The Case Against Thin

Impossibly thin. Slim and sexy. Ultra-sleek. Words that are used all too often these days to describe new devices, with the all too obvious connection being made between how thin a device is, and how that is a testament to futuristic design and visual appeal. Thin is in, this is the future, and anything thinner is better.

It’s come to a point that when predicting a company’s next product, it’s almost too easy to guess that it’ll be thinner…and maybe slightly worse off for it too. Let’s take the example of the Apple MacBook Pro, which saw its first design refresh in over four years recently. The new Apple flagship laptop saw a thinning down in practically every respect, with the 13-inch variant standing in at 17 per cent thinner and 23 per cent less volume than the already sleek previous generation. In the pursuit of thinness, Apple had to sacrifice a number of important things, from the depth or travel of the keyboard keys to the traditional ports that professional users had come to rely on for their creative workflows. One particularly worrying aspect was battery life, which till now had been the hallmark of Apple laptops. The new laptops saw a drop in battery life, both in initial reviews and as more folks started using them in their daily lives, and it isn’t a stretch to attribute the lower capacity batteries that were, according to one report by Bloomberg, a direct consequence of the all-too-thin design.

Designing for thinness can have bigger repercussions, as Samsung can vouch for with the Note 7. An all-new wafer-thin design coupled with rushed production decisions contributed in no small part to the Note 7’s woes. Ostensibly, Samsung has now pinned the blame on flawed batteries, but battery scientists, as per a New York Times report, opine that “aggressive design decisions made problems more likely”, with the decision to opt for an “exceptionally thin separator in its battery” compounding the issue. Think about it — you take a high capacity battery, cram it into an ever-reducing enclosure, and there’s really no tolerance for the slightest bit of battery expansion through use. Would a marginally thicker Note 7, with new features like waterproofing and iris-scanning for added security, have sold any less? Unlikely, and Samsung would have likely saved itself the billions of dollars they lost in the recall.

And then there are large screen TVs, a product category whose marketing is heavily obsessed with thinness. I understand the aesthetic appeal of a reasonably slim TV to fit well into your living room decor, but have you heard of LG’s latest 65-inch Signature W7 OLED TV from CES? It’s 2.59mm thick — for perspective, a Samsung S7 Edge is 7.7mm thick! I’m confused — why do these brands care so much about the one dimension you can’t see when you’re watching TV?

To be fair, the malaise exists across brands, from super-slim laptops that opt for low-power, average performing chips, fewer ports and smaller batteries, to smartphones that are slim to the point of either being too sharp or too slippery to hold comfortably in the hand. How thin is too thin, and where will the madness stop?

There are the rare exceptions, such as HP’s Spectre X360 laptop launched at CES, which actually went thicker, from 15.9mm to 17.8mm, to accommodate a 23 per cent larger battery. Granted, it was meant to offset the increased power consumption from the new 4K display, but a marginally thicker laptop lasting well over twelve hours sure beats an anorexic sub-nine-hour battery life in my books.