[Nexus 6P General] cb474:
I agree that taller phones is the trade off these days for thinner phones, especially in the phablet category. It doesn't bother me that much, personally. One place for me where thinness really makes a difference is for carrying a phone in my pocket. I don't want bulky thick things in my pocket, bulging out. As phones get larger, thinness really helps keep them manageable for carrying around, at least in one's pocket. Also, I don't know, I'm not an Apple fan, but I really like how the iPhone 6 feels to hold and for the 6+ (which is the identical width and thickness as the 6P and only 1 mm shorter). I find that the thinness makes a big difference for managing it in one hand, for such a large phone. But that just me.

I don't think that's correct. The Note 5 is a bit thicker than the iPhone 6+ and 6P. And is in fact also shorter with smaller top and bottom bezels. Samsung has also stuck with plastic and glass, because it doesn't take as much space up as unibody aluminum, so they can keep the phone smaller. So they have done exactly what you're saying you prefer. Also the LG G4 has the curved back that makes it quite a bit thicker in the middle than the 6P and 6+ and this allows them to also have a smaller phone for the screen size. So they have in fact opted for thickness, over height--but used the curved back to mitigate this some. (Although to be fair the G4 also has a slightly smaller screen.) And the Moto X 2015 with the exact same size screen as the 6P is shorter and even 1 mm less wide, but much thicker in the middle also using a curved back, to make room for the battery and electronics. (Seriously, look at how much smaller overall the Moto X 2015 is than the 6P, with the same size screen, but trading off for this thickness: http://www.phonearena.com/phones/si...ola-Moto-X-Pure-Edition-2015/phones/9587,9694.)

So it doesn't seem to me that thinness above all else is dominating the design decisons in flagship phablets. There are choices.

I don't know about that. Most reviewers and users called the Nexus 6 things like a "whale" and talked a lot about how huge it was. Of course, that was because of the enormous 6" screen. And it may be true that it did a decent size keeping the footprint down for such a large screen (although again by trading off thickness at the middle of the curved back), but still it was a huge phone, some people felt the curved back helped to mitigate this, others (many others) felt like it was just unmanageable.

Again, as I note above in more than one post, plastic (and glass) can actually be thinner than aluminum and still be durable. It's one of the main ways that Samsung has managed to keep their phones smaller and relatively thin, even with large screens. Once you go to aluminum unibodys, the phone has to be thicker to be durable. And as Apple's "bendgate" demonstrated, aluminum unibody phones still aren't as durable as plastic ones, with proper internal frames (like Samsung does). It's a bit counterintuitive, since we tend to think of metal as a tougher material, but well, at lot of things aren't what they seem. So that's just another trade off. The desire for aluminum phones, for a premium feel, is actually one of the reasons they end up being larger in one dimension or another.