WSJ: Apple to increase iPhone screen size to 'at least' 4-inches

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Sentry said:
You're right, hundred is probably abetter number. But what benefits does this really bring to the table with an extra 176 pixels vertically? That's it? That's what they'll tout as 'revolutionary 4 inch screen'? Meanwhile, without getting any real improvements with that slight elongation, what it will do is fuck with developers anew. And for no real good reason. If it was a 3:2 4", the size increase would actually be beneficial to develop for.
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But you get another row of Icons! Hooray for more clutter.
 
Sentry said:
You're right, hundred is probably abetter number. But what benefits does this really bring to the table with an extra 176 pixels vertically? That's it? That's what they'll tout as 'revolutionary 4 inch screen'? Meanwhile, without getting any real improvements with that slight elongation, what it will do is fuck with developers anew. And for no real good reason. If it was a 3:2 4", the size increase would actually be beneficial to develop for.
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IF the top/bottom bezel remain the same and therefore the dock and keyboard would also remain in the same position, what cons will it really bring though besides looking uglier. I know the back button is in the top left corner and may be harder to reach but I'm certain it won't take too long to get used to. Serious question. I too agree that for those 176 extra pixels are an underwhelming upgrade but I don't think widescreen is the devil.


Copernicus said:
Weird, I always hold my phones from the frame/four corners.
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They'll never switch to a soft home button. What's Apple gonna do? Tell them they're holding the phone wrong?
 
Zeppu said:
IF the top/bottom bezel remain the same and therefore the dock and keyboard would also remain in the same position, what cons will it really bring though besides looking uglier. I know the back button is in the top left corner and may be harder to reach but I'm certain it won't take too long to get used to. Serious question. I too agree that for those 176 extra pixels are an underwhelming upgrade but I don't think widescreen is the devil.
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I don't think widescreen is the ultimate issue here, it or it looking ugly. You touched on the usability of it, slightly smaller yet a lot less usable for a lot more people, for 176 more pixels?

And the serious answer is of course the developers. Most current apps will have bezels/letterboxes that devs will have to fix/compensate for/com up with some way make it work, etc. Though at the end of the day I realize the developer stance isn't really enough, since within a year's time it'll be out of the question with most apps already being updated.. but still, that's one aspect of it.
 
Sentry said:
I don't think widescreen is the ultimate issue here, it or it looking ugly. You touched on the usability of it, slightly smaller yet a lot less usable for a lot more people, for 176 more pixels?

And the serious answer is of course the developers. Most current apps will have bezels/letterboxes that devs will have to fix/compensate for/com up with some way make it work, etc. Though at the end of the day I realize the developer stance isn't really enough, since within a year's time it'll be out of the question with most apps already being updated.. but still, that's one aspect of it.
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Yes, I agree that devs will be bitten hard by this, but any res change would've required some dev effort anyway. But once everything settles, for the vast majority of popular apps probably within a couple of months, you still think you'll prefer non-widescreen?

Listen bro, I'm only trying to convince you that the phone which you'll eventually be getting (I doubt that they're ever going to switch back to 3:2 if they go 16:9, and switching to other OSs [heh] you'll find similar aspect ratios) isn't really that bad. Odds are you'll end up liking it less if you're already convinced you won't like it. Aaaah, damn you hype.
 
Chanser said:
If this is true I hope they do what the HTC One X has done,put the LCD screen close to the touch screen matrix.
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Uh, unless you're referring to something different than what I'm thinking the iPhone 4 was the first smartphone to do that and every subsequent iPhone will definitely do the same.
 
Zeppu said:
Yes, I agree that devs will be bitten hard by this, but any res change would've required some dev effort anyway. But once everything settles, for the vast majority of popular apps probably within a couple of months, you still think you'll prefer non-widescreen?

