The direction of smartphone growth is not just bigger.
The general direction is towards bigger, but all the factors, including cost come into play.
The current reigning ‘king” is the Samsung Galaxy S4. It has a big, bright screen, modern software, an excellent camera, and LTE data connection.
The HTC One is a close second in the Android community. I don’t know enough about the current iPhones to compare them  in this discussion fairly.
There is a new Samsung Mega with a 6.3 inch display, feeling out the gap between phones and 7″ tablets. It has a little cheaper 720p display and not “super amolid” and second-from-the-top processor. But it’s perfect for butter-fingered people like me, who need fatter keys for texting and can use a little more real estate for watching a show or two occassionally over the air. Most reports are that it feels a little rediculous as a phone and doesn’t fit most shirt or pants pockets. Some reports say it will fit in a pant pocket but come out if you sit down.That makes it a purse phone or a metro-bag phone, which is probably the kiss of death until pants pockets evolve (as they will over time).
It sells for $450 unlocked on Amazon compared to around $650 for the S4. Maybe next year we’ll get the 1080p, super amolid display with the 8 core processor….  This model is just putting its toe in the water to “test the water”. It does not have lte data connection, again the kiss of death. My guess is that when the longed-for Galaxy Note 3 comes out, it will have all these top of the line features, including the big, bright, shart screen.
The Note 2 is still held in high reguard (by people like me)for its bigger screen, modern software and fast processor and LTE data connection.

The S4 has a ruggedized version with slightly different parts. It has a tougher back shell, a few minor missing software features and a slightly weaker camera. But it will easily survive being dropped into the toilet and even has an underwater mode for the camera. (Don’t think of taking this into the ocean or even the pool.) But many people would consider the ruggedness a fair tradeoff for the ability to stop a movie when you look away.

I’m using the Nexus 4, whose big claim to fame is top-of-the-line features (except LTE) at half the price. Since I have good WI-FI coverage at home and other places and T-Mobile has decent non-LTE coverage in the Portland area, I’m not suffering. I LOVE that it has the very latest Android 4.3. I may hack the radio and do a software installation of a so-called “hybrid” radio to turn on the LTE features that are physically in this phone but were never sent through the approval process. (It’s summer, enjoy the weather for now and save that activity for when daylight savings time goes off.) Most of the world doesn’t have good data coverage that is non-LTE, so the lack of that feature is the kiss of death if you’re trying to compete in the best-of-best category.
All this brings up the “were are we going” question. Since I’m fat-fingered and I wear glasses I am waiting for continued improvements in the voice interface. I would like a phone to be developed for blind people, i.e.., no screen. Not that I want “no screen’ but I want a completely voice-activated interface for when you’re driving or you don’t want to type a text message. We’re 90% there now, but I want it easier to have my Blue Tooth hands-free device know to just read me the text message someone sent while I am driving.
I suspect many of these things will be in Android 5. I feel it is definitely going in that direction. But do you realize what a shake-up it would be to the market if cell phones went back to being phones instead of media devices? A lot of people hav big plans to sell you all kinds of books and movies and TV series.

Whenever I ponder a voice interface I think about the noise polution in our daily environment. I doubt bars will ever quiet down. It is the nature of alcohol that they sell more alcohol when it’s a noisey clutter of sounds. Even food courts love the higher noise levels. Even “soothing sounds” are loud and intended to drown-out or mask sound clutter in the urban environment. By the way, do you know how Fabreese works? It makes your nose not work. So if you spray it on your dog’s bed, you dog is temporarily “blind” in its nose. He depends on his nose and you wipe it out. For similar reasons I prefer fresh air to breath and quiet neighbors. I cant mentally adjust to the noise, air and (horrible) water of places like LA.

Believe it or not, I’ve talked about quiet spaces before, just as I’ve talked about dimly-lit places for viewing your photos in a McDonalds. I was (and continue to be ) ahead of my time in these regards because it goes against the trend to sell you music in Starbucks and have a bright and cheery McDonalds.

 But you can’t dictate a text in a noisey room or listen to one either. Gadgets that fit on your ear and mouth are slowly becoming more common. You could even make a claim for the Google glasses that have an always-on screen (like a Borg) and have something for the ear and mouth.

I have a jabra hands-free device that clips to the visor of the car. You may recall that I used it to navigate on Kauai by pairing it to my android phone and going into “navigate” mode. Lt would give me step-by-step turning instructions.

Well, the next Holy Grailis to make hands-free outgoing calls using the ability of the phone to understand voice commands like “call home”, where “homr” is in the phone’s address book.

Basicly all you do is

hold down the big bar (like a space bar) on the Jabra for a couple seconds and the phone will tell you through the Jabra to  say “call”, followed by the address book name or a number. After a confirming OK from you the call dials. You end the call by  touching the bar.

For skype users you will have to tell skype to only make skype calls from the skype app, or the phone will hang, waiting for you to touch the skype or regular phonecall buttons that are presented to you by the phone if you have skype active. Sounds complicated but it’s not.

