Have you heard the good news? It is rumored -- not confirmed, sadly, but rumored -- that the Samsung Galaxy S III smartphone will be only seven millimeters thick! That's a big relief, because the Samsung Galaxy S II (pictured above) was a whopping 8.5 millimeters thick--and who wants to be seen walking around talking to a brick?
Of course, there's a downside to a 7-millimeter-thick phone: It will have less battery life than a thicker phone could have had. And it will be harder to hold onto than a thicker phone, so you'll be more likely to drop it and watch in horror as it plunges to its death. But in between the time it leaves your hand and the time it hits the concrete, it will look really attractive. Same goes for when you're on the road and the battery is dead: It's an awesome kind of dead.
I've waited until now to unload this rant about the gadget thinness fettish because I wanted to let a decent interval pass after the death of the man I blame for it: Steve Jobs.
Remember when Jobs first unveiled the Macbook Air? I do, because I had long been a fan of the small, lightweight computers that had until then been available only on the Windows platform. Jobs brought the machine onstage in a manila envelope, because the thing he wanted to wow the audience with was its thinness.