Listen bro, I'm only trying to convince you that the phone which you'll eventually be getting (I doubt that they're ever going to switch back to 3:2 if they go 16:9, and switching to other OSs [heh] you'll find similar aspect ratios) isn't really that bad. Odds are you'll end up liking it less if you're already convinced you won't like it. Aaaah, damn you hype.
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The difference is that they'll be putting effort into something much more useless than if it were a 3:2 4" bump. But lol you are right. I'm sticking with my iPhone 4 for at least another year though, so I have no issue. The main grievance I have isn't that it's elongated and that is a lot more useless for the work that'll be needed to put in it, but it's that they're never going to actually make a true 4" screen, just this faux shit.

If they really drop 3:2 for good, I can't say I won't be sad. It was perfect imo. But we'll see, it's apple, they know what they're doing and it won't be utter shit, but it won't be my cup of tea right now either.
 
Apple can make the screen larger without making the iPhone larger by eliminating some (or all) of its bezel but a larger iPhone is no-no. I respect people's opinion and I understand many people want a larger smartphone, I hope that equally other's are capable of understanding that I, and probably many others, don't want a larger smartphone.
 
amrihua said:
Apple can make the screen larger without making the iPhone larger by eliminating some (or all) of its bezel but a larger iPhone is no-no. I respect people's opinion and I understand many people want a larger smartphone, I hope that equally other's are capable of understanding that I, and probably many others, don't want a larger smartphone.
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Put me in this camp. the iPhone is the size I want - it feels small, but substantial in the pocket (ba-dum-bum), yet I don't feel like I'm holding a TI-86 calculator when using it. I think if I went bigger, I'd rather just go to something like the Note and get an ear piece and otherwise use it as a mini tablet.
 
Those cables on the home button on an iPhone 4/4s are so fragile, even a slight drop can mess them up. This is why there are so many home button failures on those models. Capacitive home button would solve this problem very quickly.

It is also fairly trivial to adjust sensitivity of the home touch button to mitigate accidental presses. People would just have to adapt, same as they adapted when touch screens were introduced.

Service standpoint, capacitive is significantly better.
 
kaioshade said:
Those cables on the home button on an iPhone 4/4s are so fragile, even a slight drop can mess them up. This is why there are so many home button failures on those models. Capacitive home button would solve this problem very quickly.

It is also fairly trivial to adjust sensitivity of the home touch button to mitigate accidental presses. People would just have to adapt, same as they adapted when touch screens were introduced.

Service standpoint, capacitive is significantly better.
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They might as well make the screen plastic, since it's better from a "service standpoint."
 
numble said:
They might as well make the screen plastic, since it's better from a "service standpoint."
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Yep.

You have no idea how many pissed off customer toss their phone on my table, in an otterbox, FURIOUS, that their phone broke even though it was in a case. Until people can learn to be more careful with their shit, they should go to plastic.

Anyway point stands. capacitive home button would be better.
 
planar1280 said:
fragmentation. with the huge flux of iPhone 3Gs, 4, 4S in the market Developers won't want to make apps for 2 resolutions
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Yeah, I noticed how no one is making copies of their iPhone applications for iPad because of the different resolution. Or retina versions of their old iPhone applications.

Really though, most applications will already be ready for this since it's just increasing the size of the content space. The header and footer bars will just slide to the margins.
 
kaioshade said:
Sometimes minds need to be blown.

And if capacitive home button is not an option. At least make the physical home button a bit stronger. It is pathetically fragile.
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I think it needs to be better sealed/stronger.

Mine is getting quite funky on my 4, sometimes it registers a press, sometimes not.
 
So when the 5 is announced, will prices for new unlocked 4s phones drop? I don't have an iPhone and have never paid attention to how that goes.
 
I just wish they would implement Zephyr type gestures officially. It's so useful, and it could just be optional via the settings as iPad's gestures are.
 
