At the start of the week we posted a poll asking which if GizChina readers wanted larger 6.44-inch phablets. Well the results are in and we can confirm that smaller screen are still more popular by a long stretch!
After visiting a few Chinese phone manufacturers this week and seeing some of them preferring to launch larger phablet style phones we thought we would put it to the GizChina community to see if this is what you really want.
The reason for this poll was not to hate on large screen devices or push opinions, but to point out to Chinese phone makers that what we really want to see from them are great quality, bug free products. We don’t want them to start producing bigger and bigger phones if they haven’t created their best 5-inch (for example) phone. Also, I agree that it isn’t really the screen size that is the issues here but the overall phone size, this is also a problem as most of the 6.44-inch phablets had very large bezels making them larger still.
Gizchina News of the week
We have left the poll running so feel free to make your votes now, but it is pretty clear from the current results that 6.44-inch phables are not as popular as companies are hoping for. Surprisingly, and worryingly for Oppo, 5.9-inch is the least popular!
It is no surprise that 5-inch phones are in the number one spot and smaller than 5-inch comes in second! Come on Chinese phone makers more devices like the Xiaomi Mi2a, Moto X and HTC One Mini are wanted!
[poll id=”3″]We’ll be posting further polls in the future so keep posted.
And do you think people visiting Gizchina are very representative of the population? When doing a survey, it is the first thing to make sure about before to claim this kind of conclusion…
Nope, but I think GizChina readers represent the customers which Chinese phone makers are aiming to target.
If they REALLY care for international customers they MUST start selling directly from their website like Oppo does discarding the cruel middleman looting the $s. Come on Xiaomi, we want your xiaomiStyle.com soon 🙂
I flike 4.5″ screens as they are small enough for a shirt pocket. Faea sell direct, their F1 is competent, but I would buy a JiaYu G4 if I could get one direct from them
I disagree. Even with express shipping, nobody wants to wait 4-5 days to get their phone in hand. The industry standard for all the American carriers is overnight shipping.
If they can produce a nice bug free, reliable and stable product, merchants in the US will serve the phones to ppl. The competition will drive down the price. They just need to wholesale to small sellers directly. All the bootlegs out here getting pushed in the US market are gonna destroy their reputation with the customers. (who don’t know how to tell if a Chinese brand is authentic or not in most instances)
They need to do something quick, especially Xiaomi. By looking at the prices of all the Xiaomi phones on ebay I’m guessing that the vast majority of them are fake right now. Amazon is worse. I’m going to get signed up as an authorized reseller ASAP on the brands that I personally try myself and research feedback on.
If you the phones don’t have google play and English already on em, that forces the merchant to open the sealed package, and install em. Then you’re selling an open box product, not brand new. I’m guessing that only about 10% of the consumer market is willing to root their phone themselves. The rooting is a way to add value to the device too.
Hopefully the smart brands are watching Gizchina, we are the tip of the spear on this whole movement.
I may wait for up to even a MONTH for shipping a phone from China as i’m not in rush ( live in Europe – Poland). but the phone must be worth buying it. I wait for a nice well performed and efficient DUAL SIM as in Europe you find nothing interesting now in dual sim.
From china i may buy smartphone for up to 450$ as i have no warranty for it (sending phone back to china is not a warranty let’s say)
Gotta disagree on this. This is not statically correct.
One exemple come to my mind: just go to Korea walk the streets and you’d be surprised to see how many Korean women 35/40 ish have huuuuge phone and I’m pretty sure that those are not Gizchina readers…There is a huge demand for this kind of sized phone there.
Yes that is true, but not sure many Korean women read GizChina, or would buy a Chinese phone.
How can you be so sure about the fact that they wouldn’t buy chinese phone? How many people were willing to buy Korean and/or Taiwanese phone 10 years ago?
I live within a Korean community in China
Statistically speaking the demand for 5″ phone vs >5″ is 4:1 for one of the most popular phone manufacturer in the world.
