The downside of HD resolution screens on phones and tablets

What is with the current obsession with making devices screen sizes HD resolution with a 16:9 aspect ratio? I know that the whole point of this is so that widescreen video fits exactly on the screen and can be displayed without wasted space at the top and bottom, but it compromises everything else and I find it very irritating.

On a device that is primarily used for viewing widescreen video then a 16:9 aspect ratio is an essential feature, but mobile phones and tablets are not used just for watching videos. They are used for running apps. In fact, I would guess that watching videos is actually just a small part of the total usage of a smartphone or tablet.

The new iPhone 5 (there are many other examples) has an elongated screen that is now 16:9, which makes it very tall and narrow. Hold it sideways and it is great for watching videos, but many apps are worse off and a tall narrow screen is not as good as a squarer 4:3 aspect ratio, which is more like a book, magazine or newspaper.

In portrait mode the the iPhone 5 is just 640 pixels wide and there just isn't enough width to display some apps. Those that open a panel at the side with menu options are particularly bad. The reason they open a panel is because there isn't the width to display the menu options permanently, so it's a fudge. Hold the iPhone in landscape mode and the panel can be displayed permanently, but then the screen height is just 640 pixels and this isn't enough space to see much of the app's content. It's like looking at the app's content through a letterbox.

I find it very frustrating using apps with HD 16:9 screen ratios. The Google Nexus 7 tablet is just 720 pixels wide and in portrait mode it's OK. Turn it to landscape and the screen is very wide and not very tall. It's 720 pixels tall, which might seem better than the iPhone 5, but the device uses software buttons, so at the bottom of the screen is a strip with the home and back buttons. The app actually gets maybe 680 pixels or less. This strip across the bottom reserved for the system buttons makes the vertical resolution much smaller and so apps are even more compromised. Apps are even more letterboxed on the Google Nexus 7 because of the reserved space.

As someone who uses apps more than watching widescreen video, I want a 4:3 screen ratio so there is more space for apps to display their content. This is less than perfect for people that watch video and there isn't a screen ratio that suits everyone.

Consider this though, if the iPhone 5 or Google Nexus 7 screens were wider in portrait mode with 4:3 ratios, videos would have black bars top and bottom in landscape mode, but they would have the same physical dimensions. The length and width of the video image would be exactly the same as it is now. It's really just the psychological effect of seeing black bars that people don't like.