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Next Apple iPhone To Have a 4 Inch Display?
dkd903 writes "According to reports from Macotakara, Hitachi Displays Ltd and Sony Mobile Display Corporation has started shipping the screens for the iPad 3 and a 4-inch LCD screen for an unnamed iOS device. It would be fairly safe to assume that the 4-inch display will be for the next iPhone – the iPhone 5."
I have something 4 inches to show you...
Can we just agree that Apple hardware articles are flamebait by default, especially the ones about the mere possibility of new Apple hardware, and stop frickin posting them?
Why do people keep referring to the next iPhone as the iPhone 5? Let's count together shall we?
Original iPhone: iPhone 1
iPhone 3G: iPhone 2
iPhone 3GS: iPhone 3
iPhone 4: iPhone 4
iPhone 4S: iPhone 5
Next iPhone: iPhone 6
Now, if Apple decides to call the next iPhone the iPhone 5, then I'll gladly eat my words, but until then, c'mon now.
I like a phone I can use with one hand easily. This whole post was typed with my right hand only, on my iPhone 4.
There's a spot in User Info for World of Warcraft account names? Really?
God, we've been talking about the iphone 5 every week for over a year now. I know blogs are desperate for page views, but this is getting old.
Four inches should be enough for anyone.
except... if the next one is 4", then that would make the "current iScreen" 4", so they'll be happy. Don't you know how Apple works?
Couldn't resist...
Didnt' we just spend the last 6 months saying the iPhone 5 was going to have this screen? Or at least the iPhone 5 was definetly going to be released in October? Isn't this all getting to be a bit too much Apple speculation? At least the Apple iTV is a whole new project so maybe we can just speculate on that for a few months.
I have a Droid 3 with a 4 inch screen. It's keyboard makes it bulkier than most phones and way bulkier than an Iphone. It's very easily pocketable so any Iphone with a similar screen size will be even more so.
I'm a massive Apple fanboi and proud to admit it but, seriously, we're already posting articles about the iPhone 5? Really? It's literally a year away and we're already discussing it? Give it a damn rest!
Not to mention the rumour is that the screen is for a _NEW_ iOS device. If you're going to rumour-monger, at least get the rumours right...
Garbage like that is what gives good Apple fanbois like me a bad name...
I don't understand why so many people here think a 4" screen is gigantic. Remember that screen size is measured on the diagonal. The current iPhone has a 3.5" screen; a 4" screen would be 14% bigger. Look at an iPhone 4 and you'll see that the display doesn't even take up the whole surface of the device (the bezel on the iPhone is in fact much larger than most other smartphones). Increasing it to 4" could just mean that the display takes up more of the front-face of the device: you wouldn't even have to make it bigger than the current iPhone. Besides, there are lots of Android phones with screens of 4" or more. They are not absurdly big, and plenty of people carry them around in their pockets.
The headline should really read: "Rumour that next-gen iPhone may have incrementally larger display, similar to competing devices already doing well on the market". Not exactly a big deal, here.
Look at some of the things that aren't polarizing
Except it's impossible to have an article about a new device with an LCD panel without it being polarizing, because polarizing is how LCDs work. In order for it not to be polarizing, it'd have to be AMOLED or something.
He's hardly dead and already they start meddling with the _absolute truths_ according to the Messiah.
Happens to every religion.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
You're confused. You're comparing a phone model with an OS.
iPhone is the most popular smartphone.
iOS ships on more devices than Android.
I thought we were done with those, but, /. post.
every rumor,
every idiosyncracy,
every non-newsworthy, trivial, bieberite thing about it,
is a front page
The integrity of the process (yeah, I know, have I read /. lately) is in jeopardy. Please stop, before Netcraft gets involved.
Yep. I look forward to the front page stories about new alleged rumoured possible screen sizes for HTC, Nokia, Sony etc... oh wait, those won't get published. Because they're irrelevant and boring. Like this story.
Read Pynchon.
GP is obviously referring to his excessively tight hipster jeans.
Sent from my PDP-11
I tend to agree with John Gruber of Daring Fireball that all of these rumors of larger screen iPhones are just bullshit, except for one detail: a larger screen would mean a larger phone body, which would allow for a larger battery, and would give even longer battery life. Battery life is the name of the game in mobile devices, and the larger display would give Apple an opportunity to get an additional leg up on their competition. It would also be helpful to have more battery capacity if they were upgrading the iPhone to 4G, which seems to need a lot more power.
While I tend to find Gruber's arguments about maintaining the dimensions of the UI by maintaining the dimensions and resolution of the display convincing, the change in dimensions of the iPhone interface going from a 3.5" to a 4" screen doesn't seem to be much of a concern. The greater concern is that the 4" screen is too large for many people to comfortably access the full screen with their thumb while holding the phone in the same hand (though that could be alleviated by narrowing the bezel around the screen).
So, while I'd love to bet against the rumor mongers clamoring for a 4" display on the next iPhone, I think that it might actually happen. A 4G phone will need a bigger battery, and I think Apple would rather make the phone face larger, than make the phone thicker, and that make a 4" display an easy sell.
just a ghost in the machine.
