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The new iPhone 5 is getting extra leg room on the screen — and filling it with an extra row of apps, it seems.
It looks as though the new blower’s home screen will have five rows of apps instead of the current four on the resized screen, which is set to measure 4 inches across and boast a resolution of 640×1,136 pixels.
A series of leaked photos have showed the new iPhone to be taller than the current model when you hold it normally, or wider when you turn it sideways to landscape orientation. That means the screen is now 16:9, meaning no more black bars when you watch movies and TV, allowing your video to make the most of the screen.
9to5Mac discovered the fifth row of apps by changing the resolution of the home screen in the software simulator provided by Apple for developers to build apps. In the current version of iOS, the icons shuffle down a bit with extra space between them. But in iOS 6 an extra row is added, strongly suggesting the finished version of the software will have five rows of apps.
Extra stuff on your home screen is welcome, but I don’t think this goes far enough to address the problem with Apple’s home screen — the problem being that it’s not dynamic enough. Android home screens feature both unchanging icons like the iPhone and widgets, which show you snippets of information without having to open the app, like the weather or headlines.
Meanwhile, Microsoft is showing both Apple and Android how it’s done with Windows Phone’s dynamic home screen, consisting of automatically updating widgets called live tiles that strike a calm balance between the neatness of the iPhone home screen and the usefulness of the Android home screen.
Leaked photos also reveal a smaller dock connector, making the phone slimmer as well as taller. The new iPhone 5 is expected to arrive in September.
Would you rather have more icons or widgets that actually tell you something useful? What do you think of the iPhone 5? Tell me your thoughts in the comments or on our Facebook page.
Image credit: 9to5Mac
