Eight years ago my namesake, partner and perhaps friend with the same surname, Javier Pastor, published an article in this house titled ‘We don’t need a thinner iPhone’. I was going to say this when Apple hasn’t even installed the jack connector yet: Why did we want such thin phones instead of maintaining, perhaps increasing, thickness and thus gaining autonomy?

It’s been almost ten years. Although the autonomy of most mobile phones is more satisfactory, there is still room for improvement, especially for heavy users or at least for situations where using the battery very lightly provides peace of mind.

And here we are again.

mm and mAh

The smartphone has matured for years and increasingly needs time to make major breakthroughs beyond iterations such as the emergence of folding devices. These are the thicknesses of each of the models announced by various manufacturers so far this year.

The ones you see further to the left, below 7mm, are foldable and are shown here in open mode. It is between 7.5 and 9 mm that the majority of existing terminals are concentrated.and devices from every range get there.

By the way, if you are wondering, dear reader, the thinnest model in this chart is the foldable and 4.3 mm thick Honor V Purse model. Leaving foldables aside, the Huawei Nova 11 is the thinnest phone in bar format at 6.9 mm.

Last year, perhaps the most recent survey of this kind, Android Authority asked users if they still cared about the thickness of their phones. More than 5,000 people responded. These were the four options and their vote percentages:

Perhaps the last option, voted by almost half of the respondents, has some nuances: one thing is that the thickness does not matter, the other is that it is acceptable to have that funny Duracell mobile phone look. 10,000mAh. Now, in some ways this level of preference certainly makes sense. At least if we are sure that we will have more autonomy in return.

Smartphones have gone through several phases: First, they grew in area, then they reduced their thickness, having more space to distribute their internal components, which in many cases were miniaturized. Then came the increase in the following components: Camera lenses, facial recognition modules, NFC chips or wireless charging coils were added to phones that did not exist before.

Is it time to get rid of some of the complexities and assume that there is nothing wrong with releasing a 9 or 9.5mm thick phone in exchange for the user gaining hours of battery life, which is probably the main problem we face today? At least models beyond or complementing the top end of the range wouldn’t be bad either. But let’s see who will call the cat.

Featured image | Xataka.

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