iPhone 5 to sport 4-inch display

According to the Japanese Apple tracking blog Macotakara the next iPhone will have 4-inch display. The blog also reported that Hitachi and Sony have already started shipping 4-inch LCD panels to Apple. This and numerous other rumors suggest that the iPhone 5 display will be larger in order to better compete with Android and Windows Phone devices.

In March, something a little bit more interesting happened. Purported "mold engineering" drawings made the rounds, depicting a device that looked like an iPhone 4 but with a noticeably larger screen. This was followed in June by blog This Is My Next, claiming that Apple was working on an iPhone with a 3.7-inch display, and a slew of cases that hit store shelves designed for a slightly larger, but thinner iPhone, based on an alleged prototype device leaked from a manufacturing facility.

Alternatively, a report by our own sister site CNET France near the end of September looselyclaimed Apple would use a qHD (960x540 pixels) screen that measured about 4.2 to 4.3 inches diagonally. That's compared to the iPhone 4 and 4S' 3.5-inch display that runs at a higher 960x640 pixels.

One of the most recent reports ahead of this came last week from iLounge, which laid out several rumors about Apple's product changes during 2012. On that list was an iPhone with a 4-inch display, alongside metal casing and a summer launch.

Apple currently maintains three basic sizes for apps to fall into: non-Retina Display iPhones and iPods, Retina Display iPhones and iPods, and the iPad. Changing dimensions with two additional configurations would mark another step for developers when designing their software, be it utilities or games.