During The Vergecast last week, Timothy Collins called in to share an interesting theory on what a 4-inch iPhone screen could look like. In short, what if Apple made the screen taller? From 640×960 to 640×1152. Verge forum member “modilwar” fleshed the idea out some more and shared some example mockups of what the new screen could look like.
It would mean the iPhone can maintain its 326 PPI ratio, as well as the fact that any apps which use a scrolling interface (Mail, Instapaper, Reeder, Tweetbot, Simplenote, Agenda, et al.) may need to do (nearly) nothing to accommodate the new screen. Because: when in portrait mode there would simply be a larger scroll view area; when in landscape mode, there would be the same vertical height as before, and horizontal elements would simply be spaced farther apart.
At the end of the day, I don’t know if we’ll ever see a 4-inch iPhone. Because, in addition to the how would it work for apps and what about the Retina display argument, there is still the how comfortable and easy to use with one hand would it be argument. And I think that a 3.5-inch screen is the sweet spot for the latter.
Nevertheless, this is certainly one of the most interesting and compelling arguments I’ve seen on the matter.