iPhone 6 likely to have lower screen-to-size ratio compared to other flagships

iPhone 6 concept render by Tomas Moyano and Nicolàs Aichino

Until recently, a smartphone's screen-to-size ratio was a factor that pretty much nobody cared about. Now, however, the term is being mentioned more often than ever. It is used to express how efficiently a smartphone's front side is being used – how little of it is "wasted", being occupied by bezels, buttons, and anything that isn't a touchscreen. The screen-to-size ratio is also a great measure of how compact a smartphone is relative to its screen size.

Now let's talk about the iPhone 6 – the rumored 4.7-inch iPhone 6 model, to be more specific. As it usually happens with highly-anticipated smartphones, plenty of information about Apple's next-gen handset has been leaked, including the alleged size of its screen and of the device itself. (Here's our iPhone 6 size comparison vs other flagships.) That's all the data we need to calculate the expected screen-to-size ratio of the upcoming iPhone model in order to compare it to that of other popular smartphones. 

For those wondering, here's how the magic happens: assuming that the iPhone 6 will have a 4.7-inch display with a 9:16 aspect ratio, we can calculate that its screen could be approximately 2.304 inches wide and 4.096 inches tall. Accent here is on "approximately" because the screen's diagonal size, which is an essential figure in our calculations, could actually be between 4.65 and 4.74 inches even if the screen ends up being advertised as a 4.7-incher. Either way, its area should be close to 9.437 square inches, as we deducted after applying our Algebra 1 skills. As for the area of the phone's front side, we're looking at a figure of around 14.335 square inches (ignoring the curves), which we obtained by multiplying the alleged width and height of the handset – 2.64 by 5.43 inches. Dividing the screen's area by the phone's area returns 0.658, or a screen-to-size ratio of 65.8% for the 4.7-inch iPhone 6 model. 

How does this figure compare to the screen-to-size ratios of other popular and not-so-popular smartphones? Well, it turns out that the 4.7-inch iPhone 6 will fare better than its predecessor, but will still stand behind most other popular smartphones in that respect. As long as the leaked data is correct, that is. Here's a chart for you to examine.