LCfiner said:
it means the new iPhone screen will look like the current iPhone 4 and 4s screen.

pixels are super close to the glass so it looks almost like pixels are painted on the surface. very nice effect
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Ah, I'll be taking a good look at them then! Thanks
 
Sentry said:
I just wish they would implement Zephyr type gestures officially. It's so useful, and it could just be optional via the settings as iPad's gestures are.
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Yeah, it's pretty great; also the new update that makes the screen slide down to reveal notification center is much more consistent with the OS.
 
kaioshade said:
Sometimes minds need to be blown.

And if capacitive home button is not an option. At least make the physical home button a bit stronger. It is pathetically fragile.
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If a capacitive home button happens, I'll be one of those guys that I normally shake my head at and sell my 4S for the upgrade. My phone is in mint condition except for fucking pocket lint that's collected under the home button. Ugh...
 
JasonMCG said:
If a capacitive home button happens, I'll be one of those guys that I normally shake my head at and sell my 4S for the upgrade. My phone is in mint condition except for fucking pocket lint that's collected under the home button. Ugh...
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Funny thing is, the home button on the 4S is actually better than the 4.

On the 4, the home button is attached to this ridiculously thin cable that is prone to breaking a bunch. On the 4S, the home button is adhered to the frame of the digitizer, and the actual contact is resting underneath, less change for the cable to break. Problem is the adhesive tend to let a bunch of dust and other things in, and messes up the contact.
 
Gruber's sources are backing up the 9to5 Mac report:

John Gruber said:
What I’ve heard from a couple of little birdies is only that Apple has been noodling with increasing the height of the display, keeping the width and pixel density exactly the same as on the iPhone 4 and 4S. I had not heard an exact pixel number for the new height. 1152 made some sense, but doing some math after reading Weintraub’s report, 1136 makes a lot of sense.

First, at 1136 × 640, you get a diagonal of 1,303.877 pixels after applying the Pythagorean theorem. There are no such thing as fractional pixels, but what I’m talking about here are pixels as a unit of length, equal to 1/326 inch. Divide 1,303.877 by 326 and you get 3.9996 inches. Boom, a “4-inch” display. I’m sure if Apple instead went to 1152 pixels in height — which works out to 4.042 inches — they’d still just call it a “4-inch” display, for the sake of neatness, but it’s at least somewhat interesting that 1136 is the closest they could get to precisely 4.0 inches.

Second, aspect ratio. With a 640-pixel width — which everything I have heard and seen reported suggests is set in stone — there is no way get to precisely 16:9:

(16/9) × 640 = 1,137.777…
You can’t cut seven-ninths of a pixel. 1138 × 640 would be a tad closer to 16:9, but 1136 × 640 is within five-thousandths of an inch of exactly 16:9. So I think Apple would be safe to bill an 1136 × 640 display as sporting a 16:9 aspect ratio.
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Too much smoke to not have some fire here. Sorry, Sentry. :)
 
Good Job Bob said:
Yeah, it's pretty great; also the new update that makes the screen slide down to reveal notification center is much more consistent with the OS.
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This. It bugs me to no end how it exists now. It's just a small graphical thing, but I'm kind of anal about things like this. I hope they also move it to the side on the iPad, like it is in ML.
 
this freakishly tall screen is gonna come out and people are gonna get carpal tunnel having to reach up all the way up to the top of the screen to pull down the notification center.

There will be vicious blog chatter about this problem for weeks and there will be kick-starter for a new iPhone-matching wrist and thumb guard.
 
LCfiner said:
this freakishly tall screen is gonna come out and people are gonna get carpal tunnel having to reach up all the way up to the top of the screen to pull down the notification center.

There will be vicious blog chatter about this problem for weeks and there will be kick-starter for a new iPhone-matching wrist and thumb guard.
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Have you seen new Android phones? 4.6-4.8 inch and no one has trouble swiping the status bar for notifications.
 
I swear to god if Time Cook gets on stage and has a bullet point named "groundbreaking new 4 inch display" i'm going to punch myself in the face. Will the true 4" please stand up? *crickets*
 
LCfiner said:
this freakishly tall screen is gonna come out and people are gonna get carpal tunnel having to reach up all the way up to the top of the screen to pull down the notification center.

