Almost four years ago, we ran a poll on the subject of battery life versus thinness. Four years ago, Android's battery life was even worse than it is now, batteries were smaller, and LTE radios could be a death sentence on newer handsets. Today... battery life still isn't that good on most phones, but it's not as bad as it once was, and all the while the phones are getting thinner and lighter and sleeker.

There are phones with massive batteries out there (Huawei Ascend Mate 2/7, DROID MAXX, etc.), but batteries have generally only sought to keep pace with screen size over the years instead of actually growing enough to appreciably extend the amount of time we spend off the charger.

The argument, therefore, is that we shouldn't be making new phones thinner, rather, we should be making them thicker so we can stuff bigger batteries in them so that they last longer. After all, thinness is largely an aesthetic concern. Or is it?

There is little denying that a phone with a smaller battery still has one real advantage over a phone with a larger lithium ion capacity, and that advantage is weight. Gravity has little concern for things like Gorilla Glass, and the heavier a phone is, the more likely it will achieve a dangerous momentum (read: screen breakage) should it fall from your hand, a table, or any other sort of precipice. A lighter phone dropped from the same height as a heavier one is, generally, going to be less likely to break, though there are obviously tons of other variables at play (construction materials, angle of impact, type of glass, etc).

A lighter and thinner phone is also generally easier to hold and, if you do choose to put a case on it, won't be as bulky or thick. Again, though, this all comes down to specific examples, and there are as many to choose from as there are phones on the market.

But the benefits of a larger battery are just so singularly overwhelming: the freedom to do with your phone whatever you choose without having to take into account whether or not the battery is going to survive. A big battery is really, really nice to have.

So, with that in mind: let's take a vote. Battery life, or thinness?