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Poll: 61 percent of CNET readers want bigger iPhone screen

With the rise of Android smartphones, which tend to have bigger screens than iPhones, CNET asked readers whether they felt Apple should make the next iPhone 5's screen larger. 60 percent said Apple should.

David Carnoy Executive Editor / Reviews

Executive Editor David Carnoy has been a leading member of CNET's Reviews team since 2000. He covers the gamut of gadgets and is a notable reviewer of mobile accessories and portable audio products, including headphones and speakers. He's also an e-reader and e-publishing expert as well as the author of the novels Knife Music, The Big Exit and Lucidity. All the titles are available as Kindle, iBooks, Nook e-books and audiobooks.

Expertise Mobile accessories and portable audio, including headphones, earbuds and speakers Credentials

Maggie Award for Best Regularly Featured Web Column/Consumer

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David Carnoy

Jan. 26, 2011 11:56 a.m. PT

2 min read

The proliferation of Android smartphones may be influencing views on screen size in the marketplace. Eric Franklin/CNET

Maybe bigger is better.

Just a few days ago I wrote an article entitled, "Should the iPhone 5 get a larger screen?" As part of the piece, I included a poll asking readers to cast a vote for their preference. Of the nearly 5,000 respondents, the results (as of the time of this writing) were as follows:

61 percent thought Apple should make the screen larger
30 percent thought the iPhone's screen was just right
2 percent would like to see it get smaller
8 percent didn't care

Compare that with a very similar poll we did back in July of last year and you'll notice a 12-percent increase in the number of people in favor of a larger iPhone screen. Around 4,500 people voted in the last poll.

Now, we don't pretend that our polls are scientific, but our sample is fairly random and readers can vote only once (yes, you can vote multiple times from different IP addresses, but you can't sit at home clicking the voting button over and over). While we haven't yet tried to measure the percentage of iPhone backers versus Android backers who comes to the site, we do know that both groups are pretty vocal.

But if we're making a snap judgment, we could argue that the proliferation of Android smartphones, which usually have larger screens than the iPhone, has influenced how people feel about the design of smartphones. More people now seem to like the idea of a roomier screen--or are at least are more accepting of it now. In the past, many people felt some of these phones were simply too bulky and sucked up too much battery life.

Of course, don't expect Apple to make any changes to the screen size of its next iPhone. It will most likely stick with what it's got. But in the future, as smartphones continue to slim down, Apple may have to reckon with the fact that going bigger seems to be becoming more of a selling point, and that one day, it just might be better.

Just don't tell that to Steve Jobs. When asked what consumer and market research Apple had done to guide the development of the iPad, Jobs famously said, "None. It isn't the consumers' job to know what they want."

Related: A tale of four smartphone screens (Battle Royale 3)