Do you know why people prefer smartphones with bigger screens? It is to fulfill their emotional needs.
People may find bigger screens more emotionally satisfying because they are using smartphones for entertainment as well as for communication purposes, new research led by an Indian-origin scientist reveals.
“Our findings indicate that emotional reasons might influence people’s decision to buy smartphones with bigger screens even more than practical ones,” said S Shyam Sundar, a distinguished professor of communications and co-director of the media effects research laboratory at Pennsylvania State University.
“Bigger is better” for screen size basically has two reasons: utilitarian reasons and affective or emotional reasons.
“There are so many things on smartphones that we can use, but an even more powerful factor of the larger screen is its hedonic aspect – how attractive and pleasing it is to users,” Sundar said.
The screen size has increased the bandwidth of user interactions on smartphones, making it more than a talking-texting device.
According to Sundar: “With high-definition screens, people now can watch television and movies as well as multi-task – something that was not possible in earlier smartphone versions.”
During the study, researchers randomly assigned smartphones with two different screen sizes to 130 university students.
One of the phones had a 3.7-inch screen and the other had a 5.3-inch screen size.
Participants were asked to fill out a questionnaire on their experience using the smartphone.
“Large-screen TVs and monitors are known to have positive effects on user experience. Our study found that the same applies to the mobile context as well,” said Ki Joon Kim, adjunct professor at Sungkyunkwan University, Korea.
“We have not reached the point where the screen is too big yet, and I believe there may be some room for expansion of the screen size,” Sundar added.
