In 2007 Apple launched the iPhone. It was a fancy phone, but big and heavy by the standards of the time.

For the first few years after that, it seemed to be generally accepted that the iPhone was big. Even by 2010 commentators were writing things like “Apple has to expand its product range [with] a nano model … give it a modestly smaller screen than the iPhone 4, ie 3.2 inches.”

In time, other companies started making Android phones with even bigger screens. Perhaps they were working on the hi-fi shop principle that if you play it a bit louder, listeners will think it sounds better. Commentators supplied compelling arguments why Apple would never follow suit: you wouldn’t be able to reach the edges of the screen while holding it one-handed.

In 2011, the Google and Samsung flagship Android phone was launched with a surely ludicrous 4.65 inch diagonal, and iPhone users mocked it (“That’s no moon. It’s a phone”).

Time passed. In November 2013, The Verge opened a review of a Nokia Windows Phone with: “Three years ago, Nokia shipped over 110 million smartphones worldwide. None had a display larger than 3.5 inches. Today the company moves far fewer smartphones, every single one of them with a display bigger than its largest option in 2010.”

In January 2014, Sony launched its Xperia Z1 Compact, a new device promoted as being pleasingly small. It had a 4.3-inch-diagonal screen.

Mobile

The most distinctive feature of a mobile phone is that it’s mobile. You can carry it anywhere.

No matter how engaging the experience or how captivated you are, you’re never going to spend as much time poking at your phone as you do just carrying it around. The main thing a phone has to do is sit in a pocket and shut the hell up without making you constantly aware that it’s there. Small is good.

I recently retired my Nokia 700, a Symbian-powered phone with a 3.2″ screen. With the Swype keyboard it was nicely usable, but Nokia had started shutting down many of the Symbian services. I would love to have been able to keep using that hardware with a different OS, but that’s impossible with these devices.

I’ve been testing a FirefoxOS device and I’d like to be able to switch to that—but the smaller FirefoxOS phones have pretty ropey hardware (nasty screen, awful camera) and the only other one available now is too big. I’d have been happy with a device no bigger than a Keon but with a better screen and camera.

Apple have stayed pretty sensible: the iPhone did go a 3.5 to a 4″ screen, but it got thinner and lighter at the same time. But I don’t want an iPhone.

(I ended up buying a lightly-used Nokia 620, a nice enough phone with Windows Phone 8 and a 3.8″ screen. It’s a year old and I think it’s technically been discontinued in favour of larger models. It’s still a bit too big, but it’s the best I could do.)