A lot has happened since Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich.
Half of the smart phones out there use Gingerbread, Android 2.3-2.37. It works but it is clumsy.
With 4.1, Jelly Bean , we got a much smoother and more responsive interface and a much more flexible system of placing icons on the home screen.
With 4.11 and 4.2, maps got a lot better and would allow you to download local maps, so you can navigate even if you don’t have reception (as long as you calculate your route while you have reception).
Google Now got a lot better from 4.1 – on. It answers complicated spoken questions. It knows my work routine and tells me the expected traffic delays and calculated ETA when I go to work and come home. It notices when I leave the home or office wi-fi signal and generates a traffic message.
4.2 has “folders” on your home screens so you can put all your social apps in one and messaging apps in another and tools (wi-fi analyzer, calculator, speed test) in another.
4.3, just released, has a smoother, “more buttery”, response to touch. It has an improved bluetooth and an “always-on” wi-fi can be selected to know where you are at all times (you can turn this off, of course). It has better battery life and the ability to limit what apps children can download. It will be the last Jelly Bean. Key Lime Pie will come out at year end.
In a word the industry has really had some shakeups. Many of the early Gingerbread phones can’t be updated to Jelly Bean due to technical issues (like not enough RAM)and they are still on an old 2-year upgrade cycle. They can’t keep up with the little updates because they want to keep a fancy “shell” on top of plain Android and it takes time to re-write the shell. For this reason the pure Android phones, the Nexus phones, get the upgrades first, for me, I waited less than a week.

It took a few days but I finally got the download of Android 4.3. I got tired of waiting and used a trick (posted on line) to get the download server to send me the OTA (Over The Air) upgrade (via wi-fi).

I’ll keep you posted.

The screen is more responsive and hand gestures move the screen more reliably and smoothly, like butter, even an improvement over the first “butter” update (4.1?).
Location has changed a bit. I’ll keep you posted.

Android 4.3 was announced a few minutes ago (7/24/13). It will go out to nexus devices today. There is a new Nexus 7 tablet announced minutes ago.

Game of Thrones doesn’t start its next season until spring. For now I’m getting by with Continuum. Its my  second favorite. Dome is a bust. Suis  Its my third favorite. Grimm starts on Oct 25th. It’s fourth if it doesn’t get too sappy. I don’t have Netflix, to watch House of Cards. Maybe I can get by with Royal Pains if it  doesn’t get too sappy.  I have not developed an interest in Defiance.

I suppose you’re wondering why I even bother to mention a small upgrade to Android. Well, it’s just like when Microsoft introduces a service pack to an operating system. Windows 95 became much better with service pack 1 and file names could be longer and with spaces and wasn’t so dependent on 16-bit structure. The same happened with W98 and W2000 and XP. Well, you get the idea….

Jelly Bean (Android 4.1) was a big improvement over Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0).

I’ve been using 4.22 for a long time and the notifications and integration with  Maps are really neat. I get told in the morning and afternoon how the road conditions and traffic are for the expected commute (the one Google knows I make every day). You could get Douglas to talk about this easily, too. Note 2 users and Galaxy S4 users are operating with a similar version level.

Reports are that there is about a 10% speed improvement with 4.3 on the Nexus 4 (which is already plenty fast). And there is an option to leave the wireless system scanning at all times so the phone always knows where it is, using WI-FI location, even if you want to set the phone to only use your data plan to send/receive data. This takes advantage of the software in some apps that gather your location. This constant-scanning is turned off by default, but you can set it on if you want to use that feature for some game or social app. Another feature of 4.3 is an upgrade to Blu-tooth to 4.0. The Nexus 4 will be (is) the first to get this upgrade, which uses less power (better battery life) and has connectivity improvements, I think.

So, what’s going on? My guess is that the phone manufacturers are complaining that they need 6 months to get out each upgrade and that Android is too far ahead of them. Many have only offered one upgrade to their customers since 4.0 and they don’t want to work on 5.0 (Key Lime Pie) until the next big phone upgrade.

I talked about this before, they have been on a two-year upgrade cycle and would LOVE to have the next big thing match their marketing schedule. But Android has a team working on the present system and the next and someone to tell them to speed up or slow down to match various “political” developments.

LTE on the NEXUS 4 works fine and now T-Mobile has LTE. The NEXUS 4 originally worked (with only minor fiddling) with LTE in the original version 4.11 around Christmas last year. With version 4.22 a different radio (think of it as a radio driver) no longer worked with LTE. So the hackers installed either radio 33 or 27 and did a little fiddling and it works fine on the T-Mobile LTE network, which is now even in Portland. Some people claim a download speed locally of 30 Mbits (faster than most WI-FI !).

I’ll know next Wednesday (July 25th) what is really in the 4.3 over-the-air upgrade. In this case the “OTA” upgrade will come by WI-FI. Although I still hope (against hope) for LTE coverage with the upgrade, there is nothing (nota, zip) that suggests it will be there. But I have a “hunch” that it will be easy to make a minor change (hack) to implement it. That’s my HOPE, anyway…. In either case, I’ll wait and see how fast it becomes available before I give up the latest operating system (4.3) for this faster form of data coverage (LTE).