5.9" were ridiculously large (it is), then so is anything bigger, including the phone that must contain the 5.9" screen.
- ezzaf 4y agoAspect ratio also has an effect. Squarer phones have more surface area at a given screen diagonal. A 'smaller' screen can actually be larger in area. Take the 5.7 inch note 3 mentioned earlier. https://m.gsmarena.com/compare.php3?idPhone1=5665&idPhone2=11656 https://m.gsmarena.com/compare.php3?idPhone1=5665&idPhone2=1... Its screen is nearly 7% larger than the 5.9 inch zenphone 9. Skinnier aspect ratios exaggerate the growth in phone screen sizes. http://www.displaywars.com/5,9-inch-d%7B20x9%7D-vs-5,7-inch-16x9 http://www.displaywars.com/5,9-inch-d%7B20x9%7D-vs-5,7-inch-...
- softwareoiu 4y agoSamsung Z Flip 3. you're welcome
- emptysongglass 4y agoBut you still have to unflip it to use it in any capacity and unflipped is very tall so what's the point of the flip?
- piaste 4y agoSo it's more compact in your pocket, which is where space is most at a premium. Tallness doesn't make phones uncomfortable to hold (width does), it just makes them poke out of your pockets.
- Tmpod 4y agoHeight does make phones less comfortable to handle with a single hand, which is what I prefer to do most of the time. They are heavier, lean further back so you have to spread your fingers on the back more, and reaching the top to pull the notifs bar, for example, is harder. I'd argue height is worse than width in comfort.
- lifeformed 4y agoThose are pretty wide.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y agoI'm worried. My Pixel 4 will stop receiving updates later this year but the Pixel 6 is huge and the Pixel 7 looks huge too. Why are screens getting so big? So they can shove more ads?
- pooper 4y agoI think it is mostly so we can have bigger batteries. The iPhone SE has a tiny battery by today's standards.
- MereInterest 4y agoExcept that could easily be achieved by making the phone slightly thicker, instead. When phones are so thin and fragile that a rigid case is practically mandatory, I don't know why "thin" is a selling point.
- pooper 4y agoI completely agree with you. We could solve two problems at once: get rid of a camera bump and make the battery bigger at the same time by using the extra space of the camera bump to house a bigger battery. Not sure why it hasn't happened yet or if it has I don't know if it.
- MereInterest 4y agoMy guess is the same reason glossy screens won out over matte screens for laptops: because they look slightly better on the showroom floor, despite the worse real-world performance.
- dr_spicy 4y agoThe pixel 1 had a wedge shape for this reason
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y agoWhy does the battery size matter? Do we compare car fuel tank sizes? We typically care about how it affects our use of the product. How long can the iPhone SE last on a charge? How does it compare to other iPhones?
- kalleboo 4y agoPhone manufacturers have tried selling small phones. Sony couldn't make a business of it. Even Apple reportedly can't make it go round. Face it, you're a tiny minority. My wife made fun of my iPhone Pro Max, until she inherited my old one and now she can't go back, it's huge but the screen real estate is really nice to have.
- christophilus 4y ago> Tiny minority I see what you did there. Anyway, I’m in the tiny minority.
- major505 4y agoYeah, I own a Galaxy S20. Damn thing always prints on my pants when is in the pocket. The bigger screen size is good, but I preffer portability. If I want a giant screen I would by a tablet.
- ece 4y agoThe fit in my pants is honestly the biggest problem I've had too since getting a Pixel 6. The one-handed keyboard/screen mode works fine, the battery life is nice, and the bigger screen I mostly don't care either way about. It's big in my pants though, when I'm not using it, I think only folding phones will really solve this.
- hammyhavoc 4y agoPixel 6a user wanting to know what to do with my phone to actually carry it. Missus hasn't used a handbag in almost a decade, and is now using one just to carry her phone. Impractical.
- ece 4y agoMaybe I'll switch for the Zenfone 9, it seems Nexus 5x sized. I just put Lineage on a 3a for some family, so them's the breaks. All walls must fall looks cool, I'll have to check it out.
- hammyhavoc 4y agoI think I'll take a closer look at the Zenfone 9 today. Thank you! Let me know what you think of it. :- )
- canbus 4y agothere's a rude joke in there somewhere.... :-D
- otikik 4y agoiPhone 12 mini hits the spot for me. It's sad that no Android phone can compete on that dimension any more.
- koiueo 4y agoI tried mini. Didn't work for me, so went for Zenfone 8. No regrets. The mini was big enough already to occasionally being forced to activate single hand mode. But superior gestures navigation makes Zenfone so much easier to use with one hand.
- Pxtl 4y agoMy last two phones are a Moto Z Play (5.5in) and a Pixel 4a (5.8in). While the Pixel 4a screen was larger, I found the larger Moto Z phone immensely more comfortable to use. The chins meant you could more comfortably reach the inside corners, and the different aspect ratio meant the phone could be used in landscape mode without the keyboard occluding the entire screen. The Pixel 4a, despite its ostensibly larger screen, actually felt like a step down because the keyboard usability is heavily dependent on how square the screen is. Imho the move to higher than 16:9 aspect ratios has really made it harder to talk about screen size.
- Nahuala 4y agoI have slightly big hand and I don't mind the current sizes, I like them. But I wish all phones were thicker, they just so thin and slick. I alwasy have to add a case to make them ticker and easier to use
- hammyhavoc 4y agoSolution in search of an implementation: removable backs allowing for fast battery swaps, and adding a more substantial back that becomes a part of the phone rather than a cheap afterthought. Yes, I'm oldskool.
- hammyhavoc 4y agoJust got a Pixel 6a, which one reviewer called "amazingly small". Uh, yeah, anything but. Got my iPhone 4S out of a drawer to compare. I can only laugh. Admittedly, it is much smaller than the phone I moved from. Not very pocket-friendly though, and the camera ledge gets stuck on the outside of your pocket too frequently.