""The IGZO technology is perfect in that it offers near-OLED power consumption while having a lower cost and thinness that is only 25% greater than OLED, based on our checks," said Jeffries analyst Peter Misek."
So let me get this right. It's 25% thicker than OLED and uses MORE power, but it costs less to make. On the face of it, that doesn't seem like a very Appley component choice. On the other hand, getting high quality (Super) AMOLED screens means dealing with Samsung, something which Apple doesn't seem to want to do at the moment for silly grudge purposes. So the question becomes, "Does Apple want to sacrifice product quality in exchange for a small savings and sticking it to Samsung?"
If Steve Jobs were still around, I'd say "Yes."--he had a well noted penchant for carrying a grudge to extremes. I'd like a bigger screen as much, or more than the next guy, but I'm not 100% sure how plausible this whole story seems to me in a post-Steve Apple era. On the other, other hand, it might have more to do with the fact that Samsung is too big to bully, and Apple likes to have total control over it's supply chains.
Yes, a stylus.
Are you telling us that people here in the 21st centurey should not be expected to rise above finger painting? For note-taking? We're not all characters from Idiocracy, thanks very much.
Business knows that it needs the stylus to make their fancy new i-devices useful, and all the big manufacturers are all stepping up to provide.
Jobs is dead, so now the world can undergo some much needed cult de-programming and actually 'think different' for real.
I suppose anytime you want to write something in your own handwriting or create some kind of art you do it by fingerpainting. After all, big fat sausage fingers are all you really need, right? Of course if you're like me, you get tired of washing paint off your fingers all day long and listening to bank tellers complain that they can't read the amount on your checks. That's why some crazy people are of the opinion that perhaps there are occasions when fingers aren't ideally suited to all the sorts of tasks you might want to perform on a piece of paper and/or a hand-held computing device based on a paper metaphor.
Old devices had styli because the screens were resistive and needed pressure to register touches. Since pressure is a function of force per area, a smaller area (tip of the stylus vs tip of the finger) needs less force applied in order to register touches. It was a necessity that capacitive screens did away with by making fingertips practical.
But just because they are no longer a necessity, doesn't mean they aren't actually still useful for some tasks. If you want to do artwork and or handwriting on a tablet, a stylus is still the best way to go. Just because a screen is capacitive like your iOS devices screen doesn't mean you can't use a stylus if and when it's the right tool for the job--you just need a capacitive stylus.
If you weren't of a mind to do any handwriting/art on your tablet/phone whatever, then simply don't ever use the stylus. Continue using your fingers and you'll enjoy the same user experience you would with any other device. Having the extra choice won't hurt you.
My kids get a big kick out of doing YouTube and Angry Birds on the big screen. Now and then I get a customer with an HDTV in the conference room I can do a slide presentation on or refer to PDF documents with, from my phone. It only takes one million-dollar deal to make it worthwhile and then some for my company, my smartphone and me, so today we're money ahead. I bring the laptop and projector anyway because I'm a boy scout and believe in being prepared - but if it's there I use it. Believe it or not having the phone that does that sells the completely unrelated SAN or network or server technology better than its specs does. It's probably cynical to exploit this, but whatever. The geeks selling the good gear have the good gear, so it may be a legitimate bias. People don't buy rockets from Ford, generally.
It also helps to not be dishing retro crap, but that's on point for neither your comment nor TFA.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
The iPad display is already capable of pressure sensitivity. Ten-one design/makers of Pogo sketch showed off a demo of using pressure sensitivity for sketching and "palm rejection" back in 2010.
The problem is apparently iPad app developer's aren't allowed to access pressure sensitivity information, because no interface has been exposed by the iOS official APIs.
Until Apple chooses to include it in the API, no 3rd party apps will be able to leverage the functionality, because it would require using 'private frameworks' which is against Apple's rules that app store applications must follow for approval by Apple.
Relevant link.
and I still switched to Android partially because of the availablility of 4.3" screens, they are SO much better.
Yes yes I know pixel resolution blah, however they are still quite competent screens. Infact I'll go as far as to say, the reason people think the iphone 4 screen is so good (it is) is heightened due to the 3G and 3GS being so bad.
No seriously, plug the specs in to a calculator, the 3G/S screen is AWFUL.
I have 800x480 on my 4.3" screen and yes the iphone looks better at fine stuff but mine still looks fantastic and it's big, nice and big. If I was a public transport user, this is actually an acceptable size to catch simpsons or southpark etc on in the morning on my phone.
While I'm at it,........ the iphone has only ONE button, all the other buttons MUST be drawn on the damn screen. Options, back, etc - all on the main screen. You might be used to it but I've trained myself off it now, I think the one button philosophy is an utter joke. 4 buttons is not unmanagable in the slightest. This frees up even MORE real estate - and it's consistent (hello apple!) because I can find my options (menu) button in the same location /EVERY/ time.
Best technical decision I've made in years. Iphone 3 -> 3GS -> 4 -> 4.3" Android phone, never, ever going back. â(TM)¥
You are so right!
That's why I laugh at my friend's 50" TVs. My 19" one is so much better because the pixel density is so higher!
Pixel density for the win. Steve Jobs said it was all that mattered. And Steve Jobs can't be wrong.