How Apple Could Make the Move to 4.7" iPhone Displays

[bbeagle]

If the iPhone 1 had no bezel, just display, or it had what it actually had, which would you choose? If you say the latter then you should be sent in a rocket toward the sun.

Actually, if you remember back to 2007, many people said the 3.5" iPhone screen was TOO LARGE. (People were used to very small 2.5" screens with dialing buttons below).

I think a screen that filled up without bezels would be amazing, but maybe back then it would have seemed WAY TOO LARGE. I don't know.

 

[LordVic]

You're mixing up perfect and possible. I can use my iPhone 5 in one hand too, but I have to be more wary of my grip than with my old 3GS. If one handed use is the only criteria, you can't get better than the 3.5" screen for most people with an average sized thumb. You can reach any part of the screen without ever thinking about your grip. Once you go bigger than that, you start to lose that benefit. Hence the suggestion that is is still "perfect" for one-handed use. A most appropriate term would really be "best" though.

Obviously one handed use isn't the only criteria, so I wouldn't call it a perfect size in general. I think that is fairly subjective.

Remember what you learned in school

Nobody and nothing is perfect....


everything is relevant. What you think is "perfect 1 handed phone" isn't perfect for me.

if your idea of "perfect" is that your thumb must hit every inch of the phone, than for some people they'll need a 2" phone, and some people could use a 6" phone.

just remember

There is no such thing as perfection. Only what works best for you (not directing this at you, just an addition to your comment)

 

[bsolar]

More doesn't mean better. Apple have PROVEN this time & time again.

Sometimes you shouldn't give people what they think they want, but what they need.

There_are_plenty_of_other_options_out_there_if_you_want_to_carry_a_brick.

According to Apple's analysis, sales' growth in the smartphones market comes mainly from >4"+expensive and small+cheap categories. Apple could ignore these signals and go ahead with their current format, but it would mean leaving these market categories to competitors. These market categories are not insignificant and are becoming more and more relevant (being the fastest growing).

Apple is most likely not interested in competing with cheap devices but they are surely interested in the expensive market in which >4" is becoming more and more popular.

Sometimes you shouldn't give people what you think they need, but what they want.

 

[zipa]

you are still incorrect.

every single pixel you add increases battery load, regardless of the actual image on display.

every pixel has it's own power draw, even if it's microscopic numbers in power draw

Yes. This is what I am saying. Doesn't still change the fact, that the backlight is the single biggest battery hog (aside of the radios) in a phone. Doubling screen size adds 400% to the backlight consumption, whereas doubling resolution would perhas increase GPU power consumption by 20-30% under normal use.

Sure, the power consumption to drive the individual pixels (i.e. to set their color) obviously increases proportionally with the number of actual pixels, but the effect on the phone's total consumption there is so negligeable that I'm not even sure that it can be measured.

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It's not that apple need to but that 1080p is probably cheaper than making a custom resolution screen. In fact there is probably a surplus.

This. I've been in the mobile industry long enough to be able to say with absolute confidence that the last thing you want on your bill of materials is something that is worse than what your competitors have, yet still costs more.

 

[macs4nw]

NO MORE iPHONE 6 SCREEN SIZE RUMOURS.

Seriously; what is the deal with this site - just to get headlines? This isn't informative; nor interesting just speculative nonsense.

Let's report something interesting about Apple - not 1000 posts about the iPhone 6. I am far more interested in what people are doing with their current iPhone technology than speculating what 'might' happen.

It's like flies around a dog ****.

Common, this is a rumor site.

What are you expecting to read here? Progress reports, or 'white papers' on technology?
No one forces you to read here.

 

[yakovlev]

[…] the additional real-estate could pave the way for making similar UI's for both the iPhone and iPad

You really should not do that.

You should do the best possible UI for each device type: iPhone (3.5"/4"), iPad, large iPhone (4.7"). If all these UIs turn out to be the same, great; if not, don’t force them to be similar for the sake of simpler coding.

