Why I'm Giving Up On Android

The Android world is leaving one-handed phones behind. I'd love to go back to Android, but I don't think I will. High-end Android phones are literally inflating in a spec-sheet race that I like to call "the game of moar."

I'm an extreme phone geek. I like to change devices every six months or so, in part because I'm constantly recommending devices to others. For a while now, I've been using the Windows Phone 8X by HTC. I like Windows Phone a lot and the 8X's hardware is gorgeous, but I miss Android, both for the flexible widgets and for the amazing array of third-party apps.

But the Android world has been seized by the tyranny of moar. To switch back, I need a decent one-handed phone. Like about 25 million other Americans and Canadians, I take public transportation to work, and I really like to play games standing up.

Using a phone one-handed poses physical limits based on the size of your thumb. Back in 2011, I measured the thumbs of 12 PCMag.com staffers and got them to try the Samsung Galaxy Nexus's 4.65-inch screen (slideshow below). I found that it takes about a 7cm thumb to properly operate today's larger phones, which is longer than most women and some men have. 

In my experience, that means a phone needs to be about 2.6 inches wide, which generally also means a 4.3-inch diagonal screen.

But nobody makes a high-end Android phone with a 4.3-inch screen anymore. Notice I'm not talking about tiny-screen phones like the iPhone - I'm talking 4.3 inches, which was considered big a few years ago. It just isn't a thing. Manageable screens now mean midrange phones without cutting-edge processors or cameras, like the new HTC First.

I know I'm not alone in wanting a flagship Android phone with a 4- to 4.3-inch screen. At a press event a few months ago, two dozen top tech journalists got up and demanded one in unison. Just today, Tmonews.com's David Beren and Phone Scoop's Rich Brome called for a phone the same size as the First, but with a better camera. But the carriers and manufacturers aren't responding.

There are real reasons larger phones are trending. As more people use their phones for Web browsing rather than calling, they want larger windows on the world. Most Americans and Canadians neither stand nor walk much; they go from sitting in their cars to sitting at desks and tables, all of which are fine places for two-handed use.

The 25 million North Americans who use public transit are only about only 7 percent of the population, after all. I'm reminded of another loud, niche group: people who want hardware QWERTY keyboards on their phones. An OEM once estimated to me that was around 10 percent of the population, and said it was a market that just wasn't worth serving.

I think a one-handed, high-end Android phone could sell well beyond straphangers. But apparently the OEMs don't, so I asked them why.

The Tyranny of Moar
I went ahead and asked a few major OEMs about why they aren't making classy, powerful phones that are ideal to hold in one hand. They told me that the U.S. market - both carriers and their own research - want moar.

This is my own term, not theirs. Moar is different from more because it's instinctive. Moar short circuits rational thought; it's the feeling you get when you eat some bacon, and then want 16 strips of bacon because bacon is delicious even though, if you thought about it, you know it'll make you ill.

The OEMs told me that U.S. carriers and shoppers buy based on checklists, and on those checklists, moar is more. They also look on shelves, and on shelves, bigger is better. So screens get bigger, simply because "bigger" equals "more value" in Americans' minds.

Moar hasn't just made Android phones unwieldy; it's led to a decline in cameraphone quality, too. Moar dictates that a higher megapixel number is always better. 13 > 8. That's all you need to know. But as we've seen here at PCMag Labs, the 13-megapixel cameraphones out there often don't match up in image quality to the best lower-megapixel cameraphones, especially in low light. The pixels are just too small. Higher-megapixel cameras also generate very large files, with relatively little benefit unless you intend to crop them later.

Nokia managed to balance moar and more with its brilliant 808 Pureview cameraphone, which packs a "41-megapixel" sensor (that's moar) and then used pixel binning to create gorgeous 8-megapixel images (that's more). But that was 14 months ago, and there hasn't been a new Nokia phone with that technology since. I suspect it's because the large sensor makes phones thicker.

In processors, when Nvidia's Tegra 3 was competing against Qualcomm's dual-core Snapdragon S4, for many buyers it didn't matter that the Snapdragon tended to have the same performance and better battery life: the Tegra 3 had four cores. Four! Moar.

Where will moar end? With cameraphone pixels, it has to end at 13 for now. AnandTech's Brian Klug, an actual optics engineer, explained to me once that at current sensor sizes, if you try to make pixels any smaller they'll be trying to capture less than one wavelength of light.

I have no idea where it's going to end with device sizes. Maybe Samsung's 5.5-inch Galaxy Note II is the wave of the future. If that's true, leave me on the beach with my 4.3-inch Windows Phone. Anyone know any good RPGs for this platform?

For a different take, check out Why I Gave Up My iPhone for Android.