I doubt it - not only would a 4.8 inch display be ridiculous looking and ridiculously awkward to use, but it would completely contradict apple's "thumbs" ad campaign.
I also find it very irritating how, for example, Samsung advertise their Galaxy S III screen to be "true hd" and using it as an excuse to slam apple, completely ignoring the fact that the iPhone's retina display in ppi is superior.
You realize that earlier iPhones wouldn't work with that Thumb ad, right?
Original iPhone width: 61.0 mm (2.40 in) W
iPhone 5 width: 58.6 mm (2.31 in) W
This thumb ad was a lame one-off attempt to counter larger screens inevitable to enter the market that no manner of realistic height adjustment would make sense.
Instead of Apple scaling up to preserve the 4S height to width ratio:
115.2 mm (4.54 in) H
58.66 mm (2.309 in) W
Ivy and company chose:
123.8 mm (4.87 in) H
58.6 mm (2.31 in) W
Keeping the original H/W ratios would have required [and they would have been hugely praised by larger screen lovers] the W in the iPhone 5 to be 2.477 W.
In fact, that would have provided a mor rugged feel in one's hand, very minimal weight difference to the 4S and provided an even greater screen size on the hypotenuse and overall surface area.
The first reaction I had with the iPhone 5 was it was too small in my hand. I have medium to large hands in gloves and the 5 felt too thin in it's thickness.
And sure enough:
iPhone 4/4S 9.3 mm (0.37 in) D
iPhone 5 7.6 mm (0.30 in) D
The iPhone 11.6 mm (0.46 in) D
The iPhone 3G/3GS 12.3 mm (0.48 in) D
The sweet spot was the 4/4S with it's 9.3 mm Depth. They over refined it with the iPhone 5. They just had to be thinner for no apparent advantage other than to be thinner than Samsung.
IT'S TOO THIN. It gives a feeling of a fragile smartphone, whereas the 4/4s gave the feeling of a solidly built smartphone.
Move back to the 9.3 mm Depth and scale out the width appropriately thus requiring 2 hands for truly operating the texting area and only the using one hand via holding to talk or listen to the audio/and or watching a video and then people will feel they have purchased a solid product.
Throw in improved internal guts as expected, with a more durable glass and double the RAM along with the new CPU/GPGPU SoC, then all this media led propaganda will die down.
I don't know a soul who would complain about a 4S depth with a wider display and restored non edge-to-edge display if this depth includes a serious jump in battery life and system power opening up more services on the phone.
Steve spent years resolving the feel and dimensions and to throw that away to be a race to ultra thin is something only Ivy would have done.
More to the point, the weight of the 4S was 140 grams. The weight of the 5 is 112 grams.
``Houston. We have a problem.''
It's too light, too thin and feels off in one's hand. Restore that weight with more depth, bigger battery, upgrades to the internals with double the RAM and Apple will dominate the industry.
