brain trust: phone sizes

[cellio]

I am starting to think new-phone thoughts, and I'm looking for some meta-advice: advice about traits and how to research stuff more than specific models. (The latter are welcome too, but my questions are a litlte higher-level.)

One of my strongest concerns is about size, both physically and digitally. My current phone has the following stats:

• Dimensions: 151.7 x 75 x 7.9 mm
• Display size: 5.5 inches, 82.2 cm2 (~72.2% screen-to-body ratio)
• Resolution (this is very unusual): 1440 x 2560 pixels, 16:9 ratio (~538 ppi density)

In recent years phones have reverted to worse-than-2:1 aspect ratios. They've reinvented candybars, dammit. But maybe that's ok, if I can still see stuff. So, can I?

I almost always use my phone in portrait mode, as I think most people do. I don't watch movies; I read text. Web pages, mostly. That text needs to be able to be wide enough to be comfortable to read, and for web sites to not break if (when) I need to zoom. For context, on my current phone I have Chrome text scaling at 110% (minimum size, starting from whatever their default is), and "force enable zoom" because some web developers are rude that way.

The aspect ratios I'm seeing on modern phones are generally in the range of 1080:2400, give or take a bit. That 1080 width is significantly smaller than my current width of 1440. I assume that just means that, for phones of equal physical width, my phone is just packing in a lot more pixels per inch, so the display is a little crisper. I don't think I've seen pixel densities that high on specs I've looked at.

Pixels, schmixels, maybe: I don't know why this matters. Does it? I would naively expect that lower pixel density means a little more blurriness, but since I have to zoom most things to see them at all, do I care?

But there's a wrinkle. In order to get that physical width, with the change in aspect ratios I'd need to accept a phone that's about a centimeter longer. I'm concerned about pockets. Women, especially curvy women, if you carry a larger phone in your pants pocket, what's the secret? I assume that "butt-dialing" is just a figure of speech and folks don't actually carry phones in back pockets, right? (I tried putting mine there and it felt both uncomfortable and unsafe.)

So at current aspect ratios, I need to either settle for a narrower phone, raising questions about whether that width can meet my vision needs, or accept a longer phone, and figure out how to test that with front pockets of my jeans and chinos, because buying a whole new wardrobe to accommodate a phone is ridiculous. Phone in pants pocket is a hard requirement: purses, belt pouches, backpacks, "on the desk next to you", and dresses are unacceptable solutions. I want the safety of having it actually on my person (harder to separate from me), and I want to be able to feel vibrations because most of the time the sound is turned off in public. (Granted, "in public" has been rare of late, but I hope my next phone outlasts the current restrictions.)

Other factors besides size:

• I want this phone to last for a few years, so 5G seems prudent. All the 5G phones except iPhones seem to be huge?
• I'm pretty solidly on Team Android. I'm not a fan of either Apple or Google when it comes to how they treat people, but I'm less of a fan of Apple and I'm already used to Android. (Also, my tablet is Android.)
• I take pictures sometimes, and am even trying to learn to use the non-default settings on the camera, but "has a camera that doesn't stink" is likely to be good enough. Lots of phones these days hype their super-megapixel 4-lens cameras; I don't think I care. If I should care, please clue me in.

Does anybody make a phone that might meet my requirements with a more pleasant aspect ratio (and thus form factor for vision and pockets)? Short of reading specs for phones one at a time, how can I find out? Searching for things like "5g android 16:9 2021" isn't producing hits.

Comments

[marahmarie]

*woman, curvy, waves*

I'm concerned about pockets. Women, especially curvy women, if you carry a larger phone in your pants pocket, what's the secret?

The secret is pockets deep enough to do it; ymmv wildly. I have more than a few pairs of jeans and shorts with back pockets that can handle it and just as many jeans, pants and shorts that can't. Secret recipe (might solve your screen res issues too; haven't read the other replies yet):

1) Buy a Samsung Galaxy 6 (edit: forgot 3G support for all Galaxys stops this December - which will basically brick the phone), 7 or 8 (unlike the 6 these have 4G and OLED screens; very high res). Anything above 8 is too long, too narrow, too slippery. I prefer Galaxy Actives myself - they're thicker, noticeably heavier and virtually indestructible.

2) Get this thingamajig. It, with the phone inside of it, fits in a lot of my back pockets. The clip on the back goes over the outside of the back pocket to hold the whole thing in place.

3) ???

For jeans/pants/shorts and on those rare days I wear dresses the same thingamajig gets carried in my hand, or in an over-the shoulder bag of some sort. Can't win them all, I guess (though I haven't read the other replies yet).

ETA: I don't pay attention to how most men carry phones but as a human, much less woman/woman with curves, regardless of pocket size/depth I would not carry a phone, especially a larger one, in my front pocket (done it; speaking from experience) as it's uncomfortable. It either rides or slaps against your leg depending on how tight the pants/jeans/shorts are and is hard to get in and out of said pocket.

That said, a nice say, "gender neutral" solution might be if clothes could come with outer pockets or bands or Velcro strips that could hold the phone in place securely near or at the top or side of the front pants leg (this design could conceivably work for dresses, too).

I have a pair of pants that almost does the thing - some inches above the knee it has a phone-sized top band to slip something (say, the clip from my phone case) onto, but not the bottom band to keep the phone in place and from slapping against my leg when I move.