@ Mike:
Dutch viewers appear to have the same conclusion.
Most people prefer a 4,3″ screen
4,3″ on the first place
4,7″ Second
5″ Third
@mike I’d estimate it’s sooner the case that gizchina visitors are more tolerant of large screen size than most people than the other way around… for most “normal” people, 5 inch is already way too big.
poll options for a few 400 to make the detail noticeable for the human eye at comfortable viewing distances.
a 6.44 inch “phone” is just a tablet in my book.
Agree, I literally laughed when I saw Xperia Z Ultra in real life, people would have to be either very drunk or very big to call that thing a phone.
oops; paragraph 2 should be:
poll options for a few 400 to make the detail noticeable for the human eye at comfortable viewing distances.
shouldn’t use “greater than” etc characters… again:
poll options for a few under 5″ sizes would have been interesting here, imo. I like 4.3 inch screens for 720p resolution. Any bigger is only good to bring ppi down from over 400 to make the detail noticeable for the human eye at comfortable viewing distances.
Faith in humanity restored.
haha you’re the screen Nazi dude. jk
You are very passionate about what you believe in.
Haha. You’re right about the second part mate. 😉
Here’s a home run for a smart company that nobody thought of yet. Bezel-less 4.5in screen phone that’s under 7mm thick. They could make some really tiny phones if they wanted to. I’m looking at this old Samsung Exibit 2, imagining how tiny it would be if it was bezel-less and a few mm thinner. Make the battery endurance really high too.
Now that bezel technology has matured enough, anything under a 5 incher has the potential to be a really compact device. They are totally missing out on the opportunity there.
I think someone should start making 2 or 3 sizes of each device when they release it. Maybe 4,5,6 inch variants simultaneously. Then some people might end up buying 2 or 3 phones off you instead of just 1.
“I think someone should start making 2 or 3 sizes of each device when they release it. Maybe 4,5,6 inch variants simultaneously. Then some people might end up buying 2 or 3 phones off you instead of just 1.”
This is EXACTLY what these companies (offering 5.5+ inch phones) have been exploiting. There’s no guarantee that a customer will stick to one single company. If company A does make 4 and 6 inch phones, company B will not take long and come up with a 5 incher which will make “ends meet.”
I have a 5.7 inch zopo 950+ and a motorola razr HD 4.7inch, i think 5.7 is to much, i like the phones up to 5 inch, that i can use it with one hand. And another think is the resolution, sometimes the chinese mobiles use the same resolution for a 5.7 inch and a 5 inch, so the 5 inch have better pixel quality.
Andy,
This week you are probably going to hold the 5.9 Oppo N1 in you hands. My bet is that you’ll fall in love with this phone and you will surely find it suitable for your needs. The only thing that might hold you from really wanting the N1 might be its retail price – but this is not directly related to the size of the phone.
I would love to get your comment after trying the N1.
I wont as I have been sick. I’m not saying phones shouldn’t have a larger display, I’m saying that Chinese phone makers should slow down a little and improve what they already have. Oppo obviously dont need to be counted as they already have awesome hardware and great designs. Companies like UMi, iOcean, GooPhone, Firefly, Newman etc need to know that that building poor quality large screen phones with huge bezels isn’t what we want. If they want to fit in a big screen they are going to have to learn how to design a great phone, and they can only do this if they take a step back rather than rushing forward trying to make the biggest of the big.
Examples of phone companies who will continue to thrive are JiaYu, Zopo, Neo, THL, Xiaomi. None of these companies have a phablet in the works yet, but all have stunning 5-inchers which will launch soon. I guess early next year they will also have stunning 5.5 and 5.9-inch phones too, as they have taken their time.
+1 to Andi. BTW Andi, THL and Zopo do have huge phablets, the Zopo Captain S and THL W300 respectively. Also, if I’m not wrong, JiaYu had plans to release a 5.7 incher called JiaYu G6 which had an stainless steel back or something. Did you see that during your visit?
