4 ms·

I don't understand how such high PPI really matter at all. I mean it increases battery usage, it costs more, and all you get is smoother text and smoother pictu

by jokoon 12y ago

I don't understand how such high PPI really matter at all. I mean it increases battery usage, it costs more, and all you get is smoother text and smoother pictures on a less than 5 inch screen.

Padding 12y ago
> all you get is smoother text and smoother pictures on a less than 5 inch screen. I don't think smoother text (and pictures) is anything to be trivialized. I mean it actually looks much much nicer and (imho) comforting - I experience joy anytime I look at anything that's above the 100 or so ppi of average 1080p monitors. People spend huge swaths of money on the looks of things that they'll hardly ever be looking at. Considering this, spending the money on a screen (i.e. something they'll litteraly be staring at for large periods of time) is actually a borderline-rational choice in comparision..
- jokoon 12y ago
  > I experience joy anytime I look at anything that's above the 100 or so ppi of average 1080p monitors. I experience joy when I can go online and check my emails when I'm in the bus or outside.
  - coldtea 12y ago
    And our village idiot experiences joy whenever he is given a lolipop. What I'm getting at is, priorities may vary. You might care for portability of checking emails outside, I'd rather have crispy text because I'm working with all day inside.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
lutusp 12y ago
> I don't understand how such high PPI really matter at all. If there's more resolution than the display (or the observer's eye) can support, the extra resolution can be used to make diagonal lines look better (as one example), through a sophisticated drawing method that eliminates jaggies. I'm not saying this is always true, but it's on the list of options to exploit the extra resolution. > I mean it increases battery usage, it costs more, and all you get is smoother text and smoother pictures on a less than 5 inch screen. That's pretty much it. But consider that people who buy Apple phones know they're not buying the least expensive, most cost-effective devices, so maybe they expect to get something not present in the bargain phones, like resolution that no one can possibly notice. Sort of like having a refrigerator whose light stays on when the door is closed.
Keyframe 12y ago
For one, at 800dpi or so aliasing problems go away. With that kind of density, I presume, race for density will be done.
- chadgeidel 12y ago
  I had always heard it's in the 300 range. Phil Plait did an analysis back in the day using "display held one foot away" as the metric and determined that "average eyesight" could resolve 286 PPI. "Perfect eyesight" would bump it to 477 PPI. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/06/10/resolving-the-iphone-resolution/ http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/06/10/re...
  - Keyframe 12y ago
    I remember that 800 number from one of the books about graphics and rendering. Forgot which one, probably Glassner's. So it might be more of a theoretical/ultimate threshold than anything. Also, it's not about resolving individual pixels but removing aliasing effects due to signal /picture density.
- jokoon 12y ago
  that's an expensive way to solve a cheap problem, which has already been solved.

by jokoon 12y ago

I don't understand how such high PPI really matter at all. I mean it increases battery usage, it costs more, and all you get is smoother text and smoother pictures on a less than 5 inch screen.

Padding 12y ago

> all you get is smoother text and smoother pictures on a less than 5 inch screen. I don't think smoother text (and pictures) is anything to be trivialized. I mean it actually looks much much nicer and (imho) comforting - I experience joy anytime I look at anything that's above the 100 or so ppi of average 1080p monitors. People spend huge swaths of money on the looks of things that they'll hardly ever be looking at. Considering this, spending the money on a screen (i.e. something they'll litteraly be staring at for large periods of time) is actually a borderline-rational choice in comparision..

jokoon 12y ago
> I experience joy anytime I look at anything that's above the 100 or so ppi of average 1080p monitors. I experience joy when I can go online and check my emails when I'm in the bus or outside.
- coldtea 12y ago
  And our village idiot experiences joy whenever he is given a lolipop. What I'm getting at is, priorities may vary. You might care for portability of checking emails outside, I'd rather have crispy text because I'm working with all day inside.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]

lutusp 12y ago

> I don't understand how such high PPI really matter at all. If there's more resolution than the display (or the observer's eye) can support, the extra resolution can be used to make diagonal lines look better (as one example), through a sophisticated drawing method that eliminates jaggies. I'm not saying this is always true, but it's on the list of options to exploit the extra resolution. > I mean it increases battery usage, it costs more, and all you get is smoother text and smoother pictures on a less than 5 inch screen. That's pretty much it. But consider that people who buy Apple phones know they're not buying the least expensive, most cost-effective devices, so maybe they expect to get something not present in the bargain phones, like resolution that no one can possibly notice. Sort of like having a refrigerator whose light stays on when the door is closed.

Keyframe 12y ago

For one, at 800dpi or so aliasing problems go away. With that kind of density, I presume, race for density will be done.

chadgeidel 12y ago
I had always heard it's in the 300 range. Phil Plait did an analysis back in the day using "display held one foot away" as the metric and determined that "average eyesight" could resolve 286 PPI. "Perfect eyesight" would bump it to 477 PPI. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/06/10/resolving-the-iphone-resolution/ http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/06/10/re...
- Keyframe 12y ago
  I remember that 800 number from one of the books about graphics and rendering. Forgot which one, probably Glassner's. So it might be more of a theoretical/ultimate threshold than anything. Also, it's not about resolving individual pixels but removing aliasing effects due to signal /picture density.
jokoon 12y ago
that's an expensive way to solve a cheap problem, which has already been solved.