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When phones are too big for pockets
By: cnn.comPosted On: 07/29/2010 1:23 P
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Something weird is happening to mobile phones: After shrinking from enormous Zack Morris proportions in the '80s and '90s, they're getting bigger again.
Something weird is happening to mobile phones: After shrinking from enormous Zack Morris proportions in the '80s and '90s, they're getting bigger again.
So big, in fact, that some won't fit in jeans pockets anymore.
The Dell Streak, which is set to be released in the U.S. later this summer, is the biggest of the big-daddy phones so far, with a 5-inch screen. The screen of the iPhone 4, by comparison, measures only 3.5 inches diagonally.
When held up to a person's ear, the Dell phone looks like a book.
The Streak's mondo screen has become the focus of much debate on the internet, with tech bloggers arguing about what kinds of pants you'd have to wear to carry it around in your pocket; how big your hands have to be to hold it; whether or not people will stare at you when you're using it; and, perhaps most significantly, what exactly constitutes a phone these days.
Is a phone just any device that can make calls? Or does it have to be portable enough to carry with you, regardless of how baggy your pants are?
As mobile phone technology improved, "there definitely was a trend for smaller and there definitely was a trend for thinner," said Ramon Llamas, a senior research analyst who covers mobile technology for IDC. "But I think we're seeing the pendulum swinging back in favor of larger phones."
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