Back in October of 2012, I wrote about how smartphone screen had steadily grown with the current king being the Samsung Galaxy S III with a 4.8-in, 1,280 × 720 display (the best-selling smartphone during third quarter of 2012). However, the big news out of the Consumer Electronics Show recently held in Las Vegas was that with the success of the Samsung Galaxy Note II, the debut of the largest smartphone yet, Huawei’s 6.1-inch Ascend Mate. Dubbed a “phablet”, it is the latest entry in what has a unique phenomenon: smartphones with screens so large that they are approaching the size of the 7-inch mini-tablets.
Having played with the Galaxy Note II, I can’t imagine holding a paperback book (the best analogy I can think of) up to my ear to hold a conversation. However, for the past 
number of years, a smartphone has not been about making phone calls. Smartphones are now about consuming data. The problem is, if you think of mobile BI (business intelligence) and the types of BI dashboards available to business people on their tablets, it is impossible to view them on the 3.5/4-inch iPhones and 4-inch Android phones from a year ago such as my Droid 3.
My issue with the phablets such as the Note II is that they are not “pocketable”. The sweet spot for size seems to be the 5-inch phones such as the new HTC Droid DNA (my next choice once my contract is up) with its 1080p Super LCD 2 display. The 5-inch phones are still pocketable while having a large enough screen to view most business data. As an Android developer, you usually have a collection of the most popular devices to test on and right now, I think the three essentials are a 5-inch phone, a mini such as the Galaxy Nexus 7 and a full 10-inch tablet.
