[Nexus 6P General] cb474:
I'm not disagreeing with you that there aren't trade offs, not matter which way the design goes. Yes, some people may find tall phones too big for their pockets, for the reason you describe. I'm just saying different people have different preferences. And there are choices. All manufacturers aren't going in the direction of thin, over all else. Perhaps a manufacturer wouldn't go backward in thinness as you describe (although actually, Apple just did--slightly--to accomodate their force touch screens), but there are manufacturers who are not going forward in thinness they way others are--which from the point of view of options for end users more or less amounts to the same thing.

Your arguments come across like you think thin is just objectively a bad idea period and has gone far beyond the utility that anyone could find in it. To me the difference, in terms of thickness, between the 6P or iPhone 6+ and the Nexus 6, LG G4, Moto X is a real difference and I prefer the thinner phone. I don't like those thick curved backs--but I understand that a lot of people think they're great. I think it's just different for different people, many people like today's thin phones, and for those who don't like it there are choices.

Of course, if one is a Nexus fan and it doesn't conform to one's design preferences, then sure, that's disappointing. But hey, lots of us where disappointed by the Nexus 6 design choices and even other Nexus phones before that. It can't be everything to everyone.

That aside, show me that 5.5" or 5.7" phone that's has big as the Nexus 6. Yes, many people thought the curved back made the phone feel better to hold than people might imagine, given it's size. But I can't think of a review that did not comment on how huge the phone was. "Massive," "whale," that was the kind of language used. It was invariably the first thing reviews commented on, if not the focus of the title of the review itself. The Nexus 6 may have had an exceptionally good screen to body ratio for the time, but due to the 6" screen it was still huge compared even to other phablets. Reviewers and users brought up the curved back as something that mitigated the way the phone felt to hold, but I can't think of many people using that or the screen-to-body ratio as a way to deny that it was in fact a huge phone. And there is a point, for most people, at which sheer size matters, regardless of what size screen was crammed into that size.

It does also seem a bit odd that you keep defending the size of the Nexus 6, as an accomplishment of sorts, but railing against the Nexus 6P, given that the Nexus 6 is just as tall as the 6P and larger in every other dimension.

I think both the Nexus 6 and the 6P in their own ways are design accomplishments. They have just made different trade offs, given the current size of electronics and batteries. Those trade off will make some people happy and dissatisfy others.

There is also an obvious elephant in the room here, which is screen size. The reason phones are increasingly large, in height and width, is because screens have gotten larger and larger. My Nexus 4 will fit entirely within the screen area of the 6P and is just engulfed by the screen on the Nexus 6; an iPhone 5 is significantly smaller than just the screen on the iPhone 6+. The people I know who don't like large phones could not possibly be bothered to quibble about bezels one way or the other. If size is an issue, they just don't get phablets. I know many Apple users who hate even the iPhone 6 and wish there was still a new iPhone the size of the 5. For them the fact that the 153.2 mm tall Note 5 is 6 mm shorter than the 159.3 mm tall 6P is an irrelvant difference between equally enormous phones--when the iPhone 6 at 138.1 mm is 20 mm shorter and the iPhone 5 at 123.8 is more than 30 mm shorter (those are real differences in size). I can only imagine that people in the 5X forums are complaining that it is so much bigger than the Nexus 5 and not a real replacement for it. A lot of people think 4.7" screens are the ideal size for phones. So I think for people who really have issues with phones sticking out of their jeans and such, they simply are not getting phablets of any sort. The fact is, phones are getting bigger and bigger to accomodate large screens, not because manufacturers are choosing thin designs over thicker ones.