one has to wonder what the ideal thickness is, are we supposed to think it's just never thin enough? will we have phones that literally cut into the skin of your hand as you hold it and they still brag about how the new model is 4 atoms thinner?
it's not like they're getting easier to hold, modern phones are so huge that you need a popsocket for it to be reliably and comfortably held.
The iPhone 4/SE1 was the perfect design.
No real camera bump, single hand hold, light, durable with a metal back.
If we just added a modern OLED screen, and a modern chip and battery, that design would be perfect.
The 13 mini was close but the stupid camera bump ruined it, bring back the sleek slab
Yes
modern phones are so huge that you need a popsocket for it to be reliably and comfortably held.
Idk, I think this is just a small hands problem tbh, my hands are pretty average for a guy I think and I have had 0 issues comfortably holding big phones. Even right now I have a P9 Fold and the accompanying case makes it even bigger
i looked it up and my hands are apparently slightly larger than average, i'm pretty bang on 20cm from tip of the middle finger to base of the palm.
My 7.1cm pixel 6a is just on the edge of what i'd say is okay to hold, and with a case it's wide enough that holding it normally becomes uncomfortable after a while and i simply can't reach the other side of the screen with my thumb unless i roll it over slightly in my hand.
I have no idea but they keep making them thinner for...reasons?
My personal "sweet spot" is the OnePlus 3. Not too tall, thin but not unbearably so, and doesn't sacrifice anything for headphone jack and a decent size battery. Though if I had a choice between "thin" and "removable battery", I'd take the extra thickness required for the battery cover in a heartbeat. I'd also accept several more mm of thickness if they want to include a slide-out keyboard.
Personally, I'm of the camp where I can appreciate a somewhat slimmer design because I'm putting a case on it regardless, and the camera bump doesn't bother me since the case flattens it out anyway. I have the Xperia 1 V, and I'm pretty happy with the form of it.
well we already have wearable phones, they're smartwatches.
And we have foldable phones, but they still fold into the same general format because that's how people want to use the device most of the time. The problem is just that manufacturers insist on making them ever so slightly too wide..
I actually like thin phones. I find them easier to hold, but I would gladly sacrifice the camera hump for a completely flat back.
They still have glass fronts man. Five-ish feet drop onto the screen against concrete with no case? Doesn't matter what the back is.
Glass backs mean that almost any fall will damage it, but non-glass backs only eliminate cases if you can somehow ensure it never lands face down or on a corner.
Glass backs have very low friction. Set the thing down in bed and its natural floor seeking instincts kick in.
Hear me out: wood
Been rocking my iPhone 11 Pro Max with no case for a long time.
It’s fantastic.
I think the thing that is driving thin phones with big camera bulges are phone designers now factoring in bulky phone cases when thinking about how the phone feels in a pocket. Overwhelmingly phones live in a case and that case becomes the phone in our head - a fat phone is apparently uncomfortable or displeasing somehow so a thin phone means a thinner case which equates to a better overall experience as the phone owner. It will fit in pockets easier, slide into car accessory holders instead of cup holders, allow a phone wallet combo to not be a pocket wad, and overall usability becomes easier for folks with weaker grip strength like older and younger users. There is a lot driving the move to a thinner phone but it does make the underlying device look really goofy.
whatever is driving the trend of these super thin phones
The driving factor is - as always - money.
People will likely no longer buy new phones if it's all the same when compared to the previous generation.
So the companies make useless stuff up - that nobody really needs - so that they can sell more.
Apple is especially great at this because their base of sheeps is already locked in and swims in too much money that they are willing to spend.
Kill the bump! Give me better cooling and battery life with replaceable battery.
No.
-Apple
Wait... the magsafe battery is tied to a specific phone serial? I can't get the magsafe battery and lend it to my buddy who is low on battery at the moment?
Oh. At least that, I guess. But if it's just a magsafe battery pack, shouldn't it be compatible with any other models that accept wireless charging with a magsafe?
No, but hell no
Give me a chunky phone with a week long battery
I had an Oukitel that I ran for almost 4 weeks. Had to charge it for a trip off grid. Talk about chunky!
Might buy another model, but had to drop Verizon to get it working and T-Mobile took a week to figure out how to activate it. PITA, but it was solid once working. Great BT speaker, couldn't kill the battery, everything worked great. Carrying the thing was a pain, even with a pack. Not sure I want all that mass again.
If you want a phone you can beat a man to death with, Oukitel it is!
With its ability to produce an 8D sound effect
Wow. They cracked string theory.
More seriously, does it have a 3.5mm jack?
Cheaper than I thought it'd be
I have a motog5 if I load a non google OS like lineageOS, or use Googles Android with a TrackerControl app that let's you turn off app tracking, then I would get 3 days between charge, with regular use. A few weeks if it was just standby for phonecalls
Uhm IIRC typical battery is 2000 mAh/day, so one week battery is 14 Ah/day, which is 50 Wh assuming 3.7 V.
