While screen sizes have increased since the game boy era, device sizes have not if you’re comparing to phones which are the true successor to that kind of casual gaming.
The average mobile phone is smaller than most generations of game boy.
Additionally, unless you’re purposefully buying phablets or only used the mini/micro/sp, device sizes on phones hasn’t been increasing significantly over the last decade. In most cases, it’s the bezels getting smaller and screen sizes growing to be a larger part of the same device size.
Here are a smattering of measurements in millimetres. By volume, modern phones are way smaller. The biggest change is they’re longer in one dimension, but still very comparable. .
Original Gameboy 148mm (height) x 90mm (width) x 32mm (depth)
Gameboy advance 81mm x 140mm x23mm
Pixel 9 152.8 x 72 x 8.5 mm
Gameboy mini 101.5 x 52.5 x 15.5 mm
Gameboy advance SP 82x23x84
Gameboy Micro 101 x 50 x 17.2
iPhone 16 147.6 × 71.6 × 7.8 mm
Taking the pixel vs the advance for volume, the Pixel is only 35% of the GBA, or if you take by area, ignoring depth, Pixel is 96% of the size of the GBA.
If your pockets could fit a GBA, they certainly can fit a standard mobile phone.
The average mobile phone is smaller than most generations of game boy.
Additionally, unless you’re purposefully buying phablets or only used the mini/micro/sp, device sizes on phones hasn’t been increasing significantly over the last decade. In most cases, it’s the bezels getting smaller and screen sizes growing to be a larger part of the same device size.
Here are a smattering of measurements in millimetres. By volume, modern phones are way smaller. The biggest change is they’re longer in one dimension, but still very comparable. .
Original Gameboy 148mm (height) x 90mm (width) x 32mm (depth)
Gameboy advance 81mm x 140mm x23mm
Pixel 9 152.8 x 72 x 8.5 mm
Gameboy mini 101.5 x 52.5 x 15.5 mm
Gameboy advance SP 82x23x84
Gameboy Micro 101 x 50 x 17.2
iPhone 16 147.6 × 71.6 × 7.8 mm
Taking the pixel vs the advance for volume, the Pixel is only 35% of the GBA, or if you take by area, ignoring depth, Pixel is 96% of the size of the GBA.
If your pockets could fit a GBA, they certainly can fit a standard mobile phone.