Penn State researcher, professor and co-director of Media Effects Laboratory, S. Shyam Sundar, noted that emotional connections can cause individuals to purchase bigger smartphones even if that purchase is not practical.
So why is Bigger Better?
The trend in a bigger screen is better has been rising among entertainment devices in general over the past few years especially with TV’s and computer Screen Monitors.
“There are basically two different reasons that ‘bigger is better’ for screen size: 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,“ said Sundar. People may find bigger screens more emotionally satisfying because they are using smartphones for entertainment, as well as for communication purposes.
Positive effects in useability has been reported in previous studies regarding larger screen size in T.V.’s and computer monitor screens. Since the inception of the cell phone, users went from a very large and bulky “cellular” phone to super small ones. Now, research finds that as cell phones are used more often for entertainment and can multi-task, as they could not before, users want a bigger screen.
“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,“ said Sundar. “Finding the ideal size is something that I’m sure industry engineers and designers are working to find.“
The question is, what size is the biggest size society will accept. At some point phone makers will have to stop increasing the size as it will make the mobile phones inconvenient to carry such as the earliest cellular phones.
Sundar and Ki Joon Kim, adjunct professor at Sungkyunkwan University in Korea, reported these findings in the online version of the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking.