iPhone 5 gets a 5in screen The iPhone 5 will sport a five-inch - 4.6in to be precise - screen. Well, that's if you believe the claims of an unnamed industry source - almost certainly a bod from either Samsing or LG - quoted by a South Korean newspaper, Maeil Business. Big screens are in, apparently. When questioned, punters say they favour screen sizes …
I got my 4.3" HD2 almost two years ago (upgrade time soon, woo hoo!), and could never go back to anything smaller. Yes, it's massive, but as long as the bezel stays thin and the buttons small, it makes for a great phone all round. The screen is crystal clear and browses as well as a tablet (I got rid of the native Win Mo 6.5 and now have Andoroid), and it fits all my pockets perfectly.
I used an iPhone the other day and the smaller screen felt quite inadequate after being used to mine. Definitely will stick with HTC or Samsung next time round.
4.6" isn't even close to 5"...
that was a lame way to try to grab more readers...
Well, I know the 4.3" screen on the Galaxy SII doesn't bother me one bit, it causes neither problems in my pockets, nor in my hands.
But aside from the diagonal measurement, the aspect ratio of the screen makes a huge difference. And here, Apple has been the odd man out with their weird display not conforming to the quite-sensible-for-phones 16x9 ratio.
But with the iPhones little screens, it was merely annoying to watch videos on so far. If this 4.6" screen sticks to Apple's usual aspect ratio, it'll be ridiculously wide and clumsy to handle.
Long have the days gone of the giant mobile phone, with a very small screen that can only display 6 digits at at time. Bigger screens are better I have moved from a HD2 (4.3") screen which at the time of release was big to a Samsung galaxy note. It fits in my pocket and after the initial OMFG its massive it now just feels like a normal sized phone. I will be very disappointed if the trend of large screen phones heads south when it comes time to replace my hand set in 2 years, I don't want to go back to "squint-o-vision".
If it gets much bigger and heavier than my N900 it is going to be too big and heavy. You have to consider what those big screens and the GPU they need do to the battery life. Actually if phones were a little bit bulkier for large removeable batteries then I could find that acceptable.
i think 4 inches is the max for a phone. if you want a bigger screen, get a frikken tablet
i quite like the 3.5 screen on the iphone - the phone looks neat and compact these days compared to the oversized ugly Androids. I remember when the first iPhone came out and it looked huge against the skinny candybar feature phones everyone had back then.
why should everybody else suffer just cause you like to wear clothes with small pockets?
Samsung's 5" Galaxy Note passed my pocket test without trouble.
But no, here we go again with people telling others that their personal preference is what everybody should adopt...
silly people.
"downvoted" because you manage to say 3.5" is just right, while at the same time saying how people adapt to larger sizes without too much trouble ("the first iPhone looked huge at the time").
The nice thing about the Android (and possibly some of the newer WinMo) phones is choice. If you want a phone-tablet, you can get one. If you prefer a more reasonably-sized phone, you can get that too. No need to be forced into one form-factor because it is decreed to be so.
I certainly like a big screen, but I also like a small phone and a touchscreen I can reach all corners on with my thumb when I use my phone with one hand. It's a compromise. I think about 4" is OK.
Apple totally nailed it with the 3.5" screen in 2007 -- this was just big enough to be usable and just small enough to be accepted by customers who had become spoiled by ever smaller (dumb) phones. Nowadays people do much more with their phones and have come to accept larger phones more easily. Back in 2007 a phone with a 4.3" or even 4.6" screen would have been dead in the water.
I guess Apple will come with a 4.0" screen for the iPhone 5. This is still fine for 960x640 and with a smaller bezel the phone will be hardly larger.
The chances of Cupertino going to a five-incher as their primary smartphone are zero. I agree however that for many people something around the 4 inch or so mark appears to be the current accepted size and anything the Apple release is going to be in that ballpark.
The Galaxy Note - played with one for a weekend recently, wayyy to big for a phone although a nice device and it _does_ fit in your (jeans) pocket.
Was actually comparing my DesireHD screen against the guy next to me earlier in the week and those apple screens are miniscule. They look nice (Samsung?) as a display but god are they undersized.
Are they really calling it 'five inch' in their blurb? If so then they really are just cock-measuring (which would mean by implication they think they're now playing catchup to the oriental manufacturers).
4.6" should be a good size, though, but my next upgrade's almost certainly going to be an SG3 (defo Android, regardless). Heard apocryphal rumours the SG3 is to be announced today... we'll see.
I guess that at a the existing 9cm screen (yes, it's all metric really) and aspect ratio of 3:2 gives a width of close enough to 5cm and a height of about 7.5cm.
If you were to keep that width but extend the diagonal to 4.6", which I'm going to take as 11.7cm then you'd get a height of about 10.6cm and an aspect ratio close to 2:1. So the screen would fit on the front of the current sized iPhone (quoted by Apple as 11.52cm) with almost a centimetre to spare for a home button, speaker grille and so on.
Furthermore, all existing apps could be displayed identically, in letterbox.
That said, like you I remain sceptical just because of Apple's regard for the ecosystem. Fine, the autoresizing masks on UIViews mean that a large number of apps could be made to work just by ensuring the correct boxes were ticked but it definitely wouldn't be that easy for everyone.
I'm also nearing the point where I'm going to stop reading these articles, and just wait till September to see if a new phone is released, until the point that Cook (or one of his cohorts) unveils the thing, there is no way to know, or anyone to really believe, as to what it is actually going to be like......
I loved my small dumb phones. I miss them to be honest. I found my old Nokia 8210 in the loft the other day. So small and light it felt like a fake.
I'd love it if someone would release something of a similar size and shape to a 4th gen ipod nano that had a nice sharp colour screen and keys for phone operation & sms, and also an mp3 player. Sometimes when i'm out with the wife & kids my smartphone is a hindrance and a distraction. Having the option to stay in touch when required (eg heading off in different directions and meeting up later) but not having access to email, instant messaging, games, facebook, twitter, etc etc etc.
I suppose i could just charge the battery in my old nokia though lol
Seems an two-part easy solution: Small cheap capable phone, say 3.2" screen, fits in pocket, excels at phone calls, texts, alarm clock, calculator, long lasting battery etc AND at throwing out a WiFi hotspot via 3G. Lives in your trousers.
In your car, jacket pocket or handbag lives a 7" device, works as a Sat Nav in the car, or as an internet tablet and PMP if you're on a train journey.
If you find your self without the tablet component, and you really need to, then you can, at a push, pull up a map or a webpage on the small screened phone- won't be fun, but will get you out of your jam. Easy peasy!
I have mates who take £400 worth of Korean shininess out on a drunken night- it doesn't seem too clever (and I believe there is an Apple engineer who now feels similarly!)
5" at iPhones 3:2 aspect will be a very wide phone, too wide to comfortably hold or use 1 handed. Androids 5:3 (480x800 res and above) would keep the width more manageable but raise squeals of outrage among IOS devs. My 480x854 Play is right at the limit of what I can comfortably use and it's as extreme an aspect as you'd want to see.
A 5" iPhone seems condemned to be too fat to use or annoyingly incompatible with previous versions.
Some sort of stretchable or expandable screen. As small as an iPhone in the pocket, but can optionally expand to tablet proportions. Folding joints not permitted unless they're perfectly invisible when unfolded. Maybe a flexible LCD over a hinge?
I remember mobile phones. They were quaint little things. You could fit 5 of them in your pocket, they lasted 2 weeks on a single charge, and you could leave them on the car roof, watch them bounce down the street, pick them up and they would still work. If people wanted phones they would still be buying those things. I hear some people still do.
The rest of us are buying mini computer than allows us to browse the web, read emails, draw pictures, take and edit videos, play movies, navigate down a street, be a wifi access point, yada, yada, yada. Oh yeah, you also make phone calls on them but compare those old mobile phones they aren't too good at that - too big, too power hungry, too fragile.
Turns out for most of the things you do with these newfangled things big is good. People get over their shock at the Galaxy Note by using the thing to browse the web and read emails, and rapidly come to the realisation that it is really, really good at doing those things. And it does actually fit into a pocket or handbag and is light enough to carry around all day without noticing. Yes it sucks at making phone calls - holding something that big up to your ear looks funny and feels awkward. But then again, if making phone calls was the priority, you would have bought a yesteryear mobile phone, and you didn't.
All iPhone (and iOS) apps are coded for 3:4 ratio screens. That is why Apple quadrupled the resolution with iPhone4 - 320x480 had become too low, but all those apps were hardcoded for that resolution. Apple _had_ to preserve backwards compatibility.
On a tablet 3:4 form factor is nice for reading stuff, it is close to what we are used to with paper.
But on a fondlephone thin and long is better, too wide and you are getting into Samsung Note territory. Therefore on a phone with a largish screen, the common Android 9:16(ish) ratio is actually more useable. Our mitts are the limiting factor.
And thinner bezel is not the answer. You need some bezel to hold the phone without accidentally registering touches with your (holding) palm.
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