When things start to get a little out of hand

'Super size me,' is what the smartphone told the world. And so we did.

The inexorable rise of the mega-phone, or the super-phone or the jumbo-phone pretty much sums up the trajectory of the majority of smartphone vendors - Power = bigger and bigger = better. I talk a lot about the superficial and non-pragmatic spec wars that so many Android vendors are focused on, attempting to make their phone that 1% faster for succeeding generations instead of making the basic phone experience better. It now seems that this focus for more powerful, more 'mega' and more 'super' is now translating to the phone's physical size - in a way saying 'I made this phone faster, but since specs are nothing more than a whole lot of coded tech jargon to most, I'm just going to make the screen bigger so you can easily see what I've done.' And yes, we can see what you've done, because now your phone is that much harder to grasp in the hand.

Whatever happened to small and chic? 6 or so years ago when there was no iPhone or big touch screen phones and the only successful smartphone was a Blackberry, small was in. Small was hip, and miniaturisation was definitive of high-tech. People were amazed that you could fit so much awesome into something so small. The whole line of Siemens phones comes to mind, a market failure no doubt but still undeniably cool. As a kid I didn't know a friend who wouldn't have pounced on a Siemens handset had they the cash - which is unfortunately something that elementary school kids inherently lack. Successful examples of handset miniaturisation are the Sony Ericsson W880i - a supermodel handset and the Motorola RAZR both emphasising their merits for both thin and small.

Fast forward several years and at the rate we're going we'll have six inch phones in a couple of years, and I hate to be the one to break it but the human race won't have hands big enough to account for such gargantuan gadgets in 2 years time - evolution is not that fast. Evolution isn't running a 1.2ghz dual-core, in fact it's probably running the same piece of junk hiding shamefully inside my graphics calculator.

I claim no hatred against these 'larger' phones nor do I consider myself a Luddite desperately clinging onto the simplistic past, but perhaps I do long for a society and a technology industry that embraced more the notion of holding a cute little pebble to my ear as opposed to a pancake to the side of my face. Times change implacably though and the altering physical form factor and size of smartphones is the most obvious simulacrum of the new way in which we communicate with our phones.

The iPhone augured a significant shift in phones, the paradigm shift in phones from passive to active. Phones used to be the passive device, a device that alerted us when someone wanted to contact us but was otherwise expect to remain discreet - seen but not heard. Hence, why make a phone big when we're meant to pretend it's not even there, why make it big when the only time we're meant to have it with us is when someone wants to contact us or when we want to contact someone else. Phones were passive and discreet, so they got smaller and smaller. Enter smartphone - a phone that we're always meant to have with us, and one that we're always using. Phone call or not, we're always on them because we can do so much more from them - we can browse the web efficiently, we can play worthwhile games and we can keep updated on the latest. With these smartphones, we're not waiting for them to surprise us with a phone call, we're not waiting to see what it's going to throw at us because we're hoping that it handles the tasks that we want to throw at it. Smartphone has to be a superlative in power and size to handle our growing demands, so it's getting bigger and bigger.

But something's got to give and these immense display sizes are actually subtle inconveniences in real world use. This preternatural display growth has got to find its limit, before it becomes borderline tablet.

To illustrate the point of the 'subtle inconvenience' I'll call upon an interesting article written by Matthew Panzarino on 'The Next Web'. He stated that designer Dustin Curtis had done a test in which he found that the disparate display sizes of both the iPhone 4 (3.5 inches) and the Galaxy S II (4.27 inches) made a genuine difference in terms of their usability and could perhaps pose a niggling issue for the Galaxy S II through time. He found that the display size of an iPhone 4 allowed every icon on its home screen to be reached with the thumb whilst holding the phone with one hand, whereas the limited thumb span proved too small to reach to the further edges of the display when using the Galaxy S II. To the left is a diagram that designer Dustin made to complement his contention.

Sure, you have to make a few sacrifices if you want the big and the better. That's how life and nature works right...a little give there and a little take there. But I don't think that's how it works for phones - because a smartphone is meant to materialise a vision for easy, portable computing. And traditionally a phones have blessed us with the advantage and accessibility of quick one-handed operation; the fact that phones have increased in brain size and processing power shouldn't compromise this one distinctive trait. Smartphones need to retain their one-handed usability and size because it's the only characteristic that preclude the smartphone and tablet from convergence. It's the only reason why they're still different things. Heck, if I could grab a tablet and hold it in one hand and use it with that one hand with ease I wouldn't need my phone, because my phone would just be a smaller and more eye-straining version of something I already have.

So I'm here looking at the new Galaxy Nexus and its 4.65 inch display, and I'm thinking to myself 'how big are your hands?' You might think I'm overreacting and these seemingly minor nitpicks are all in for the sake of a more spacious experience. But more than you think it's the insignificant things that leave an otherwise perfect product completely smitten - thumb hyper-extension and unnecessary two hand use are just a couple of those things. I use a 3.8 inch HTC Trophy daily and for me and my average sized hands that's just about the limit. Again, this is all completely subjective and for some of you this large screen size may suit your needs, and your hand-span, but strictly from my own personal vantage and I'm sure that of many others anything above 4 inch is a heck of a size, and anything larger than the Galaxy S II is really really pushing it.

Super size? Are you really lovin' it?