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How sharp is the iPhone 4's screen? High Res 4 vs 3GS images
not shabby.
- lyime 16y agohere is a quick screenshot comparison http://grab.by/4UDZ http://grab.by/4UDZ
- moxiemk1 16y agoThe improvement in the sharpness of the NYTimes logo is astounding. Call me a fanboy, but this kind of improvement in resolution is exciting. Also, imagine a 30inch panel at this ppi... one positively quivers.
- jbrennan 16y agoAs a 30 inch Cinema Display owner, I did the math on it the other day, I think it's about 8000x5200 pixels at 326 ppi. I would pay whatever the cost for that.
- houseabsolute 16y agoAnd after you paid that you'd pay half as much again for the four graphics cards you'd need to display information on it at a decent framerate. :P
- jbrennan 16y agoI figure by the time they can pack so many pixels into a single 30 inch display, a single graphics card will be able to drive it. Hopefully :)
- modeless 16y agoActually, I think the screen tech is already there and it's really the terrible scaling support in OSes that is holding things back. Nobody buys high DPI displays because the experience of using one with Windows sucks. If it's true that iOS 4 automatically scales apps while improving text sharpness that will make it far more advanced than both Windows and Mac OS.
- ergo98 16y ago>If it's true that iOS 4 automatically scales apps while improving text sharpness that will make it far more advanced than both Windows and Mac OS. I usually just ignore these topics, but honestly: The ignorance is incredible. Absolutely incredible.
- modeless 16y agoIf you have nothing useful to add to the conversation, please continue to ignore these topics. I can only assume you believe that the DPI controls in OS X and Windows are actually useful, and to that I would say: have you ever actually tried to use them?
- ergo98 16y agoDo you think what you added was useful? The iOS DPI controls are some of the most shockingly rudimentary and backwards of virtually any contemporary system, which is exactly why they simply doubled each axis' pixel count (then inventing some asinine "retina display" nonsense to try to make lemonade out of the teeny screen size in the face of better equipped competitors). To see someone calling it a model to strive to is simply shocking, especially on a generally more knowledgeable site like HN. Windows has been dealing with resolution variance to much greater success since the early 90s. Seriously, by your claim, Windows XP would have been a revolution had it come with the new ability to target both QVGA and the exclusive new VGA functionality.
- modeless 16y agoThe iOS DPI controls are the simplest and most straightforward of any contemporary system, which is why they will likely actually work, in contrast to the OS X and Windows DPI controls which have never worked and likely will never work. I call that more advanced. You are confusing resolution and DPI. Windows has been dealing with DPI variance by completely ignoring it since the early 90s, with the result that the physical size of interface elements varies with your screen's DPI, and high DPI displays are impractical. iOS doesn't have the option of ignoring DPI because in a touch interface the physical size of interface elements actually matters.
- AlisdairO 16y agoFor me, the real killer app of that sort of resolution would be resolution independence: current flat screens look crappy when you switch them to a non-native resolution, whereas with that sort of PPI you could get away with it - and you wouldn't even need a powerful graphics card, because the screen could appear as a lower resolution device to the system.
- jrockway 16y agoThe cost is measured in number of dead pixels. On a 4" screen, it's easy to avoid dead pixels. On a 30" screen... not so much.
- glhaynes 16y agoHow bad are dead pixels, though, at >300 dpi?
- Tuna-Fish 16y agoBlack dead pixels cost nothing, but dead subpixels, or pixels stuck to displaying colour are very bad. Even if adding more resolution makes you unable to resolve the pixels, you can still always see light, in the same way you have no hope to resolve stars, but you can clearly see their light. Luckily once we get oled, it no longer matters, because there is no backlight and you can always set misbehaving pixels to black.
- glhaynes 16y agoyou can always set misbehaving pixels to black Are there no "stuck pixels" that can't be turned off on OLED?
- sukuriant 16y agoDespite your desires, at some point, those pixels will become too small for you to see at normal viewing range. They'd be a waste, you have 20-10 vision, or you'll be sitting far too close
- cheald 16y agoThat's 41,600,000 pixels. My 24" display, at 1920x1200 (~86 PPI) is 2,304,000 pixels, and even with a moderately high end graphics card, it struggles under load. You're talking about a display with 18x as many pixels to paint (or, to put it in a metric more easily graspable, it'd be like running ~18 displays at 1920x1200 @ 86 DPI, across which a single frame would be painted. Needless to say, I don't think that technology is going to be showing up in stores near us in the next year or two. :)
- rythie 16y agoIBM used to make a 22inch 3840×2400 which was 204 DPI: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_T220/T221_LCD_monitors http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_T220/T221_LCD_monitors
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- kylec 16y agoAny idea where I can get an actual (home+power) screenshot from the device?
