

Nokia Lumia 920 is more retina than the iPhone 4S - jharrier
http://www.virtualpants.com/post/30935634536/nokia-lumia-920-is-more-retina-than-the-iphone-4s

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janardanyri
Sidenote on marketing: this is probably an amazing screen, but the
gadgetmarketspeak designation of "Pure Motion HD+" makes me tune out
instantly.

The cleverness of "retina display" was that a single explanatory sentence told
you everything you need to know - this phone has better resolution than your
eyes can fully perceive.

"Pure Motion HD+" means nothing to me - is that better or worse than 'true
HD'? (For that matter, was the original just plain 'HD' actually fake HD?)

I had the unfortunate experience of trying to gauge displays at Best Buy
yesterday, where machines in the same category would variously have resolution
designations from "1280x800" to "SXGA" to "True HD" to nothing whatsoever,
depending on what they thought sounded best, and the cumulative effect was
that I felt less aware of my purchase options looking at the actual machines
than simply checking opinions on Newegg.

I can't imagine trying to navigate that process as a consumer with other
priorities in life. And they wonder why Apple has such healthy profit margins
in comparison...

~~~
option_greek
There are some things other companies never seem to learn from apple:

1) Differentiating their phones by weird model numbers that no one remembers

2) Making product announcements with no details about price and availability

3) Cramming all kind of high end features and adding non catchy names like
this PureGodKnowsWhatEver+ in their product descriptions and praying people
will buy them.

~~~
dmansen
4) Have real products that people can play with in stores (last time I was at
Best Buy, not a single phone worked)

5) Support products long after they are released

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TheBoff
"More retina" is meaningless: the whole pointer is that it's indistinguishable
from normal use distance.

You can say "higher resolution", or even "retina when held closer to the
face", but "more retina" really is nonsense!

~~~
iNate2000
But it's more funnier.

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goombastic
I would buy a Nokia Android. Awesome hardware, great software. Windows 8 on a
Nokia is like taking a camel to a horse race.

~~~
powertower
> Windows 8 on a Nokia is like taking a camel to a horse race.

What are you basing this statement on?

~~~
shuw
Well, Windows Phone has failed to gain traction in the marketplace and
therefore lacks a proper app ecosystem.

Second, I think the WP8 UI very divisive. You either love it or you don't.
Personally, I think it's a Pepsi. Sweet on first impression, but cumbersome to
use every day. Too much scrolling (can't use muscle memory) and giant
typography which distract from the content.

~~~
powertower
> Well, Windows Phone has failed to gain traction in the marketplace and
> therefore lacks a proper app ecosystem.

Can you even buy a WP8 phone yet? Give it a year after it's released before
passing judgment on its app ecosystem.

You're confusing the old with the new.

Their whole deal here is that they are re-inventing the product line. It's not
the old WP flop anymore.

> Personally, I think it's a Pepsi. Sweet on first impression, but cumbersome
> to use every day.

That's coming from someone that's never even used it once!

Personally, I think they have an awesome product. Once MS and manufacturers
gear up their marketing, we'll see what happens.

~~~
shuw
I was referring to the Windows Phone app ecosystem. There is _no_ app
ecosystem for WP8 yet, and I assume that it will allow you to run WP7 apps.

And I did use WP7 for a week. My impressions of the Metro-style are that it is
love-or-hate and I fall into the latter. WP8 is a continuation the Metro
design language.

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lambda
Can we please say "higher resolution" or "higher density" rather than an
abomination like "more retina"?

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Achshar
They do indeed have marginally higher PPI, but they, understandably, didn't
mention it in spec sheet. Because it's just lame to brag about 2 more PPI.
Although I think it is impressive that they have achieved it in a screen that
is 1 inch larger then iPhone's.

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mtgx
Both Xperia S and HTC Rezound had 342 PPI, and were launched a long time ago:

<http://www.gsmarena.com/sony_xperia_s-4369.php>

<http://www.gsmarena.com/htc_rezound-4099.php>

And bragging about having 3 more PPI than the iPhone is just lame...just as
bragging about having "better than HD" display because you have 48 extra
pixels, is.

~~~
jharrier
Agreed. Not a lot to brag about, but I'd at least mention that it is retina.

~~~
esolyt
What does retina mean? Can you explain to us?

Do we really need a term for "high PPI"? If iPhone 4 is retina, then what is
Xperia S? It is certainly not retina, because it would be insulting to call it
retina when its pixels are even more indistinguishable. What about Galaxy
Nexus? It is 316 PPI, slightly less than iPhone. Is it enough for being retina
or not? Who determines?

