DigiTimes Claims Display Improvements in Next-Generation iPhone

[Anuba]

Yea, when 3G was released only Telia had it, i live in Denmark btw. And Telenor got 3G in jan 2009. But when 3GS was released Both Telia, Telenor + 3 got it.

But i hate apples long waiting time, they should give european people same amount of importance like they give US people.

So i really hope iphone 4G gets released in whole europe incl scandinavia same time as US release.

Well, I don't think Apple is the culprit. While I do agree that they care less about the international market when it comes to stuff like service and support, they do care about making the products available for sale as quickly as possible. When they release new computers, iPods or software, it's usually available all over the world on the same day because their depots (in our case, in the Netherlands) have already stocked up in advance.

The delays only happen with products like the iPad and the iPhone, so I'm guessing it has more to do with negotiating deals with carriers, or perhaps local regulations pertaining to cellphones having to be approved by some authority or whatever.

 

[SAD*FACED*CLOWN]

Yea, when 3G was released only Telia had it, i live in Denmark btw. And Telenor got 3G in jan 2009. But when 3GS was released Both Telia, Telenor + 3 got it.

But i hate apples long waiting time, they should give european people same amount of importance like they give US people.

So i really hope iphone 4G gets released in whole europe incl scandinavia
same time as US release.

more than likely the rest of the world will have to wait at least 30 days until after the US release

 

[Stridder44]

512 MB of RAM, now we're talking. Can't wait for this new phone to come out so I can finally upgrade from my crappy SonyEricsson W760.

 

[hefeglass]

I can't wait until June 7th. Will you still be posting that stupid link after its known that the res will be 720x480?

That resolution would require all current iPhone apps to be rewritten. I will be blown away if apple decides to use 720x480...first of all...it makes absolutely zero sense and second, it's just barely up to today's standards.

 

[CaryMacGuy]

What are the chances that Apple will leave video chat up to devs and maybe only include a "Photo Booth" element in the camera app. I don't really care about iChat AV on my iPhone...I really want to see Skype on my iPhone with the video features.

 

[ranReloaded]

While it is true that 2x resolution would make life a lot easier for developers (and Apple) in terms displaying pre-4.0 bitmaps, etc. I find it difficult to swallow they will go with 640x960 on such a small display. Seems overkill in terms of dpi, How small will a pixel be?

 

[wizard]

Haptic feedback is of no value whatsoever.

I would have thought introducing haptic feedback was a sure in... ah well, maybe for the 4G'S'

Why would you even want this on a cell phone? It uses excessive power and provides little useful feed back to the user. Just wondering because if Apple is to stuff more functionality into iPhone they had better put something useful in there.


Dave

 

[Kwill]

iPhone introduction (lemonade)

Apple is widely expected to introduce the new iPhone on June 7th at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference.]

Jobs: "And now, here's Jason Chen to introduce the new iPhone..."

(iPhone starts ringing. Steve answers as large screen displays Jason in orange jumpsuit behind bars, video conferencing with the new iPhone HD.)
​

Chen: "Hey Steve, this new phone is great but can I have my computer back so I sync it to my iTunes account?"

 

[Anuba]

That resolution would require all current iPhone apps to be rewritten. I will be blown away if apple decides to use 720x480...first of all...it makes absolutely zero sense and second, it's just barely up to today's standards.

Scaling 480x320 to 720x480 for legacy applications really isn't that bad (try it with a screenshot), and for vector based stuff like text it's obviously a non-issue. 480*150% looks acceptable on my computer screen, and when you take into account the fact that it's going to be shown on a 3.5" screen where the scaling artifacts will be less noticeable, it's not as implausible as Gruber suggests. Since Apple has no gripes with scaling up iPhone apps to a comparatively huge iPad screen where the scaling artifacts are infinitely more noticeable, I don't see why they wouldn't accept the same thing on a much smaller screen.

I agree that going with 960x640 is a more logical choice due to the ability to use pixel-doubling, nobody's questioning that. It's just that it would be rather un-Apple to use a cutting-edge panel, they usually wait until the cost comes down a bit. In this case, Apple (or rather, the customers) would be carrying the "first dibs" cost on new technology which is usually quite steep.

