Rumours of larger iPhones that take a page from the Android phablet handbook have been swirling around for a while now, and the WSJ is now chiming in with reports that two are coming this year. One with a screen bigger than 4.5 inches, the other with a screen bigger than 5 inches.
According to the WSJ’s sources, both bigger iPhones will be clad in metal, much like the iPhone 5s, while the unapologetically plastic polycarbonate casings one the 5c fall by the wayside.
Apparently the smaller of the two blown-up iPhones is further along in development, and is currently being prepped for mass production, whereas the large large one is still in earlier development, though still on track for release this year. Neither involves any fancy curved glass or anything.
Part of Apple’s push to finally get to a bigger-screened model isn’t necessarily to compete with gigantic Android handsets here at home, but rather because big screens are popular in China, a market that’s been the apple of Apple’s eye for a while now. Going goldpagne was apparently just one step of the process, and bigger screens look like the next.
Granted these are rumours, and if the largest-screen iPhone is still in early development stages, things could change, but it’s worth nothing that the WSJ’s info lines up preeetty well with a similar report from Bloomberg that hit late last year. The main discrepancy there seems to be a disagreement about whether or not these new iPhones will sport any curved glass, but the information about the sizes doesn’t conflict.
How large that “larger than 5 inches” model will get before its design is finalised, and whether or not it will actually come out remains to be seen, but it looks more certain that ever that we might be in for something big. [WSJ]