So, I look at this and it reminds me of a trivial experiment I did in a hotel room, which is sort of the opposite of what these people are doing.

Simply, I took my phone and held it up in front of me, a comfortable distance from my face, and covered the hotel TV with it.

At that point, it's easy to realize that the phone screen isn't necessarily too small, at least for "TV" watching, because, net, the screens are the "same size" in terms of consumed field of view.

In the end it was the same if you could watch it comfortably (which is a different problem).