The evolution which went the wrong way

The fact that they can don’t mean they should

Imagine a smartphone which *doesn’t fit in your pocket.

*If you’re a woman, you don’t have to imagine, our pockets are even too small to fit the debit card.

But when men will experience the same problem, perhaps the industry will do something about it?

What happened with smartphones

Many companies are designing interesting products answering our needs, waiting until we’ll be relying on them on a day-to-day basis to redesign them, but this time not with us- users in mind but companies, who will use it as a selling platform for their products.

This is why they began to remind tiny billboards.

Everything everywhere

Once convenient devices to communicate, exceeded it’s abilities and became life management assistants, music and video players, the mini-computers we rely on in our everyday lives.

The size of a mobile device was always a constraint (too small to have a desktop experience) but big enough, to use one-handed (but not if you have a hand smaller than average male). Responsive design was a smart answer- adapting the layout to smaller view forced many designers to strip on decorative stuff and leave essentials.

Unfortunately, it occurs that a handy size of the device wasn't because it was convenient for the user. It was because of the battery and its inability to provide enough energy to feed the power-hungry screen.
Size limitation is a challenge for the app and web designers. This is one of the reasons why flat design with nice and clean layout became so popular.
Unfortunately increasing the display size allows designers and developers to double and triple the content of their apps or websites without worrying about clutter or compromising on whitespaces.

The gap

My Huawei P lite 2018 is too big for me to use it one-handed, but a year ago it was the smallest phone available on the market for a decent price with decent spec.
Recently when I’ve entered a mobile shop I was shocked by this what I saw on display. My phone looked like a younger sibling of grown-ups!

Being myself a User Experience designer I am wondering why manufacturers are not thinking about user convenience just about business opportunities?

Where is the balance!?!

Mobile phone suppose to be a computer in our hand, but now it reminds more a tablet which is… available on the market since a while.

It’s all about power

Since the battery industry evolved, phone manufacturers instead of providing smartphones with longer battery life, what would be a natural answer to user need (tell me if you’re not using a power bank or don’t take a USB cable everywhere you go), started producing phones with bigger screens.

Unfortunately, big brands are not following any good practices, just getting things bigger, hungrier to pack there more —more stuff inside and more stuff on the screen.

Common sense would say to expand the life of a battery on one charge and change the battery when the original reached the end of its lifecycle. I did it a few times with my old phones until they locked batteries in the body without the ability to take it out.

Would we ever, 30 years ago, agree to have a remote control which we would need to throw away and replace with a new one when batteries would die? No, of course not, but they got us used to that step by step and now not many people protest against it. We just buy another phone… thinking that it’s ok. It’s not, because a lot of the mobile phone carbon footprint comes from the production process.

“A smartphone’s energy cost comes from production. Making a phone accounts for 85–95 percent of its annual carbon footprint because manufacturing its electronics and mining the metals that go into them is energy-intensive.” Source: Lotfi Belkhir and Ahmed Elmeligi. Assessing ICT global emissions footprint: Trends to 2040 & recommendations. Journal of Cleaner Production. 2018 via Anthrpocene

The culture of “disposal” phones which are ok for a year or two until the battery is dead or a super big screen is cracked (what happens very often) isn't good for users. It’s a great source of income for phone producers, manufacturers of phone cases, protective screen glass, even insurers. It’s a real gold mine with no respect to the environment.

Give us a choice

Not wanting to be radical, I would like to suggest 2 paths of smartphone development to choose from.

1. The full-on for people who don’t have enough and want to have everything that is the biggest, thinking it’s the best or more visible indication of their status (laughing quietly… and dying inside)
2. A practical phone for people who appreciate the convenience and want to have a smartphone they can use one-handed, without a need to charge it every day and with an option to replace the battery once the old one is no longer good.

Misconceptions from the past are still hunting us

I thought that the "bigger-better" approach is the thing from the past, but as we see there are companies who are too greedy and lazy to provide a truly user-centred product.
Honestly, I’m waiting for an independent company/organisation which will go against the tide and make solid phones*.

This is my 22nd post from 52 problems series, feel free to catch up with my other articles about the way how technology affected our lives.

*I know the FairPhone, but it’s still quite bulky. If you have a brand you’d like to recommend I’m eyes and ears!

When my Huawei will die, I’ll get my hands on a simple messaging device and use my tablet for video calls and my analogue camera for pictures. This way I will minimise my carbon footprint and be more focused on here and now instead of looking at the world through the screen and constant stream of “tailored” news and social media updates from brands all over the world I’m not interested in.