Anything The Wall Street Journal reports regarding Apple rumors is usually true, so we’re excited that their latest piece says that the sixth generation iPhone will have a screen that’s “at least” 4 inches diagonal. Considering that the iPhone will turn 5 years old next month, and for all those years it’s stayed at 3.5 inches, it’s about time that these guys gave us some more room to breathe. Consider this: HTC’s 2012 flagship has a 4.7 inch screen. Samsung’s flagship this year has a 4.8 inch screen. Even Nokia’s Lumia 900 has a 4.3 inch screen!
Now the question that will occupy everyone’s minds for the next few months is just how big the next screen will be? If it’s “at least” 4 inches, that could mean anything really. We’ve heard rumors in the past saying the next iPhone will have a screen that’s exactly 4 inches across, but that would be boring.
Let’s assume for a second that Apple is going to stop selling the 3GS this year. That would mean that the resolution of the iPhone 4 and 4S can become the new “low end”, and Apple can finally introduce a higher resolution display. Those Samsung and HTC devices we mentioned earlier, they push 1280 x 720 pixels, which makes the iPhone’s current 960 x 640 resolution screen look quaint. Apple normally doesn’t compete on specs, but they’ll probably want to at least match the 720p resolution of this year’s Android phones if they want to be taken seriously.
Oh and another thing, just because the next iPhone has a larger screen doesn’t mean that the 3.5 inch iPhone is going away. Chances are Apple will make the iPhone 4 for at least another year, and the iPhone 4S for at least another two years. After that, could they make the 3.5 inch form factor the “iPhone nano” we’ve been hearing about for ages?
Something to think about.
[Via: The Verge]