While Appel did budge and increase the size of the Apple iPhone with the iPhone 5, however a 4″ screen in 2014 isn’t the right size? Has the market moved away from Apple’s magical iPhone screen size? Something that was gigantic back in 2007 even with 3.5″ surface.
In documents submitted to the court during the ongoing Samsung vs Apple patent battle, it has come to light that Apple has been fretting over the iPhone screen size falling short of popular demand. Cheap Android devices with 5″ screens have become very popular with manufacturers like Micromax making the most of this opportunity.
Apple pioneered touch screen phones that have no buttons, they upped the game with the Retina Display on the iPhone 4 in 2010. However 4 years later, competitors have great hardware on their phones and have toppled Apple’s dominance by throwing quantity like more RAM, more processing power and bigger displays at a lower cost. Given the plethora of Samsung Galaxy and other devices on the market that fits perfectly into a first time smartphone buyers budget, their upgrade cycles stick to Android and these users get used to larger 5″ displays.
Apple has had a valid argument that large displays are bad for usability. So far the iPhone 5 /5S sells in good numbers with the 4″ screen, but would the iPhone 6 face too much heat if Apple doesn’t increase the display size again? Would they make interface changes to make the phone usable? or move the power button to the side? All eyes would be on Apple to see how they manage to compete with the bunch of large screen and low cost Androids in 2014. The iPhone 5c is far from the low cost iPod touch like iPhone that Steve Job mentioned in his email back in 2010. Would that eventually happen?