 

[MacAgnostic]

Of course developers could modify their apps to use higher resolution images to improve the look of their app, but unlike with the iPad (where 2x apps look awful), they wouldn't need to. The iPad screen is physically bigger. If the iPhone screen was the same size, apps that weren't optimised would look exactly the same as the do now, no better and no worse.

If you pixel double, 1 pixel becomes 4 pixels - no problem

If you use an arbitrary scale, say 150%, as you don't get half pixels, the OS would have to apply anti-aliasing to everything, the result being that apps would look terrible without being redesigned. I simply don't believe Apple would do that. An iPad is a completely different, new product, this iPhone is just a new model

First off it isn't anti-aliasing, its scaling, which the hardware already does. This would only apply to bitmapped graphics, text and 3D graphics are rendered at native resolution.

Here is an example of 100% vs. scaled to 150%, is that so terrible?
BTW. I just scaled everything, in a real-case the text would be higher resolution.

 

[Anuba]

While it is true that 2x resolution would make life a lot easier for developers (and Apple) in terms displaying pre-4.0 bitmaps, etc. I find it difficult to swallow they will go with 640x960 on such a small display. Seems overkill in terms of dpi, How small will a pixel be?

It's 330 pixels per inch, up from 164 PPI.
You can check it here using the DPI/PPI calculator.
They already have the rumored iPhone HD listed.

The second highest PPI they have listed belongs to the Motorola Droid, 854x480 on a 3.7" screen (265 PPI).

The iPad has 131 DPI, which is pretty much consistent with Apple's hi-res MBP screens, the 1680x1050 15.4" (129 PPI) and the 1920x1200 17" (133 PPI).

Phone screens can have higher PPI due to the shorter viewing distance, but 330 would probably be some sort of world record for a mass-produced device.

First off it isn't anti-aliasing, its scaling, which the hardware already does. This would only apply to bitmapped graphics, text and 3D graphics are rendered at native resolution.

Here is an example of 100% vs. scaled to 150%, is that so terrible?
BTW. I just scaled everything, in a real-case the text would be higher resolution.

Also it wouldn't necessarily apply to all bitmap graphics, in the example with the home screen I could see them doing 4 columns instead of 3, displaying the icons with the same pixel dimensions they do now, so physically smaller but spaced farther apart (like on the iPad).

 

[wizard]

New iPad in the fall with more RAM!

The extra RAM on iPhone will be very welcomed no doubt. As to iPad I wouldn't be surprised to find out that the reason we have to wait till fall for iPhone OS 4.0 is that that is when the iPad gets revved to 512MB of RAM. As it is the iPad is extremely limited right now due to allocated RAM.

Since Apple said that the iPhone OS 4 will be released this summer... I think the new iPhone will have more RAM.. mostly because of multitasking. I have heard that it has sucked on the devs iPhones. So that's my opinion. And wouldn't it be hilarious that Apple releases a new iPad at WWDC?

Hilarious it would be. Not that iPad doesn't need more RAM but that many users seem to think iPad is already on its last generation. All the fanbois that think it is perfect the way it is well be lost for an explanation.

Besides by fall Apple should know what the competition will look like. RAM is one parameter that allows for easy competition.



Dave

 

[Relativistic]

Here's some food for thought.

I took the original pic from the vietnamese website, rotated & perspective corrected it and contrast enhanced it:

200/132 = 1.51

Aspect ratio of
800x480 = 1.67
960x640 = 1.5

So, this does look like 960x640 folks. Or something between that and 480x320 with the same aspect ratio. Maybe 720x480? Btw, non-power-by-2 scaling is very easy to do on hardware, it wouldn't even use 0.1% of the cpu when running legacy apps.

330 ppi is definitely insane, no matter which way you look at it. I don't think mainstream display technology is there yet. But Apple can pull a rabbit out of their hats, you never know.

