iPhone 5 case pictures leaked, indicate larger design

If you ever wondered about the size and shape of Apple’s upcoming mobile devices, look to what the case makers are developing.

Per Electronista, Italian web site Macitynet.it and MIC Gadget have discovered new iPhone cases, all of them showing a design somewhat like the iPod touch but with the requisite camera, microphone, and speaker connectors. The Macitynet.it sighting compared it against both the iPhone 4 and fourth-generation iPod touch and found it larger than both, strongly supporting beliefs that it has a larger screen.

A plethora of cases from multiple Chinese manufacturers shown at MIC Gadget bear this out annd suggest that they all got access to leaked blueprints rather than some of the more speculative designs seen a few months ago.

The more recent cases, if shaped around the real design, point to Apple finally taking on a wave of increasingly larger Android phones. It’s now common for even mid-tier phones like the Droid Incredible 2 to have four-inch screens, which are rumored for Apple’s model, and phones like the Galaxy S II regularly use 4.3-inch or even 4.5-inch screens. Apple might not increase the resolution but would still have one of the sharpest screens in the size class.

Stay tuned for additional details as they become available.