Years ago, I was sitting in a restaurant in Manali. The food on my plate was delicious. But what interested me more was a small little thing in the hand of the girl sitting on the next table. No, it was not a diamond ring or any other sparkly jewelry. It was a mobile phone, pink in colour, and very close to the size of a matchbox. My hands itched to feel that tiny cute thing in my hand. It was not just the nice pink colour, but also its small size that made it so desirable. For smaller the phone, the better it was considered in those days, not many years ago.
How drastically the things have changed now! Almost all the major mobile companies are racing to bring out super-sized phones. And consumers are actually liking the trend, and happily flaunting their big screen devices. Bigger is definitely being considered better these days when it comes to smartphones. There’s now a whole range of phones available that boast of 4 inch plus display. Phones like Samsung Galaxy SIII (4.8 inch display), HTC One X (4.7 inch display) and even bigger Samsung Galaxy Note (5.3 inch display) and Note II (5.5 inch display), Galaxy Nexus (4.65 inch display) are not just big in size, but big in demand too. Such is the increasing popularity of big screen phones that even Apple has had to succumb to it. Apple once had it as a declared belief that 3.5 inch is the perfect size for a phone’s screen. But with their iPhone 5 (having a 4 inch display) we can see that the rising demand for bigger screens has made even Apple do a re-think. And I don’t see many Apple fanboys complaining.
But why are such phones, that are too big to snuggle comfortably in hand and quite the battery guzzlers with their big screens, winning over the smaller sized devices?
The reason might be that these smartphones are like mini computers. Voice calls and SMS are now just one of the functions that the phones can perform. And for all the rest of the functions and services that we can now use and access via our phones, big screen is definitely better and easier to use.
Here’s how:
Big and Bright screens offer a visual delight: The big screens of the latest smartphones, with their latest display technologies and high pixel density are quite a visual treat. They offer more space for widgets and app icons, and it’s really a joy trying out different wallpapers on big screens. ‘Simply stunning to look at,’ is how a big ‘big screen fan’ and an owner of two big screen devices puts it.
Playing Games: I don’t think there’s even any need to explain the advantage of big screens in playing mobile games. Just imagine playing a game like Agent Dash on a small screen! All its fantastic graphics would be totally wasted. Small screens were fine as long as games were simple and light on graphics like the classic Snake and Tetris. But with games getting more and more complex and heavier and heavier on graphics, it’s only the big screens that can do them justice and derive from them the full joy that they have been designed to give. Of course, good storage and processing speed etc. are needed too for such heavy games, but so far all the super-sized smartphones that are available are high-end devices and come equipped with superb muscle power to provide the consumer with optimum speed and strength.
The latest smartphones are not just communication devices, but entertainment devices as well. They come equipped with enough storage to enable you to carry even whole movies in them. It’s easy to download whole movies on smartphones and enjoy them anytime, anywhere. And then of course, there are websites like Youtube to satisfy all your video cravings. And when it comes to video watching, it is easy to see the advantage of bigger screens over smaller ones. The bigger and high resolution definitely makes for an easier and more pleasant video watching.
Browsing Pictures: ‘The 8 megapixel camera of my HTC One X takes amazing photos. Still I enjoy editing them and enhancing the pics using various apps. The big screen of the phone definitely makes it easier for me to touch up a photo as I like,’ told another big screen fan.
Actually, browsing pictures on my SIII is something that I quite enjoy doing too. And I don’t think it’s just my infatuation with my Samsung Galaxy SIII that makes me feel that my pictures look better on it. They really do look brighter and crispier on SIII’s 4.8-inch Super AMOLED HD display with the resolution of 1,280 x 720 pixels. Whether it’s the wallpapers, images and photographs stored in phone gallery, or pictures on social networks like Facebook, definitely appear better in a big HD screen, then a smaller screen. Definitely reduces the need to squint at the maximum zoomed up image just to recognize the faces in a group photo.
Social Network: One of the most common things that people do on smartphones is to stay connected with the social networking websites like Facebook and Twitter etc. Big screen smartphones make it almost as easy to use these websites as a computer. The bigger the screen, the easier it is to read the updates, like and share a post, post an update, tweet and retweet and so on, with fewer chances of accidentally touching a wrong link due to cramped space.
Web Browsing: Not only social networking sites, but bigger screens make it easier to browse any website. The bigger screens allow more content in a single screen, thus reducing the need for scrolling. Much easier to view the pictures on the websites, and the high resolutions of these big screens also make it easier to read the content too.
Reading Books: The app that I use most on my SIII is a book reader. Over time, I have built up a small library on my phone. Since the mobile is always with me wherever I go, so is my library. And I can read my books any time, anywhere, even in utter darkness. But I suppose I wouldn’t have found reading books on a phone quite so easy had it not been for its big 4.8 display. I suppose other people who use their phones as their ebook readers must feel the same. Bigger display means more content on a single page, and thus less need for page turning or scrolling. And if the books have images, then a good sized screen is a must, of course. Just imagine reading a comic on a two or three inch screen!
Maps: Of course, the smartphones also work as very capable navigation devices. But it can get a bit tedious trying to follow a map on a small screen. A bigger screen has an advantage here too.
Creative Ease: Smartphones are now being designed to encourage the consumers to use them as readily for data creation as they do for data consumption by browsing net e
Samsung Galaxy Note II
tc. Devices like Samsung Galaxy Note and Note II make it easy for the user to put down their visual creativity in the form of paintings, quick sketches etc. ‘I love it that whenever I get a good idea, I can quickly sketch and save it on my phone,’ says a student of fashion designing and a proud owner of Samsung Galaxy Note II. ‘The big screen of my Note definitely makes it easy. Actually, the S Pen and the big screen were the main reason why I bought Note II. Now I don’t need to carry a notebook wherever I go.’
Easy Typing: Thanks to cloud storage, it has become very easy now to access our data from anywhere. Apps for services like Skydrive, Dropbox, OneNote etc. are capable of making our data available in our mobile phone. Besides, the increasing storage capabilities of latest smartphones make it easy to carry a lot of documents and files within the phone as well. And when a consumer accesses these documents, whether for just viewing or editing, a big screen definitely makes his or her work easier. Big screens make it easy to read and edit the docs. Besides, it is much more easy to use the virtual keyboard on a big touchscreen than a tiny one.
Cool Factor: Most big screen phones available in the market are high end devices, so there’s definitely a vanity factor attached to them that makes people want to flaunt them. That, I think, is one of the main reasons the big screen phones are being so popular. They have great flaunting value.
The slim form of latest big screen phones keeps them from being bulky. But still, the phones, getting bigger and bigger as they are, definitely are becoming too big to be managed by one hand. And it’s not very comfortable either carrying such big devices in pockets. But despite these discomforts, the ‘big’ devices are rapidly gaining popularity. Obviously, as the trend increases, more and more people are becoming willing to bear this ‘big size’ discomfort to enjoy the benefits of a big screen and a high end device.
So, one might ask, if big screen matters so much, why not use a tab instead? But tablets, fantastic as they are, still are not as easy to carry around as mobile phones. Besides, though more and more tabs have voice calling feature now, I suppose most people still prefer using a mobile for calls. Holding eight or ten inch devices to the ear in public is still seen as awkward (can’t say what the future holds!). And few people like carrying around two devices (tab for big screen, phone for voice calls) when they can get their combined benefits in one device. No wonder more and more people are opting for the big screen phones that give them a big and bright display, and still are more convenient to carry around then tablets.
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Jyoti Arora
Author of Dream’s Sake
www.jyotiarora.com
DREAM’S SAKE
