Official: The shape of the smartphone is changing forever The shape of the smartphone is changing as a fad turns into a long-term trend, a business analyst has noted. Analyst outfit IHS Markit said it expected wide aspect ratios – either 18:9 or 18+:9 – to make up two-thirds of new device sales in Q3 of this year. At the start of 2017, the "traditional" 16:9 ratio display was seen on …
Vendors are a bit fond of fusing the screen and digitiser to the glass for that to work. My current solution is to attach a 3rd party tempered glass screen protector to my phone's expensive screen. When dissapating force applied to tiny spot, half a mm is far better than nearly zero. Screen protector is a bit cracked, phone is fine. Before buying new screen protector, I'll build up the sides of the case with glue or something ( cases sold for the curvey-screened Samsung phones don't protect the screen edges for some reason, so some user modification is required.)
Fitting glass protector did affect screen sensitivity on S8, but for some reason turning off "Hard Push on Home [ virtual] Button to Return to Home Screen" option made the screen more sensitive again.
Frankly, it'd be nice if sensibly sized (<= 4") phones of decent spec were to become available again. If I want a device that required both hands to operate, I'll use a 9" tablet. For a phone, I want to be able to reach the top corner with my thumb easily, and being human my thumbs happen to not be 6" long.
As for becoming taller and narrower, this is again the consumer optinion being shaped to maximized profits - the less square the screen, the fewer pixels there are for any given diagonal size. Fewer pixels means higher yealds, which means lower cost and greater profit margins. We have seen this on desktop displays where things went from 16:10 to 16:9 and more recently the trend toward "ultrawide" screens.
Be consistent. You lambast the average consumer for being potentially confused by geometry (area, width, height), but you yourself express the size of phone you want by only giving a diagonal dimension without specifying the aspect ratio. For example, I could cover about 90 percent of the screen of an Z3 Compact (4.6" 16:9, 64.5 mm wide) with my thumb tip without out adjusting my grip. The XZ2 Compact is only half a mm wider at 65mm but has a 5" screen. The XZ2 has a larger screen in terms of area (64.5 cm 2, Vs 58.3 cm 2). The XZ has greater pixel density too, but that's moot to this point. Now, most of an Android user's thumb movements will be towards the bottom of the screen (keyboard and navigation), so most users will happily take the advantages of being able to read more text over the occasional, very slightly extra effort required to move their thumb to the top left corner of the screen.
I think that the average consumer has used enough phones in the past to choose the size they want.
"I think that the average consumer has used enough phones in the past to choose the size they want."
I disagree, I think that people buy what the market sells them, I really don't think preferences really come in to it - there's not a single person (other than say, an Apple shill), that wanted the 3.5mm jack removed.
Removable batteries died out even though they made fixing the phone a lot easier.
Phones gained little camera humps to make the phones thinner overall and easier to drop, with slippery, awful surfaces.
Even though you'd then scratch up the camera, and wonder why they didn't just make it flush and fill out the space with battery.
Until the Gemini, there hasn't been a recent device with a reasonably sized keyboard - my wife has been showing several people her Gemini, and many of them wish they had such a device, some have even offered money for it on the spot.
My point is, there is demand for devices beyond the ever increasing slab of slippery glass, but people's preferences aren't so narrow that they'd avoid buying the latest crap regardless of questionable design choices.
Sounds like you're describing my Lumia 520. The right size, micro SD, head phone jack, flat back, good shape to hold, removable battery.
Every so often, I take it out of the drawer to recharge and think about what might have been if MS hadn't completely screwed things up.
"Sounds like you're describing my Lumia 520. The right size, micro SD, head phone jack, flat back, good shape to hold, removable battery. Every so often, I take it out of the drawer to recharge and think about what might have been if MS hadn't completely screwed things up."
You are describing my Samsung Galaxy II as well. Fortunately, I am still using mine.
I don't blame Microsoft for the Windows Phone death. They played the best hand they had left to play. Just could not convince enough app makers to support the platform. Could not gain the traction it needed. If you use a variety of apps (I don't) there just wasn't any way to stick with the platform. I'm still using a Lumia 950XL every day of the week. I use it to talk on the phone, send txt messages and access my email. I'll kill time on the internet with it if I'm stuck in a doctors office waiting room but for the most part, it's a communications device for me. I'll use it till it dies or is broken.
