Your burning Xbox One policy questions answered by Major Nelson

E3 2013 has come and gone, and with it, we got to see the next generation of Microsoft’s and Sony’s consoles up close and in detail. Microsoft’s showing didn’t go as the company likely planned, and it has been on the defensive ever since. Xbox Live’s Director of Programming Larry Hryb joined the defensive, and took to a video interview where he answered a host of questions from Reddit.

Since the con, the gaming world has been a little baffled by some of the policies Microsoft will be implementing in the Xbox One upon release, such as the 24-hour online check-in requirement, or the console’s mandatory reliance on the Kinect hardware being plugged in. Microsoft will also be implementing some kind of used games policy, wherein developers can charge players to activate a used game. The majority of the burning questions surrounding the Xbox One were posed, and Hryb did his best addressing them.

Hryb explained the required internet check-in as a way for Microsoft to be “flexible,” in that through checking in, the service can provide you with your up-to-date gaming library from anywhere an internet connection is available. Technically, your Steam library works similarly — if you don’t already have a game downloaded and installed, you need to check into the service and download it. Of course, you aren’t required to continually check in after the game is installed, like you have to on the Xbox One. One of the tropes of the Xbox Live service is that it’s a wild west of lawless, bannable offenses. Considering the service requires that 24-hour check-in, it was unclear whether or not banned users would be able to access their games even if they couldn’t log into the service. Hryb clarifies this, and says that users will always have access to their games. This suggests that the online check-in is on a different connection tier than the actual Live service.

A popular sentiment regarding the online check-in ever since it was announced was that rather than have it be online only, Microsoft could have also allowed the check-in to work via putting the physical disc back into the console every 24 hour period. Then, at least, if an internet connection was faulty, users could still play their games. Unfortunately, Hryb noticeably sidestepped the question and said the online check-in was designed for flexibility, not addressing the possibility of physical disc validation as an alternative to internet validation.

Though the Xbox One hasn’t yet released, Hryb was asked what would happen to the game validation at the end of the Xbox One’s life. If the console currently requires online validation every day, would Microsoft have to keep check-in servers up for the rest of the eternity in order to allow gamers to access the games they bought during the Xbox One generation? In theory, Microsoft would either incorporate the Xbox One validation requirements into the following console’s servers, or the company would remove the requirements altogether now that the console is from a defunct generation. Perhaps predictably, Hryb notes that the One hasn’t even released yet, and it’s too early to know how the end of its generation would be handled.

The main focus of the interview is that Microsoft created the seemingly draconian Xbox One always-connected policies in order to support the flexibility to access your games library anywhere. However, Hryb doesn’t explain why the check-in is mandatory for your main console, or why a non-portable gaming platform needs so much focus on accessing your library from anywhere other than your living room. Hryb didn’t exactly assuage anyone’s fears, but at least he didn’t generate any new ill will like a certain Microsoft executive did when he literally stated that people with internet connectivity issues should buy an Xbox 360 instead of an Xbox One.

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Google’s Project Loon fills internet gaps with solar-powered balloons

Mobile data might seem near-ubiquitous, but the world still has major dead zones and huge expanses with poor coverage. Anyone that has fervently and consistently checked the availability of Verizon’s FiOS in their neighborhood knows this all too well, but that still places you on the well-connected side of the spectrum — there are parts of the world where Time Warner and Comcast (let alone FiOS or Google Fiber) would be a huge advance. Over the weekend, Google launched Project Loon, an initiative to help fill in those internet gaps through the use of networked balloons.

The goal is to provide broadband-like internet for the two-thirds of the world that doesn’t have access to a reliable internet connection. To do this, Google is using a network of actual high-altitude balloons — this isn’t some kind of metaphor — that fly in the sky above the Earth. The launch of the project consisted of launching 30 balloons, each of which are capable of providing internet access with speeds comparable to 3G — better than nothing, but probably not fast enough to download all those episodes of Falling Skies that you missed so far this season.

The balloons were launched over New Zealand as a test bed and fly around 12 miles high, each of which able to provide internet connectivity for an estimated hundreds of people within a 25 mile diameter. The height of the balloons was intentionally chosen to be out of the way of commercial flights, as well as birds.

The Loon balloons are networked to each other with a radio transceiver, and are also in contact with the ground thanks to another. Each balloon has a third transceiver for backup purposes, and is tracked with on-board GPS. Each Loon balloon is powered via solar panels, which takes around four hours for a full charge, and extra energy is stored in a rechargeable battery.

