Samsung Galaxy S4 tipped for 5-inch real Full HD screen

How big is the Galaxy S4 going to be? It might seem silly, but it's one of the gadget world's most important questions for 2013. Will Samsung keep making bigger and bigger phones? Will the S series merge with the Note, or will the Note get even more ludicrously enormous again?

With Samsung such a massive force in the industry, the answers will affect what all the other phone makers do, so it's no surprise to see the gadget rumour mill addressing this key question.

DigiTimes, the Taiwan-based purveyor of tech gossip, reckons the Korean giant is plumping for a 5-inch display with a Full HD resolution of 1,080x1,920 pixels -- the same as most flatscreen TVs. It'll follow HTC's 5-inch Full HD Butterfly and the Sharp's 5-inch Full HD Aquos SH930W. Are you spotting a pattern yet?

Next year's Android superphones are set to boast astonishingly high pixel density -- the number of dots in every inch of screen space. Not only will they be mahoosive, they'll be staggeringly detailed too. The Butterfly and Aquos' 440 and 443ppi panels far exceed Apple's 'retina' standard of 326ppi, and you really have to squint to discern individual pixels on the iPhone 5.

Other screen rumours whirling around Samsung's fourth-gen flagship phone reckon it'll have a flexible display -- not so the whole phone can bend and fold, but so it's practically unbreakable.

The S4's innards are unlikely to add more cores, with this year's standard of quad-core chips set to continue. Samsung will show off an eight-core phone chip with ARM next year, but we'll probably have to wait a generation before it's grunting away in our blowers. There's hardly any rush: not many apps take advantage of four cores yet. 4G is a given though, and the latest version of Android too.

Are you hankering after a TV in your pocket? Or would you rather phone makers focused on another element of mobilecraft next year? Give me your dream specs down in the comments, or over on our cutting-edge Facebook page.