The compact mobile is dead

In 2011 we talked about Samsung Galaxy Note as if it were the son of a mobile and a tablet. In fact, the most veterans surely remember the term Phablet. He has barely rained, huh. The Galaxy Note was a huge mobile, enormism for the time. His screen had “unusual 5.3 inches” (Xataka textual words), a much greater figure than that of 2010 Galaxy Swhose panel was four inches.

Back in 2011 I was 17 years old and had a Htc desire s that I still keep and replaced me Nokia X6-00. I remember that, when I bought it, people saw it and said “you have to see, at this rhythm the mobiles will be like a television.” I’ve been listening to that “mobiles are getting bigger.” Today I can confirm with the data in the hand that this is not only so, but that the compact mobile has died.

Mobile less than six inches launched in 2025: zero

For this analysis we have resorted to the data of GSMARENA and traced until 2010, so that we have collected all the mobiles launched in the last 15 years to see what happened. In 2010 Justin Bieber launched ‘Baby’, Enrique Iglesias piad him with ‘I Like it’, Christopher Nolan scored somewhat with ‘origin’ and the industry put 125 mobiles into circulation worldwide. They were all less than six inches. I say more: except the Dell Streakeveryone had less than five inches.

This was the usual tonic during the following years. More and more mobile threw themselves, but in 2014 something began to change. This was the year of Nexus 6he OnePlus One and the Samsung Galaxy Edge (The curve screen). Also of the Ascend Mate 7 from Huawei and the Xperia t2 ultra from Sony. They began to draw increasingly large mobiles with FullHD screens and 16: 9 format, such as televisions and monitors.

The screens became larger, but the format was always the same, 16: 9. That meant that if we wanted to increase the size of the screen, the mobile width had to be increased a lot. So much so that the Ascend Mate 7 of 2014, with its six inches of screen, had a high of 157 millimeters and a width of 81 millimeters. To put it in context, the Galaxy S25 Ultraone of the largest mobiles of 2025, has 162 millimeters high and 77.6 wide. The mobiles were getting huge, in every way, but growing that way was not sustainable.

The reason that the screens become larger and larger is evident: mobile phones were no longer mobile. They had become entertainment platforms In which playing, watching movies, listening to music, sailing, chatting, etc. More screen, more options, you don’t have more.

Then the manufacturers fell into the account: why continue inspired by televisions and monitors? What if instead of making 16: 9 panels we stretch them up and make them more panoramic? It was then that the six inches began to become the standard for the high range. Already in 2017 we had terminals such as Galaxy Note8 with 6.3 inches and 18.5: 9 format and the LG V30 (DEP), with six inches in 18: 9 format.

That number tells us the proportion between the width and high of a rectangle. To date, for every 16 high pixels we had nine pixels wide, and vice versa. If we wanted to increase the size of the screen, something that made sense to understand the mobile as the main device of every user, the only option that was not to end bricks in the pocket was to keep the width and increase the height. And that was what happened: format 16: 9 was condemned to extinction.

As of 2017, mobile phones began to grow, and to grow, already grow up. In 2018, large mobiles with 18: 9 format represented just over half of all the launched. In 2019, the market took a 180 degree turn and the strange thing was that a mobile does not exceed six inches. The market had been completely invested.

In later years, the try to launch compact phones were left in little more than that, try (see the iPhone Mini) And, today, there is not a single mobile below six inches. A small format requires sacrifices in terms of battery, power and photography, things for which the user, according to the disappearance of compact mobiles, does not seem willing to happen.

So far this year only three mobiles have been launched with less than 6.5 inches and are the Google Pixel 9ahe Samsung Galaxy S25 and a total unknown: the rugerized Sonim XP400. All others, removing mobile phones with physical or older keyboard, have larger diagonal panels. There is not one, not one, six inches or less.

All this has not been achieved only based on adding inches to a screen, but companies have done an exceptional job miniaturizing components, moving them in place and improving technology, in general. One of the most obvious changes has been get rid of the upper and lower frames and pass the buttons, and even the fingerprint reader, to the screen. That has allowed an iPhone 16 to have a 6.1 -inch screen in a body of 147.6 x 71.6 millimeters. To put it in context, the Samsung Galaxy S4 2013 measured 136.6 x 69.8, but had a “only” five -inch screen.

The next step: bigger

Formats 18.5, 19 and 19.5: 9 have the advantage that it allows you to add inches at the expense of stretching the terminal up, but everything has a limit. A point comes where such an elongated screen It becomes uncomfortableas we have been able to verify in some terminals that carried the appearance to the extreme. It gives the impression that our hands no longer give of themselves, so the next natural step seems evident: folding mobiles.

While it is a technology that is ahead (the first Galaxy Fold It was launched in 2019), these devices allow you to have larger screens in a more conventional format. In that sense, manufacturers have already stolen the issue of thickness (which are told just four millimeters of the OPPO FIND N5) And now they have to do it with the screen fold. It is a challenge, but it seems that the road goes in that direction.

Images | Xataka

In Xataka | Mobile manufacturers are still determined to show off more and more megapixels. That does not mean better photos