A large screen, for real
After just a couple of weeks with the Samsung Galaxy S III, my iPhone 4S screen stopped seeming "normal-sized." At first it became "small" and ultimately it became "too small."
And when I put my phone in a car dock, the iPhone now seems minuscule. There's almost always more information on the Samsung's screen. It's all easier to read, and the controls are either larger, or they're or grouped less tightly, which makes them easier to hit. The iPhone seems to disappear in the dash.
Mind you, I've been driving with iPhones for years and I was always very happy with them. But to me, the difference between an iPhone 4S or even an iPhone 5 screen and the 4.8" display of the GS3 is like the 24" color TV in my parents' living room and the 45" HDTV in mine.
Is a larger screen better with every app and in every situation? Naw. The user interfaces of phone apps include two kinds of views: list views and content views. I spent days doing side-by-side comparisons in all kinds of apps. The iPhone 5 rarely displays significantly fewer list items than the GS3.
But content views are a different story. The larger screen almost always offers a superior experience.
The Galaxy S III's screen has roughly the same pixel density as the iPhone 5 (they're both greater than 300 ppi). When I'm reading a book, I can see more of the page, and the wider content margins are more comfortable. I get to see more of a map without having to zoom or scroll. I can see more of the email message, and more of the article in my newsreader. A movie or video is large enough that I feel as though I'm seeing all of the rich HD detail I was meant to see. When I'm reading comics, I don't need to keep twisting the screen to read panels that have different orientations.
The screen of the iPhone 5 sometimes makes me feel like I'm reading a grocery receipt, not a book. And I never used to read from my phone in bed. Now, if my (still quite beloved) iPad is downstairs and the Galaxy S III is on the nightstand, I'll spend an hour reading from the Samsung rather than risk cold feet.
It's clear. I find that the Samsung's larger screen is always at least as good as the iPhone's and it's usually better.
But at what price? The GS3 is indeed slightly larger than the iPhone 5. That'll be a huge, huge problem for you if you like to go from bar to bar trying to win sucker bets in which the guy with the largest phone has to buy the next round. Otherwise, when is this marginally-larger size an issue?
Oh, all right. The iPhone 5 is narrower, and unlike the SG3, my thumb can span its entire keyboard without any stretching or shuffling.
A win for the iPhone 5? Not to me. The iPhone is still too tall for me to easily operate with one hand, because an app's top row of controls is usually just out of reach. And Android's superior keyboard designs, plus the fact that the GS3's keyboard is wider and less cramped, more than makes up for the thumb stretch.
Even if it didn't, one-handed operation isn't the defining element of my mobile computing experience. I've always been a mystified about why Apple seems to place so much importance on that one idea, particularly when it conflicts with so many other, equally-good ideas...like putting more content on the screen without sacrificing readability.
When somebody argues that "It's not really more information...it's just the same content, scaled up to fit" I wonder if they've spent much time with a variety of Android devices. That's categorically not what I've encountered with about dozen different Android phones of various sizes in the past year, in test after test after test.
People whom I know, respect, and even consider to be friends have dismissed large phone screens as a cheap marketing gimmick that targets gullible consumers in the showroom, and which doesn't offer any practical benefits.
Yikes. That's so incorrect, so far out of whack with reality as I experience it every day with the Samsung Galaxy S III, and with other flagship Android phones, that I can't even mount an argument against it. I can't think of anything to say other than "Nope. Wrong."