The balloons also contain equipment to monitor the weather, as objects flying in the sky will surely bump into some less-than-desirable weather at some point, but the balloons have been built to withstand the conditions they will be facing.

This test covers just 50 or so people in the Christchurch area of New Zealand, where the testers are able to connect to the network thanks to special Loon antennas. The antennas work specifically with the Loon network and aren’t compatible with WiFi networks and actually filter out standard WiFi signals. The signals being transmitted to and from the balloons are encrypted, though Google didn’t go into much detail about how.

As for positioning, the balloons are largely automated, though do allow for human control from technicians back at Google’s Loon home base just in case. Eventually, though, Google is looking to automate the entire process and keep the balloons traveling within specific wind patterns in order to maintain consistent coverage of desired locations.

Where once satellite internet was the only option, balloons could provide a cheaper, faster solution to large portions of the globe where it might never make sense to run fiber. Basically, Google is testing out an internet network built on the backs of balloons flying in the sky, ushering in an age of steampunk-like connectivity for people far off from city centers and otherwise lacking in high-speed internet access.

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Leaked pictures of the iPhone 5S logic board hint at minor changes

After last week’s unveiling of iOS 7, rumors about the next iPhone have started to really heat up. A photo has leaked from a Japanese electronics site today, and it’s supposedly the logic board slated for use in the next iPhone. Unsurprisingly, it looks a lot like the internals of the iPhone 5 with merely a few minor differences. Simply put, this adds credence to the idea that the next iPhone won’t be a complete redesign.

When this image is compared side-by-side to the iPhone 5′s logic board, it’s hard to see much of a difference. Save a few screw locations and slightly shifted electronics, the two boards seem nearly identical. While there has been substantial discussion about Apple scaling up the iPhone to a phablet form-factor, this doesn’t seem like the drastic design difference many smartphone enthusiasts are hoping for.

Alternately, this logic board could potentially be designed for the cheap iPhone Mini that has been discussed frequently in the last few weeks. It is possible that the iPhone 5S will see a more radical redesign while the iPhone Mini gets stuck with slightly revised iPhone 5 internals. Assuming that this picture actually showcases a legitimate board, it’s still way too early to tell how it is going to be used. Even if it’s really from Apple, it could simply be an early prototype.

Samsung and Apple are at each other’s throats in the smartphone market, and that might be cause for worry. Since Samsung has been in charge of making previous chips for Apple, the increasingly strained business relationship might just cost consumers a substantially more powerful iPhone for the time being. We might not even see the next big jump forward in Apple’s A-series SoCs until next year. The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is supposedly building the A6x for the upcoming iOS models, but the 20nm A7 probably won’t make its way to iPhones until 2014 or later.

If we’re only going to see a minor update for the next iPhone, that would certainly explain the extremely similar design for the logic board. Unfortunately for Apple, that could also mean bad news for its falling stock price. While the regular iPhone stalls, maybe this is the perfect time for the super-cheap iPhone Mini to return Apple to the top of the market.

[Image credit: Moumantai & iFixit]

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Samsung’s new Galaxy S4 will have LTE-Advanced, even if your carrier doesn’t

The 4G LTE rollout is still underway in most regions, but Samsung isn’t hanging back waiting for the next phase to begin. The company has announced than an upcoming version of its Galaxy S4 Android phone will be released soon withLTE-Advanced support baked right in. This device will support substantially faster data rates — up to 3 Gbps down and 1.5 Gbps up. You’ll be able to load cat GIFs faster than ever.

The new Galaxy S4 (GS4) will be sold in South Korea as soon as next month, but that’s not surprising. Samsung is a Korean company and more or less dominates the market there. Special variants of international phones, and unique devices are launched in South Korea all the time. In this case, Samsung says its in talks to bring the LTE-Advanced device to several other countries, but refused to say who it is working with. (Check out our LTE-A explainer if you would like to learn more about the technology.)

The question is, does it really matter yet? LTE -Advanced networks are the unicorns of the telecom world. The US, which was significantly behind in the rollout of pre-4G standards, is one of the leading markets in 4G deployment. Even in North America there isn’t a scrap of LTE-Advanced to be found.

A Russian carrier called Yota Networks has activated LTE-Advanced on 11 of its base stations as part of a pilot program. Testing of this fledgling network showed real-world speeds of about 300 Mbps downstream. That’s a far cry from 3Gbps, but it’s still a substantial improvement over regular LTE. Currently available LTE devices will still work on the upgraded towers, but not at LTE-Advanced speeds.

