iPhone 5 front glass panel leaked

Summary: Leaked fron panel suggests that rumors of a 4-inch screen are true.

Parts supplier ETradeSupply has posted a video purporting to show the front glass panel of the much anticipated as of yet unannounced iPhone 5.

The screen area, measured diagonally, comes out at 4.065-inch, which seems to suggest that new new iPhone will indeed sport a 4-inch screen.

The new screen is 0.91 millimeters, about 0.1 millimeters thinner than the glass panel on the iPhone 4S. There are some other changes relating to the position of the receiver hole, camera hole and proximity sensor hole.

In a scratch test carried out by ETradeSupply, the new screen appears to be much more scratch resistant than the lens on the iPhone 4S. There is also evidence to suggest that the light transmittance of the new screen is much better than that of the existing screen.

Last month the same parts supplier posted a video which allegedly shows the metal chassis that Apple will use for the iPhone 5. This showed a number of interesting new features, including:

• Unibody metal chassis, which to me looks and sounds like it might be made from Liquidmetal alloy;
• Width appears unchanged;
• Longer body, suggesting a 4-inch screen;
• Substantially thinner design;
• Smaller SIM tray;
• Headphone jack moved to the bottom;
• Smaller dock connector;
• Larger speaker grill;
• The on/off switch, volume control and mute switch seem to be similar to those found on the iPhone 4 and 4S.

If these are genuine parts -- bear in mind that I'm not making any assertions that it is although the evidence is compelling -- then Apple has just made it much harder to get at the battery on the forthcoming iPhone. Replacing that would require removing the screen just as it did with the earlier models, but the thinner screens used today -- along with copious amounts of adhesive -- mean that it's a lot easier to break the screen.

Image source: ETradeSupply.

Image Gallery: What is Liquidmetal used for?