The name is every­thing and the iPhone 5 got off to a ter­ri­ble start. I really thought Apple would call it The New iPhone. The name iPhone 5 doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. The 4 in iPhone 4 meant the fourth iter­a­tion, 4S meant a faster 4, 3G meant it took advan­tage of 3G net­works, and 3GS meant a faster 3G. What does the 5 in iPhone 5 mean? 5 doesn’t mean the fifth iter­a­tion because it’s actu­ally the sixth. It’s not 5G. I can’t think of any­thing 5 might mean other than it’s the num­ber after 4. The 5 in iPhone 5 is almost mean­ing­less. Why use it.

What the heck is 1136×640? I under­stand how Apple got there, but the result is hor­ri­ble. The orig­i­nal iPhone started with a 3:2 3.5-inch 480×320 LCD. Apple stuck with it through the iPhone 3GS and then with the iPhone 4 the pix­els were dou­bled hor­i­zon­tally and ver­ti­cally to 960×640 and birthed the retina dis­play, a dis­play where indi­vid­ual pix­els can’t be dis­tin­guished at the dis­tance most folks look at the dis­play. The retina dis­play visual expe­ri­ence is won­der­ful. Apple stuck with a 3:2 aspect ratio and dou­bling the pix­els was genius because old apps looked the same on the iPhone retina dis­play and apps that took advan­tage of the retina dis­play looked absolutely bril­liant. Everything was the same when it came the visual expe­ri­ence, but every­thing was dou­bly clear.

But now we have an iPhone with a 16:9 aspect ratio. To me 16:9 = HD video. And HD means 1280×720 or 1920×1080. With 1136×640 most apps will need to be rewrit­ten any­way. Why not just go whole hog, embrace a world­wide dis­play stan­dard, and use a 1280×720 pixel for­mat? Did Apple focus the iPhone to work bet­ter with 16:9 video with the 5? I think so. Then it should have used 1280×720. Heck, Apple could’ve claimed the iPhone 5 the king of retina with a ppi of 367. 1136×640 is just wonky.

And why 4 inches? To keep the same pixel width of 640, and the same 326-ppi res­o­lu­tion? If mak­ing things easy for devel­op­ers was an impor­tant con­sid­er­a­tion then Apple didn’t do very well because almost all apps will need to be rewrit­ten to take full advan­tage of the change in aspect ratio and pixel for­mat. Why not 4.5 inches? If big­ger is bet­ter why not a lit­tle big­ger? Everyone else is doing it. Ah yes, Apple didn’t want to make it too big because it didn’t want to make the expe­ri­ence of using the iPhone too uncom­fort­able. One hand oper­a­tion will be dif­fi­cult for most, but it would have been almost impos­si­ble if it was big­ger than 4 inches. Difficult is bet­ter than almost impos­si­ble, I guess.

Joshua Topolsky:

As you may have heard, Apple has increased the size of the dis­play on the iPhone 5 to 4 inches (at an 1136 x 640 res­o­lu­tion), as opposed to the 3.5-inch screens that have dom­i­nated every other model in the line. Prior to the release of the new phone, there were many peo­ple who argued that the 3.5-inch dis­play was sci­en­tif­i­cally per­fect — hav­ing been engi­neered to match the aver­age reach of a thumb — and a larger screen would cre­ate all sorts of usabil­ity prob­lems. Undoubtedly those poor indi­vid­u­als are under­go­ing surgery as we speak in the hopes that they may some­day be able to reach the upper left cor­ner of the iPhone 5′s screen with their right-hand thumb. I can tell you I’ve had no such trou­bles, but then again I have huge, monster-like hands.

I was and still am one of those many peo­ple who argued and argue the 3:2 3.5-inch dis­play was and is ideal for peo­ple with aver­age hands, not for peo­ple with monster-like hands, to whom I would rec­om­mend the Samsung Galaxy Note or the LG Optimus Vu. Bigger is not always bet­ter and when the smart­phone becomes too big to oper­ate with one hand that’s when big­ger has become too big. The 4-inch 16:9 dis­play on the iPhone 5 is too big for a great major­ity of folks who use smart­phones. I just saw the Apple’s Thumbs iPhone 5 ad explain­ing how per­fectly sized the 4-inch 16:9 LCD is. The only prob­lem is the dude’s hand is prob­a­bly much larger than your aver­age hand. The exis­tence of an ad like this sug­gests Apple mar­ket­ing is respond­ing to what I think is a valid com­plaint: The iPhone 5 is too big to use it like you did with the iPhone, iPhone 3G/3GS, iPhone 4/4S. When did it become okay to sac­ri­fice usabil­ity for the sake of mak­ing some­thing big­ger? Did Samsung’s gigan­tic Galaxy smart­phones and their suc­cesses have any­thing to do with it? I’m more than a bit dis­ap­pointed because it seems Apple went from 3.5 inches to 4.0 inches with­out a good rea­son. It went from 3:2 to 16:9 with­out a good rea­son. And it went from 960×640 to 1136×640 with­out a good rea­son. This is what I would have liked in The New iPhone: every­thing in the iPhone 5 but with a 3:2 3.5-inch 960×640 in-cell touch LCD. Well… not every­thing, but if given the choice I would have pre­ferred a thin­ner, lighter iPhone 4S with a bet­ter dis­play, cam­era, and LTE.

Update 2012.09.25: MacRumors mem­ber Leotno reports of light leak­age, not from the dis­play, but from the chas­sis.