Samsung is choosing sides in the eternal chicken-and-egg conundrum we see every time a new network technology starts rolling out. Either users buy the devices and have no network, or the expensive new network rolls out while most users are unable to make use of it. Samsung is betting on its networking future by developing the devices early. Samsung is hoping the new GS4 will encourage cell carriers to begin upgrading their networks, and Samsung would be more than happy to help supply the infrastructure to do it.

The new Galaxy S4 will be powered by a separate Qualcomm LTE-Advanced data modem, probably paired with a zippy Snapdragon system-on-a-chip (SoC). Qualcomm also makes Snapdragon SoCs with built-in data modems, which will likely be upgraded to use LTE-Advanced sometime next year.

In the US, LTE is still creeping across the landscape, gobbling up more of rural America every day. Verizon has almost complete coverage if its 3G footprint, and AT&T is picking up the pace to match. Verizon is expected to move toward LTE-Advanced later this year by utilizing its untapped AWS bands, but other carriers are in a tougher spot. AT&T failed to complete the T-Mobile acquisition, leaving it with even less spectrum than when it started. T-Mobile claims it is in a good position to upgrade its small LTE footprint to LTE-Advanced in the distant future. Sprint has had nothing to say on the topic as it is still mired in acquisition talks.

Samsung’s Galaxy S4 with LTE-Advanced isn’t going to transform your carrier’s network overnight, but at least they’re getting out ahead of the change. When LTE-Advanced does come to your region, Samsung wants to sell you the matching phone.

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Haswell-E to offer DDR4 support, up to eight cores in 2014

Leaked slides suggest that Intel‘s Haswell-E will ship in the back half of 2014, with support for the nascent DDR4 standard, 40 lanes of PCI-Express 3.0 connectivity (likely in an x16/x16/x8 configuration), and, in a first for Intel, up to octal-core CPUs.

This feature set would make Haswell-E a major upgrade to the upcoming Ivy Bridge-E, due later this year. That chip is expected to serve as a drop-in replacement for Sandy Bridge-E, which debuted in 2011 along with the X79 chipset. The X79 chipset is already showing its age, with just two USB 3.0 ports and inconsistent support for PCIe 3.0 (Intel’s own motherboards don’t support PCIe 3.0 on X79, and the company claims that this is an unofficial mode). Wellsburg will solve this rather neatly.

The question of value is going to be particularly interesting in this context. In heavily multithreaded scenarios, an eight-core chip is obviously going to outperform a six-core flavor. If Intel holds clock speeds constant between IVB-E and Haswell-E, we can expect a performance gain of up to 40% in heavily-threaded tests. That assumes Haswell’s IPC improvements average out to 5% over IVB and a 33% gain in performance due to the additional cores.

That, combined with official PCIe 3.0 support, is nothing to sneeze at. As for DDR4, that’s more of a wash.

DDR4: The “4″ means faster — sorta. Kinda.

DDR4 has been ramping for several years, mostly behind the scenes (read our article on thestate of DDR4). It’s scheduled to debut in servers first and it makes sense that Intel would debut it with Haswell-E — the “E” family of processors are derived from server silicon.

Compared to DDR3, DDR4 offers lower power consumption and higher transfer rates. Unlike DDR3, it makes major changes to the internal RAM topology. Where DDR3 used a multi-drop bus that allowed multiple DIMMs to sit on the same memory channel, DDR4 virtually requires the use of a point-to-point bus with a maximum of one DIMM per RAM channel.

That would leave dual-channel systems limited to two DIMMs, with quad-channel systems limited to four. While that’s not an impossible solution, it would further inflate the cost of moving to DDR4, given that RAM manufacturers tend to charge premiums for both new RAM technologies and higher capacity DIMMs. It would also require SoC developers to build wider RAM interfaces if they wanted to address more than a single DRAM chip.

The solution may be to adopt load-reduced DIMMs, or LR-DIMMs. LR-DIMMs use an on-package buffer to re-drive the data signal to all attached chips. This significantly increases potential RAM density and reduces cost. Unfortunately, this type of configuration adds additional memory latency — and DDR4 latencies are already expected to be higher than their DDR3 counterparts.

The figures above are given in clock cycles, not nanoseconds, which means that there’s crossover at a certain point — 5 clock cycles at 3200MHz is less latency than four clock cycles at 2133MHz. At the same speed, however, DDR3 will have lower latency than DDR4. Keep in mind, the graph above shows the relationship between DDR3 and DDR4 withoutusing LRDIMMs, which add their own 2-3 cycles of latency.

