Do you remember a few years back when the original Motorola RAZR was released? I do. It was my first “cool” mobile phone. In fact, it was more than cool. It astounded me the first time I picked it up, how anyone could get a phone to be this thin. Of course, the RAZR was a terrible phone in today’s standards, in fact, it was a terrible phone in any standards.

The UI was painful to look at and the phone did close to nothing well, besides make phone calls. Did that matter? No, it did not. From then on, for a good year or two, all the mobile manufacturers played the “Who can make a thinner phone” game? It got borderline ridiculous.

In fact, the RAZR was such a success from a branding perspective, that till today, Motorola embraces it with new phones that it continues to release.

Then came the next era in which hardware became close to irrelevant. That occurred with the introduction of the App Store, or some might say, even prior to that. Think about it, the first iPhone was large and bulky (in those days’ terms), it had no 3G, it had no video capabilities. The hardware, both internal and external were very limited and yet, that phone changed everything.

Welcome to the end of 2013, in which hardware contests are back, but instead of “Who can make the thinner phone”, we have replaced it with “Who can make the most insanely large screen on a phone without people laughing at you?” Ready to play? The Galaxy Note started it with a 5″ phone. Well, others before the Note did it, but I am starting in the modern era and ignoring older phones like the Nokia N810 and the Dell Streak.

The Note was a tremendous success. I am talking over 50 million devices sold. Then there was the Note 2, which again, proved there is a market for the P word, the Phablet. Except, many were and are still not convinced. “Isn’t it too big?” “You actually hold that thing up to your ear and talk on it?” “Do people laugh?” These are some of the questions I got when using the Note 2 as my primary mobile device.

But again, the market has spoken and people like very very large phones. So let’s look at the market. As usual, Samsung led the way with these gigantic phones. LG followed with their own products. Nokia even jumped on board and pushed the limits to see how far it can go. But there was one player, one big player missing in the game.

You see, there are a lot of trends in the mobile space that never take off. Of course, only few of them officially die out but the others just remain there with almost no adoption by the market. I am referring to technologies like NFC, wireless charging, and others. No one knows if these things will take off, they might, but they have not yet.

Historically speaking, a good indicator of whether something will take off in mobile is if Apple adopts it. It happened with touch screens, it happened with the whole app ecosystem exploding (Yes, there were apps before Apple, but there were also touch screens before the iPhone.), and many other examples.

Well, a new report from Bloomberg says that Apple is indeed jumping in the phablet game. We are talking about two new iPhones, one at 4.7 inches and the other at a whopping 5.5 inches. The report also states that Apple is embracing the whole curved screens insanity that we were just talking about.

So why would Apple do this? Well, let’s start with the question of why Apple hasn’t done it till now. The answer is because the iPhone was and remains the most overall comfortable experience out there. Phones that barely fit into a large hand, let alone a small or even average hand, are not comfortable and do not provide a good user experience.

There have been studies on the optimal size of a phone that enables you to reach all ends of the screen without having to shift your grip. Even the current 4 inch iPhone is pushing it but 5.5? Apple wasn’t going there. But they are now and that worries me.

Of course, Apple is feeling the pressure of the market slipping away but is this really the way to get it back? I am not sure it is, but one thing is for sure, the day a 5.5 inch iPhone is released is the day you can say goodbye to normal size phones for at least a few years.