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How big is too big for a mobile phone?

On Thursday, Samsung is expected to unveil new models of its Galaxy smartphones.

Samsung is widely expected to unveil some of its latest mobile gadgets on Thursday, including the Galaxy Note 5 and S6 Edge Plus smartphones. As usually happens with these sorts of product launches, the hints and rumors have been dribbling out for days. Signs are the trend toward bigger and bigger screens isn’t over.

One hint came from Samsung itself in a recent blog post called “7 Reasons Why Bigger Is Better.”

So just how big can phones get, before they can no longer be called handheld devices?

“There’s only so much bigger I feel like you can get at this point,” says Ryan Reith, an analyst with market research firm IDC, who says some phone screens in Asia are now 7 inches, measured diagonally. That’s twice the size of the screen on the original iPhone.

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