Bigger phones aren’t necessarily better

As a person of a certain age, I remember the first mobile phones back in the 1980s being the size of a brick. Then phones got smaller and smaller until they could easily be carried in a shirt pocket. This trend has been reversed in recent years with the advent of smartphones, which have become extremely large. But I don’t want a big phone. I want one that will fit comfortably in my trouser pocket.

My existing iphone 8 strikes an ideal balance between size and functionality, but I fear that when I’m forced to replace it I won’t be able to find one of a similar size. Surely there’s a market for smaller phones? Bigger isn’t necessarily better. Geoffrey Breakell

CA SAYS

Apple doesn’t agree. The heading ‘Big and bigger’ sits proudly at the top of its page for the iphone 14 (www.snipca.com/43730). Its screen is 6.1 inches, much larger than Geoffrey’s iphone 8, which feels positively tiny at 4.7 inches. Apple does offer one model that’s just as small – the iphone SE (www.snipca. com/43733, pictured left), as well as the iphone 13 Mini, which is 5.4 inches (www. snipca.com/43732).

There are no comparable Android phones, though he could consider the Asus Zenfone 9 (www.snipca. com/43099), which we gave a Buy It! award to in Issue 640 (page 25). However, at 5.9 inches it’s hardly petite.

Put us in the picture

To answer your picture quiz in Issue 643 (page 49), I think you must’ve typed ‘grumpy badger in a purple jumper eating a banana’. Do I win a Computeractive mug? Josephine Rees

CA SAYS

Yes, a mug will be heading to Josephine soon. In case you missed Issue 643, we asked you to guess what we typed into the AI image generator DALL·E 2 (www.snipca.com/43589) to produce the image left. If anyone wants to set their own picture challenge, type something imaginative, email us the result, and we’ll publish it in our next issue.