The phablet craze is now in full swing, with recent Android and Windows Phone hardware coming to market with screens that measure 6 inches or larger in size. Despite the ever-increasing physical size of its competition, Apple has stuck to just two screen sizes for its iPhone hardware, with the original iPhone through the iPhone 4S measuring 3.5 inches and the iPhone 5 and 5s coming in at 4 inches. That may change this year, though, as a new report claims that Apple is prepping two bigger iPhone models for debut in 2014.
Sources speaking to The Wall Street Journal claim that Apple is working on a new iPhone with a display that measures somewhere between 4.5 and 5 inches in size. A second model is reportedly in development with a screen that's larger than 5 inches. The smaller of the two is said to be further along in development and nearly ready for mass production, while the larger unit is reportedly still in the "preliminary development" phase.
Both of the larger iPhones are expected to spot a metal body similar to the one found on the iPhone 5s. In addition to these bigger iPhone claims, the WSJ suggests that Apple could give the plastic body of the iPhone 5c the axe.
Rumors of Apple launching an iPhone larger than the current model are nothing new, and it's worth noting that the company likely has many bigger prototype phones kicking around in its labs that will never see the light of day. As competing handsets continue to get larger and consumers adapt to these bigger phones, Apple may be feeling a bit more pressure to give its iPhone some growth serum itself. Of course, Apple also managed to move 33.8 million iPhones during its fiscal Q4 2013 period, and analysts estimate that that number grew to as much as 55.3 million during the holiday season, so obviously the relatively small size of the iPhone isn't hurting demand too much.
If you were in charge of designing the next iPhone, how large would you make its display?