A typical sodium ion battery (which i very much like btw) typically holds 0.2 kWh/kg, so 200 Wh/kg, so to store 50 Wh, you'd need around 250g of battery.
For reference, i think smartphones should be about as heavy as an apple (fruit) which is 100g average. And the battery makes most of that weight (like, 80%). So the battery could be about 80g, which would store 16 Wh of energy. That would make about 4000 mAh. Which is what many phones today already have. Which lasts for 1-2 days.
You're describing rugged phones
I can understand people wanting “smaller" screens cause they don't have huge hands/pockets
But slimmer phones when the cheapest ones (< 200€) already are like 8mm, I don't really get it, at this point it's just a structural weakness, like the geth would say
The only advantage would be to have a bulky phone case while still maintaining a 6 or 8 mm width, but still it wouldn't prevent your phone from bending
You clearly have not watched Zack’s YT on this. The big ones bend and break way sooner. It’s not even close.
My guess, what we are witnessing here with the Air is just a stepping stone to a foldable. As a standalone I’m with you, it’s the inferior phone. Just not because of the structural weaknesses - it’s not weak at all - but due to smaller battery, less cameras and less speakers.
Oh, and case less gang checking in.
I was recently messing around with an iPod touch 5th gen, with dimensions 4.86 inches (123.4 mm) in height, 2.31 inches (58.6 mm) in width, and 0.24 inches (6.1 mm) in depth. It weighs approximately 3.10 ounces (88 grams). It felt fantastic in the hand and I want a phone that size now.
I was near an Apple store a few days ago and tried out the iPhone air, it was honestly really nice in the hand. I wouldn’t buy one, but seeing in person, I kinda get it.
I'd love to see a modern specs Nexus 4. Loved that phone!
Do phones really need to be so skinny? Part of the reason I always get a case is not only for protection, but also to deliberately make it a little thicker.
Yeah, the only real improvements in phones over the last decade are the adoption of USB-C and the addition of extra camera lenses, and I never really use the extra lenses on my phone.
I replaced my 2016 Galaxy S7 last year with a Motorola G32 mainly because the Galaxy wasn't holding a charge or getting software updates anymore. The G32 is actually lower in spec in a few ways (lower-resolution screen, no wireless charging) but it's still more than adequate for my needs, has a headphone jack and MicroSD slot and supports LineageOS (although I haven't installed that yet.)
Even the S7 upgrade wasn't strictly necessary but I saw a good deal and didn't like the way my LG G2's volume buttons were on the back.
We're well past the point where smartphones should've been fully comodified and where we should be able to get generic versions based on common standards (i.e. a common platform open to OS developers without the need for a specialized build for each phone.)
Only Essentials brand had something new a while back. Two magnetic power pins on the back and Wireless USB protocol so you could attach add on devices like the 360 video camera, and the Pro audio DAC. It's too bad they closed up after a few years. The phone was great. Cermamic and Titanium body.
This has become one of the useless marketing figures everyone chases because they made it seem important in the first place.
I absolutely prefer having something a bit thicker, as it fits the palm better.
Samsung did it: https://www.theverge.com/...
the phone will just generate shit all the time - texts, voices, images, music - all to post on AI-gen only social media. And it doesn't even need human interaction to do that but you are legally obligated to buy 12 of these per year or you will be deported to Moldova.
My Xperia lasts 2 - 3 days. Look on GSMarena for what you want, they have filters.
It's really funny to me that we're having these conversations all over again. I had the Moto Z back in 2016 and it was almost half a mm thinner than the 2025 iPhone Air. (As always, here's Apple still playing catchup, a decade later this time.)
I honestly didn't mind it - the Moto Z had a Moto Mods battery that snapped on the back (in a MUCH more elegant manner than Apple's magsafe battery implementation in my opinion) and so I always knew that was an option if the battery life became a concern over time. And I loved that the extended battery made the back of the phone perfectly flush with the camera bump too, so if you elected to add battery life, it was literally what we've all asked for the whole time: Just make it thicker and add battery. But if you didn't need extended battery life, then you had a razer thin phone (and a camera bump), probably the thinnest I had until the Fold7 at 4.2mm.
I wish that Motorola's solution had stuck, because they solved this problem already, meanwhile everybody is here reinventing the wheel over and over again in 2025. 🤦
I think what people want is longer-life, user replaceable batteries. They didn't need to be thinner. Apple says, "Look! It's thinner! Thinner is better!", so the fanbois say "Look mine is better because it's thinner, Apple said so!"
