Apple's perfect iPhone 6 resolution!

Current resolution history:

They have 2 iPad screen sized app resolution.
The old outdated one at 1024 x 768 for iPad 2 and iPad Mini 1st Gen.
And the new standard resolution, doubled to 2048 x 1536 for iPad 3rd - Air, and iPad mini w/ Retina Display.

iPhone's have 2 popular screen size's also.
The old 640×960 for iPhone 4-4s.
Then the new 640x1,136 for iPhone 5-5s.
The apps still fit on the iPhone 5-5s with the old 640 x 960 resolution because it had the SAME width but only had small black borders on the top and bottom which wasn't to noticeable for consumers and was easy to fix for developers.

So now there are 2 ways to make a even bigger iPhone properly.

1: Have the same 1136 length resolution, but with a different width (1136 x ????), which is worse then having the same width, because now you have these long noticeable black borders running up and down your whole screen.

2: Double the current iPhone's resolution to 2272 x 1280 and make a completely different sized iPhone (at a 16:9 aspect ratio), while making all the iPhone apps blurry, but scaled properly just like iPhone 3g to iPhone 4, and the iPad 2 to iPad w/Retina Display transitions.

Conclusion:

The 2nd option seems more feasible. If they do double the resolution to 2272 x 1280, they can make any screen size up to 8" and still keep their screens "Retina" since an 8" screen at that resolution would have 326 ppi. So with that reasoning, they can make 20 devices for example, all with screen sizes at 4.1", 4.2", 5.6", 6.7" etc..., and they would all have nearly identical screen quality (sharpness wise) since we can only see around 300 ppi at normal viewing lengths, and all the apps would scale perfectly since its the same resolution! And for reference, at resolutions of 2272 x 1280 on a 4.8" screen, it has 543.28 ppi, and at 4.5", 579.5 ppi.

This screen resolution can set iPhone's for decades and still have different sized phones (until people demand 10" phablets)! They all would have a 16:9 aspect ratio of course but I prefer that better then 3:2. Developers would have to make apps only with one resolution for decades without having to do drastic scaling or changes to their hundreds of thousands of apps in the Appstore which makes consumers happy also. That sounds a lot better then the world of Android with hundreds of different resolutions, and Apple will probably mention this if they do release 2 different phone sizes for marketing purposes ;-)

gnasher729 said:

Don't worry too much about that. The Retina display doesn't create any "fragmentation" - there is more work for an app to take full advantage of the better screen, but the app will work just fine without a retina display.

Apps need different layouts for small (iPhone sized) and large (iPad sized) devices, and for portrait and landscape mode. But apart from that, there is no good reason why an app wouldn't work with a slightly larger screen. Consider this: MacOS X apps work with all kinds of screen and window sizes.

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Yes, but they are in windows on the monitor. They are not full screen. It scaled the apps to correct window sizes, but if viewed in full screen it wouldn't be clear. Android works by scaling all the apps no matter what, that's why iOS AppStore is far more superior because of correct scaling. Apple will never stretch an app, even when the first iPad came out, it didn't scale the iPhone apps, they were the same size, but they did give an option to double it.

T5BRICK said:

Why would doubling the resolution cause the shape of the phone to change? The screen and overall size would be larger, but the aspect ratio would stay the same.

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I meant the screen size, they can have any 16:9 screen at any size with that one resolution and not fragment the appstore. Re-read my original post, I polished it up a bit

Jimmy James said:

For that matter why would doubling the resolution cause the screen size to change?

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It wouldn't cause it to change, but give the OPTION to make larger iPhones as they please. Which is the whole reason for changing the resolution in the first place.

Abazigal said:

They might triple the original non-retina resolution of 568x320 to give 1704x960. With a 4.8" phone, that gives a PPI of 400. All existing apps would scale properly.

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We'll not really. It won't have a 16:9 ratio like the iPhone 5-5s, it would have the old 3:4. I don't think they would go back to that especially since people like the widescreen view a lot better.

I'm still really confident they will double the iPhone 5s resolution for the iPhone 6.

SmokyD said:

I agree, to avoid fragmentation, 2272x1280 is the only way to go.

At 4.7 inches, that would be a ridiculously high 555 ppi though.
At 5.5 inches, that would be a more feasible 479 ppi.

Both are possible, though I would be happiliy surprised to see them pull off 555 ppi in a 4.7 inch device.

At 2272x1280, whatever the size of the phone, they can continue to sell the 5S/5C and all apps will work across all devices. Then they could finally retire the iPhone 4S and its legacy resolution and 30 pin port.

2272x1280 is the only logical choice if they want clean scaling with no fragmentation across devices, which is something I would expect from Apple.

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Yup, I think it's the only way to make a bigger phone without ending up with a disaster. That's why it ticks me off when when people think apple will use a completely different unrelated resolution like 1080p.