Analyzing screen-to-body size ratios of top Android handsets

It’s a well known fact that there’s nothing like a bit of graphing to brighten up a geek’s day. This seems to be well understood by a Reddit user that goes by the name of “Thare” who, after embarking on a search for a new Android phone that had the largest screen while maintaining the smallest possible size, decided to share the wealth of information that he had gathered.
It will come as no surprise that of the phones he compared the Samsung Galaxy Note ended up at the top of the heap having 66.9% of its body area made up of touch-screen real estate. Of course, no one can really call the Note a small device, unless they possess Shaquille O’Neal-sized hands.

While this isn’t a comprehensive study of all the available Android devices on the market, Thare did a good job including a range of the most popular devices across the four US carriers. Samsung also garnered the second spot on the list with its yet to be released Galaxy S3 (which of course is made for humans) which has 66.1% of its svelte design available for touch interactions. HTC rounds out the top three with its EVO 4G LTE phone running on Sprint. Its 4.7-inch screen gives owners 66% of real estate to play with.

iPhone owners won’t be surprised to see the 4S coming in next to last place, with the trade-off being of course those beautiful Retina displays that Apple is installing in the world’s most popular smartphone. Which leads to an interesting thing to point out. While the Galaxy Note certainly has a large screen, it also has the distinction of having one of the lowest pixel density’s in the chart. While it’s the first Android device to sport a higher resolution than the 4S, the iPhone still takes better advantage of the space it has to work with by having a pixel density of 326 ppi compared to the Note’s 285.

While the comparison of different devices is certainly interesting, probably the real gem that is visualized is the slow progression we are seeing in the mobile industry towards larger screens installed in consumer devices. With rumors abounding that Samsung has retooled many of its assembly lines to mass-produce its flexible OLED screens, it’s conceivable that we could, sometime in the near future, see bezel-less devices to hit retail stores. While market analysts say that it won’t be until 2017 before we see the market dominated by flexible display devices, it’s certainly interesting to think about the possibility because bezel-less handset will totally change this list.