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.
Before we were obsessing over Witch Doctor and Demon Hunter builds,
we were rolling the dice to unlock Salarians and Quarians in Mass
Effect 3′s PvE multiplayer. The gamble of its mystery box Reinforcement
Packs is dangerously addictive, and next week the loot count will
increase — BioWare’s already giving us more stuff with a follow up to
last month’s Resurgence Pack.