Since desktop workloads are far more sensitive to latency than bandwidth, DDR4 likely won’t offer much benefit here until clock speeds rise well above 2133MHz. That doesn’t make DDR4 a bad thing, most memory standards launch at rough parity with the product they replace, but it means users shouldn’t look to the new memory to provide an immediate performance boost over the old.

Overall, Haswell-E will be a significant step forward in total desktop performance and a moderate improvement on total platform capabilities. If you’re a high-end enthusiast whose been waiting for faster desktop hardware, it’ll scratch that particular itch — but you’ll have to wait another 15 months or so to test it.

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New tactile display sends information through skin instead of eyes

Your sense of touch could be the next frontier in relaying valuable contextual information if new research currently being conducted at MIT proves successful. Researchers believe it may be possible to design wearable arrays of GPS-enabled vibration motors that provide simple navigational cues or detailed data through a kind of tactile Morse code. This could lead to non-visual haptic display technology — why not check your email without even opening your eyes?

Your skin and eyes process very different kinds of sensory data, but the number of receptors is almost identical. The simple fact that you have touch receptors over about two square meters of skin makes it an ideal route to convey information. The question being investigated by MIT senior researcher Lynette Jones is, where should the input be directed?

While all skin is capable of detecting tactile interactions, not all of it is equally sensitive. Just like screen resolution for visual data, the larger the array of vibration motors, the more detailed the haptic data stream can be.

To determine how well people can identify touch input, Jones has designed and built a pair of wearable devices. The first consists of eight accelerometers tied into a pancake vibration motor of the same sort used in cell phones. This allowed researchers to gauge how far vibrations propagate through skin. They found that the vibration was not detectable 8mm from the motor.

The second wearable device consisted of a 3×3 array of vibration motors. This one was used to see how able people are to discern where a vibration is coming from. Even though the action of the motors was not detectable from the outside past 8mm, participants perceived the vibrations at about 24mm. This makes it harder to identify the source of vibration when the motors are less than a few centimeters apart.

Another barrier to overcome is the dampening effect of the skin in different areas of the body. The intensity of the vibration might need to be varied based on where the device is worn to attain the desired “display resolution.” Jones and her team found that looser skin tends to dampen motors more, but this could potentially allow for smaller arrays with less interference between motors.

If the research pans out, it could lead to a new way of absorbing data — possibly in the same way blind individuals read braille lettering. Wearable grids of small vibration motors could act as simple left/right navigation indicators, or notify you of new messages. With additional environmental data, the same technology could help emergency personnel find their way around a burning building, or send messages back and forth when looking at a visual screen would be too dangerous.

The MIT team is currently designing arrays that can be worn across the back, and a smaller version that wraps around the wrist. Coupling these devices with wireless technologies could even allow for integration with existing smartphone navigation and messaging services.

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Firm bets solar phone screens will be the answer to slow-moving battery tech

Regular readers of ExtremeTech know that battery tech always seems to be standing just at the base of a mountain of progress, but can never quite start the climb. There are always new advancements, but never ones that seem like they’ll be put into consumer products anytime soon. So, it may be time to look for alternative power sources for mobile devices, perhaps a solar-powered smartphone screen.

Let’s face it, there is a lot of new and awesome battery technology on the horizon, but almost all advances seem to stay right on that horizon, out of reach of the general consumer. Meanwhile, solar power, though underutilized by society, has been around and kicking for quite some time. However, we haven’t harnessed it in the vast majority of devices — our phones and tablets use lithium-ion batteries, our Wiimotes use standard AAs, and we plug our laptops into a wall. Startup SunPartner Group, located in France, wants to change all that, and aims to attach a smartphone screen that collects solar power and delivers it to the phone. In fact, a transparent overlay has already been developed and is currently undergoing testing.

SunPartner isn’t the first tech company to step outside one sunny day, look up, and figure there has to be a way to use the Sun. In 2009, Samsung released a phone equipped with solar cells called the Samsung Crest Solar. It wasn’t a smartphone, and was actually considered a budget phone due to its low price of around $60. The phone was released in India, and was reportedly able to provide around 5-10 minutes of talk time power from around an hour sun.

The phone didn’t quite take off, in large part due to the solar cells being placed on the back of the phone. This meant that when sitting outside at a restaurant or cafe, for example, users had to place the phone face down on a table, missing their alerts. By placing the solar cells into a transparent screen, SunPartner has figured out how to allow people to use their phones while they are harnessing the power of the sun, rather than having to place them face down on a table and miss juicy texts and alerts.

