

How sharp is the iPhone 4's screen? High Res 4 vs 3GS images - petekalo
http://scobleizer.com/2010/06/13/how-sharp-is-the-iphone-4-0s-screen/#
not shabby.
======
rglullis
It 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> ). 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.

~~~
Tichy
What amuses me is that before the iPhone 4, iPhone users insisted that the
iPhone resolution is perfect and no higher resolution was necessary. Now
suddenly they would never ever consider buying a phone with less resolution.

~~~
dieterrams
What amuses me is how threatened people can get by a photo of a phone, that
they have to start insulting people for their appreciation of it.

~~~
Tichy
insulting?

------
teilo
It 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
I 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
The room is also pretty dark - a shallow DOF would've been required to get the
shot in the first place.

~~~
teilo
That's what tripods are for.

------
lyime
here is a quick screenshot comparison <http://grab.by/4UDZ>

~~~
moxiemk1
The 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
As 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
And 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
I 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
Actually, 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
>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
If 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
Do 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
The 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.

~~~
ergo98
>The iOS DPI controls are the simplest and most straightforward of any
contemporary system

But they're simple because it was a startling realization that the original
design was shortsighted. The iOS platform has had a mere 3 screen attributes
thus far, and each has been an essentially hard-coded hack specific for it.

It is not a laudable goal. They certainly didn't spearhead density-independent
layout (and are more accurately one of the last to the party).

>and high DPI displays are impractical

In the workstation world people generally essentially placed their display
based upon its DPI. A large, lower DPI display was wall mounted or placed at a
greater distance (but serving more people), while a higher DPI display came
closer to the user.

The iOS platform is not the best example of density-independent layout. It is
one of the worst among the modern era.

------
Groxx
Photos of the real thing == impressive. That's quite an improvement.

~~~
houseabsolute
Setting 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
Looks 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
Winners: us.

~~~
HolyoakeD
Who is 'us'?

~~~
cheald
The 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
It would be awesome to, once in your lifetime, create something that manages
to "languish" like the iPhone did, then. :)

~~~
cheald
No doubt. Perhaps the wrong choice of word, but what I meant is that Apple
wasn't pushing higher-res displays, despite advancements in display
technology, until their competition did. They were content to let the iPhone
stay at a relatively low resolution until it became a point that they had to
compete on.

------
saint-loup
By comparison, the 3GS display, with the grid of pixels so visible, almost has
a kind of retro, low-tech beauty.

------
ZeroGravitas
This 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.

~~~
dieterrams
> 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.

They're zoomed because it's the only way to demonstrate the difference when
the display you're looking at almost certainly has a lower PPI. It's no
different from having to zoom in on a print sample to show how clear a
printer's text is on a monitor.

> 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.

Which makes it all the more impressive that iPhone 4 has four times the
contrast ratio and better battery life than previous iPhones, with the speed
of an iPad, in a physically smaller space. Given that everything has been
improved, it's clearly not much of a tradeoff.

FYI, iOS is perfectly capable of running applications designed for other
resolutions. It's not for lack of 'flexibility' on the operating system's part
that Apple chose not to utilize intermediate resolutions for its hardware.

It's also a little strange to see Android phones' variety of resolutions being
described as some sort of path that Android has trailblazed. For one thing,
the operating system has nothing to do with it, and for another, that sort of
thing has been standard practice for a long time now, whether you're
considering computers in general or even just mobile handsets.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Your definition of trade-off seems broken. If I can make a car much bigger, or
make it much more fuel efficient because I've got a new lightweight alloy body
then that's still a trade-off even if I decide to make it a little bit bigger
_and_ a little bit more fuel efficient.

I personally think they've been forced to overshoot on screen density in
return for platform homogeneity, the much lesser discussed cousin of the ever
popular "fragmentation" and this will cost them money, performance and battery
life. They are of course making lemonade from this particular lemon via
marketing in an attempt to counteract the benefit that rivals will receive by
choosing the screen with the best balance of quality/price/battery at any
particular point in time for their devices.

Follow the pattern: processor speed: no comment (i.e. the same as everyone
else, soon to be lower as new models are released), memory: no comment (i.e.
half the flagship rivals, same as the rest), screen density: let's shout this
metric from the rooftops because as any longtime Apple follower (like myself)
knows, it's only "about the total experience" when you can't actually beat
them on the raw figures. If you happen to be forced to use a spec that by your
own marketing is higher than actually necessary or visible most of the time,
then that figure becomes vitally important since no-one even wants to match it
because they want to focus on the "total experience" rather than chase your
metric.

~~~
dieterrams

      Your definition of trade-off seems broken. If I can make a car much bigger,
      or make it much more fuel efficient then that's still a trade-off even if I
      decide to make it a little bit bigger and a little bit more fuel efficient.
    

There's nothing wrong with my definition of a trade-off. What you're pointing
out _here_ is that all design inherently involves trade-offs, which is just a
simple fact. Your previous post, however, makes the FUDdy suggestion that
people are going to get something worse than before ("I believe smaller pixels
means less light gets through, it's more work for your processors which means
less battery life etc.")

I guess it's possible that when you talked about "less light" and "less
battery life", you were speaking in reference to theoretical maximums which
Apple could have chosen to individually pursue at the expense of all other
factors, as opposed to the display quality and battery life of existing
phones. In which case, you were simply stating a practical fact and not
offering a criticism. But it sure doesn't sound that way.

    
    
      They are of course making lemonade from this particular lemon via marketing
      in an attempt to counteract the benefit that rivals will receive by choosing
      the screen with the best balance of quality/price/battery at any particular
      point in time for their devices.
    

Where and what are those devices?

    
    
      let's shout this metric from the rooftops because as any longtime Apple
      follower (like myself) knows, it's only "about the total experience" when
      you can't actually beat them on the raw figures.
    

You'll notice Apple continues to emphasize the experience here, which is why
they bothered to talk about human optics rather than simply dumping the 326
ppi figure and moving on. And sure, they like to brag about specs when they
can, but it's the fact that they're fundamentally about the total experience
that gives them the highest customer satisfaction ratings.

    
    
      If you happen to be forced to use a spec that by your own marketing is higher
      than actually necessary or visible most of the time, then that figure becomes
      vitally important since no-one even wants to match it because they want to
      focus on the "total experience" rather than chase your metric.
    

Nobody was forced to do anything. 960x640 was a particularly convenient choice
for two reasons: it allowed them to have maximally sharp text and images,
while sidestepping problems that arise with scaling apps for previous devices
by non-integer values.

------
MaysonL
The 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?

~~~
rimantas
I'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
I'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)

------
rodh257
would 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.

------
DTrejo
I took of picture of your pixels so you can see pixels in your pixels.

Please forgive me.