@Piro
I suggested that consumers have enjoyed choice in the size of phone screen size, and you disagree before talking about batteries and headphone jack. I don't follow you.
There have always been smaller Android phones available in the low and mid range. Where smaller Android phones were conspicuous by their absence was in the top range - those phones boasting the fastest processors - until the Xperia Compact range. I've seen a few in the wild.
I've also seen people who've deliberately chosen bigger models.
So I'll state it again: most people having used smartphones over the last decade are aware of the pros (more screen for content) and cons (harder to hold etc) of a large screen and have made their own informed choice.
These glass slabs aren't slippery if you put them in a case. A case will also solve your protruding camera lens issue. As a side benefit they identify your phone as yours, just in case your mates have the same model.
Some phones have sapphire over the camera lens; if it's scratched then it's likely due to jewelry or diamond cutting discs (or the dust after using them) that's likely to be the culprit. Blow or brush the camera lens before wiping it on your shirt.
It's healthy to suggest that certain design choices are questionable as long as one is genuinely ready to hear possible answers. I understand that a protruding camera lens prevents a naked phone from being laid flat on a table, but I also understand it provides a tactile aid to help obscuring the lens with one's finger, and that anyway most people use cases. Some people would say that nudging people to place their phones face down is also socially desirable. There has been a choice, all options have been questioned, and the pros and cons weighed up.
> If a phone requires the use of a case, then that's a very strong argument to not buy that phone.
What difference does it make if the protective material is built into the phone, or added by the user to meet their individual needs?
If you think all users present the same risk to their phone (environment), then you really haven't given this any thought. Maybe you only socialise with people in the same line of work as yourself, or else you've no grasp of simple physics.
"If you think all users present the same risk to their phone ……"
Let's just take the common situation of dropping the phone from waist height onto a road surface. If a phone without a case breaks more than one in a hundred times it's too fragile...….. Except for the rare subset of people who never venture outside.
"These glass slabs aren't slippery if you put them in a case."
You pay a lot for the glass case and the expensive CPU and then hide it in a case which incidentally slows down the CPU on intensive tasks because it throttles when it gets hot and the case keeps the heat in. This is not imaginary, by the way. I discovered that the phone I use as a satnav (LG G4) overheats in the car in a case in summer, and the fix was to spend time making it a proper bracket that holds it securely but with a good airflow, whereupon the overheating stopped.
That's a design fail.
Similar fail is tablets and eReaders that need a fat cover. The Sony PRS350 may have had a cover option that was simply a flap on the front. Larger screens, Tablets & eInk do need a safety cover, but it should be a clip on hinge, not a box.
A phone CAN be made such that it doesn't need a cover.
Was the LG Chocolate (10 years ago?) first touch phone in long shape and maybe Nokia Communicator "brick" first long screen smart phone. 2000 etc. I had the mono and then the later colour one. A modern version would be nice, I suppose the Gemini is nearly the replacement.
"My point is, there is demand for devices beyond the ever increasing slab of slippery glass, but people's preferences aren't so narrow that they'd avoid buying the latest crap regardless of questionable design choices."
I'm a bit of an Apple fanboy. Before you laugh and dismiss my post because of that, I genuinely chose Apple hardware because I like the way it works (it does work well for my needs). It looks nice, but, TBH, that really isn't my primary consideration.
That said, it does have it's faults. I'd like the option of a bigger battery, even if I have to accept a slightly thicker phone or tablet to get it. I'd like the option of adding an SD card as well, although, TBH. I rarely use the full 128Gb storage that is built in, unless I am going on a long journey and load up the phone with videos. Not too bothered about the lack of a headphone socket, as I have a decent pair of bluetooth headphones that last a week (in normal use) on one charge, and I think it's nice not to have a cable that can snag on something and pull my phone out of my pocket (I've had this happen with an iPod before).
