My thoughts on what the iPhone 5 will be...

[Icyculyr]

• 4 inch 960x640 IPS display
• A6 at 32nm w/ quad-core Cortex A9 and the same graphics
• 1GB RAM, 4G, much better battery life

A dual-core or quad-core Cortex A15 would be preferable but I don't think it's ready for the iPhone 5 which is about four months away, and PowerVR SGX600 series graphics would be ideal as well, but there's no way we'll see that this year.

And a 1440x960 resolution would be ideal but it'd require more graphics grunt, so it's kind of unlikely.

Just sayin' :shades:

 

[Slapshot136]

I would rather see a size like 1280 x 720 for the display.. but the rest seems realistic/acceptable

 

[Icyculyr]

I would rather see a size like 1280 x 720 for the display.. but the rest seems realistic/acceptable

The only problem with that is it would fragment iOS and require developers to support another resolution, whereas 1440x960 is a multiple of 480x320 and thus can be scaled (not upscaled) to the higher resolution, maintaining app compatibility and only requiring higher resolution content.

 

[Slapshot136]

it's about time for apple to go with a 9:16 ratio instead of a 2:3 ratio - although I wouldn't mind a 10:16 ratio

if you keep backwards compatibility forever, eventually you stop moving forward

 

[Icyculyr]

it's about time for apple to go with a 9:16 ratio instead of a 2:3 ratio - although I wouldn't mind a 10:16 ratio

if you keep backwards compatibility forever, eventually you stop moving forward

What benefit is there with those ratios over the current ratios? I can't think of any, and in the process of changing it you'd lose perfect compatibility with existing apps.

EDIT: And even if there is a benefit, is it worth breaking compatibility with 600,000 apps? I don't think so.

 

[Lyerae]

You have to eventually break compatibility. If you don't, you'll be supporting legacy code / applications forever, and that is never a good thing.

It would be better for Apple to switch to a different ratio now, rather than 2-3 years from now, when there are even more apps they'll be breaking.

 

[Slapshot136]

What benefit is there with those ratios over the current ratios?

for one thing all dvd/blu-ray movies are in that widescreen ratio, so they wouldn't need to re-size the movies from their original size - I would say that is a fairly significant reason by itself - and apps wouldn't necessarily lose compatibility, only the poorly coded ones that are hard-coded to a certain resolution instead of being flexible, and even then, apple could just add some extra whitespace to make them fit

 

[Icyculyr]

You have to eventually break compatibility. If you don't, you'll be supporting legacy code / applications forever, and that is never a good thing.

It would be better for Apple to switch to a different ratio now, rather than 2-3 years from now, when there are even more apps they'll be breaking.

That's not true -- it's not legacy code, it's just a screen resolution. But think about this... in two to three years won't people again want a larger iPhone? Do they then break compatibility again? No.

for one thing all dvd/blu-ray movies are in that widescreen ratio, so they wouldn't need to re-size the movies from their original size - I would say that is a fairly significant reason by itself

That's a plus, yeah, but for that all iPhone apps that haven't been updated to support the new resolution will run with black borders, which is far worse as far as I'm concerned.

Plus 16:9 is good ratio for movies and games, but not so much for anything else like web browsing, books, even "general" apps -- 3:2 gives you the right kind of proportions to design an app, you've not got too much space in either dimension, but with a 16:9 ratio you'd end up with an iPhone that's too tall in portrait and too short in landscape.

Need I mention the added work for developers?

- and apps wouldn't necessarily lose compatibility, only the poorly coded ones that are hard-coded to a certain resolution instead of being flexible, and even then, apple could just add some extra whitespace to make them fit

Unfortunately since from the beginning apps were designed for fixed dimensions, any change to those dimensions will break compatibility (to clarify, the reason for this is that it's unlikely any existing app won't have some kind of dependency on a fixed resolution imo, e.g, there may be a few hard coded lines, etc.) -- all apps will need to run with black borders as Apple has no way to know which app will fully support adjusting to the new resolution and which app won't.


Apple does provide autoresizing functionality, but sometimes (even often imo) you're required to manually resize controls when animating, and the autoresizing functionality just can't produce the desired result. You'll probably find a lot of apps with both autoresizing and manual resizing, but none except maybe the simplest of apps, which handles resizing entirely through autoresizing -- some will have hard coded points as well, even if it's just a line or two.

But then again, it is of course possible I'm wrong, and maybe even Apple's going to do a shift to the same kind of way Android does it, but I think not.

TLDR;

All switching to a 1136x640 resolution would do is:

• Require all existing apps to run with black borders until updated
• Add more work for developers not only for new apps but old ones too
• Prevent iPhone apps from running pixel double on the iPad

And, in the future, what happens when everyone wants a larger smartphone again? The process repeats. As far as I'm concerned Apple should keep their current system, although if they shifted over and made it so apps had to support variable resolutions and aspect ratios that probably wouldn't be a bad thing in the long run, but if they do a in-between option, then... meh.