I will always upvote a dig at apple fans 🤭
Tbh, the camera bumps are nice if you use phone cases. They allow the phone+ phone case thickness to be much thinner than otherwise. Provided they aren't enormous unexplainable bumps like the pixel phones'
Pretty well packed with sensors isn't it?
It is not, especially compared to solutions like Samsung's that have a different bump for each camera. The food thing with that design is, you can expose the camera and make the case form-fit around, which doesn't make the phone thicker. Google pixel cases that do that expose this entire slab to the elements though, this glass will get scratched quite easily
You're taking about this? It won't sit flat on its back, rocking around every time you tap it.
You other brothers can't deny.
Upvote because butt
The next iteration will be a cheese wedge, 1mm thin on one side and 1cm thick on the other.
you need mechanical stability a bit too, so if it's too thin, it just breaks too easily.
IMO the perfect size for a smartphone should be the weight of an apple (fruit) or some other snack like croissant, something that you can comfortably hold in one hand.
honestly I don’t mind it - the grooves allow you to actually hold the fucking thing one handed without being a basketball player
This is exactly the reason. It makes large screen devices easier to hold for people with normal sized hands.
if they sold smaller phones I would’ve. I prefer not to use cases; this isn’t a problem, but a complaint on the status quo. I sympathize with those under 6’3 who have to purchase further solutions. agreed that phones should be smaller in general; like they were about few generations ago.
When they eventually give us a good smaller phone, we gotta buy buy buy it so they get the message. I think the industry is just fully of copying, if one company makes a bigger phone and finds some success, the next company does it etc
I had the mini for years but she finally ran out of juice recently ><
lolol not literally - it rests against my index or middle sometimes
‘Sup?
‘Sup?
It’s because most customers use cases. They know this, and so Apple can say they made it thinner, when the reality is that it’s always not that thin. Especially when you can throw a case and a mag safe battery on the back and make it even thicker than the pro model.
It's sorta like the late 90's-early 00's when people were swapping the shells of their Nokias and pagers.
The thinner phones just allow the user the option to change the appearance to what they think looks good without becoming too thick.
And even then, it's hard to find a case where the lip is higher than the camera lens. The best you can usually get is the lip and the lens at the same level, so any slightly uneven surface can scratch it.
I don't mind a camera bar (or "visor"). It's better than the stupid bump they used to use, because it's stable, and it also provides a slight angle that makes the phone a little more visible when it's laying on a desk.
What I don't like is a super thin phone that has no meaningful battery and is easy to bend. "Bend" means that dropping it results in more than just shock force.
Take a look at JerryRigEverything’s iPhone Air video.
It took 200+ pounds of force, in the middle of the device, to bend it. It was very impressive.
I've heard that, and it's very impressive. Unfortunately, I weigh more than 200 pounds, and putting a significant fraction of my weight on the device is not a particularly remote possibility, given my track record.
Parascope lenses don’t require cheating physics.
I have no problem with functional protuberances. In fact, I wouldn't mind seeing more, such as a universal mounting connector of some sort? I don't know if I am atypical in this regard, but I like mounting my phone on things. Handlebars, car dashes, tripods, mic stands, etc. There are solutions for this, but they invariably involve something wrapping around and blocking some of the front side of the phone, which has become increasingly problematic over the years with screens pushing towards the edges. My bike holder sometimes blocks the front-facing camera needed to unlock the iPhone, for example. But if there were something on the back side that a mounting bracket could securely latch onto, none of this would be a problem.
SP connect and quadlock offer mounting brackets, that get glued to the back of your phone (or phone case) check on their websites under "universal"
That's interesting. It's basically what I'm thinking phones should just have by design. Something that can twist-lock it into place. I guess the question with this after market solution is whether you trust that adhesive enough? It would be better if it were just built into the phone, but it's nice to have some affirmation that my ideas are not totally baseless and that others have been looking into it. Thanks!
Seriously. How did we get to the point where so many phones are designed for you to set them down directly on the camera lens? What are we doing?
I recently had cause to use my phone as a clinometer to measure the gradient of a path at various points. Camera bumps made the task take twice as long as it otherwise would have, because I had to record it camera forward, then camera backward, and average the two, just to negate the effect it has on how the phone sits...
It’s a hand ergonomics thing. People with smaller hands who still want a larger screen have an easier time holding the phone body if it’s thin. The camera bump is outside of the handholding area so stuffing the big circuitry there lets you make a better hand experience.
Why do phones have to be as slimmed down as a coke addicted supermodel from the 90s anyway?
I'd much prefer they shrink the fucking things enough that they fit in your pocket.
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@lemmy.world
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This perfectly illustrates my gripes with whatever is driving the trend of these super thin phones.
First, is anyone even asking for phones to be thinner? Then there's the camera bump sticking out like a wart. And beyond that, it gets put into a bulky case anyway which negates the super thin thing entirely.
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