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higher resolution- 480 by 800 screen for 3g iphone

I

iansilv

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jun 2, 2007
1,101
411
Alright- Sony's xperia has it, now LG just announced a phone with the same resolution screen:

http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/20/lgs-kg2300-touch-web-phone-say-hello-ui-in-korean/

a 480 by 800 resolution screen, as opposed to iphones 320 by 480 resolution.

So obviously the part exists, the resolution is workable, and it works in a small form factor. The question is- will we see it in an iphone?

Personally, I think we will. Apple's resolution independence works with leopard, and I think they have applied the same concept to the iphone's ui. Meaning, if a piece of software is written with the sdk, it would look the same, only sharper, on the new screen. Like running quake at a higher resolution on an old crt monitor. I think the ui and sdk would take care of rendering photos/video at the higher resolution, same thing for web pages. so my theory is, they could introduce a new iphone with a higher resolution screen without having to make any adjustments or ask programmers to write their code any different for either phone. the icons / ui would simply render at the higher resolution, looking sharper.

Apparently, the 480 by 800 resolution screen on the xperia looks pretty nice, I would hate to not have that resolution on the next iphone.

Thoughts anyone?
 
How much sharper does a 3.5" screen need to be? I haven't taken a look at one for more than 5 minutes, but I recall the models I saw being pretty darn sharp. I wouldn't complain if newer models had a sharper screen, but I think 3G and all the gigs you can pack in are more important.

On a related note, I hope they figure out some way to incorporate HD video. Now all I mean by that is eventually being able to have HD video files on your computer and then iTunes converts them to the right size for iPhone. I have about 30 Blu-ray movies I'd like to give the HandBrake treatment once Apple gets BD-ROM drives, but you obviously can't pack an HD movie on an iPhone. But I want it to play on AppleTV.

Yes, I want everything. :)
 
I used to have a Toshiba G900 that has a 800x480 resolution screen,

RUBBBISH!!!

you cannot play video at native resolution, you get about 1 fps

You may think you can argue with the gpu's in each device, well the G900 has a Nvidia Go 5500 gpu, which should clearly handle the resolution even in 3d environments, but no, it was so badly implemented it was worse than the Imate Jasjar 640x480 resolution and only just on a par with older 320x200 resolution ppc's

it is sharp, but its so small its actually harder to read, even with the dpi corrected to make text proportionally look the same as a lower res devices. With lag here there and everywhere. Sometimes you can get 1/2 rings out the speaker before the screen has changed to the phone app.

The plus side is aslong as your eyes can take it you can see more information, 5 mins before my eyes start bleeding in my case.

Pretty much why im on a iphone now, and pretty understandable why, and as it cost £400 it makes the iphone a really good deal.

If 800x480 is to work effictivly only a compay like apple will make it work in a realistic ergonomic way.
 
That resolution would have more than double the pixels of the current iPhone, and pushing more pixels requires more processing power and memory, and would most likely decrease battery life. I'm also not sure if all the UIKit interface widgets have been made resolution-independent yet. I'd like to see a higher-resolution screen too, but implementing that may be less trivial than it might appear. Even a bump to 640x400 or so would be nice. I wouldn't mind a physically larger screen either, making the iPhone slightly wider and there is already more room lengthwise by pushing the microphone hole up and shrinking the Home button. Then there is LED backlighting or OLED.

However, my money would be on not seeing a screen change in the next revision.
 
I've been into an O2 store and watched videos on the iPhone and I have to say that the current screen is fine. I'd prefer them to do something about the crappy speaker.

The design of the next iPhone will have been final for a while (at least the physical features; screen, chipset etc...), and I imagine they may even be manufacturing the thing as I write this (I'm not sure how long it takes to build up a sizable inventory ready for a launch).

Given that the current iPhone was a bit, shall we say, 'behind the times' feature-wise, I can't imagine that Apple are just going to add features just to trump other market offerings.

Because of the current iPhone's success, Apple know they don't have to do anything special. Even in current markets where the iPhone sales are probably only average at best, they know that the introduction of a 3G version will probably be enough to boost the figures (and that is all Apple are interested in).

3G is all I'm really waiting for. My vodafone conract runs out in July, so that should give me pleanty of time to negotiate with the wife. She's already said I can't have one, but I'll work on that ;)

C
 
chrisparr said:
My vodafone conract runs out in July, so that should give me pleanty of time to negotiate with the wife. She's already said I can't have one, but I'll work on that ;)

C
Click to expand...

Had the same problem until whilst in the queue on day one she got to play with one, and we ended up getting one each instead of a disputed one for me :p
 
iansilv said:
Apple's resolution independence works with leopard
Click to expand...

No, it doesn't. That never ended up being a feature in Leopard. This doesn't negate your point, but I thought I'd mention it.

As for the iPhone, more pixels on the same size screen will soon pass the threashhold where the human eye can tell the difference. Take a look at this chart and look at the PPI numbers:

http://daringfireball.net/2007/06/high_res_macbook_pro

The iPhone is ALREADY far sharper than any Mac. And Macs are generally seen as having pretty sharp displays!

So you'll be using more battery, eating up more processor and/or GPU cycles, and adding the challenge of making sure applications and websites scale correctly so they're readable.

All this so that you can get a marginal difference...maybe...in some situations. I don't see it happening. It looks like the kind of thing a manufacturer would put on just because "it looks better on paper." Apple tends to care more about how it actually works, and not so much about having the biggest number.
 
having the iphone next to the tosh g900, the iphone clearly wins,

i know the g900 has a smaller screen physically, but the hight is almost the same as the iphone, and although its 320 more pixels for the hight, its just not as vibrant or clear, ok the really small fonts are where the extra wins but you still have to press your nose on the screen and force focus to read them.

for a device the size of the iphone 320x480 is very good on the eye.

It just goes to show, having the specs isnt the complete package for a successful device.
 
everyone is talkin bout resolution on a sub-4inch screen.....no one is mentioning that the xperia only has 65k colors, while the iphone has 16mill
 
Small White Car said:
No, it doesn't. That never ended up being a feature in Leopard. This doesn't negate your point, but I thought I'd mention it.
Click to expand...
Reading
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2008/06/06/wwdc-2008-future-ui-designs-in-mac-os-x-106/ it sounded like they at least had it for the desktop, with the iPhone already supporting resolution independence tech (allowing Mobile Safari to scale web page text and graphics smoothly). Guess we wait till Snow Leopard to see it properly kick in :)

Whatever the resolution, the text and images have to actually be legible, resolvable. Icons being finger tip size or larger for example. Currently, the screen does pretty well, and they could go OLED if they wanted to, so viewing angles, colors, refresh rates, battery usage all got improved...
 
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