Zoolander, Ben Stiller’s 2001 comedy, holds up. Except maybe for one running gag: The movie’s dim-witted male models use tiny cell phones that are about the size of a box of matches. It’s still funny, even though it’s a dated notion about the direction of technology. Here’s a clip, because why not.
In the years since Zoolander and Hansel faced off (“It’s that damn Hansel—he’s so hot right now”) phones have gotten bigger, not smaller. The trend lines started to reverse in 2004 with the silver Motorola Razr, which represented the zenith of thin, telephonic-style accessories that could be waved around a nightclub like jewelry. Around that same time, Research in Motion came out with the BlackBerry 7210, an unwieldy blue beast equipped with a keyboard and a color screen that tagged its owners either as investment bankers or hopeless e-mail addicts.
The Razr’s popularity seemed like the bigger cultural milestone at the time, but it was actually the BlackBerry that was our (temporary) future. For the first time, mobile devices were practical for something other than making voice calls, so they needed to be bulkier, even at the cost of a ridiculous bulge in our pockets.
Comedians back then still didn’t quite get that the ground had shifted. Here’s Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update in 2005, parodying Steve Jobs and the gradual shrinking of the iPod into fictional models such as the Micro, Pequeno, and Invisa. “We can barely see it,” complains Tina Fey. “Yes it’s exciting,” says Fred Armisen, hamming it up as Jobs.
That was about a decade ago, and the shift to bigger, bulkier gadgets is now unavoidable. The iPhone 5 had a 17 percent larger display than the iPhone 4, and on Tuesday, Apple will announce two new iPhone models with an even more dramatic jump in screen size. Soon we’ll also get a bigger iPad. And Apple (AAPL) is, of course, late to the jumbo gadget party. Samsung Electronics (005930:KS) has been supersizing its phones for years and this week announced the Galaxy Note 4, with a 5.7-inch display, and the Galaxy Note Edge, with a 5.6-inch curved display. Pretty soon we’ll need shoulder harnesses just to carry these things around.
Industrial designers say there’s a simple reason devices are getting bigger. “It’s a classic conflict of aesthetics vs. function,” says Don Norman, director of the Design Lab at the University of California at San Diego. “Small phones were elegant. Remember, they were a reaction against the big old clunky bricks we started with. But then phones evolved. We don’t talk on them any longer. We use these devices for maps, restaurant reviews, and for texting our friends and listening to music. So the screen becomes very important, and small screens are miserable to use.”
Norman points out that this kind of change may have been inevitable as phones became vehicles of self-expression. “This is how fashion works,” he says. “Whatever was fashionable a year or two ago, almost by definition is out of fashion today.”
Designers are working hard to make these slabs of glass and plastic look appealing. Still, they must find it depressing. Consumers have sacrificed elegance for information and aesthetics for practicality. The new magical smartphones do everything well, except their original purpose. “I crack up when I see people with six-inch phones talking on them,” says Robert Brunner, a founder and partner at Ammunition, a San Francisco design firm. “It looks like they are holding a big plate up to their heads.”
For Brunner, phone fashion recalls another seminal comedy …
