On Thursday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Apple is testing an iPhone much bigger than any smartphone it has ever put to market.
Apple has tested screens of other sizes before, but the paper's sources say that Apple "appears more willing to move ahead than in years past" with a bigger smartphone. The bigger iPhones are only prototypes for now; the new lines of iPhones rumored to be unveiled on Sept. 10 are expected to have 4-inch screens like the current iPhone 5.
Selling the iPhone since 2007, Apple has only ever sold phones with 4-inch or 3.5-inch displays. Since then, other smartphone makers, led by Samsung, have eaten into Apple's dominance of the market with Android-powered devices with large touchscreens. Samsung set a new standard on Wednesday with the 5.7-inch Galaxy Note 3, an update to its popular line of "phablets."
This isn't the first time The Journal claimed Apple was considering bigger iPhones. The newspaper reported on similar tests as recently as July.
But that was after Steve Jobs' death. In 2010, a year before he succumbed to cancer, Apple's founder blasted rival hardware makers for producing phones so big that "you can't get your hand around it" after announcing the 3.5-inch iPhone 4.