In 2011 Samsung unveiled a smartphone so big it looked as if it must have been a joke, a mistake or a turn toward conceptual art.

With a screen measuring 5.3 inches diagonally, the device, the Galaxy Note, was met with instant and slightly unhinged criticism.

A writer for the Boy Genius Report, an industry blog, called the Note “the most useless phone I’ve ever used,” adding, “You will look stupid talking on it, people will laugh at you, and you’ll be unhappy if you buy it.”

The critics were wrong.

Samsung went on to sell millions of the huge Note; and its successors, the even larger Note 2 and Note 3, became some of the best-selling smartphones of the last few years. The Note also spawned dozens of copycats, making for an entire new category: phablets, or smartphones almost big enough to be considered tablets.