Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Apple Testing GPU Drivers for Higher-Resolution iPhone Screens?

While I am in favor of rumors for a higher res iPhone and can believe this is testing for iPad 3 alternatives, my strongest belief is this is for the next Apple TV with an A6 chip and a range of "TV" monitor options.

Apple is notorious for having very fixed and simple resolutions for its widest distributed consumer products which now include iPhone and iPad., They will keep it simple whatever the resolution.

It is Apple TV that needs to see different displays.

Not to open a can of worms (aka kick-a$$), and leak the most likely rumor of all, it is the next Mac. Using an A6 chip (or two), and a range of existing display resolutions. That is now MY rumor. I have a track record that can be researched.

Rocketman
 
I have heard many people say just give the iPhone a 4" screen and keep the resolution. They won't do that, the PPI that they are going for is tied not only to the res, but the size.

A 4" or 4"+ iPhone would need a higher resolution. I guess they are trying to find the right balance of screen size, resolution and PPI.
 
I'm partial to 4" at 1024x640. 4" addresses the "bigger" without being too big. 1024x640 addresses compatibility with older apps since they'd just run at 960x640 with black bars, no scaling necessary. With the larger screen size, 4" vs 3.5", you don't actually lose any touch surface by leaving black bars since the black bars were previously bezel anyways. 16:10 as an aspect ratio vs 16:9 should also be less unwieldy rotating between portrait and landscape orientations, which seems to be an advantage of the existing 3:2 aspect ratio. And 1024x640 on at 4" screen would work out to 302 dpi or still Retina. As well, since most of the added screen space in a 16:10 screen will be in height (in portrait) vs the current 3.5" screen, Apple could probably maintain mostly the same overall dimensions simply by eating into the wasted bezel above and below the screen. They probably wouldn't even need to change the size or the shape of the home button. 4" 1024x640 seems fairly advantageous from many angles.
 
I think the next iPhone will have the same ppi, but a larger screen, therefore old apps will fill only part of the screen, the same way iPhone apps are displayed on the iPad, and this gives future app developers the ability to utilize more screen space.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_3 like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8J2 Safari/6533.18.5)

I expect Apple to increase the screen resolution of the next iPhone to not only accommodate the rumored 4" screen but to keep up with the competition of 720p resolutions now. If they do increase the screen size then they'll have to also increase the screen resolution to maintain the retina ppi, it doesn't seem like Apple to increase the screen size and allowing the ppi to decrease.
 
IMO Apple's priority should be the mythical resolution independence. The current increase in resolution is logical and will continue, but it's becoming an issue for images that were digitally scanned or shot just ten years ago (when the full-screen norm was 800x600). Those images are beginning to turn into postage stamps on the new screens. I know of some fractal imaging programs that have been able to do a decent job of upscaling small images. But it would be nice if devices had a built-in way to do that.
 
leukotriene said:
Umm...
Nobody's noticed that 1440x800 and 1280x720 both represent different aspect ratios from the current 1.5 aspect ratio of 960x640?

That suggests not just a higher resolution, but a completely different screen design and probably a completely different form factor. This could be the future "iPod": a 5 or 6 inch media player with an aspect ratio of 1280x720 that could AirPlay to an HDTV set without having to letterbox. It would be more like a long rectangle (like an HDTV) and less square-ish than the current iPhone aspect ratio. Perhaps this could also be the future remote control for an AppleTV set since the content on the TV set would scale down perfectly (in terms of aspect ratio) to match the content displayed on the remote control.
Click to expand...

Yup. It could be they want to increase screen size without making the phone much larger. There's little scope for making the iPhone's screen wider without making the iPhone itself wider; but they might be able to make the screen longer (top to bottom) by reducing the wide bezel at the top & bottom of the iPhone. And as you say, it has the added benefit of fitting better with wide-screen content.

OTOH, maybe Apple just used fake info to smoke out the leak in one of their engineering departments. ;)
 
The UI of iOS has pretty much stuck to incremental improvements over the last 5 generations. I wouldn't be surprised if Apple has a larger UI rethink planned for iOS 6, in which case a change in aspect ratio/screen size could go hand-in-hand with a major UI changes.
 
jayducharme said:
Apple's priority should be the mythical resolution independence.
Click to expand...
Why is resolution independence mythical? That's been the norm for desktop/laptop computers since the 1980s (or at least early 90s; I can't say for sure since I didn't get into computing until the early 90s). Building applications for a fixed resolution has always felt like a step backwards for professional application development, just like websites that are fixed width are totally amateur. It is the default nature of a [good] engineer to design UI that is resolution independent; this isn't a new concept.

Now there are certain kinds of applications that do not in fact lend themselves well to resolution independence, but most content-serving apps and 3D games would conform to it beautifully.

Personally, I hope they just make the iPhone with a larger screen, but not larger phone, and same resolution. I don't care that the ppi will be reduced. iPhone text is crisp, but a wee bit small for some people to read. And not everyone wants to use an iPad just to see the text more easily.
 
Resolution independence is a good concept, but it's virtually impossible to implement good enough. That's why most current desktop software ISN'T fully resolution independent - heck, get the OS X Developer Tools and adjust the scale of the UI - everything will either look like crap or brake. Windows isn't any better - adjust the DPI in the control panel and you'll find that software either looks like crap or brakes. "Resizable windows" doesn't equal "Resolution independence", bro.

Websites are a little better, but still - most of the time resizable websites look like crap in one way or another, simply because there's no way to adjust the design if you have dynamic content.
 
Sneakz said:
Not surprised if true. My belief is that the next iPhone resolution will be 1152x720 or 1440x960 though to keep the current screen ratio.
Click to expand...

But if they do that then the fanboys loss the pixel perfect argument. Hell it goes out and will finally point out that the argument was crap to begin with. The most important thing is the ratio will still be the same.
 
Rocketman said:
While I am in favor of rumors for a higher res iPhone and can believe this is testing for iPad 3 alternatives, my strongest belief is this is for the next Apple TV with an A6 chip and a range of "TV" monitor options.

Apple is notorious for having very fixed and simple resolutions for its widest distributed consumer products which now include iPhone and iPad., They will keep it simple whatever the resolution.

It is Apple TV that needs to see different displays.

Not to open a can of worms (aka kick-a$$), and leak the most likely rumor of all, it is the next Mac. Using an A6 chip (or two), and a range of existing display resolutions. That is now MY rumor. I have a track record that can be researched.

Rocketman
Click to expand...

I think they're waiting to see if Intel turns things around. I don't know that Apple really wants to be their own cpu vendor. I got the impression they went this route because they were unhappy with what was available. Just my thoughts.....
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back