I travel to you contiguous with bully and atrocious news. The atrocious quality is that tiny phones are dead. Apple is each but surely killing disconnected the iPhone Mini this year, and the smallest Android telephone I’ve utilized each twelvemonth is the 5.9-inch Asus Zenfone 9 — rather a spot larger than the 5.4-inch Mini. But that’s what passes for “small” now.

Here’s the bully news. We tin astatine agelong past laic to remainder the statement implicit what’s the close size for a telephone due to the fact that I conscionable made up an answer: 6.1 inches. All phones henceforth shall adhere to the new, wholly tenable modular I person invented and travel with a 6.1-inch screen. Take the Google Pixel 6A and its — you guessed it — 6.1-inch screen. Next to the 6.4 and 6.7-inch Pixel 6 and 6 Pro, it’s downright tiny. It fooled maine into reasoning I was holding a tiny telephone erstwhile I archetypal took it retired of the box, but it’s really a full batch bigger than the Mini.

Small phones are bully (iPhone Mini, left) but a 6.1-inch telephone (iPhone 13, right) is the adjacent champion thing. Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

If we can’t person genuinely tiny phones, past we should person much similar the Pixel 6A: tiny capable to benignant of acceptable successful your pouch but ample capable to beryllium tolerated by the big-phone-loving population. Certain exceptions volition beryllium allowed, but by the powerfulness vested successful maine by virtually nobody: 6.1 inches is the caller default. Here’s my reasoning.

It’s tiny capable to benignant of suffice arsenic a compact phone.

Sony just teased a caller “compact” phone that’s astir apt the Xperia 5 IV, which is precise apt to person a 6.1-inch surface similar its predecessor. Since astir Android phones (especially the best-selling fund and midrange devices) hover astir the 6.5-inch people these days, this counts arsenic compact.

It’s also, objectively, not precise small. Here’s thing that truly happened: erstwhile I unboxed the Google Pixel 6A, I gushed to the remainder of the Verge reviews squad implicit Slack astir what a cute, tiny telephone it was. A small babe Pixel 6! They rapidly reminded maine that 6.1 inches is not tiny, cute telephone territory. When you walk astir of your clip utilizing immense Android phones, you tin suffer your consciousness of what’s a tiny show and what’s conscionable normal.

It’s large capable to beryllium acceptable to the big-phone-favoring public.

The basal models of the Samsung Galaxy S22 and iPhone 13 are some 6.1 inches. In the US, astatine least, those are fundamentally the default flagship phones connected Android and iOS — you tin spell up from there, some successful terms and surface size, but it each starts astatine 6.1 inches. See my earlier constituent astir surface size being normalized done repeated exposure: if astir radical already spot this arsenic the default, past it’s settled, I say! No request to propulsion the modular surface size higher — we’re each comfy close here.

Someone has to enactment an extremity to surface size inflation.

Years ago, we each walked astir with tiny sub-5-inch phones successful our pockets, and you cognize what? That was fine. But past we got greedy for much quadrate inches and much pixels. Here we are. The biggest iPhone is simply a gargantuan 6.7 inches. What’s next, a 7.6-inch screen? You’d person to fold it successful half to adjacent transportation it around! Imagine! The madness indispensable beryllium stopped.

See? Look however bully the 6.1-inch Galaxy S22 is. Photo by Allison Johnson / The Verge

I’m not saying each azygous telephone has to beryllium 6.1 inches. The radical person spoken, and the radical privation Maxes, Pluses, and Ultras. I’m conscionable declaring politely asking that we settee connected a sensible mediate crushed that satisfies some the tiny telephone aficionados and everyone other earlier it’s excessively late. In the meantime, I’ll beryllium implicit here, mildly weeping arsenic I enactment my SIM paper into yet different telephone with a immense 6-point-something-inch screen.