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Comment by dnautics | Hacker News Reader

honestly, if google would make a nexus 3 I might consider it. I have a samsung nexus S, and it's on the large side of what I am comfortable with.

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On that note, I have to wonder if the buyers of these super-sized Android phones are like 80% male or what. Women have much smaller hands than men. This hit home for me when I bought winter gloves in a "women's extra-large", because the store was out of "men's small". They're two different labels for the same size! For me, the Nexus 4 works fine, but if it were any bigger, or my hands any smaller, it'd be awful hard to use one-handed. Five inch phones seem to be excluding half the market.

just to point out -- while the marketing is "4-inch screen is now 5-inch screen", the ergonomics aren't so bad. The 5 is several millimeters taller and only half a millimeter wider than the 4. But for holding the thing in my hand, I only really care about the width.

Yeah but your thumbs or fingers still need to traverse 5inches of screen because thats the tappable area now.

I mostly tap on the keyboard? I do use an app that sometimes requires clicking in the top right corner of the screen, but I already use my other hand to do that. Actually, I already use my other hand for the keyboard as well.

i suspect there's also a preference among men to put phones in pockets while women may often carry handbags..

I seem to see more women than men with really huge phones like the Galaxy Note series. Perhaps because they are more likely to have a bag to carry it around with, rather than needing to keep it in a pocket. Presumably they just use them two handed.

I was a bit concerned when I got my wife her Nexus 4 that she would find it too large, but she hasn't said a thing about the size.

Unfortunately the electronics manufacturers (and Google apparently) are, well, not very thoughtful when it comes to phone design. It's like they don't really know what else to do, so they've settled on simple-minded memes like "bigger = better!!!"

Often this is sort of a reasonable plan in general... faster CPUs and more memory are usually helpful (if you can keep battery usage reasonable).

But when applied uncritically and universally, without much judgement or thought, in a mad rush to out-spec the other guy ("Now Double The Size of Our Competitor!!!!"), this just leads to mediocrity, where everything apparently has great specs but nobody really likes them very much...

well I have to admit, I assumed that the bigger screen size meant bigger form factor but I looked it up and the nexus 5 is a smidge smaller than the nexus 4 in the dimensions that matter to me (might be thinner, didn't check). Still bigger than the nexus S, though.

I wish it wasn't the case, as I'd prefer they make smaller devices too, but it's not a simple minded meme. It's market research.

They're making them bigger b/c that's the cultural preference in much of Asia, not b/c they have some flighty notion of bigger=better.

Same reason iPhone got bigger in a recent major version upgrade. This has been discussed b/f at HN.

Or perhaps people just genuinely want larger phones. Samsung's Note series sold very well. I know I personally would love the bigger screen of the Nexus 5 over my current Galaxy Nexus.

I can't think of anything worse than having a tiny screen like the iphone.

Individual Android phones have had better customer ratings than the iPhones since the S3 and Note 2 (amongst others). And one of the key features the owners report as liking is the larger screens.

Apple prefer to use ratings like JD Power, that group by manufacturer, as that helps those who only target the high-end. Though even on that metric various competitors have gained swiftly and Samsung tablets scored slightly higher than Apple in the latest results.

Take a look at the Moto X... go put one in your hands. It has a different form factor and it feels much smaller than it is. Holding it I was (and still am) strongly tempted to move off my Nexus devices, and being so close to Google I am hoping it will get updates very quick.

I wonder if battery life is related as well. Nexus 4 battery life is poor compared to iPhone even though the Nexus is much bigger and hence carries a bigger battery. Having a larger form factor can mask some of this power efficiency deficiency.

Larger phones fit bigger batteries.

The nexus 4 had terrible battery life.

You see, Google does not cater to small groups. Fit into the middle 90% or go home.

It does, else how else do you explain accesability option. Besides many small groups make up a karge percentage overall depending on how fine you dice.

Language options being another cavert in your point about small groups. Certainly translate caters for more than 100 languages alone and you can bet this other 10% fit into some of those.

Nothing pleases everybody. Why else do we have exception handerling in programming code :).

The Nexus 5 denotes its hardware generation, not the screen size. So, technically the Galaxy Nexus would've been the "Nexus 3".

In the same way that the Nexus 7 denotes its hardware generation, and not the screen size?

So we should all buy the Nexus 10 then which will be available around 2019?

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