“Steve Jobs dazzled the crowd Monday with one of the iPhone 4’s snazziest features: an ultra-high-resolution display that puts to shame any other cell phone on the market,” Christopher Null reports for Yahoo! News.
“With a resolution of 960 x 640 pixels, the iPhone 4 crams more graphical ability into a 3.5-inch diagonal space than any other gizmo on earth,” Null reports. “With a density of 326 pixels per inch, Jobs claims it’s better than the human eye can even detect at a standard viewing distance. In other words, if Jobs is correct, you’ll have to hold the phone right up to your face to see the iPhone 4’s pixels at all.”
“iPhone 4 has more than just raw pixels. Apple is also touting its optical lamination process, which basically adheres the glass directly on top of the LCD so there’s no gap between the two,” Null reports. “As Displayblog explains, this ‘improves sharpness and clarity of the display by eliminating light refraction, which is caused by the small distance between the glass surface and the LCD that exists on pre-4 iPhones.'”
“Finally there’s IPS [also used in the iPad’s display], “Null reports. “It works by arranging the crystal structure within the LCD such that the crystals are parallel with the glass screen above. Traditional LCD screens have crystals at odd angles, which decreases brightness and makes viewing at odd angles difficult, but IPS corrects that problem by creating order from the chaos.”
Full article here.
“…this ‘improves sharpness and clarity of the display by eliminating light refraction, which is caused by the small distance between the glass surface and the LCD that exists on pre-4 iPhones.'”
Acually, my First Gen iPhone is also full face laminated. My 3G and 3GS are air-gapped.
How many people will trade up their iPads when this screen comes to it?
Sometimes early adoption stinks.
Apple, we think different and you can see it with perfect clarity on the iPhone- if you look close enough.
No one has Apple’s engineering chops but it’s more than that. By employing the brightest and the best, and providing an environment where that talent can flourish, Apple can do an end run around every other tech company.
It’s no real mystery how Apple do things but what is amazing is that no other company employs a similar philosophy. Until others divest themselves of their middle management structures and become as nimble as Apple, they are doomed to follow eternally in their wake.
Truly, Apple are engineers with the souls of artists.
=:~)
What if that technology applied on 50″ led tv
@eone
Would we need something like Super HD? HD Cubed?
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@Sarasota
No one is going to trade in their iPads because they want the new iPhone. Owning technology is not an act of barter. FYI it is indeed possible and practical to own both iPad and iPhone AT THE SAME TIME.
If I remember correctly, the Motorola Aura had an IPS display with a pixel density of 310ppi, obviously much smaller but it was 2 years ago.
@eone
it will cost you 10 grand, that’s what happens !
Had to check about the Aura.
Yep, almost identical screen, only it was a 1.5-inch circle, and the damn thing cost $2,000. It was built like a watch, and pretty much the only thing you could do on it was talk and show your friends how expensive your phone was. Nice engineering, though. In some ways, an elegant failure like the 20th anniversary Mac…
326 dpi is crazy.
Print is generally only 300dpi!
There’s no such thing as an LED TV.
You mean and LCD TV with LED backlight?
@Newtype,
Reading comprehension is neat-o.
Sarasota means, what happens when the next iPad gets the Retina display and they’re stuck with the 1st gen screen.
Hey, this is high consumer technology. You gotta pay to play. Or don’t participate. The latter is probably more admirable in some ways. Sometimes I feel like all this technology is just making me poor.
This is exciting and I hope it raises our expectations for PC display technology, which, in terms of resolution, has really been stagnant. Sure, there are some high res displays available, but the OS’s and apps don’t make use of them in a way that maintains text and design element usefulness. We shouldn’t have to compromise between lots of pixels and readability (or misplaced buttons, labels, etc.). Currently, the display availability/resolution scaling partnership in every major OS is half-baked. As an example, I can easily read a 15″ MBP but not (nearly as easily) the high-res 15″. Why couldn’t I get nice graphics AND text that is still useful (and buttons, fields, etc. that aren’t mis-sized or misplaced)? The scaling features, text manipulations, that command-line hack, all result in some awful Franken-display. Maybe future iPhone-to-iPad app display improvements will trickle into desktop land? One day, high res won’t be synonymous with squinting.
I like the idea of more pixels/inch. Now how about doing this with the MBP’s and the displays?
@iQuack,
Gettin’ on it right now.
Old eyes.
So, turning 50 I don’t yet need reading glasses. And, no, I haven’t seen the new display, but I’m afraid that this new display will be wasted on me. I can’t really see pixels on my 3GS. Maybe the screen should be a little bigger?