What I don't like, however, is the lack of choice feature and design wise in the smart phone market. Most of the smart phones appear to be using variants of the same design, just with slightly rounded corners, a screen that goes to the edge, or a notch. I'd like a choice, maybe different resolutions. Screen Sizes. A proper keyboard (as per the Gemini), a keypad or touch screen. Maybe even more colours.
Maybe I'm getting old (I am), but it seems that phones today don't offer the same choice as phones previously. Look at the old Nokia range. They were all clearly Nokias, but the 7110 and 8110 had different features, and looked quite different. Todays smartphones all look like thin slabs of glass and plastic/metal.
> If a phone needs an add on case it's a poor design i.e. too fragile for normal use.
The issue is with defining 'normal', though a later commenter has suggested that a metre fall onto asphalt is a scenario most of us have encountered. It's probability - my plastic fantastic Nexus 5 survived dozens of such drops, until one day it didn't.
Indeed, the joy of a £35 Huaweii I once owned was I didn't worry about dropping it, since I bought it as an interim phone. My current Galaxy phone might survive a dozen drops unprotected, but the cost is such that I'd rather not take the risk.
Using the pubs I do, not only are many of the drinkers tradesmen (I like the mechanic's iPhone 4 surrounded on 4 sides by 3/4 of foam rubber), but many spend the evening in a concrete tiled beer garden; if you spend several hours a week there, over time a drop is inevitable.
still keeping mine and the wife's samsung S5 and S4 minis alive because there hasn't been anything since that's the same form factor and high spec (someone seems to have decided that small phones now should be the crappy spec ones). A phone, for people like me, needs to be small enough to carry in all kinds of convenient places - like the napoleon pocket of a hike coat, a bike bar-bag, a sailing dry pouch, or simply the humble trouser pocket (without the danger of ripping when sitting and/or dodgy bulging).
I SIMPLY DONT WANT to carry around a screen big enough to watch movies on, update instafacetweet or any of that tosh. I have several devices that can do that (laptop, 9" tablet) and I don't want to take any of those with me up a mountain / in a boat / on a bike / to the pub.
seriously, any manufacturer who can bring back the form factor of the S5 mini, with a fully loaded spec, I'll be getting two.
The Galaxy Sx Mini phones never had the full internal spec of their bigger cousins. The Xperia Compact range largely did, and, with respect to IanCa's outdoor lifestyle, had the added bonus of being waterproof. They also had several very good battery Stamina modes before stock Android adopted such features. Oh, and an FM radio.
The Galaxy Sx Mini phones never had the full internal spec of their bigger cousins.
Honestly I don't really care about full spec. Keep that for galaxy notes or whatever. What I liked about the Sx Mini was they had good specs in a small phone. The current trend is small phones have the minimum specs: Galaxy A3 no longer exists, but the 2017 model had 16GB of storage and had finally made it to 2GB of RAM, 3 years to pass the spec of the S5 mini. Presumably the thinking goes that if you don't want to pay for a bigger screen then you don't want to pay for more storage or a processor with more than one ant in it either. Unfortunately that means that people who want smaller screens for reasons other than price don't have much choice. Xperia compact is what I've jumped ship to, but even that seems endangered.
Edit: but sadly no longer FM radio.
still keeping mine and the wife's samsung S5 and S4 minis alive because there hasn't been anything since that's the same form factor and high spec (someone seems to have decided that small phones now should be the crappy spec ones)
Precisely. The lack of network software updates to the S4 mini are what eventually forced me to upgrade. The A series is disappointing, because they've speced it along the lines "bigger phone"="better", so the mini-sized A3 would have been a downgrade. Held out a year on rumours of new small Samsungs until I gave up and got Sony XZ1 compact. Yes, it's faster and has some nice features, but even it, after 6 months, still feels uncomfortably bulky in the pocket. The way the official cover integrated into the case was also nice, though probably not possible with a waterproof phone.
The length is also important for ease of carrying. I realise you can't just compare diagonal sizes when they're making them proportionately longer, but I don't really want to be carrying round a stick.
> As for becoming taller and narrower, this is again the consumer optinion being shaped to maximized profits - the less square the screen, the fewer pixels there are for any given diagonal size. Fewer pixels means higher yealds, which means lower cost and greater profit margins
Screens aren't becoming narrower: instead, they're becoming taller. E.g.
