A few years ago, the Dell Streak made people question the device's screen size. There were pictures all over the internet mocking its very existence, with people holding it up to the side of their head and laughing, "It's too big!" And yet, that was then, and this is now. The market has demanded bigger smartphones, and out of it we've managed to birth some weird name along with those demands. Ever since phablet took over, we haven't been able to look back since.

Now, technically speaking, as far as I'm concerned there is a difference between a phablet and a smartphone with a giant display. Samsung's Galaxy Note phablet lineup, while others have tried to "copy" them with certain features, definitively falls into the phablet category. The majority, if not all of the other smartphones with huge screens, measuring up to 6 inches (!), are just big phones.

Too big, but big phones nonetheless.

There is a lot of talk recently about the phasing out of small tablets. Devices with screens measuring between seven and 10 inches. They're apparently being phased out due to the large smartphones that are sweeping across our industry, and that makes a lot of sense. I mean, if someone out there owned a Galaxy Mega 6.3 and an iPad mini? Well, there's not much of a difference between a device with a 6.3-inch display, and another with a 7.9-inch screen. So, I could see why someone might not think the (small) tablet is all that necessary.

And the talk has picked up with the continued rumors of Apple's upcoming 5.5-inch iPhone 6/Air. With a display of that size, many people seem to think that Apple's iPad mini lineup could suffer quite a bit. Not that people will ditch iPads altogether, but they'll simply opt for the larger iPad Air lineup.

I've tried so many tablets over the years, before I finally found a reason to keep one. My daughters will use a tablet of any size, I've found, but they really love the size of the iPad mini. And so do I. I liked the iPad Air when I tried it out, but ultimately I've just always preferred the iPad mini. And I don't think that's going to stop being the case, either.

And that's not because I'm just going to stick with smaller devices, because apparently that's not even a possibility if I want a high-end device. If Apple is indeed gearing up to launch a 4.7-inch iPhone, then I'm going to have to hope that the size increase stops there, and the 5.5-inch iPhone never becomes the "smallest option." Because I want to keep my small tablet, and having a phone that's close in size just doesn't sound like a good plan to me.

Have you given up a small tablet in favor of a larger smartphone? Let me know!