I have seen photos of the G6, but they didn’t have it on hand. THL and Zopo have 6-inch phablets, on sale but they have nothing larger in the works. In fact the new THL could be a game changer 😉
If I remember right, the G6 was shown in a Charbax video.
Well,
I recently changed my Note II for a Oppo Find 5, one of the primary reasons are the overall Size. I thought I`ll be fine with my note but after just 6 month I accepted that it is just to big. Used the stylus once or twice so I need a Phone not a tablet.
The only positive ting on the most 5+ devices is that they are come with a much bigger battery. And for users like me with not much screen time it is great to have a phone running 2-3 full days without worries.
Now I’m back to 5″ and have to charge daily again 🙁
I think it’s so typical that all these Chinese phone makers once again think more = more. They don’t understand the concept of a MOBILE PHONE. I’ve put a lot of thought into this and right now, the ideal size for a phone is between 4″ and 4.5″. While Chinese phone makers only care about specifications they make phones with a useless HD screen and multiple cores that drain you battery while in fact they should focus on making a more energy efficient and stable phone. As much as I like to believe that Android is best, most companies really fail to meet the demands of customers. It’s a battle about getting the highest resolutions or most cored that has gone way too far. For me the perfect phone would be: 4.5″ 720p (honestly, 1024p is bullshit and completely unnecessary, only thing it does is drain your battery and ruin your phone’s performance) narrow bezel with 3000 mAh battery and a dual core 2.0 ghz processor with a vanilla android optimised for maximum performance.
I’d like to also see a phone like that, but maybe just a little bigger such as say 5″
But most importantly 720p with 2gig of ram and a quadcore processor.
Currently in France but I have been living in Korea for 5 years and 60% of my Korean friends have these huge phones and I don’t see any of them going for smaller displays…The trend is cleary to bigger displays. Anyway this is not the issue here. This article claims “It’s official 5-inch displays or smaller are more popular!” which should be “It’s official 5-inch displays or smaller are more popular among Gizchina readers”.
So you’re arguing semantic that no one really care about nor will it impact anything? Okay.
Indeed I am. Thanks for your contribution though. Much appreciated!
I prefer 4.0 – 4.5 inch display. Easy to hold and to put on pocket. So, far i like xiaomi mi2s and willing to buy it soon. Maybe. 🙂
Years ago, I have seen maintainance workers walking round with phones as big as a brick. Phones started getting smaller and easy to carry around. I still use a not-a-smart Nokia sometimes. Just 84 gms and the battery lasts for over a week.
As the phones got smarter and smarter and people started watching vidoes and playing games, they got bigger and heavier.
The Lenovo A820 that I bought recently has a 4.5″ display, measures 135 x 68.2 x 9.9 mm and weighs 152 gms with 2000 mAh battery.
Its big and heavy enough as it is.
So I voted for ‘Smaller’.
Big displays? Yeah, I like them and dream about a Nokia size phone with 10+ inch 3D Holographic Display.
Most unreliable poll one can ever have and where’s why:
1.) People prefer smaller screens but the 6.4″ is more popular than the 5.9″ one?
2.) What’s the demographic of your sample group? Phablet sales are equalling the combined sales of Tablets and Laptops. Needless to say, they are very popular. Chinese manufactures are making large phones because it is what is popular in the most unsaturated smartphone market i.e. not Europe, North America, places where people are fearful of irrational none issues like phone fitting in their pockets and people laughing them because of the size of their phones(cultural immaturity and ignorance respectively). Markets like Korea, Japan and China are what matters and where tech trends usually start. Chinese OEMs will continue on this route because it will be profitable.
3.) There is an element of bias for these people who are “stuck” with < 5" displays. I bet if everyone who voted were asked to trade in their small display phone for a Samsung Galaxy Note 3 they would do it in a heart beat.
4.) How many of your sample group have actually experienced using one of these large devices? How will you know for certain that you don't like a certain car without at least test driving.
Don’t mad, I’m with you