With iPhone 5, you could just add more rows. The large iPhone is different enough to require additional thinking. Suppose you have the following UITableViewCell on iPhone 3.5"/4":

LABEL1  LABEL3
LABEL2          >
CONTENT

On iPhone 4.7" all labels may fit on the same line:

LABEL1  LABEL2  LABEL3
CONTENT                 >

Auto Layout is great, but it can’t do everything for you (e.g. it can’t do the example above). You should still customize some details. If you don’t, you’ll have horrible-looking “stretched” UIs with excessive amounts of whitespace (sort of like early Android tablet apps that were stretched phone apps).

 

[jclardy]

Dunno where 1134 came from, I reckon he meant 1334 (as mentioned in the article). This is bigger than 1280, so would accommodate 720p

Ah okay, I thought it sounded weird as it wasn't 16:9.

 

[Casiotone]

Yes. This is what I am saying. Doesn't still change the fact, that the backlight is the single biggest battery hog (aside of the radios) in a phone. Doubling screen size adds 400% to the backlight consumption, whereas doubling resolution would perhas increase GPU power consumption by 20-30% under normal use.

Sure, the power consumption to drive the individual pixels (i.e. to set their color) obviously increases proportionally with the number of actual pixels, but the effect on the phone's total consumption there is so negligeable that I'm not even sure that it can be measured.

Maybe you should read this very interesting and technical article :

http://anandtech.com/show/7743/the-pixel-density-race-and-its-technical-merits

For both OLED and LCD displays, pushing higher pixel densities incurs a cost in the form of greater power consumption for a given luminance value. Going from around 330 PPI to 470 PPI for an LCD IPS display incurs around a 20% power draw increase on the display...

That's for the screen itself.

The backlight also needs to be more powerful on a denser screen:

In the case of LCD displays, a stronger backlight must be used as the higher pixel density means the transistors around the liquid crystal become a larger proportion of the display...

 

[iSteve-O]

I really hope this means there will finally be widgets.

Having rows and rows of icons is just getting old at this point.

 

[ghost of jobs]

More icons?.. **** yeah!

 

[benamin]

Apple's market research shows that consumers want bigger and cheaper smartphones. Since I've never had a smartphone, I don't know whether I'd prefer bigger or smaller, but the reason I don't have one is the price of the iPhone. If they could produced a current generation model (versus selling an old one with limited storage) for max $450 I would be interested, preferably $400. The last computer I bought was a Mac mini for $600, and I hope it will last me for many years. It's hard for me to justify in my mind spending that much on a cellphone.

Quite Simply, you are not Apples target market. What you are describing are the customers they are letting go to the cheaper android devices because there is no (or less) margin in it for them. I don't see them leaving the Premium device market, where they make oodles of $, to join the low cost ranks of every other phone maker that is currently loosing money. (except maybe Samsung).

 

[TheRealCBONE]

agreed. on the nexus 5.. it's my biggest pet peeve.

The amount of times I accidentally task switch while trying to type cause I fat finger the keyboard and hit one of the on screen buttons is annoying as hell.

the one thing Samsung does well is preserving the hardware controls and giving you the entire display as usable space.

I SUPER-HATE the stupid on-screen buttons! A waste of screen space and poorly implemented. Funny thing is that:

1. The only phones that people buy in large enough numbers to make their manufacturers any money (Apple and Samsung), both use at least one physical button.

2. Android fanboys and staunch proponents of phones no one wants to buy complain constantly about the physical buttons on Samsung devices. "Physical buttons are in teh past! Accidentally exiting to Home or backing out of what you were doing 5 or 6 times a day is the new hotness!"

 

[ghost187]

So how do you explain the 1080p 5.5" iPhone Kuo predicted?

Non-optimized apps would look like miniature crap!

Btw over the past week I saw too many "doubling down on secrecy" comments. Non of these rumors and so called leaks look anything like what Apple would do, my guess is WE KNOW NOTHING!!!

 

[agsystems]

Phones got smaller and smaller because they were dumb phones. They didn't do video and complex games and apps. Stop pretending there isn't a reason for a bigger screen. Go back to 2005 if you really want a tiny phone.

Apparently Apple designers tested multiple sizes and found that 4.7 preserves their precious 1 hand design that they love so much.

From a supply chain POV, I would just build 1 model (5" 1080P) - they would sell a boat load with plenty of supply.

