For about 100 years or so the handset was a lot heavier than todays smartphones and nobody thought anything of it. My grandmom had one of those old black bakelite jobs, it must have weighed at least 2 pounds and could be used as a means of self defense.
But no one was tapping on the screen and looking at it to interact with it …
I would personally argue that I’m unsure about the connection between weight and comfortableness and the tolerances. Would 200g be ok? I really don’t know.
However … making phone calls is not the main use case for smartphones. You just cannot design them with that in mind as something to optimise for. That’s non-sensical, weird, and a total non-sequitur. Your comparison makes zero sense in that regard. It just doesn’t even apply, so it’s not a valid argument in any way, shape or form.
It’s not the phone part you have to design around, it’s obviously all the other stuff, especially – really, really, especially – if your argument basically boils down to “Oh, but it’s fine for making phone calls!” I mean, yeah, you can easily argue making the situation better for phone calls in your design since they still play some role, but the argument you made just doesn’t fly at all. It makes no sense.
It makes no sense to you. But the world is a lot larger. If there is an interruption in data services most people wouldn't even notice. But when you can't make or receive calls that's major and in extreme cases will lead to loss of life. Apps are nice-to-have, phone calls are a must.
Good point. I got to thinking about a remote screen attachment, sort of the touchscreen version of a headset, then realized you just do that now by using an external battery pack and a smartphone with a decently long cable between them.
Seriously? I think we somehow survived the nineties, early '00s without such issues.
>* You certainly don't want your phone to be as heavy as a brick.*
It's been at least 5-10 years that we've been very far away from that situation...