iPhone 5 Release Date, New Auto Layout Feature Points To Larger Screen

The talk around the town is that the iPhone 5 will come with a bigger display. As usual, Apple has not confirmed any of the rumors, but an application in their new iOS 6 has developers predicting that the Apple iPhone 5 will indeed come with a larger screen of 4 inches. Many Android phones currently come with 4-inch displays, and the pressure is on Apple to provide a viewing experience that can compete with other increasingly popular (and cheaper) smartphones. A larger screen means a different resolution. Currently, the iPhone 4 and 4S have a 960X640 resolution. The older 3GS model was only 480X320. Previous iPhone model displays have all had an aspect ratio of 3:2. The display on the iPhone 5 will still probably be the Retina display since Apple's latest line of Macbooks has just adopted the technology. If the iPhone 5's new screen is going to increase by half an inch to 4 inches, the amount of pixels available will increase, and if the rumors of the new aspect ratio being 16:9 for widescreen viewing are true, then display elements from old apps will get shifted. Luckily, software developers given access to the SDK of the Apple iOS 6 have noticed a new feature called Auto Layout. By using this feature, developers can set parameters for an app's UI, and have the app display properly across multiple platforms. This can be seen as an indicator that Apple expects new screen sizes on some products in the upcoming months, most likely on the iPhone and a possible iPad Mini. Developers at WWDC 2012 didn't seem too concerned about the possible display distortions. According to a poll conducted by Piper Jaffray's Analyst Gene Munster, developers rated the potential display image disparity as a 3.4 out of 10 in terms of difficulty.