~~~
potatolicious
The original contention is that it is the absolute (useful) peak of screen
resolution, as in, at the distance the screen is normally viewed from, the
individual pixels are imperceptible to the human eye, and adding more will not
result in any perceptible difference.

Similar to print media, where beyond a certain dpi your eyes just can't tell
the difference if you added more dots.

~~~
esolyt
Your definition of retina is based on 2 assumptions:

1) Everyone has the same eyes.

2) Everyone holds their phone at the same distance.

Both of these assumptions are incorrect. Therefore, a display that is retina
to you, may not be retina to me. It is therefore meaningless to talk about
whether a display is retina or not (unless a specific human and a specific
distance is specified).

~~~
potatolicious
Your argument is faulty, and here is why:

You are confusing with "these assumptions are not true 100% of the time" with
"these assumptions are not true most of the time". In fact, just like sound
perception, motion perception, and eyesight resolution, the _vast, vast, vast_
majority of the world is tightly clustered around a maximum.

There are a small number of humans who can hear above 20kHz, but that doesn't
change the fact that 99% of the world can't - in fact, most adults sit closer
to 16Hz. Ditto, for the vast, vast majority of the people on this fair planet,
framerates above somewhere between 70-80Hz become imperceptible, with a lot of
people sitting closer to 60Hz.

Both audio and video equipment are engineered with these limits in mind, and
there is no fundamental problem with engineering screens with the limitations
of the ultramajority in mind.

The fact that there are a few extraordinary individuals whose sensory
abilities far exceed that of the rest of the population, does not make it
"meaningless" as a concept. What is "retina" as defined above, is retina to
everyone but the statistical outliers.

To address your _original_ post, it seems like you're taking out your Apple
rage against a concept that is older than Apple. "Retina" as Apple uses in its
own advertising is really whatever the damn hell Apple feels like calling
retina, but the concept predates Apple's usage of it and has validity. The
Xperia S, the Galaxy Nexus, are all "retina" in the non-Apple-marketing sense
of the word.

------
rbanffy
That's great news. All of us time-travelers who sport extra-high resolution
artificial eyes will be able to see all the extra detail this higher density
allows.

Now, seriously, there is absolutely no need to increase pixel density

~~~
jarek
> Now, seriously, there is absolutely no need to increase pixel density

Isn't that what they said in 2010, and 2005, and 2000?

When we have a display that's "retina" when being held 1 mm in front of sharp
eyes you might be able to say there's "no need." Until then, the market will
decide.

~~~
MartinCron
I don't think anyone was saying that there's no need to increase pixel density
in 2000 or 2005, at least not to me.

Can you even focus 1mm in front of your eyes? I can't, but I'm old.

~~~
jarek
> I don't think anyone was saying that there's no need to increase pixel
> density in 2000 or 2005, at least not to me.

Well, there's that Apple marketing page that in 2004 said 100 ppi was the
"ideal resolution"
([http://web.archive.org/web/20041011130432/http://www.apple.c...](http://web.archive.org/web/20041011130432/http://www.apple.com/displays/technology.html)).
I'm sure internally they wouldn't have minded a 220 ppi MBPwRd display with
around 100 ppi effective, but they weren't saying that - they were saying
higher density causes eye strain.

> Can you even focus 1mm in front of your eyes? I can't, but I'm old.

Arbitrarily small distance. Vast majority of people physically can't hold a
screen that close in front of their face, so a "retina at 1 mm" display would
be retina for all feasible uses - unlike the current "retina at 25 cm."

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vilius
(The yet unreleased) Nokia Lumia 920 is more retina than the (one year old)
iPhone. Oh... I mean... more pure motion HD plus than iPhone! And: It’s
surprising that Nokia didn’t mention that the Lumia 920 is just like iPhone,
but with more widgets, therefore better.

I understand that this kind of marketing works. But how? How come people do
not value true innovation and choose to buy "better than HD resolution" when
what they really need is already crisp iPhone screen?

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RandallBrown
Nokia should never have released the 900 if this was so close on their
roadmap. I say this as someone who bought the 900 and stopped using it because
the screen and camera sucked. My 2 year old iPhone 4 was better in almost
every way.

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jinushaun
Too bad the Metro interface doesn't take full advantage of those pixels. Text
is now smoother, but flat squares with sharp corners look the same at any
resolution.

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grecy
A product with an unknown price that you can't buy is better than a product
you've been able to buy for a year now.

Interesting.

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shakyboy86
But still Nokia has a long way to reach iPhone level.

~~~
cbg0
In sales, or how exactly?

