Last week LG uploaded a video teaser of one of the devices that they’ll be announcing later this month at Mobile World Congress, the Optimus Vu. While they didn’t exactly show the thing off, they did unveil the Vu’s key selling point: It’s going to rock a 5 inch screen with a 4:3 aspect ratio, i.e. the same aspect ratio as the iPad. Now it’s bad enough that the Samsung Galaxy Note polarized the tech community, because shipping a smartphone with a 5.3 inch screen seems just a tad bit insane, but the Vu takes things to whole different level. Because of the 4:3 aspect ratio it’s actually wider than the Galaxy Note. How exactly are you going to hold it your hands … that remains to be seen. What makes the Note useful is that it has a stylus, so there’s an instinctive understanding that it’s a two handed device. Meanwhile the Vu looks like it doesn’t use a stylus, which poses some serious problems.
The bigger question here is what market do devices like the Optimus Vu and the Galaxy Note serve? LG and Samsung bill these things as being devices that fit between a tablet and a smartphone. Wasn’t the iPad supposed to be the thing that fit between a laptop and a smartphone? Three years later we need to buy yet another device to stare at for hours on end?
This year we’ll be paying close attention to how Apple responds to the 7 inch Amazon Kindle Fire. Will they launch a larger iPod touch or a smaller iPad? We’ll also see how much larger the iPhone 5 is compared to previous generation iPhones. Rumors say it’s 4 inches, which is still a lot smaller than the 4.3 and 4.7 inch beasts that people can’t seem to stop lusting after.
What size do you think is good enough for most people?
[Via: Unwired View]