“Apple’s iPhone Retina display may soon become obsolete,” Nigam Arora reports for MarketWatch. “Apple’s iPhone 5S Retina resolution is 1136 x 640. Next year, competitors will have resolution of 3840 x 2160. The obsolescence is going to come far sooner than I had even recently expected based on information from Samsung’s Analyst Day. The new trouble for Retina displays came Wednesday in the form of an announcement by Qualcomm, a major provider of mobile phone chips. If Apple fails to respond in a timely manner with a new display, it could have a serious effect on the stock.”
“Until now, one of the impediments to Ultra HD mobile phones has been lack of a commercially available GPU capable of driving the massive number of pixels while using low power. Retina display is not Ultra HD,” Arora reports. “Now Qualcomm has introduced its next generation Snapdragon 805 ‘Ultra HD’ processor. This is the first mobile processor that supports 4K Ultra HD resolution. According to Qualcomm, Snapdragon 805 samples are available now and will be delivered in commercial quantities in the first half of 2014.”
“From Samsung’s Analyst Day, Samsung is expected to introduce a 4K-display mobile phone in 2015. Samsung is anticipating an intermediate step between the Galaxy S4 display, the present-day flagship phone, and the 4K display in 2015. The intermediate step is a phone with a 560 ppi at 5.2 inches and a resolution of 2560 x 1440,” Arora reports. “As a reference, Galaxy S4 provides a resolution of 441 ppi and a resolution of 1080 x 1920, and Apple iPhone 5S, the flagship Apple phone, provides 326 ppi and a resolution of 1136 x 640. iPad Air provides 264 ppi and a resolution of 2048 x 1536 on a 9.7 inch screen… Retina displays as most consumers know them will be obsolete in 2014. Apple will fall behind the competitors unless it introduces a new match for 4K.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We wouldn’t worry about Apple’s display quality.
seriously? the pixels are not perceptible to the naked eye now – what reason is there to increase the pixel density other than marketing/bragging rights?
There is some sense into higher resolutions besides marketing (see link below). Whether and when Apple will follow it, it is matter of discussion.
There’s no sense to a 4K phone (or tablet) display. There’s not even enough room to notice the difference between 720p and 1080p on 27″ TV, much less a phone or tablet. So how can a 4K display on an ultra-portable be anything other than marketing? Now 4K recording/output on the other hand would be awesome.
There certainly is enough room on 27″ to see the difference between 720 and 1080 if you are close to the screen. We just typically watch TV from a good distance. We hold our phones close to our face so the resolution must be much higher to be imperceptible.
Its the GHz race all over again.
Retina is fine. Increasing the number of pixels will not be noticeable. I’d rather Apple focus on software and increasing battery life, storage capacity, and processor speeds.
This translates as:- “Apple, please develop a display that will utilize the snapdragon 805 ultra HD processor so that we can copy you as soon as possible?!,” “We know that you will not increase your display size, so we want to create a larger display than you would to sell more of our large new cell phones running on last years software, but Shhh!,don’t tell our customers, will you?
If it were viable to have retina display at 3840×2160 on an iPhone then it could technically work at all sizes. It would be super dense at iPhone and iPad size, but would start being viable, albeit beyond current retina standards, for MacBooks and desktop displays. It might open up some interesting possibilities if the 4K resolution is used across devices, iPod/iPhone up through 27″ iMac/Thunderbolt Display. 🙂 My best guess is that there will be a bump in resolution at some point but Apple will focus on improvements in usability over specs. e.g., if 3840×2160 graphics equals unacceptable battery drain, Apple would opt out of it. Then again, being able to “mint” your own silicon designs is a great asset in squeezing what you need to out of the hardware.
About a year ago I have tried to think about perspectives of “Retina^2” and even “Retina^3” resolutions and ramifications that will follow. I suppose this is the route Apple will go; agree with MDN, Apple is going to be fine.
Retina 2 and Retina 3 immediately popped up in my head too.
That convinced me super retina is plausible, but I still don’t see how it offers any tangible benefit from the user’s perspective. The extra resolution would not yield a perceptible change in visual quality. Removing graphics smoothing would save energy, sure, but that doesn’t accomplish much beyond compensating for the extra energy needed to use higher resolution graphics. It also has the drawbacks of taking longer to download higher resolution raster images, and occupying more active memory and disk space.
Visual quality will improve only on closer-than-typical viewing distances.
Marketing hype. it’s called “retina” because while other screens may have more pixels per inch, the current screen has so many pixels that the eye cannot resolve individual ones as regular use distances. Apple will clearly continue to make the screen better and better, perhaps with more pixels, but likely in the many other ways that affect the user experience. Current keyboards could easily accept words typed at 200 wpm but nobody can type that fast so why advertise that capability?
Why exceed the resolution that the eye can see on the iOS devices? You stream the new higher resolution to the new 4K HDTV set and view the lower resolution on the devise in your hand. Lower power screens and know one will ever see the difference. That is why Apple is building several BILLION DOLLAR SERVER FARMS all around the world. Apple engineers are not idiots. Did you not see the 4K HDTV ports on the new Power Mac?
I assume you meant Mac Pro for power Mac.
Server farms.
What good are those specs with when it will eat the batteries for breakfast?
Another “specs” article that has no more merrit than the HP’s Windows 8 Elite pad!
