Chinese mobile phone manufacturer ZTE is gearing up to release a 5.9-inch Full HD smartphone based on the new Windows Phone operating system.

The device was leaked on Weibo, China's Twitter equivalent, by Lu Qian Hao, head of market strategy for ZTE.

Along with an image of the handset, Hao also said that the smartphone will be a flagship device for ZTE and that it will come with a whopping 1920 x 1080 pixel touch screen and with DTS audio for delivering a movie experience.

Microsoft doesn't support 1080p full HD with its recently released Windows Phone 8 operating system, so there is speculation that the new LTE handset will run on the older Windows Phone 7 OS.

With a 5.9-inch display, the device is huge in comparison to most smartphones on the market, and the size puts it into the smartphone/tablet hybrid category often referred to as "phablet".

There it will join Samsung's Galaxy Note 2, which has a 5.29-inch display - device which offers a much smaller resolution of only 1280x800 pixels.

The smartphone and tablet industry is still experimenting with sizes for their devices. Apple, an innovator in the field, has always gone for 3.5-inches on its iPhone smartphone and 9.7-inches on its iPad tablet.

However, its latest iPhone 5 has gone up to 4-inches, competing with the much larger handsets, and this month it also launched its iPad Mini, which is its first 7-inch tablet offering.

Even so, Full HD displays are rare on such devices. None of the current crop of 7-inch tablets, such as the Google Nexus 7 or the Kindle Fire HD, offer Full 1080p HD. Other Windows-based smartphone offerings from Samsung, HTC and Nokia have displays based around the 720p HD resolution.

HTC, meanwhile, is rumored to be working on the much anticipated Droid DNA, which promises a 5-inch screen and Full HD 1080p resolution based on the rival Android operating system from Google.

For the time being there are no details regarding the hardware underpinning the ZTE's speculated device and the product is far from launch. But some reports have suggested it may hit store shelves in Spring 2013.