Flashback: the LG BL40 New Chocolate put a cinema in your pocket with its 4" 21:9 display

How wide is too wide? That’s a silly question, LG thought in 2009 when it released the LG BL40 New Chocolate. With a 4” display of cinematic 21:9 aspect ratio, this phone was unique for its time – at that point a typical phone had a 4:3 or 3:2 display, while media-focused devices went 16:9 to match the emerging HDTV standards. But 21:9 was unheard of. To some extent aspect ratio dictates what kind of content is viewed. The earliest TVs had squarish ratios because they mostly showed newscasters – portrait images, basically. The growing number of TVs at home pushed cinemas to go wider to...