Well damn. If there wasn’t already enough fuel on the “new iPhone will have a taller screen” fire, 9to5Mac happened to discover something terribly interesting after playing with the iOS 6 simulator.
The full explanation can be found here, but in short they found when setting a simulated device’s screen resolution to 1136 x 640, iOS 6 would neatly arrange apps on the homescreen into five rows — a homescreen layout that the iPhone rumor mill has pointed to for the past few months.
Suffice it to say that wasn’t the case when they did the same thing in iOS 5.1 — all the app icons remained in four rows, though they were set further apart from each other to fill up that additional space. What’s more, changing the resolution in the iOS 6 simulator to anything but 1136 x 640 (and the standard 960 by 640, naturally) yields a sort of “iPad-like” layout with peculiar proportions.
It’s not exactly a smoking gun (finding a prototype unit a la Gizmodo would be ideal) but it’s pretty damning stuff nonetheless. Rumors of an iPhone with a taller screen have been circulating for what seems like ages now, and if that particular screen resolution sounds familiar, that’s because 9to5mac pointed to it as a likely suspect for the new iPhone back in May.
At the time, they (along with quite a few others) reported that a 4-inch screen would be doing all that pixel pushing, yet another bit of iPhone scuttlebutt that seems like a lock as we head into the final stretch. With a grand unveiling reportedly taking place just over a month from now, it’s little wonder that these juicy new tidbits are coming hard and fast — here’s hoping the suspense ends sooner rather than later.
