If you spent hundreds of dollars on a gold iPhone 5S, I feel bad for you son. I’ve got iPhone problems but a small screen soon won’t be one. The Wall Street Journal is now backing up a months old report by Japanese business publication Nikkei that Apple’s upcoming iPhone 6 won’t just come with a bigger screen but a choice of screen sizes for iPhiles to choose from.

The two screen options will be 4.7-inch and 5.5-inch diagonally which will catch Apple’s mobile offerings up with its larger Android competitors. Apart from the size, the appearance of the new iPhones aren’t expected to be different from the current design of iPhone.

What is interesting to me is some of the behind the scenes production rumours. Apple is ramping up production in a big way for the big phones. While the iPhone 5S and 5C saw Apple order 50 to 60 million units ahead of launch, they’ve ordered between 70 and 80 million units ahead of launch of the iPhone 6. While iPhone sales growth has been as high as analysts expected, Apple is banking on the larger screen to boost demand for the iPhone 6, especially in China where Apple is still trying to grow market share and where bigger is better for phones.

Interestingly, it looks like the 5.5-inch model might come out a little after the 4.7-inch model. Production on the larger of the two iPhone 6s will start in September which is a month behind production starting on the 4.7-inch model. And worryingly, Apple has been ordering extra 5.5-inch screens because the current production process is resulting in higher than usual failures on the production line. That can’t be a good piece of news for anyone wanting to be an early adopter of the biggest iPhone 6.

Typically, new iPhone announcements are made in September with the release a few weeks afterwards. Given the production schedules, if you’re holding out for a 5.5-inch iPhone, you might need to put it on the Christmas list and hope Santa can deliver on the likely low supply and high demand.

Source: TechCrunch