We’ve heard a lot of rumors lately that Apple will eventually transition to OLED display technology for its full line of iPhone handsets — a move that many analysts believe could come within the next few yeas, with some going so far as to suggest a 2018 debut. However, a new, though extremely questionable, rumor out of Taiwan suggests that — in addition to the OLED display — Apple could possibly release an iPhone featuring a whopping 5.8-inch display.
According to DigiTimes, and backed up by claims originally made by The Motley Fool, Apple has “plans to launch a 5.8-inch iPhone featuring rigid AMOLED display panels in 2018 or even earlier in 2017.” In the report, Taiwanese analysts speculate that as many as 50 million of those 5.8-inch OLED iPhones might be sold within their first year of availability.
The report also alleges that, while Samsung would exclusively supply Apple’s initial batch of OLED panels, other current Apple suppliers — such as LG and Japan Display — will ultimately bring their panels to the table at a later time, too.
The Motley Fool article goes on to speculate that the 5.8-inch handset could be positioned and marketed as the 2nd generation ‘iPhone Pro’ — which many believe could be touching down this year, boasting the 5.5-inch stature of the ‘iPhone 7 Plus’, with an added bonus of high-quality, dual-lens optics for vastly superior photo taking capabilities.
Here’s where the rumored 5.8-inch display on an iPhone doesn’t particularly make sense to us, though:
It’s an almost certain prospect at this point that Apple will eventually transition its iPhone display technology to OLED, yes. However, simply the idea that the Silicon Valley tech-giant might delve even further into the phablet scene seems a bit, if not entirely, far fetched to us. Why is that? Well, for starters, the move would effectively give Apple’s range of iOS devices a total of 7 different physical screen dimensions — including the 4” iPhone 5s, 4.7” iPhone 6/6s, 5.5” iPhone 6/6s Plus, 5.8”, 7.9” iPad mini, 9.7” iPad Air, and 12.9” iPad Pro.
Furthermore, a 5.8-inch iPhone — though perhaps fun to fantasize about — wouldn’t result in a display that much larger than Apple’s current 5.5-inch display on the iPhone 6s Plus. Whereas, for comparison, the company’s current 4.7-inch iPhone 6s, and 4-inch iPhone 5s, gives each model in Apple’s current lineup plenty of room to stand out from the next.
The original iPhone — launched back in June, 2007 — featured a 3.5-inch display, which eventually grew into the taller 4-inch panel on the iPhone 5, followed two years later by the 4.7- and 5.5-inch models currently on the market. So while we’re almost certain that Apple plans to transition to OLED — or, at the least, a comparable display technology all its own — the plausibility of a device that’s only 0.3 inches larger than the current top-tier iPhone seems like an unnecessary move to make, not even factoring in the cost of research, design, and development that would ultimately have to be invested to create such a device.
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What do you think about the prospect of a whopping 5.8-inch iPhone?