A PiperJaffray analyst believes Apple will unveil its next-gen iPhone with a “completely redesigned body style” in October 2012.
According to analyst Gene Munster, the redesigned iPhone may “more closely resemble the metal rear panel of the current iPad.”
He also said there was a 50% chance the next iPhone would boast a screen larger than the current 4 inches.
“Beyond the redesigned body and screen, we believe the new phone will include 4G LTE, upgraded processor and memory, and a higher megapixel camera,” he added.
Meanwhile, a number of iOS developers told Eric Ogg of Gigaom they weren’t all that cocnerned about Apple potentially upping the display size of its flagship iPhone.
Sam Shank, the CEO of Hotel Tonight, said if Apple does change the screen size, the phone itself would become slightly wider – but not much taller. Still, says Shank, he doesn’t believe Cupertino would alter either the aspect ratio or pixel density.
“Changing the aspect ratio would be a lot of work for development teams. We found that maybe 50 percent of iOS development is [spent] in layout… If we had to do two versions of that, the current aspect ratio and a new aspect ratio, and had to lay it out again, that would add considerably to our development time.”
Lenny Rachitsky, the CEO of Localmind, expressed similar sentiments.
“We haven’t put a lot of thought into it yet, partly because we assume Apple isn’t going to pull an Android and fragment the device market unnecessarily,” he said.
“If they do, they must have a really good reason to do it, and we’re confident they’ll provide tools to make it easy to migrate. The last thing they want to do is put more friction in front of developers.”
