Not when we're talking about making the screen bigger we're not. What's the point making the screen bigger if you're not going to fit more on it? Every element would end up bigger. If it's just to make it easier to use for people with larger fingers then fair enough, nothing would need redesigned, just new artwork*. Is that what you're thinking might happen? I was assuming that the point in the bigger screen was to fit more content on, if that's not your assumption then we're talking at cross purposes, but I doubt even more that Apple would seek simply to make everything bigger.
*or just accept the poor scaling, since *1.5 wouldn't look as good as *2, which didn't even look that good in my opinion (a non-optimized iPhone app looked worse on the iPhone 4 than on the 3G, I thought).
It's nice to have larger content, and web pages, media such as photos and videos, and games would benefit from it greatly. You'd also be able to have more powerful hardware and a larger battery for better battery life. Does a 4.4 inch Android device actually have much more screen real estate than an iPhone 4? I don't think so, it's mostly just bigger.
I'd love to have a 4.6 inch iPhone or iPod touch. It's so much better having larger content, and the device would get even better battery life than it does now!
Apple's clearly working on a quad-core for the A6, and it'd simply be too hot in a 3.5 inch smartphone. I don't know what screen size they'll pick, but I do hope they come out with a 4.6 inch model, I'd love that size.
Regarding artwork, technically speaking if they used the original artwork it should look the same as it does on the original device, and if they used the @2x artwork, it should look similar to what it does on the iPhone 4 or 4S. I believe it looks worse because everything else looks so much better.
I think if you had a full screen app with a 480x320 image on it, running on a 3GS and 4 side by side, you'd not see a difference.
I should test that, actually
