A tiny phone, or giant pen?

The trend to make cell phones smaller is admirable, in some cases. I don’t know anyone that says, “Boy, I really miss my 1.75 lbs Motorola DynaTAC 8000X, it was like holding a brick to my head!” Yet, sometimes things can be taken too far. Take a look at one of the latest concept designs for a giant pen. I mean, a small phone. At first glance you might think, “wow that’s cool,” or you might think, “wow, that’s dorky.” I think, “Why!?”

Of course, small phones are handy. What else is handy? Contacts, calendar, email, the Internet, wifi access, speaker phone, SMS, a notepad application. Now, I can understand someone trying to “slim down” their pocket junk. Plus, I see the upside to having a phone small enough to pass for a regular pen. But this won’t pass!

Hold up a regular piece of printer paper. The short edge, the top and bottom of the page, is 8.5″ long. This “small phone” is longer than that! Can you imagine keeping an 8.7″ pen in your pocket? I guarantee you they’re not going to create a belt clip for this. Besides, who clips a pen to their belt? Plus, where are you going to find the novelty, over-sized pocket protector to go with it?

I think phones are plenty small, and plenty of people regularly buy larger phones for the phone’s features. Sure, there are people out there who don’t want those features, they just want a phone. But, they are not the kind of people that would buy a phone pen.