They got a lot smaller than that.
I have a big screen because I have big thumbs and soft keyboards suck. I still have epic typos though.
I absolutely hate that phones got so darn big. Im stuck with iPhone 13 mini even though I hate iOS with no clear upgrade path
we
could watch stuffcould watch adsAnd porn
I wish 2g and 3g weren’t being dismantled. I want to go back to using my old razr
Third model from the left is funny, almost no screen at all. :)
This graphic is missing the (de)evolution in phones when manufacturers unnecessarily started putting holes and notches in the screens.
#StopPuttingCutoutsInMyFuckingDisplays #BringBackBezels
Some phones go to the extreme, but my small circle camera cutout doesn’t bother me. On a phone, it’s always in the status/notification bar anyways so not a big deal unless you watch a lot of widescreen content.
The biggest deevolution must be audio jacks… the big lie of “we need to remove them so we can make your phones smaller”, just for phones to get thicker. Surely it can fit.
The modern 170 g is larger than the older 170 g, what a crock of shit
The older one was a thicc boi
I mean the weight symbol itself is scaled. To make it look like modern phones are nearly back to the old weights they made the last bag as big as the third one instead of the fifth
I say the screen grows constantly and the part of the phone that isn’t screen decreases constantly. It’s just that at some point the sum is getting smaller
There’s an early Corner Gas episode where Brent and Davis get into a competition over who can get the smallest phone, it feels so odd watching it today.
God, I miss that show. I’m gonna go pirate that shit.
You can watch it on the Internet archive
Thank you so much!
i had a guy visit the office a couple months ago with a smarty phone that was smaller than my flip phone closed-up. i loved it. i decided then that if i ever did ‘have to’ get one–and i could afford it, it would be one of those (a jelly).
Unihertz Jelly Star! I bought one solely to use as an mp3 player, but I got very close to it becoming my regular full-time phone.
I use mine as my daily driver. It’s cute and sufficient. I still have a large smartphone at home for some things, but the Star is what I take into the world.
I remember back in 1990ish, there was a guy involved in the local music scene who got interviewed on AM radio (Right before the rise of conservative talk radio, when there were still local hosts talking about local issues.). This guy wasn’t a big shot and not a musician, just a guy passabout music. tmusic. He went by the moniker Jim Clevo, I had the fortune of meeting him once. Anyways, he had insight as to where the music industry was headed. In the interview, he told how in the future we would be listening to music through our phones. At the time high tech was a cordless landlines with an answering machine built in. He sounded crazy, i couldn’t figure out why he thought we would all be holding phones up to our ears listening to music, I never had anything but a corded phone at the time. Not sure why I’m rambling about it other than this post reminded me of him.
I mean as soon as cassettes were a thing, mix tapes by holding the cassette to the radio became a thing right? Why not phones?
Hell back in the 80s, before the breakup of Yugoslavia, they went a step further: they had a home PC that could be built from parts available at electronics stores. It used a cassette recorder for a HDD.
A local radio station started broadcasting software, pc owners could record the audio of a program on a Walkman, then put the tape in their PC.
There’s a past we never got where a radio-based internet existed alongside the landlines based one.
Was he frank zappa?
https://www.grunge.com/139089/rock-stars-who-freakishly-predicted-the-future/
Anyone remember when Steve Jobs said in response to adding video support to the iPod that “nobody wants to watch videos on a handheld?” And then just a few months later, iPods got support for images and videos?
and when iPhone 4 was released, Apple also explained it had the perfect size because you could reach any part of the screen with your thumb while holding it in your hand… but also, antennagate. Steve Jobs was full of crap.
We didn’t “realise” we could watch stuff; we got touch screen technology, wifi and mobile data became cheaper as we got 3G, 4G and 5G. The we *could *watch stuff, and browse the internet - this was always the obvious course of phones even in the 90s when bricks were still around. Meanwhile battery tech hasn’t moved forwards much, so these big screen, wifi, Bluetooth & 5G connected,video playing devices need bigger batteries to keep going all day. Ironically a bigger device - even with a bigger screen - will have a longer battery life because you can physically fit a bigger battery in.
