Fourth, it’s hard to argue that Apple wouldn’t want to cause its developers grief with a resolution switch when it has already done just that once before.

There is a fifth argument: that iOS has for some time been headed in a direction that makes resolution changes less painful than they might be.

(autolayout graphic)

In iOS 6, Apple introduced the concept of Auto Layout. Instead of developers having to specify absolute pixel coordinates for objects, they are able to define a location in relative terms. For example, this object should be centred and at least 20 pixels away from neighbouring objects.

Not all developers adopted it. In fact, probably most haven’t, as there’s been no particular reason to so far. A change in resolution would provide that reason, and they’d then have apps that would play nicely with any future resolution changes.

(ios7_cover_photo)

Then there’s iOS 7. A flat user interface becomes much easier to rescale than one that has pixel-level decoration in the form of shadows, glows, textures and so on. Perhaps Apple introduced the flatness of iOS 7 purely for aesthetic reasons, but perhaps not.

It’s also not all gloom-and-doom for developers: a great many apps are effectively just navbars and tableviews, and adapting those would be a simpler task.

So my view is, yes, we should expect to see not just a larger display size in the iPhone 6, but also a new resolution. Let us know your views – especially if you’re a developer – in the comments.