@macerroneous
I seriously doubt you are 50 years old (you don’t state the units of your age) and are able to read with the same visual acuity and at the same distance as as a younger person (say 40 years old) without reading glasses. Almost 100% of anyone over the age of 45 needs reading glasses of some strength–even if it is small. If I’m wrong, a research ophthalmologist would surely love to examine your eyes.
@Joe
Actually, if @macerroneous is nearsighted by the right amount, he can have perfect near vision with no reading glasses… of course driving without glasses will get him killed, but reading’ll be fine… Your “almost 100%” quote holds true if you’re wearing distance contacts or glasses, or if you’re not nearsighted.
The problem with an ultra hi-rez display is that the higher the resolution, the smaller the text on web pages. Web surfing is already extremely awkward on the iPhone unless you’re visiting a mobile web page or using a dedicated app. I’m all for the gorgeous new screen, but it will be all but impossible to read most web pages on this device. Perhaps this will encourage more webmasters to put up mobile versions of their sites or release their own iPhone apps. Personally, I only look at regular web pages on my iPhone if I’m desperate, and that certainly won’t change when I get my new one.
“it will be all but impossible to read most web pages on this device”
wow, i can’t believe steve jobs didn’t think of this. this is a major fail. good call. especially since basically no one outside those in attendance has a seen a unit up close. really good call.
@Joe & CTeyeDoc
You may have both proven my point. I don’t want to wear glasses to read my iPhone. I do get perturbed when websites publish too many characters per line. Since MANY iPhone users are “mature”, I urge web designers to watch this particular statistic.
This is getting a bit personal, but who wouldn’t enjoy the attention. Sorry, eyeDoc, but I haven’t had a checkup in years. I used to wear glasses to look older, but figured I didn’t need that once I turned 40. Besides, my mild farsightedness seemed to gradually correct. I’m a surgeon, and seem to see well enough to perform intricate hand work, but I am surely developing presbyopia. I just checked my vision without having to even download an app. I can focus well on the iPhone at 14 inches, but at 12 inches it’s a blur. I am 49 and 7 months.
Bottom line: if the screen were longer, then in portrait mode print would be bigger for me.
I mean landscape mode.
@ Sarasota
> How many people will trade up their iPads when this screen comes to it?
I wouldn’t be so upset, because it won’t happen any time soon…
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iPads are typically used at a greater distance from your eyes, compared to the iPhones. If the distance is 2x as far, then the iPad’s screen would only have to be about 160 DPI to have the same “retina” effect as 326 DPI on iPhone. It is already about 135 DPI. If that distance happens to be 1.5x (not 2x) for you, then the iPad would have to get up to about 200 DPI. But the point is, it would not have to get up to the crazy iPhone 326 DPI, because you don’t hold your iPad that close to your face (at least most people with typical vision do not).
Also consider the graphics, CPU, and battery power limitations. The new iPhone has to drive 4x as many pixels as the old iPhone; that’s a lot more work, so the graphics and CPU hardware must be substantially better on iPhone 4. Only a few years ago, 1024×768 was a typical screen resolution on a laptop computer, and now this tiny iPhone is driving 960×640 pixels with ease; that’s amazing.
So now to the iPad. The iPad’s screen has roughly 9x more area than the iPhone’s screen. With the same 326 DPI, the resolution would be something like 2880×1920. That’s much higher than an HDTV (1920×1080). It’s even higher than Apple’s 30-inch Cinema Display (2560×1600)! Imagine the processing and graphics brawn needed to drive that many pixels (and the battery power needed). It will be many years (longer than the useful life of your iPad) before Apple can squeeze that into an iPad, keep it from melting down, and get ten hours of battery life.
So be happy. I think the current 1024×768 (135 DPI) display will stay for at least two generations. The iPhone’s screen resolution stayed the same for three generations. The next bump up will probably be to something like 1280×960. At the current 10-inch diagonal screen size, that just happens to be 160 DPI, which would be the iPad’s “retina display” (with the iPad held twice as far from your eyes as an iPhone). And that’s not too much sharper than what you have now.
“In other words, if Jobs is correct, you’ll have to hold the phone right up to your face to see the iPhone 4’s pixels at all.”
um… Isn’t the point that you could put your nose on the glass and still not see the pixels? If 300 is the limit of detectability, then we should be unable to see the 324 grid no matter what we do.
Even in an article praising the screen to the heavens… they don’t seem to really get it.