I see an important question looming on the 5-year horizon: how are people going to be carrying these large devices? Clearly carrying large phones in pockets is impossible for many, increasingly impractical for many more, and simply undesirable to the curious.
Will handbags or hip bags become common for all? Will the average size of phones rebound and approach some smaller-screen equilibrium size near 5"?
Everything depends on the adoption of these devices by younger people -- whatever becomes "cool".
My prediction is that phones will become strapped to arms or shirts somehow. I see some sort of arm-hoslter or dedicated shirt pocket that comfortably, securely houses a mini-tablet.
>Clearly carrying large phones in pockets is impossible... impractical... and... undesirable.
People keep saying that and time and time again it's proven wrong. It has been wrong for years, and it will keep being wrong. If large phones were impossible, impractical, and undesirable, people would stop buying them. But they're not. They're demanding them in such large numbers that even Apple has put out a massive, massive phone. Even Nokia put out a massive phone. Samsung started matching the size of their flagship to the size of their largest phone years ago.
Every manufacturer has a huge phone, because the majority of the buying public wants a huge phone. But still I hear people say "big phones will never catch on". Guess what? They did catch on, and they're not big phones anymore. After several years of being big phones, they're just called phones now.
>>If large phones were impossible, impractical, and undesirable, people would stop buying them.
I think you're conflating several different things here. Something can be impractical but still desirable. For example, big SUVs are a pain in the ass -- they are inefficient, difficult to maneuver and hard to park. Yet people still buy them because of a simplistic "bigger is better" mindset. How many people with big SUVs actually use all the space in the vehicle? How many people with half-trucks actually use it to haul big and heavy equipment that would not fit in a smaller car?
Yes, big phones are impractical. This is simply common sense: they are difficult to fit inside pockets and impossible to use productively with one hand except maybe by Hafþór Björnsson. And yet they are desirable because "Big" is a status symbol.
I don't see the connection with SUVs. They aren't impractical in the same way. For example, for many people (men and women alike), a device above a certain size cannot be carried hands-free. This is a fact. For me, this would be a dealbreaker. It's not about status; it's more closely linked with my unwillingness to type anything longer than a sentence or two on a small keyboard and screen.
On the horizon, I see a disconnect between the ideal size of mobile devices and the practicality of carrying them around everywhere. Poolside, hiking, on the toilet, out to dinner.
Something will have to change to fix this. I see the solution as new fashion trends that will be ushered in by people who are young -- young enough not to think that, for example, wearing a cell phone on a hip holster is symbolic of greybeard-ness, etc.
Women carry handbags. There's very obviously a lot of men commenting on this issue who cannot imagine that pocket size has been nonexistent for one genders fashion for a long time now, and so was never a practical constraint on device sizes.
Male fashion will just up pocket sizes in response - my dad when he goes traveling has a jacket he can fit a 13" macbook air into.
There's also a difference for what seems like a good idea in the context of a retail showroom and what is a good idea over a year or two of real life usage.
The TV with the brightest, most overly saturated image might seem like the best choice when sitting on the shelves of Best Buy, but not the best choice overall.
Perhaps megapixels in cameras is a better comparison. The quality of each pixel erodes so you can't view most pictures at 100% anyway, yet faced with a decision in the store and one camera has MOAR PIXELS than the other, it's enough to sway it.
Sure. 27" is just too big to be practical for most.
What I was specifically saying is that people here keep calling 5"-6" phones "too big" yet the mass market keeps buying them, in huge numbers. I'm not sure if you can walk into an Apple Store and pick up an iPhone 6 Plus off the shelf yet or if they're still sold out.
Aren't we getting to the point where you don't have a choice, if you want a new phone? The market wants phones, not necessarily with a strong preference for the sizes being offered. I recently bought a new phone, and found my options getting quite limited if I wanted less than 5" screen size, and SD card. If I compromised on SD card, maybe there's more options, but all the main choices seem bigger in general.
There was a point where the market had a choice, much like when phones still came with physical keyboard. There was a long period where you could buy a phone with a keyboard and a phone without. People bought the phones without keyboard. There was a time when you could buy the phones with 3" screens, and people bought the 4". Then when 5" screens came along, people bought those. Then the 5"+ screens.
The people who want physical keyboards, SD cards, smaller screens, and removable batteries are not numerous enough to sell $600-$700 phones to, not with competitive specs. I live in the US and I would love a mid-size diesel truck-based SUV. Toyota even makes the 4Runner that meets those exact requirements, sold overseas. But I am massively in the minority in the US, so I Toyota won't sell me one.
It sucks, it does. But much like we don't say we have a "big screen" or "flat panel" TV anymore (now it's just a TV), a phone the same size as the iPhone, the Galaxy, the Moto X, the One M8, etc isn't really a big phone anymore. It's just a phone.
Agree, there's no choice. Everything you find today below 5" is budget phones that are so slow and have such a bad screen that they could almost make you vomit. It can't be impossible to make smaller phones fast and with high dpi, a few years ago all phones were like that, take iphone 4-5s, nexus 4 or htc 1S as example. I've been thinking it's better to buy a high end old phone than a small new one because there simply aren't any high end small phones to buy. And by small i don't even require super super tiny, just finding something slightly below 5" is very hard.
I think the pocket problem is a little over played (at least for men). The 6+ fits fine in the pocket of my hipster skinny jeans.
The strap idea is interesting.
I have a hard time imagining a phone that gets people who aren't already carrying purses to start doing so. In addition to the social awkwardness (man purse?) it's just so much harder to lose something that you keep directly on your person.
Long term you'll have a radio with a battery in your pocket/bag, a wireless bluetooth headset that you issue voice commands to for a lot of things and then another small display either on your wrist and/or in front of your face. You might have a larger dumb display as well; I'd expect eventually those would be flexible, activating some sort of electromagnetic skeleton tentpoles to hold the shape when needed.
Will handbags or hip bags become common for all? Will the average size of phones rebound and approach some smaller-screen equilibrium size near 5"?
Everything depends on the adoption of these devices by younger people -- whatever becomes "cool".
My prediction is that phones will become strapped to arms or shirts somehow. I see some sort of arm-hoslter or dedicated shirt pocket that comfortably, securely houses a mini-tablet.