“LED back-light unit (BLU) vendors have reportedly offered two alternative backlight solutions for Apple to choose from for its next-generation iPad, according to sources at Taiwan-based BLU makers,” Max Wang and Steve Shen report for DigiTimes.
“With the next-generation iPads expected to adopt LCD panels with resolutions higher than 2048 by 1536, the current single LED light bar designed for the iPad 2 has to be modify in order to maintain or strengthen the brightness of the panels, the sources explained,” Wang and Shen report. “BLU makers have solved issues related heat dissipation and battery consumption for [a proposed] dual light bar design.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
There is no relation between resolution and quantity of LEDs that do the backlight. This depends on size of the panel, not on resolution.
So if Apple seeks two-line backlight instead of one-line as of now, it might has to do with brightness uniformity and thickness of the backlight system, not with resolution (DigiTimes is in its usual guessing mode on this).
Despite it may sound counter-intuitive, two lines of backlight LEDs can allow overall thinner panel since the layer that dissipates light evenly can be done thinner with more diodes around perimeter.
(To be correct, there is relation between resolution and backlight, of course, but it is very small.)