On These Rumors of a 4.6-Inch iPhone Display

Reuters:

Apple Inc’s new iPhone will have a sharper and bigger 4.6-inch “retina” display and is set to be launched around the second quarter, a South Korean media reported on Thursday.

Lots of attention on this rumor, but no one seems to be pointing out that if it’s true, this new iPhone would need way more pixels than the current 960 × 640 iPhone display. (If they increased the size but kept the pixel count the same, it would drop beneath Apple’s “retina display” threshold — not going to happen.) That means every app in the App Store would need to be redesigned/resized.

Sure, developers would get on board and support the new size. But why would Apple want to add another vector of fragmentation? For this reason and others, I say it’s bullshit.

★ Thursday, 22 March 2012