Phones Sure Are Gigantic These Days

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A while back Dave Roberts was on Twitter complaining that he wanted a new cell phone, but they were all too damn big. I naively suggested a Moto X. I’ve got one and it’s reasonably sized.

But it turns out that it was reasonably sized—back when I got it. Since then it’s been super-sized. So too bad for Dave.

I forgot about all this until yesterday, when I ambled into my local T-Mobile store for an entirely different reason, but ended up looking at phones. The battery on mine is getting iffy, and as near as I can tell there’s no way to fix this except to toss the phone in the trash and buy a new one.1 But every single phone in the store was way bigger than my puny 4.7″ model. Aside from the iPhones, there was literally not a single phone anywhere close to the size of mine.

Is this really where the market is? There’s not even a small niche of users who want a fairly premium phone in a smallish form factor? No women with small hands who want a phone that’s more comfortable to hold? No men who don’t want a gargantuan phone in their pocket all the time? There’s no market for this at all?

Weird. And what’s weirder is that it’s mostly the height of the phones that’s changed. The width of a phone with a 5″ screen isn’t all that different from mine, but they’re mostly a good inch taller. Why? Are there any phone engineers or product managers out there who can educate us about this?

1No, I’m not really willing to do this.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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