You might think SunPartner would have to use transparent solar cells to accomplish this feat, but the company has found another solution. In its overlay, it alternates thin-film solar cells and standard transparent film. Rather than looking like a horizontal striped shirt, though, SunPartner employs the uses of small lenses that essentially bounce the image from underneath the opaque solar cells and help the image spread across the entirety of the screen. The lenses are also used to help focus the solar rays toward to the solar cells. At the moment, the prototype screens are around 82% transparent, with a transparency of 90% predicted for the future.

Currently, the tech is so cheap that it only adds a cost of around $2.30 per phone, and if used properly — leaving your phone face up on a table during a sunny day rather than in your pocket — can extend the life of a smartphone by around 20%, and can maintain its charge while idle in the sun. While 20% won’t change the world or free up electrical outlets at coffee shops, that would be the first real, major increase consumers will have received in a seemingly endless amount of years.

The overlays are estimated to hit the market sometime next year, with recognizable names like Nokia to incorporate the tech into its devices.

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Organic photo sensor dumps silicon, promises to shatter CMOS imaging limits

Most attempts to improve the quality of image sensors have focused on making them more sensitive to low light. A newly-developed organic CMOS sensor from Fuji and Panasonic goes in the other direction. It increases the sensor’s saturation level — while at the same time reducing noise. The result is a ground-breaking 88dB of signal-to-noise (s/n), about 12dB above the typical value for conventional silicon sensors.

Higher signal-to-noise means improved dynamic range. The 12dB increase is expected to mean that the new sensor design is capable of gathering four times the light of a traditional design, or about 2 f-stops more dynamic range. That means that a single frame captured using this new sensor design could contain essentially all the same information as a bracket of three images shot at -1, 0 and +1 f-stop exposures. Best of all, of course, that data would be captured in a single instant, making HDR-quality images of action scenes a reality.

 

Organic sensors explained

Typical camera sensors rely on silicon to trap photons and turn them into electrons. Fujifilm has pioneered the use of organic (carbon-based) compounds to do the same job. It was first granted a patent on the process in 2011, but the partnership with Panasonic is designed to bring the technology to life in a complete sensor implementation. By placing the photosensitive layer on top of the electronics, the organic sensor design is expected to reach a nearly 100% fill factor — the percentage of the surface area sensitive to light — resulting in increased low-light sensitivity.

The increased absorption capability of the organic compounds also results in thinner sensors. The light-sensing layer can shrink from around 3 microns to 0.5 micron. This allows the sensor to capture light from a larger angle of incidence, as shown by the illustration above, providing yet more light sensitivity. The thinner photosites will also make it easier to design lenses, as the need to send light directly down into the photosites of current sensors is one factor driving up the cost of lenses for digital cameras.

In addition to the increased dynamic range shown in this sample image, this image shows that the new sensor also has the potential reducing noise. Its designers are claiming reset noise as low as 3 electrons, well below the typical level for current designs. The combination of higher saturation and lower noise could make organic sensors a clear winner over current silicon-based versions.

Sensor developers from Fujifilm and Panasonic are just presenting their research this week at VLSI 2013 in Kyoto so we’re short on potential product specifics so far. However, if the two companies can deliver on all they are promising this week, it could mark quite an upgrade for future cameras.

[Featured image credit: Technische Universitat Munchen]

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Samsung’s Galaxy S4 Zoom, a camera that blurs the line between camera and phone

Though modern devices have been blurring the line between their main functionality for a while now, the general rule is that a dedicated device performs its one function much better than a device that performs multiple functions. When it comes to video games, phones do an admirable job, but most gamers will claim that a dedicated gaming handheld provides a better gaming experience. Any photographer will support the notion that even though smartphone cameras are getting quite sophisticated and produce a high quality result, nothing beats a dedicated camera when it comes to photography. Samsung, in line with its traditional product development strategy of throwing spaghetti at a wall to see what sticks, has decided to take that dedicated camera and stick a phone inside.

Technology companies aren’t strangers to developing odd devices. With the Fonepad and Padfone, for instance, Asus made a tablet that can make phone calls, and made a phone that “turns into” a tablet. Samsung recently announced strange new phablet sizes, even though it already has the Galaxy Note. Now, in a world where the smartphone is king and the term “camera phone” hasn’t been uttered in what seems like a generation, Samsung is releasing a camera phone, the Galaxy S4 Zoom. Thankfully, the device isn’t the basic flip phone that the term “camera phone” suggests.

