iPhone's retinal display

[alfredo]

Looks like it is more than hype

http://prometheus.med.utah.edu/~bwjones/2010/06/apple-retina-display/

Though as you can see from these images of the displays I captured under a microscope, these pixels are not square. Rather they are rectangular and while the short axis is 78μm, the long axis on the iPhone 4 pixel is somewhere in the neighborhood of 102μm. I am including images below of the iPhone 1G, the iPhone 3G, the iPhone 4G and the iPad to show some perspective on pixel sizes. The scale bar and my measurements are approximate as I was having a tough time in the lab tonight finding an appropriate calibration. Nevertheless, this should serve as a useful metric for examining the relative pixel sizes and for making the point of whether Apple’s Retina Display is marketing speak and hyperbole or if in fact, Apple’s claims have merit.

[romana]

1. Definitely not hype

And yes, Apple is given to marketing hyperbole.

But this display is absolutely, stunningly crisp and beautiful. I can't believe how good full webpages with text look on it. Even the smallest text is readable.

In a word, the iPhone 4 display is amazing.

[alfredo]

2. I wonder if it will appear on the iPad some day.

[Tesha]

3. There's a tradeoff between processing speed, battery consumption, and number of pixels.

The more pixels you have in the display, the faster the processor has
to work to sling those pixels around and the more battery power is
consumed.

Right now, the iPhone 4 and the iPad have roughly equivalent numbers
of pixels and the exact same processor. But if you wanted to (roughly)
quadruple the number of pixels (so the density matched the iPhone),
you'd need a processor that could work four times as hard as the
current top-of-the-line processor. Alternatively, you could take
four times as long to paint each screenful, but one of the hallmarks
of the iDevice world is that they manage to get 60 frames-per-second
pushed to the screen come Hell or high water, and Steve Jobs won't
ever settle for 15 FPS and neither would you.

So a "retinal display" for the iPad, while nice, probably won't happen
at least for a year or two (until Moore's law advances the capabilities
of the processor another binary order-of-magnitude or two).

Tesha


(I'm ignoring some subtleties about the separation of duties between
the general-purpose processor and the graphics processor, but my
overall point still holds.)

[alfredo]

4. I'm happy with the display on the iPad. Retinal Display is not needed,

because you can increase the font size without having to scroll a lot.

[Tesha]

5. The retinal display would be nice, but as you say, not necessary.

But doubtless it is coming as soon as it's supportable by the rest of
the hardware.

Tesha

[alfredo]

6. Just watched that Tour de France on it and the video was incredible.

edited to add the r I left out of tour. Still need work with that on screen keyboard.