Everyone loves their smartphone, and apparently everyone wants their smartphone to keep getting bigger, too. The Samsung Galaxy S4 has arrived bigger than its predecessor and the HTC One also clocks in at 4.7 inches or so. But as phones get larger, fashion designers are the ones dealing with the consequences.
In fact, the growth between the original Samsung Galaxy and the Galaxy S4 is part of the reason why clothing designers are working on making pants pockets bigger. The Galaxy S4 would've been too big for a traditional pocket.
"We recently increased the size of our 'coin pocket,' which is the pocket-within-the-pocket on the wearer's right, from 3x3 to 4x4 to accommodate today's larger phones," Doug Conklyn, senior vice president of global design for Dockers, said to Fox News.
Over at Banana Republic, they even stuff devices like the HTC One into pockets to make sure what they're creating will feature practical design.
"We don't have fit sessions without having a smartphone on hand or an iPhone to make sure that the pockets are all designed to be perfectly functional," Simon Kneen, creative director and executive vice president of design for Banana Republic, said.
But while clothing designs have been able to deal with the increases so far, the phablet craze is simply going to make it harder going forward. The Galaxy Note phones are even larger than the Galaxy S4, while the Chinese company Huawei is making a device that's nearly 6.5 inches long. Even the iPhone 6 is rumored to be entering phablet territory with a 5-inch screen.
This trend isn't going away, either, as more and more people use their phones as consumption devices instead of simply to make calls with. People like bigger screens for video watching, game playing, and Internet surfing, and companies are going to indulge them until they say enough's enough.
How users deal with these bigger phones partly depends on the kind of options that fashion designers give them. At some point, stuffing these giant rectangles into your pants is just silly, which is why some people recommend sliding your phone into the jacket pocket.
Of course, you're not always walking around with a jacket on, or a bag or purse. Whatever you do in those cases, according to Esquire's Nick Sullivan, stay away from belt clips.
"Once it's true they were the show-off badge of the early adopter of the PDA. But rarely are these people also interested in style."