Take a Galaxy S4 Mini, turn it on its side, and slap a fancy lens on the back, and you more or less have the S4 Zoom. The Zoom is a 16-megapixel camera with a 10x optical zoom, optical image stabilization, and a xenon flash. The camera is running Jelly Bean 4.2, and also has a 4 fps burst mode, complete with auto-focus. The Zoom sports a Super AMOLED 4.3-inch, 960×540 display, and has 1.5GB of RAM and a 1.5GHz Exynos processor under the 15.4mm thin hood. A 1.9-megapixel front-facing camera also joins the mix, as does standard WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0, LTE, and NFC connectivity. The camera phone also comes with 8GB of internal storage, and has support for extra MicroSDHC (up to 64GB) storage. Essentially, the zoom is a basic Samsung smartphone running Jelly Bean, but with a higher quality camera than those found on the current crop of smartphones.

In August of last year, Samsung released the Galaxy Camera, a digital camera running Android. (Read: Samsung unveils the Galaxy Camera: Does Android belong in your point-and-shoot?) Though the camera came with WiFi and 3G connectivity, it couldn’t make direct calls, thus lacking the one feature that defines a phone. On the camera side of things, though, the 16-megapixel Galaxy Camera is more formidable than the S4 Zoom, thanks to its 21x optical zoom lens and slightly larger 4.8-inch screen. The Zoom, however, gets the edge in connectivity by being able to make phone calls directly from the device. Basically, the Zoom is a smartphone with a nice camera, rather than a powerful smartphone with an okay camera.

The phone is set to release this summer, though Samsung has not yet nailed down a firm date, or hinted at a price. The Galaxy Camera released at $550, so since the S4 Zoom has similar camera specs (not counting that sweet zoom), but can make phone calls, a similar price tag should be expected.

While a camera that can make phone calls won’t blow the lid off the world of mobile tech, combined with all of the other strange hybrid devices beginning to flood market (phablets, tablets that can make phone calls, phones that get stuffed inside a tablet, and so on), it continues to seem like mobile innovation remains at something of a standstill, not quite sure where to go. Perhaps the market is waiting on a device like Google’s Glass to truly revolutionize mobile tech, even if the device’s guttyworks aren’t entirely impressive.

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Is Apple preparing to release an iPhone phablet?

Samsung seems dead-set on constantly increasing the size of smartphone displays, but will Apple respond? Rumor has it that Apple is, indeed, going to enlarge the iPhone once again this year, but I’m not going to hold my breath. After all, Cupertino isn’t exactly known for its willingness to bow to outside pressures.

Since the iPhone launched six years ago, the rumor mill has been insisting that the screen is going to get larger. Those rumblings were unanimously false all the way up until Apple unveiled the iPhone 5 last September with a larger 4-inch screen. Now, Reuters is reporting that it has four different sources from Asian suppliers promising that Apple is ramping up for a phablet-sized iPhone.

Truth be told, this all sounds like malarkey. Earlier this year, a report came out showing that only about 3% of mobile users had a phablet. In comparison, 72% of users had medium-sized phones. Frankly, it seems unlikely that Apple would want to fragment its products even further just to snag a tiny extra bit of the market. One of the biggest appeals of the iOS platform to many consumers is the simplicity. Having a 3.5-inch display, a 4-inch display, and a third display active at the same time truly muddies the waters. Cupertino bit the bullet, and upped the iPhone’s screen size just nine months ago. It seems incredibly unlikely that it would do that again so soon. This rumor just doesn’t fit Apple’s modus operandi.

That said, a larger version of the iPhone most certainly does exist. In his video appearance at the WWDC keynote earlier this week, SVP of Design Jony Ive went out of his way to explain some of the core aspects of Apple’s design philosophies. His team develops countless iterations of a product, but only sells the best one. While Apple is most assuredly testing a wide range of potential iPhones sizes, that doesn’t mean we’ll see another size increase any time soon.

Obsessing over screen sizes is shortsighted in any case. Usability, price, and aesthetics all make much more of a difference to the average consumer. If Apple spent all of its time chasing the latest moves of its competitors, it wouldn’t be where it is right now. The iPod, iPhone, and iPad wouldn’t even exist. If I had to place a bet right now, I would wager that we’ll see a certain smaller iOS device long before we see a bigger one.

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