Taiwanese manufacturer HTC is reportedly working on a new 5-inch screen smartphone for launch later in the year that will come with Full HD resolution, Digital Spy said.

The DigiTimes website cites its "industry sources" as saying that HTC will move into the large-size smartphone market by launching a new flagship model later in the year.

According to the site, the five-inch display will feature a pixel resolution of 1794 by 1080 pixels, which The Verge deduces to mean that it will have the full 1920 x 1080 panel, but without the 126 vertical lines for the on-screen novigation buttons introduced for Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.

DigiTimes suggests that HTC has been given confidence by the success of Samsung's Galaxy Note 5.3-inch phone/tablet hybrid, which has sold more than 5m units since it went on sale last year.

Samsung intends to launch the Galaxy Note 2 later this month, featuring a reported 5.5-inch display.

LG Electronics has also moved into the large-screen device market by launching its 5-inch Optimus Vu in May 2012.

DigiTimes is notoriously patchy with its predictions, but there could be some basis to the 5-inch HTC phone report, as a GLBenchmark result recently matched the stated resolution.

The GLB information sheet also indicated that the as-yet-unnamed handset would come with Qualcomm's MSM8960 Snapdragon S4 SoC with Adreno 320 graphics.

HTC has previously updated its Android lineup twice a year, meaning the 5-inch flagship handset come be announced in the autumn.

However, the company may not want to draw attention away from its expected new handsets running Microsoft's Windows Phone 8 operating system.