Apple to put the iPad on notice with landscape iPhone X Plus apps mode

by Daniel Petrov

Aug 01, 2018, 3:51 AM

Apple to put the iPad on notice with landscape iPhone X Plus apps mode

Back in the spring, Bloomberg tipped the eventual resolution of the upcoming 6.5" X Plus - the largest iPhone screen ever. "The phablet is codenamed D33, a person familiar with its development says, and at least some prototypes include a screen resolution of 1242 x 2688," revealed an insider at the time, and, lo and behold, that's exactly the resolution dug out deep from the iOS 12 beta code by some lucky Brazilian programmers.

They forced 1242 x 2688 in the iOS 12 emulator with the new beta 5, and suddenly apps like Calendar or Messages appeared in split-screen mode, like on the iPad, when turned in landscape. Moreover, in portrait mode this resolution showed much more content on one screen than before, though there are some kinks towards the top end where the notch is, as you can see from the emulator screenshots below, which will probably be ironed out by the time the iPhone X Plus launches.

With the Calendar app, your events and your overview will appear on separate sides of the phone, while Messages will let you view a thread content on the right, and all others on the left. Contacts are split in a useful manner, too, with details of a single one on one side, and a scroll-through list on the other for faster preview.

All in all, Apple seems determined to make the best use of the largest display on an iPhone ever, otherwise it wouldn't have bothered developing all this support in the latest iOS 12 beta, but something tells us that the head of sales in the iPad division will be the least happy person when the 6.5" iPhone X Plus launches.