There will be vicious blog chatter about this problem for weeks and there will be kick-starter for a new iPhone-matching wrist and thumb guard.
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I haven't seen you this wound up since the original iPad reveal, LC. :P

And Sentry is turning into Refrigerator. Lol.
 
Tobor said:
Gruber's sources are backing up the 9to5 Mac report:



Too much smoke to not have some fire here. Sorry, Sentry. :)
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At this point in time, you have to think that there are multiple models that they're testing, no? One could be this, the other could be a proper 4" display. Seems way too early for this to be the set direction if it is real.
 
Sentry said:
I swear to god if Time Cook gets on stage and has a bullet point named "groundbreaking new 4 inch display" i'm going to punch myself in the face. Will the true 4" please stand up? *crickets*
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Watch out Apple-fanatics! It's TIME COOK! Back from the future to unveil the new larger iPhone 5!
 
Good Job Bob said:
Have you seen new Android phones? 4.6-4.8 inch and no one has trouble swiping the status bar for notifications.
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Obviously, They must be hiring assistants to walk beside them and use one of their free hands to scroll down from the top of the screen while the user works the bottom of the screen

Tobor said:
I haven't seen you this wound up since the original iPad reveal, LC. :P
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All that’s left is for Forstall to show us how “amazing" it is for iPhone games to run with pillar box bars to match my disgust at them showing the iPhone Facebook app running zoomed in on the ipad back in 2010.

edit:


Deadly Cyclone said:
Watch out Apple-fanatics! It's TIME COOK! Back from the future to unveil the new larger iPhone 5!
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"THE TIME COOK" sound a second tier D&D dungeon boss.
 
Sentry said:
The difference is that they'll be putting effort into something much more useless than if it were a 3:2 4" bump. But lol you are right. I'm sticking with my iPhone 4 for at least another year though, so I have no issue. The main grievance I have isn't that it's elongated and that is a lot more useless for the work that'll be needed to put in it, but it's that they're never going to actually make a true 4" screen, just this faux shit.

If they really drop 3:2 for good, I can't say I won't be sad. It was perfect imo. But we'll see, it's apple, they know what they're doing and it won't be utter shit, but it won't be my cup of tea right now either.
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lol if you think it's not a "true" 4" screen because you don't like the aspect ratio. It's a true 4" display if the diagonal measurement is 4 inches. That's literally the only criterion required.

Oh, and it's not an additional 176 pixels, it's an additional 112,640 pixels.

Personally, I'd rather Apple had stuck with the existing display size and phone size, but I'm glad that they'll be able to keep the device itself the same size; making the phone itself bigger would be unacceptable, so this is an okay compromise. And this'll be a lot easier on developers if they only get additional pixels in one direction to deal with. Stuff like the Facebook and Twitter apps will be incredibly easy to tweak for this.
 
Sentry said:
I swear to god if Time Cook gets on stage and has a bullet point named "groundbreaking new 4 inch display" i'm going to punch myself in the face. Will the true 4" please stand up? *crickets*
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made my Samsung.

Right? RIGHT???? GUYS!?!?!?!?!? SRSLY!?!?!?!

I have to wonder though if the Apple fan base is ready for 4 inches.
 
Sentry said:
The difference is that they'll be putting effort into something much more useless than if it were a 3:2 4" bump. But lol you are right. I'm sticking with my iPhone 4 for at least another year though, so I have no issue. The main grievance I have isn't that it's elongated and that is a lot more useless for the work that'll be needed to put in it, but it's that they're never going to actually make a true 4" screen, just this faux shit.

If they really drop 3:2 for good, I can't say I won't be sad. It was perfect imo. But we'll see, it's apple, they know what they're doing and it won't be utter shit, but it won't be my cup of tea right now either.
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crazybostonterrier.png


Most ludicrous thing I've read this month.
 
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