Also this chart stops at 2015 - and thats still accurate. Mobile phone tech has plateaued. Time was, iPhone launches each year were a big deal because Apple was good at bringing previously out a of reach tech into the mass market. Now all the changes are minor and phone launches are dull. iPhones are now just popular because they’re iPhones. Chips are getting a bit more energy efficient pushing the capabilities a bit; but cameras, screens, storage and connectivity are probably as good as they’re going to get for now beyone incremental changes.
We’re now probably in the enshittification phase where companies try to justify ever increasing prices but can’t - iPhone prices have been largely static for 5 years because Apple can’t find a compelling reason to increase them. Whether there are stupid notches in the phone display, or expensive accessories like wireless headphones or now trying to up-sell people on software / services - ultimately a phone is just a phone now. The manufacturers latest hope is that somehow AI will allow them to charge more but it’s looking like AI in it’s current form has little value to consumers. Apple has delayed it’s changes to Siri because it’s struggling to make something that isn’t basically just another unreliable overhyped LLM.
Realistically the next real leap in phones will probably only come if and when battery tech improves; if smaller high energy density batteries come then that really will unlock a new revolution. The AI bubble doesn’t look like it’s going to deliver.
Before full touch screens came out I bought a small windows CE full screen device and put a few videos on it on a card (can’t recall if it was sd or something more primitive) and watched anime in between calls at work.
I always wanted this, and phones getting better at it just meant less devices. I am partial to phablets and fold phones because I like to read books,light novels,and manga on a bigger screen while being portable. I have in the past used both a tablet and phone before I got my fold, and when the inside screen of my fold failed after a couple years I am now back at both until I can afford a replacement.
I know not everyone wants this, but that’s why we have options, and dumb/feature phones can still be purchased, even from large carriers (though price of plan may be wasted on those). These memes act like there are only smartphones now, but dumbphones were always an option.
Realistically the next real leap in phones will probably only come if and when battery tech improves
I don’t think so. The real thing is just ergonomics. They want as big a screen as they can and human hands are only so big. They won’t retreat in form factor.
If anything they’ll are toying w bit with folding screens to make devices scale up and still be hand friendly.
The next big step is going to have to be wearable, to produce arbitrarily large content hands free. Don’t know if social norms will tolerate it, but that’s really the possible evolution from the status quo.
The screen size boom was later. Look at the iphone 5
Apple was slow to adopt larger screens. The Android phones of that time were roughly an inch larger. Apple rarely blazed any trails.
https://www.droid-life.com/2012/12/20/top-10-android-phones-of-2012/
Phones with large screens used to be called phablets, nobody calls them that anymore because they’re all phablets now.
It’s unfortunate. I’d love a small, privacy respecting phone. Bonus points if it has an eink display.
That’s exactly what the Mudita Kompakt is ! Give it a try it’s great!
Nice recommendation! I’m definitely going to look further into it. It appears to be Google-free, which is wonderful. Thanks for taking the time to share!
Phablets were larger than modern screens; in the 8-9" range. You were lucky to fit one in a back pocket.
Phablets were in the 5-7" range, everything above that was definitely a tablet.
No, I saw 4" media devices be called media tablets (hello Archos) whole phones were stuck on 2.5" to 3"
And after that as phone sizes grew, 6-7" screens were called phablets
I must have been in a coma for that. When was this?
Exactly. Apples biggest success has been looking at all the options being tested by other manufacturers, choosing the option they want, then completely eliminating all other options and convincing people in droves that what they are offering is what you want.
To be fair, until about a decade ago, they did generally
stealpick the best of available options.and that it was their idea
That Motorola RAZR in the middle, god that was an awesome phone. So sleek. Satisfying to close!
