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A new class of oversized smart phones has emerged called “phablets”—a hybrid between a phone and tablet. Samsung kicked off the trend with its 5.3-inch Galaxy Note in October, 2011. And Huawei’s Ascend Mate, displayed at the recent Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, measures 6.1-inches, less than 2 inches smaller than the Apple iPad Mini. And market-intelligence firm ABI Research forecasts 208 million phablets will be sold worldwide in 2015, more than twice as many as in 2012.
After decades of shrinking down to a manageable size, why are mobile phones returning to their roots as ergonomically challenged paperweights?
Partly, it’s vendors trying to sell us more gadgets, of course. Another explanation came from a Qualcomm executive at the Vegas show, who pointed out that the larger form factor plays well in China, the world’s largest smart-phone market, due to the size of the characters in their alphabet. And a recent iPhone to Galaxy convert told me that he’s come to think of the device as a true tiny tablet. On which, in a pinch, you could even make a phone call.
—Larry Greenemeier
[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]
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7 Comments
Add Commentphone call - what's that ?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisthese days I typically see people with mobiles holding them horizontally away from them as they talk into the bottom - dunno if speaker or earphone but it looks weird.
actually talking to other humans - isn't that something that happened last century ?
I want a tablet with a phone built in. It's silly to have this wonderful tablet gadget with all the electronics to make a phone call, but without the function built in. It has a microphone, speaker, interface, and cellular link, but I can't use it as a phone. What's that about?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPhablet: good for my eye sight yet bad for my pocket. For now I will personally stick to the 4 inch phones. What I am really waiting for is the Google glasses, aka, Project Glass: when are those hitting the consumer market?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisalan.coffel, what would you use the call-capable tablet for? Way I see it:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEveryone needs a phone. This is the device you carry everywhere you go. It can be as large as you're willing to carry everywhere you go. For some people that's a phablet but for many it's smaller.
Many people also need a tablet. This is the device you don't carry everywhere you go. There's not much point in giving it the ability to make phone calls because you've got a phone to do that and size isn't really a benefit for making calls and anyway who wants to be switching between phones frequently.
So I don't see where the call-capable tablet fits in. How do you see it?
alan.coffel, get a Skype number. Then your "phone" is any device you're using at the time.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI had an Evo for my first smart phone and thought it was a great phone , nice screen, just the right size. When the Note 2 came out, I picked one up and I can say I am in love with the screen size. After a while it does not feel big, you get used to it and now when I see other smaller phones, the screens are just to small. Plus on the bigger phablets the battery last for days...My evo barely made 4 hours of heavy use, my Note 2 can go almost all day of heavy use. I will never go back to anything smaller then the Note 2.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thistwo words: skype
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