Rumor: New iPhone 5 Part With Edge To Edge Screen Appears?

Posted on February 26, 2011 by AppleBitch


A Chinese site (iDealsChina) has reportedly displayed a front panel part which appears to have a different structure when compared to panels of previous iPhones and may therefore come from the iPhone 5 (via 9to5Mac).

As can be seen from the image, and with the enormous caveat that this could simply be a mock-up part or a fake, the part appears to show a screen that is wider and longer than the current iPhone, with edge to edge display.  Also of interest is the fact that there is a hole for the iPhone Home Button which had been the subject of much discussion when it was suggested that Apple was looking to remove it in the next generation of iOS devices.

While increasing the size of the iPhone screen would not pose very many technical challenges in itself, the problem comes with the number of pixels that applications utilize.  Increasing the screen size would mean that developers would have to make changes to their apps to reflect the increased number of pixels available for use.

Previous rumors from Digitimes had suggested that Apple would implement a 4 inch screen in the next generation iPhone 5.  At the time, many people had assumed that this meant a 4 inch screen across but we hypothesized that they could actually be talking about a vertical increase in the screen size rather than both horizontal and vertical.  We even posted a concept image of how it could be implemented, but let’s be clear, we’re not saying that this is what we think the iPhone 5 will look like, simply a concept on how a larger screen and no Home button could work.

Edgy…

Related Posts:

This entry was posted in News, Rumor and tagged , . Bookmark the permalink.
  • shorebreeze

    It’s obviously either a fake image or a horribly reject part because the top part of the bezel is so irregularly crooked. But it’s what Apple SHOULD be doing with the iPhone 5. A four-inch display would be ideal; the display would be much more comfortable to text on and the phone would still be more or less the same size. It would certainly make me more likely to consider an iPhone when my Verizon comes up for renewal in the summer. With what’s on offer right now I’d probably get a Droid X because it is so easy to text on and the speakerphone is so good. But it is a little big and if someone can deliver the same performance in a slightly smaller package that would be great for me.

  • Mr. Bee

    If you look into the “Apple might remove the home button” rumours, it turns out that it all goes back to idle speculation from one very unreliable source. It’s a meme that’s gotten a lot of play perhaps due to the fact that *Honeycomb* devices eschew all hardware buttons, but it isn’t likely to happen on iOS devices at all IMO.

    It would be a bad move to take away the button both because it’s central to the whole design of iOS devices, and also because it’s the single thing that makes the phone useable for the blind and people with other handicaps. It’s not just a happenstance that this is the case either, it was clearly designed that way from the very start. Having a single button that resets a device into a knowable “default state” has long been defined as a basic accessibility standard/requirement.

    One of the design goals of a phone like iPhone is wide accessibility. While the number of such severely handicapped people is small, taking away the only thing that allows many of them to use the phone just for aesthetic reasons would be dumb. If there was something about the home button that was a negative, (there isn’t) then they might balance accessibility with whatever they would gain by eliminating that negative, but otherwise it’s a fools move to take away the button.

    • Dominick

      i agree! not having a home button would ruin the whole ios experience. just picture using multitouch gestures while ur driving just to get to the home screen…that would mean that it would require you to use 2 hands and have your hands off the wheel. definitlty not going to happen!! apple is going to keep it the way it is