New poll finds most people prefer iOS 7 icons to those in iOS 6

ios 7 vs ios 6 icons

One of the best words I’ve heard used to describe the sweeping changes in iOS 7 is ‘polarizing.’ For the past two weeks, my Twitter timeline has been seemingly split between people who love the new UI and people who absolutely abhor it.

Most of the controversy seems to be focused around the new stock app icons, which have been completely redesigned. But for all of the grumbling I’ve heard about them, a new poll shows  most folks actually prefer the new icons to the old ones…

TechCrunch points to a poll by Polar, a mobile tool built by Input Factory to help gauge user and community sentiment, regarding the new icons in iOS 7. Nearly 50,000 people chimed in, and the consensus seems to be that most like them.

ios 7 vs ios 6 icons 2

In fact, the data reveals that not only do people tend to prefer the iOS 7 versions of the icons overall, but they strongly prefer them in most cases. For example, 80% of those who voted preferred the phone icon in iOS 7 over the iOS 6 version.

Likewise, the Messages app icon was preferred by a staggering 84%. Surprisingly, iOS 6 icons only won out in just a few cases, including the Reminders, Safari, Game Center, Camera and Calculator apps. And the margins were much smaller.

Of course, this little study only involves 50,000 people and [obviously] doesn’t speak for everyone, but it is a decent-sized sample. And for what it’s worth, we created our own poll on the changes made in iOS 7, and saw fairly similar results.

Apple’s mobile OS caters to over 500 million devices, and has remained largely unchanged for 6 years. So it’s not surprising iOS 7 is being met with some initial controversy. It’ll be interesting, though, to see what people think 6 months from now.

Thoughts?