For years, smartphone makers have been locked in a battle to give us bigger screens. The problem is that our pockets haven’t grown with them — assuming your clothes came with pockets in the first place.

There’s no denying the appeal of a big screen. We stream movies on our phones, play games, edit photos, answer emails, doomscroll social media and occasionally even make a phone call.

But somewhere along the way, the smartphone stopped being particularly small.

Samsung has just provided an interesting Australian data point on that dilemma. Research commissioned by the company found 84% of Australians consider size, portability and the ability to fit a smartphone into a pocket, purse or wallet among the most important factors when choosing a phone.

That’s worth paying attention to.

It’s also worth being precise about what it says. It doesn’t mean 84% of Australians want smaller phones. Samsung’s research groups size and portability together with the ability to fit the device into something.

Still, with a nationally representative sample of 1,017 Australians surveyed by Pureprofile, it’s a decent indication that how easily we can carry our phones remains important.

We want big screens, not necessarily big phones

And there’s the contradiction.

A larger display makes almost everything we do on a smartphone better. The trade-off is carrying that display around for the other 23 hours of the day.

We’ve largely accepted that compromise. Phones got bigger, pockets got tighter, and protruding camera bumps made already large devices even less pocket-friendly.

Perhaps the question shouldn’t be whether we want smaller screens.

Maybe we just want smaller phones.

That’s where Samsung’s latest foldables become more interesting than another annual procession of faster processors, better cameras and increasingly enthusiastic applications of the letters AI.

Samsung describes its new Galaxy Z Fold8 as having a “passport-sized” form factor. Closed, the emphasis is on portability; open it up and you have the larger display that makes browsing, gaming, streaming and consuming content more appealing in the first place.

The Galaxy Z Flip8 attacks the same problem from the opposite direction. It’s a conventional-looking smartphone when open, but folds down when you’re finished with it. At 180g and 6.1mm thick when unfolded, Samsung says it’s also its thinnest and lightest Flip yet.

Neither approach is really about giving us a smaller screen.

It’s about making a large screen easier to live with.

Maybe that’s the real foldable argument

Foldables have spent years looking for their killer argument.

Novelty isn’t enough. Neither is simply demonstrating that, yes, a screen really can bend in half.

But portability might be a more convincing answer.

Samsung obviously has a vested interest in making that case. It commissioned the research, and it happens to have a new generation of foldable phones to sell.

That doesn’t make the underlying question any less interesting.

We’ve spent years judging smartphones partly by how much screen manufacturers can squeeze into them. Perhaps the next battle isn’t about who can give us the biggest display.

It’s about who can give us that big display without making us carry an even bigger phone.