Samsung S7: 2.74" wide with a 16:9 screen (4.4" * 2.5")
Samsung S8: 2.68" wide with a 18.5:9 screen (5.2" * 2.5")
LG G5: 2.91" wide with a 16.9 screen (4.6" * 2.6")
LG G6: 2.83" wide with a 18.9 screen (5.1" * 2.5")
LG G7: 2.83" wide with a 19.5:9 screen (5.5" * 2.6")
I.e. the screen width has stayed constant at 2.5 inches, while the *handset* width has dropped slightly, but that's due to the ongoing drive to trim bezels down to a micron's thickness.
Equally, pixel density has stayed fairly constant for the above handsets at ~570 ppi. So the screens are both physically bigger than the old screens and have higher overall pixel counts, which would negatively impact yields.
And to round it off: the main reason why manufacturers are extending the screen height? Virtual buttons. Moving from 16:9 to 18:9 (or beyond) gives them a nice space at the bottom of the screen where the virtual buttons can sit and not get in the way. And as an added bonus, it contributes to reducing bezel sizes and increasing the screen-to-body ratio; both of which are great for marketing.
Overall, it's time to step away from the tin foil - there's no need for a shiny hat today!
"Frankly, it'd be nice if sensibly sized (<= 4") phones of decent spec were to become available again"
My phone, Moto Z play (5.5" screen) died a week or so ago while on holiday so had a few days to think about what to replace it with. As emergency measure when I got home I went back to my previous Nexus 5 (5" screen) and was amazed how small it seemed. That said, I had thought of getting a Moto G6 (5.7") or G6+ (5.9") but ended getting a Nokia8 (5.3" + Nokia ringtone!) and think I'm happy with the size. Meanwhile, my wife wont use a "smartphone" as a phone as she thinks they are all too big so for a phone she uses an Alcatel "feature" flip-phone and has a Moto G5 with no SIM card as effectively a mini-tablet (though side effect of my phone dying on holiday was I put my SIM in her G5 and I fear she may have become hooked on the idea of facebook-anywhere!)
"......scientists reported an antidote – an under-glass fingerprint sensor which makes a display cut-out superfluous. But so far we've yet to report a successful field trial."
We can only hope that the notch is a shortlived phenomenen. The word "fugly" does not begin to cover the case.
On OLED screens the notch doesn't have to visible. It will only be visible if the background to the status bar is not black.
Apple made a point of making the notch visible and insisting that developers don't hide the notch.
The Vivo X21 phone has an optical under-the-display optical fingerprint sensor, sold in India a couple of weeks ago. It is possible that the article you refer to is about ultrasonic under-the-display finger print readers, I can't remember.
The notch exists for one or two reasons depending on how you view the issue. Percentage of surface covered by screen is one of the metrics that is being used to drive the sale of new phones. So are features such as face unlock. Problem is that the level of reliablity required for high end phones, under the glass sensors aren't ready yet. At least not a price that even Apple is unwilling to charge. the notch is a comprimise, we want to have both things, even if it creates an ugly comprimise that should handle OS level info battery level, signal strength etc etc and tell app developers hands off.
"Personally, I actively don't want face unlock, so the presence of the notch is sacrificing functionality in exchange for nothing."
Selfies seem popular which needs a front facing camera, you also need a loudspeaker when making a call. I think there us a proximity sensor there too that is used to detect when the phone is held to the ear. They (currently) have to go somewhere that's not got a screen over them.
At the moment there are many similar specced phones with 16:9 and 18:9 displays, so a vendor should be able to work out what the consumer thinks they want based on what they buy.
Also note that consumers buy what they think they want, and that what they think they want and what they actually want aren't necessarily the same thing.
A phone designer can spend months living with a prototype and assessing it. A consumer might spend twenty minutes in a showroom with their mind melting under the strain of specification numbers and special offers.
A phone designer also has access to a lot of information, both quantative (what proportion of users spend what proportion of their time with their phone reading articles in portrait as opposed to watching videos in landscape) and qualitative (how a phone feels in a hand or a jeans pocket)
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