Evidence Growing of a 4-Inch iPhone 5

In the past two days, two major traditional news sources have published reports that Apple is prepping a smartphone with a larger screen than any of its predecessors.

Neither Reuters nor the Wall Street Journal received their information through official channels. Reuters, for example, quoted "people familiar with the situation". There have been similar reports published online in recent weeks.

iPhone in a Growth Spurt?

Many of the predictions that the next iPhone will have a larger display are based on the assumption that Apple is feeling stress from its competitors. The device likely to be its main competition for the next year, the Samsung Galaxy S III, will have a 4.8-inch touchscreen, dwarfing the 3.5-inch one on the iPhone 4S.

In fact, every Apple phone going back to 2007 has had a 3.5-inch screen, though the company doubled the screen resolution with the iPhone 4. Meanwhile, virtually every Android, Windows Phone, and even BlackBerry has a bigger display.

Something's Familiar About This...

This isn't the first time there have been persistent and well-publicized reports that Apple is going to introduce an iPhone with a larger screen. This happened last fall, too, and these turned out to be incorrect. Instead, the company launched the iPhone 4S.

According to information that supposedly leaked out of Apple, this company's former CEO nixed the bigger model at the last minute because it used a different screen resolution than all previous iOS-based phones. Tim Cook is running Apple now, and he might have a different opinion, however.

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