 

[samcraig]

I've said it before - I'll say it again. You can't compare history with the present when it comes to what people prefer.

Back in 2007 - there wasn't the selection of apps, web content, etc that necc. warranted a bigger screen. People were emailing and such on their phones - they (most) weren't using them as mini portable computers.

 

[AX338]

Time to reduce that top and bottom bezel size.

 

[drewc1138]

I'm not typically one to reminisce about Steve, but...

Steve would have never said "the customers want this"...he would have said "here is what the customers want".

 

[fullauto]

An extra row in folders would be welcomed, albeit unlikely..?

 

[bsolar]

Quite Simply, you are not Apples target market. What you are describing are the customers they are letting go to the cheaper android devices because there is no (or less) margin in it for them. I don't see them leaving the Premium device market, where they make oodles of $, to join the low cost ranks of every other phone maker that is currently loosing money. (except maybe Samsung).

The poster described Apple's analysis unaccurately. According to the analysis the largest smartphone sales' growth come from 2 different categories:

• >4" and expensive.
• Cheap.

Apple might not be interested in the cheap devices market, but has to react to the increasing popularity of >4" expensive models which directly compete with the iPhone.

 

[iChrist]

that letterbox looks terrible...

Apple just need to remove all unoptimized apps. The timeframe from the dev release to public release is more than sufficient to update constraints.

If the dev can't be bothered, remove the app, less unsupported crap cluttering up the app store.

 

[benamin]

I'm not typically one to reminisce about Steve, but...

Steve would have never said "the customers want this"...he would have said "here is what the customers want".

You are close, he may have said "the customers want this".... But it would have been followed by "they just don't know it yet"....

 

[Dave.UK]

Its 2014 and the best mobile operating system (apparently) can only do this? Seriously, letterbox?!

I remember when "retina" was first mentioned and the Apple fanatics jumped on here saying how important having more pixels was - Now though, they dont think its that important!

I apply a simple test. I think "What would people on MacRumours say if Samsung did this" - The answer in this situation is laugh and make condescending posts.

One final point - Wow! Thats one hell of a bezel!

 

[lilo777]

Actually, if you remember back to 2007, many people said the 3.5" iPhone screen was TOO LARGE. (People were used to very small 2.5" screens with dialing buttons below).

I think a screen that filled up without bezels would be amazing, but maybe back then it would have seemed WAY TOO LARGE. I don't know.

Image

Back then (in 2007) larger screens did exist but they were used only on PDAs. Because power consumption back then by screens and chips (CPU and RAM) was much higher than it is now it was not feasible to make phones with larger screens. The battery life time for a phone with large screen in 2007 would be too short.

----------

Its 2014 and the best mobile operating system (apparently) can only do this? Seriously, letterbox?!

Image

I remember when "retina" was first mentioned and the Apple fanatics jumped on here saying how important having more pixels was - Now though, they dont think its that important!

I apply a simple test. I think "What would people on MacRumours say if Samsung did this" - The answer in this situation is laugh and make condescending posts.

One final point - Wow! Thats one hell of a bezel!

Or, maybe it is not the best mobile OS anymore? Because, obviously, there are mobile OSes out there that have no issues with different screen sizes (for many years now).

 

[TheRealCBONE]

This is very interesting. A 4.7 inch screen is a great size. BUT if Apple makes a larger iPhone aren't they admitting they were wrong about the 4 inch being "Perfect"? Also a 4.7 inch screen will probably get a lot more Android fans to switch to Apple?? Just my thoughts. All comments are welcome.

Apple marketing just says what they say to sell product. No one is ever going to say that their latest device is a hot mess or demonstrably inferior to their competitors or "Ick. This teeny thing kinda sucks." Apple wants everyone to have an Apple product so that they can tie you in and get their cut from everything you do and buy. Everything else is secondary and all of their white background interview nonsense is just to peddle more product. Self slurping their stuff in this fashion sells more product currently so they're going to keep doing it. If folksy backwoods nonsense starts selling more product, they're going to start doing that. People can't take it so seriously. They have to strike a balance between pulling people off Android and keeping existing Apple lifers from feeling duped.

 

[AppleWarMachine]

I'm sure Mr. Ive is going to figure it out somehow