- sophiebits 16y agoHere's a shot from the 3GS: http://images.apple.com/iphone/features/images/retina-resolution-3gs-20100607.jpg http://images.apple.com/iphone/features/images/retina-resolu... (pixel-doubled) http://i.imgur.com/j2yAN.jpg http://i.imgur.com/j2yAN.jpg (normal size for the curious) And the same from the 4, with actual size pixels: http://images.apple.com/iphone/features/images/retina-resolution-4-20100607.jpg http://images.apple.com/iphone/features/images/retina-resolu... And here's another screenshot, of Mail this time: http://images.apple.com/iphone/features/images/retina-gallery3-large-20100607.jpg http://images.apple.com/iphone/features/images/retina-galler...
- ntoshev 16y agoThank you for this. Photographing screens is pretty meaningless. If you look at the palm holding the phone in the original post, it is much better visible on the 4 picture than on 3GS, with papillary lines and everything. How can someone claim these pictures allow you to compare the quality of displays is beyond me.
- rbanffy 16y agoLike simonsquiff pointed out, it's not the resolution per se, but things you can resolve on one screen you can't on the other. I guess I would have to hold it very close to my face to be able to read most of the NYT home, but there must be people who can read it at a distance.
- simonsquiff 16y agoThat's genuinely very very impressive. I think all the web commentary about whether the pixels are visible or not are missing the point. The point is that thinks that were not readable (or resolvable) now are. For instance on the NYT page, on the 3gs screenshot only the main headlines are readable. On the 4 phone, everything is. That's a huge usability improvement. Additionally a number of the stylist elements on the iphone don't look that great at lower resolution but amazing at the higher one. The obvious one is the inset text effect used for the browser header (i.e. the white inset on text),it almost looks like ghosting on the 3gs whilst on the 4 it looks like a crisp inset. The same goes for the inset icons at the bottom. I have to look hard to see pixels on my 3gs; things looking less pixely isn't the news, things being more resolvable is.
- Groxx 16y agoPhotos of the real thing == impressive. That's quite an improvement.
- houseabsolute 16y agoSetting a new standard, that's for sure. Thank god you can't patent a simple increase in the number of pixels on a screen.
- killedbydeath 16y agoLooks more like an incremental arms race, just like with camera resolutions: iPhone 3GS: 480 x 320 (~ 1 year ago) Motorola Droid: 800 x 480 (~7 months ago) iPhone 4: 960 x 640
- Groxx 16y agoWinners: us.
- HolyoakeD 16y agoWho is 'us'?
- cheald 16y agoThe people that have the benefit of using the technology, no matter whether it's Android or Apple. Competition is driving manufacturers to produce higher-spec devices in the hopes of winning customers. The iPhone languished at 320×480 for a long while (and really, I'll betcha Apple would have loved to keep it there, as a lower-resolution display takes less battery power to drive, and produces higher framerates in games, etc), and then all of a sudden, Android devices with shiny high-res displays started showing up, and Apple was compelled to counter with its own offering.
- unwind 16y ago
- MaysonL 16y agoThe questions that I want to know the answers to: 1. Will the next iterations of the iPad and MacBook(s) have this sort of display (perhaps as an option), or will it be the iteration after that? 2. How much will they cost?
- simonsquiff 16y agoI think it's more likely that the iPad will do a similar x2 increase in resolution, i.e. go from 1024x768 to 2048x1536... You don't need the same level of DPI on the iPad and it would just take too much grunt to push the same DPI as the iPhone on that screen.
- zokier 16y agoiPad is partially marketed as a reading device, so larger resolutions are warranted. And doubling the resolution is quite clever trick as it makes scaling legacy apps much, much easier
- baddox 16y agoDisplay technology usually increases in cost exponentially with screen size.
- MaysonL 16y agoTrue, but it also decreases exponentially over time.
- rimantas 16y agoI'd be happy for a while if Apple follows the trend it set with iPad and iPhone 4 and starts shipping notebooks with IPS screen even if resolution is the same as it is now.
- yardie 16y agoI'd also be happy with this. Considering that Apple used to ship all their Powerbooks with IPS displays, but the market decided that TN would rule the day. Now the only places to find them are extremely highend workstation laptops (aka. heavy, desktop portables)
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- BigZaphod 16y agoThe iPhone 4 isn't even available for purchase yet and you're already complaining that the "next thing" doesn't exist yet? Slow down!
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- modeless 16y agoI've worked with display walls before and trust me, even a one-pixel gap between displays is too distracting for any real use. Considering the tiny size of these pixels it would be impossible to get the screens that close together.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- saint-loup 16y agoBy comparison, the 3GS display, with the grid of pixels so visible, almost has a kind of retro, low-tech beauty.
