Apple By Ryan Whitwam Jan. 21, 2016 12:17 pm
Apple has grudgingly followed the trends in the mobile industry and scaled up the iPhone to 4.7 inches. It even has the larger phablet-sized 5.5-inch iPhone Plus. The company apparently thinks there is still an appetite for a smaller iPhone, because rumors of a new four-inch version have been persistent over the past few months. Now, we’ve got the first believable leak of the supposed four-incher, and guess what? It looks like a little iPhone.
If you just glanced at this device, you’d think it was an iPhone 6. It's the same unibody aluminum frame and overall shape as Apple’s current phones. Speaking of, this would be the year for a more substantial redesign of Apple’s mobile devices, if past patterns are anything to go by. If this phone is legit, it could indicate that Apple is sticking with the current design.
Concerning the authenticity of the leak, that’s impossible to say for certain. The size of the phone does seem right, based on the ratio of the Home button to the surrounding bezel. The leak comes by way of a Chinese gadget site MIC Gadget, and iPhones are indeed manufactured in China. Most hardware leaks first show up on sites like this, when workers smuggle phones out of factories. However, there’s also a thriving knockoff market in China, and some of them are very convincing. The phone in the leak is never turned on, so it’s impossible to know if it’s really some Android phone being passed off as an iPhone. It does appear to have tape covering areas where a production ID would be on a prototype unit.
A four-inch iPhone would probably make some users with small hands and even smaller pockets very happy, however, there’s a reason phones keep getting bigger — they just sell better. Most consumers don’t seem to mind using two hands to operate their phone. If the smaller iPhone exists, there’s a good chance that it’ll be a niche product.