Stop the phone pixel insanity! Ridiculous based on the size of a phone display. More pixels than the current retina will not influence my purchasing decision. I think this will be a issue like cameras on phones; Quality will become more important than quantity. Stop the insanity!
Yeah, some pundits don’t seem to understand that the normal human eye can’t resolve pixel arc sizes smaller than that those subtended on the retina displays on the iPhone, iPad, etc.
Qualcomm is only interested in getting back in the game since Apple designs their own chips.
Here we go again. Let’s compare Apple’s current technology to something competitors “might” have at some arbitrary future time.
RIGHT. how is that fair or relevant to compare the retina display to something in the pipe works maybe and speaking as though Apple of all companies would not care to advance in that timeframe
The Second Most Ridiculous Article I Have Ever Read
Note the origin of this article and all will become clear.
the increase of pixel density is not visible to the naked eye but does affect the way we see subtle color variations and shadows on things like skin (just saying) I am sure Apple will chose a blend that gets the highest yield in both picture and power yields one without the other is moot. if they dpi make a bigger phone they may need a denser screen .Samsung needs it now the screen rez on the present phones is laughable
Samsung Analyst Day?
SAD
I’ve been away for a while. Did people suddenly get enhanced eyeballs where higher resolution than “the smallest dot that a human can see” actually means anything besides “YOU’RE PUSHING MORE PIXELS THEREFORE MAKING YOUR PRODUCT SLOWER?” I’ve still got the 19 inch penis enhancement on order so I’ll keep this eyeball enhancement feature for later…
So tired of these Apple is doomed fluff pieces
Right so these phones will be available a few months before the next iPhone upgrade. Fact is these chips are advertised as test mules for phone makers to develop products 8 months ahead. Apple of course is testing or soon will its next generation of chips that will have similar qualities in this regard so apart from one is advertising a future product and the other isn’t because it only supplies to itself whats the difference.
Harem scarem, but it would be good to have an optional big-screen iPhone for those who want one. And for those who need one, such as several of my middle-aged lady friends who have gone over to the Galaxy to ease their eyesight.
Uh, another analyst speaks of what if based on the competitors vision. Well, for now the Retina Display is fine due to the fact that it gives the viewer a pixel free smoothness. Just as the days when Blue ray was to placed on every notebook with its ultra high resolution, which is not totally perceivable by the human eye, that soon cost a lot and used a lot of energy. Problem with ultra high resolution on a small device is the return the viewer will see and the cost to do it on small screens in both cost in CPU use of energy and cycles.
Maybe before rendering the Retina obsolete, consider that there is a maximum perceivable resolution that once pasted offers no further benefit to the veiwer. 4K is not the Holy Grail even if you can shove 7K resolution on a 5 inch screen! Point is mute on resolution for a Smart Phone or any other device once the eye can no longer see any difference and large resolutions are for clarity on LARGE screens. Maybe he should speak more on the processing of output to large screens form smart phones with a solid compression technology that would use nominal power to get that job done.
ok. this is probably a stupid question but i’m gonna ask cuz a little piece of me is kinda stupid. with denser pixel display, denser ccd’s in future models, will i be able to change lenses and do some macro photos? never mind, i think i know the answer. if all those things came true then i guess it stands to reason. god, i love the smell of reason in the morning. oh yeah, and samsungs a loser …but sometimes losers become winners cuz they have no honor and no standards of ethical behavior and that’s why there are so many rich prick winners. just think of all those greedy people who sold risky loans so they could dump them on fanny mae and then you end up with all those mortgage backed securities sold around the world and bernie type ponzie schemes and hardly anyone paying the price for nearly bringing down the economy and blowing up their own housing bubble. sorry, i’m just taking up space. do not read this. i’m just kinda embarrassing myself, although, i did manage to spell embarrassing correctly. i’m a petty decent speeler and that’s why i deserve more pixels. i’m shut up now.
I don’t think a higher resolution screen on the phone is the idea, I thing the pundit missed a very important point about a faster graphics processor in a phone. What you want is an iPhone with 4k processing capability so when you plug your phone into a large screen TV, the phone can handle it.
I’m absolutely certain by the time 4k video and TVs become common, the iPhone processor will be able to handle it.
Nigram, go fuck off. Your asswipe scare talk makes you look like an anal sphincter.
I hope Apple starts using its patins in haptic. That would be great. Samsung brings out ultra HD or 4K that is pointless on a tablet let alone a phone. Then iOS devices start having screens you can feel. Something very useful. It would be fun reading the Android fans BS their way out of that. Oh yea when is Android going to come out with 64 bit? I think most people care more about speed than pixel count.
The 805 chip, as it is currently designed, is a tablet chip, not a phone chip.
Sure, come people are extrapolating and saying the 805 *could* be put into a phone, but no one who really knows the technology is predicting this. The cost to battery life to drive both this chip and a screen at UHDTV (NOT 4K as that is a Digital Cinema standard and is different from the popular misnomer) is just much, much too high. Want a phone that lasts four hours or less of use? Use technologies available within the next 12 months *and* use this chip to drive a UHDTV resolution screen on a typical cell phone battery.
I do believe there will be UHDTV resolution tablets by 2015 if only for some company to have those bragging rights, but they won’t be the new “standard”.
It appears that a Mr Kent at the Daily Planet has complained that he can still make out individual pixels on a retina display. A gap in the market that needs to becaddressed, obviously.