Companies continue to produce smaller and thinner tech, even though many of us are perfectly fine with the size of our current devices. Ultimately, though, we're all better off due to this ongoing drive to make tech as small as possible.
How so? I hear you—many of us would love to see a larger battery crammed inside the existing chassis. So let's dive into why we're better off thanks to companies continuously shaving off another few millimeters each year.
Smaller Tech Requires Less Stuff
This may seem obvious, but it's worth emphasizing right from the beginning that our stuff is made of other stuff. A device that's thinner can be built using less aluminum, less plastic, or less glass. The difference may not seem like much per device, but when you're producing millions of identical units, those savings add up, not merely in terms of cutting costs, but in terms of impact on the environment we live in.
That Includes Less Energy
A laptop doesn't require as much power as a desktop PC, even when plugged in. A tablet doesn't need as much energy as a laptop, and a phone doesn't need as much power as a tablet. As our gadgets get smaller, so do the chips inside them, which need to be able to function off increasingly small batteries.
This lower energy usage has tangible benefits, from lower electric bills to the ability to work for longer from a portable power station during an outage. This year, we had three outages in a span of two weeks , so that's a scenario I know firsthand. And on that note, smaller portable power stations are some of my favorites. I love smaller portable phone power banks as well.
Bertel King / How-To Geek
Smaller gadgets also come with lower shipping costs. More units can fit onto each plane or into a shipping container on a cargo ship. That means fewer trips are necessary to get a device into the hands of everyone who wants one, which is no small thing considering how much pollution comes from air travel and ships.
We Get New Device Types and Form-Factors
I'm writing these words from a Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 . I'm astonished daily how much power is packed into this book-style foldable phone that has replaced a laptop as my primary (and only) PC . A device like this would not be feasible if regular phones were still as thick as the original Nexus model from Google, which was 11.5mm thick. That's only a hair thinner than my phone's 12.1mm when closed. It's quite a bit thicker than the newer Galaxy Z Fold 7, whose depth when closed is only 8.9mm!
Likewise, while the new iPhone Air's thinness may grab the headlines, it's the physical design of the unit that's more impressive. Nearly everything is crammed into the bulge at the top alongside the camera, with the rest of the phone's internal space largely reserved for the battery.
This miniaturization is necessary for Apple to build the future devices it has planned, and the story is similar elsewhere. We owe the existence of everything from smart swatches to consumer drones to the ability of computer chips to fit more power into smaller spaces.
Tech Takes Up Less Space in Your Home
Those of us with a passion for tech tend to accumulate quite a bit of gadgets. Whether you live in a small apartment or a multi-story single family home, space can be at a premium. A Nintendo Switch takes up less space in a home than a PlayStation 5. A Steam Deck takes up less space than a custom-built gaming PC. The former can slide into a drawer or carrying case while the latter occupies an entire desk and, often, the space underneath.
Just compare the size of the docked Steam Deck below to all the stuff around it.
Goran Damnjanovic / How-To Geek
Smaller Gadgets Are Better to Take With You
Portable devices live and die by how portable they are. PC gaming handhelds, for example, are arguably too big for their own good . A device like the Lenovo Legion Go is large enough that many don't want to go any further than from their couch to the bedroom.
A phone like the iPhone Air feels lighter in a pocket or purse than an iPhone Pro Max. That matters a great deal for a device that goes with you to the gym or on camping trips.
A More Comfortable Handheld Experience
Weight matters whether we're holding a phone, a dedicated camera, or a gaming handheld. I'm able to easily hold my foldable phone and write on its screen with my stylus for hours at a time. I can't say the same about a tablet or a 2-in-1 laptop. With my phone, I can comfortably work from any comfy chair or just a towel in the grass.
Bertel King / How-To Geek
The flexibility and freedom this grants me has made me pay ever more attention to the size, shape, and weight of a device. I don't want to be tethered back down to a desk or stain my neck having to stare down at a device that's so heavy it has to rest in my lap.
Tiny Tech Makes for Better Big Tech
Those of you reading these words from a desktop rig—I see you, and I hear you. No one's saying you need to give up your giant space-consuming, energy-guzzling beast of a PC. You built it lovingly with carefully picked out parts, and you do life-affirming things with it. Yet you, too, have still benefited from this drive towards smaller tech. That 2TB NVME drive holds more games and many more hours of video while using far less space than a spinning hard disk or even a standard SSD.
Corbin Davenport / How-To Geek
That ultrawide monitor likely weighs less than an old CRT . You may have a tiny USB drive plugged into the back for syncing files that once had to reside on a much larger external drive. There's also a chance your desktop tower is wirelessly paired to a slim Bluetooth keyboard and a relatively slick mouse.
Smaller tech benefits us all in big ways—from the portable tech we carry every day, to the tech that lives tethered to our desks. Smaller tech is able to put out more power in less space. In fact, when it comes to computing, the drive to make tech smaller, and the ability to make tech more powerful, are one and the same.
