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UPDATED - Get Ready: iPhone 5 passes 2 Million Pre-Orders in 24 hours

By egrey@magazine.org, September 17, 2012

UPDATED:

A good find by The Linley Group:

 
"Apple requires iPhone 5 apps to be recompiled to a new architecture variant called ARMv7s" due to the new, Apple-designed A6 chip. Compiling for iPhone 5 is handled by Apple's Xcode prior to the app being packaged and submitted to Apple.

ORIGINAL POST:

Apple's iPhone 5 announcement on September 12 moved the screens of the latest generation of high-end flagship iPhone and iPod Touch from 3.5" (960x640) to 4" (1,136x640). With the first iPhone 5's arriving on doorsteps Friday, September 21, here's a quick overview of what you'll need to know to start getting your apps & mobile sites ready.

With the iPhone 5's larger screen, all previous generations of iPhone apps will need to be updated to take full advantage of the screen size. There is no automatic "stretching" or resizing, as was speculated in pre-release rumors. Current iPhone apps should work as expected on iOS 6 and the new iDevices, but will run in a "letterboxed" form, with the app centered on the larger screen framed by black bars on either side.

Image courtesy of KGI Research.

If you want to update your app to fully fit to the 4" screen, you can go CNN's route of completely reworking your app, or go the simpler route initially, and simply update the app's sizing.

Image courtesty of CBS Interactive

For the latter option:

  1. Head to Apple's Developer Portal to grab the latest final candidate versions of the iOS6 and Apple's developer tool, Xcode.
  2. Talk with your design and user experience teams about the implications of changing the app's dimensions. It's not simply a matter of "stretching", there is always some impact to augmenting the user interface and app controls.
  3. Update your app's dimensions using the Xcode simulator.
  4. Have your quality assurance teams test your current apps, even if you don't plan on updating them wholesale (like CNN did) for the iPhone 5; a little QA and regression testing saves a lot of headaches later.
  5. Submit your apps for approval to Apple, and get in the review queue!

There will be a deluge of app updates hitting the market in the next few weeks, and you're not alone in feeling the pinch. 

Have questions about updating your apps, iOS6, or the new iOS devices? Drop me a line egrey@magazine.org, or hit me on Twitter: @ethan_grey.