- DTrejo 16y agoI took of picture of your pixels so you can see pixels in your pixels. Please forgive me.
- rglullis 16y agoIt amazes me how the Reality Distortion Field is strong. The Droid came with a 265 ppi screen and very few people cared (maybe http://xkcd.com/662 http://xkcd.com/662 ). I googled around and could not find people taking pictures to compare the Droid screen with the iPhone 3GS screen. (Also, I'd love to find reviews of critics about the "squared, industrial" design on the Droid and their opinions on the "squared, industrial" designed iPhone. But I digress.) If anything, this seems to be how there's a void of real game-changing things on the iPhone 4, and yet bloggers and the writers who depend on Apple hype are working much harder to find anything to sell.
- bmalicoat 16y agoI think the main reasons this is getting more press is because the resolution is over the ~300 ppi barrier that makes most eyes unable to resolve pixels. The square design of the iPhone 4 is functional (try balancing a 3GS on its side to do a video call...), so whether you like the design or not it is a necessity.
- ergo98 16y ago>I think the main reasons this is getting more press is because the resolution is over the ~300 ppi barrier that makes most eyes unable to resolve pixels. Ugh. Tell me you don't actually believe that? The resolution of the iPhone 4 was predetermined to simply pixel-double existing iPhone applications (no sloppy scaling or black-bordered apps for the legacy stockpile). It is only marginally denser than several Android phones, and is a big ball of WGAF wrapped in ridiculous market speak. It's great that they increased the resolution to be more competitive with most other high end smartphones, but the retina stuff is such a stretch of nonsense.
- bmalicoat 16y agoWell, it is certainly easier for devs that they pixel doubled, but I don't think the resolution is hyperbole, see: http://mblogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/06/10/resolving-the-iphone-resolution/ http://mblogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/06/10/r...
- teilo 16y agoIt would be nice if he had taken it straight on, or at least with a narrow enough aperture to capture the whole screen in the DOF. What's the point of the picture if most of the screen is out of focus?
- tumult 16y agoI think the narrow DOF helps give laypeople a better sense of perspective and size. I'd rather see a high resolution showing of both head-on, but a shot like this does have a strong emotional aspect to it. In other words, I guess it's just a more powerful photo.
- potatolicious 16y agoThe room is also pretty dark - a shallow DOF would've been required to get the shot in the first place.
- teilo 16y agoThat's what tripods are for.
- teilo 16y agoI'm a photographer, so I understand the point of the shot as it is, emotional draw and all, but if the point of his article is to show the resolution, it's the wrong shot to use.
- rodh257 16y agowould be interesting to compare to the Samsung Galaxy S (android phone) which has a 4" super amoled screen, Samsung claims theirs is better as contrast ratios etc are more important than the extra few pixels, but then again, of course they would say that.
- ZeroGravitas 16y agoThis suffers the same issue as Apple's demo site that shows the iPhone 3GS screens blown up 2x to compare against the iPhone 4 screenshots. My eye doesn't have a zoom. I see things at their actual size and even holding my phone right up to my eye I can't get it as large as those images. Details that I can't see without artificial zoom are the same as details that I can't see period. Clearly, higher resolutions up to some point are better for display purposes, but there's tradeoffs involved. I believe smaller pixels means less light gets through, it's more work for your processors which means less battery life etc. Everyone knows why Apple doubled ppi and quadrupled pixel count. The benefits of this system over, say, Androids flexibility should be apparent. But there are also limitations that mean the iPad is unlikely to increase its DPI for years unless it follows Android's lead. Certainly not a clear win.
- fh 16y agoI don't understand your point. The iPad has a 130 dpi display, if anything, it should be easier to double that than it was to double the iPhone 3GS's 160 dpi. (I know that making larger displays at that resolution is harder and more expensive, but that won't be an issue forever.)
- ZeroGravitas 16y agoYou've grasped my point better than you realize. As you say the larger screen size and number of pixels outweighs the smaller pixel density. This does change over time but that's also my point, more heterogeneous rivals can re-purpose various display sizes as required and as time passes they'll get higher res screens before the iPad, just like various iPhone rivals did. They've also marketed themselves into a corner since even if they double the 130dpi screen they'll not reach their "magical" figure of 300dpi, and they've now introduced pixel density as a marketable commodity in one market, when they're at a disadvantage in another.
- fh 16y agoAh, I get it now. I agree to a point. I'd add that once resolution itself is no longer an issue (because every phone's screen is above 300 dpi), Android still has the advantage of custom aspect ratios. Regarding the iPad, marketing-wise, they might claim that people typically hold the iPad farther away from their eyes than 12 inches, say 15 inches, which places the "retina limit" conveniently just under 260 dpi.