Twenty-somethings today don't remember a time before the smartphone era when there was a race for phones to be smaller.
Cell phones were initially huge. Actually, first they existed as "car phones". They were heavy boxes the size of a big bottle of laundry detergent, bearing a handset with a number pad. They operated on AMPS (analog mobile phone service). After that cell phones then became smaller and more portable, but still huge, resembling household cordless phones. There was a race in the 1990's and early 2000's for smaller and smaller phones. Having a smaller phone than the next person was a status symbol.
Smartphones have disrupted that trend, because small touch screens suck. The trend has not entirely been disrupted: smartphones cannot be too large. Then they turn into tablets. And, thin matters, still.
I think we just really started to see the value of high resolution internet browsing and media consumption in your pocket.
If the cell carriers did something crazy like not letting us browse the internet through their network (or charged us $1k+), phones would likely small and forgettable.
Thin doesn't matter after a certain depth. Same applies to laptops, see macbook pro outcries. Phones need some depth to avoid slipping out of our hands.
Phones started to get too small in the 2000s. I can't remember which phones in particular but some definitely had buttons too small for most people's hands.
Cell phones were initially huge. Actually, first they existed as "car phones". They were heavy boxes the size of a big bottle of laundry detergent, bearing a handset with a number pad. They operated on AMPS (analog mobile phone service). After that cell phones then became smaller and more portable, but still huge, resembling household cordless phones. There was a race in the 1990's and early 2000's for smaller and smaller phones. Having a smaller phone than the next person was a status symbol.
Smartphones have disrupted that trend, because small touch screens suck. The trend has not entirely been disrupted: smartphones cannot be too large. Then they turn into tablets. And, thin matters, still.