A 4.6-Inch iPhone With 4G LTE? I’d Buy That

Alright. So you have your new iPad. You’re breathing easy knowing that the hectic, crazy part is over and you can simply relax and browse the interwebs on that stunning Retina display.

But not so fast. The iPhone rumor mill started picking up the pace before the iPad was even announced, and now that big brother tablet is out and about, speculation is revving up. Today, the rumors include a 4.6-inch Retina display on the next-gen iPhone, as well as 4G LTE connectivity.

Pulling from a Korean newspaper called Maeil Business Newspaper, Reuters is reporting that “Apple has decided on the bigger 4.6-inch display for its next iPhone and started placing orders to its suppliers.” By suppliers, we assume that references LG and Samsung within Korea, but the unnamed sources declined to confirm.

There are also rumors of a 4-inch iPhone display that have been swirling around for much longer. This seems much more realistic to me. Making a 4.6-inch display would mean that the size of the iPhone itself would be much larger than it currently is. John Gruber of Daring Fireball agrees with me:

Longer and wider? Sounds like bullshit. I can see Apple putting a bigger display on a device of the same size. I can’t see them making a bigger device.

A 4-inch display could possibly fit on to the iPhone at its current size, especially considering the fact that the next-gen precious will probably undergo a redesign of some sort.

Then we have the matter of 4G LTE connectivity to deal with. This is pretty… duh. If Apple felt comfortable enough to put LTE on the iPad, they should feel alright about slapping it in the iPhone. Of course, by the time the iPhone launches, AT&T’s 4G LTE network should be much more built out, and Verizon’s should be much more reliable.

But if connecting the dots doesn’t seem firm enough for you, the folks over at iDownloadBlog have something a bit more substantial. After receiving screenshots and detailed information from iOS 5.1 from a tipster, they replicated the 5.1 jailbreak on an iPhone 4 using iFile.

Come to find, certain strings in iOS 5.1 (which do not reside in iOS 5.0.1) make reference to 4G LTE connectivity. Yeah, yeah, I know. The iPad has 4G LTE and runs iOS 5.1, so of course there will be mention of 4G. But, before you rush to the comments section to call me an idiot, check out this screen grab:

“Enabling 4G will end your phone call. Are you sure you want to enable 4G?”

I’m sure, Apple. Let’s do this.