Was a Giant-Screen iPhone Really Announced Yesterday?

That wise, modern day scholar we all know as Judge Judy once said, “you can always tell when a teenager is lying because their mouth is open and words are coming out.”

That might also be true of Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL). During the recent Apple conference call, CEO Tim Cook was asked why the company doesn’t produce a giant-sized phone like Samsung.

He said, “Our competitors have made some significant tradeoffs in many of these areas to ship a larger display. We would not ship a larger display iPhone while these tradeoffs exist.”

It’s a good answer. Cell phone gurus agree that these larger screen phones from Apple’s competitors have some short comings. Not only do the colors reportedly look less than vivid but designing apps for all of these different screen sizes make for a less than polished experience according to the pro iPhone crowd.

Did Tim Cook provide a strong argument? Absolutely. Was he truthful in his response? Maybe not.

According to a report by BGR News, Apple is prepping the iPhone 6 for a June 2014 launch complete with a larger, “phablet” style screen according to a Jefferies research note released Tuesday.

So why the Tim Cook half-truth? He doesn’t want the Apple faithfuls to bypass the iPhone 5S as they wait for the supersized iPhone 6, according to BGR.

But let’s not get too excited.

Here at Benzinga, we read the Jefferies report and respectfully disagree with the BGR analysis. The exact wording from the report reads:

“When will Apple launch a larger screen iPhone, likely the iPhone 6? We see a June 2014 launch as most likely as the display technology transition will take time to resolve. Additionally, the supply chain is primed for a 5S and pivoting to 6 will take at least 2-3 Qs.”

Later in the report it mentions that Apple’s current display technology is unable to reach 4.8 inches. Because of this, Apple is transitioning to what the report calls on-cell technology as a “stopgap” technology before widespread rollout of OLED technology.

All this techno-talk means one thing: Apple has a lot of work to do and a lot of money to spend before a larger size iPhone is announced. In the world of Apple rumors, this comment in the research note doesn’t even count as a rumor. It’s a kind-of-educated guess. The report doesn’t even claim that Apple is interested in a larger iPhone.

At least for now, neither investors nor Apple loyalist should see this report as anything material.

At the time of this writing, Tim Parker was long Apple and unimpressed by this report.