 

[MacAgnostic]

It's 330 pixels per inch, up from 164 PPI.
You can check it here using the DPI/PPI calculator.
The second highest PPI they have listed belongs to the Motorola Droid, 854x480 on a 3.7" screen (265 PPI).

What display Tech. does the Droid use? Is it AMOLED with PenTile matrix?
If so, there are only two display elements per pixel (green-red or green-blue) instead of three (red-green-blue).

 

[Relativistic]

What display Tech. does the Droid use? Is it AMOLED with PenTile matrix?

The only AMOLED with pentile I'm aware of is HTC Nexus One/Desire

 

[Anuba]

What display Tech. does the Droid use? Is it AMOLED with PenTile matrix?
If so, there are only two display elements per pixel (green-red or green-blue) instead of three (red-green-blue).

It says here in a review that the Droid uses traditional LCD while the Nexus One (also 3.7") uses AMOLED.

The rumors about the iPhone HD screen suggest that the panel was developed by LG in collaboration with the company behind e-ink.

 

[wizard]

IPad has nothing to do with iPhone development.

Since the iPad has 256MB memory I'd be amazed if the next iPhone had any more -- clearly that's what Apple currently believe is the sweet spot in terms of price/performance.

What Apple may or may not do with iPhone has nothing to do with iPad. IPad was done totally isolated from iPhone development. Besides the lack of RAM in the iPad is already leading to less than positive user experiences. The real question here is how difficult will it be for Apple to have Samsung do a multichip spin with more RAM.

The RAM almost has to be built into the multichip module because of the lack of space for external RAM in the iPhone.

They don't like putting costly parts in their products unless it is absolutely necessary.

You are assuming more RAM would be costly. Frankly I don't know the numbers but if they are using some sort of dynamic memory it really won't be a huge delta. What will make a difference is a better user experience which more RAM should provide for in 4.0.


Dave

 

[StefSSU]

I don’t watch any video on it, and I only listen to music on it infrequently when I have to bus into work or when I don’t want to give my neighbor hysterics at 2:00 AM.

I use it primarily as a PDA: a lot of e-mail, notes, calendars, to-dos, and apps, apps, and more apps. It has a screen real-estate that for me is ridiculously small.

That’s why the hell I would want a larger size.



Greenland . Well Minnesota isn’t at least that bad, but I noticed that the person I replied to was in Canada.

ah. Fair point. So you want a Newton 2.0 then?

 

[Relativistic]

On the topic of RAM:

The iPhone has an absolutely disgusting markup. The average price of iPhones sold in the last quarter is $600 (take a look at the apple quarterly report regarding iphone revenue vs. devices sold) and Apple buys them for $160-200 from Foxconn depending on the model (these figures are more than a year old, im pretty sure the cost of manufacturing has gone down. Sure, there are R&D costs, but they pale in comparison to the $30 billion that apple has made from the devices alone. I would estimate the R&D and marketing costs to be no more than $50 per device.

It would cost apple 5 dollars to add 256MB more LV DDR1 ram to the next-gen iPhone. If they don't, they are simply gimping the device on purpose. Another possibility is that they dont want to re-tool their A4 manufacturing pipeline to save costs (gotta hoard them $billions some more )

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

that it would carry a resolution of 960 x 640 pixels, up from 480 x 320 in the current iPhone.

They just can't quite get to an HD resolution. I'd rather see larger screen (current screen is a bit small in my opinion; I can fit a larger device in my pocket) with 720P or at least the ability to output 720P or even 1080P to an external display (for slideshows and movies when visiting a friend, for instance).

 

[CaryMacGuy]

They just can't quite get to an HD resolution. I'd rather see larger screen (current screen is a bit small in my opinion; I can fit a larger device in my pocket) with 720P or at least the ability to output 720P or even 1080P to an external display (for slideshows and movies when visiting a friend, for instance).

Unless the movie is a home movie or a movie obtained from a source other than iTunes...you can forget it being able to project a protected iTunes movie onto an external display. The only reason I say that is because of the issues that were experienced with the Macbooks and Macbook Pros when they introduced the Mini Display connector. Maybe that issue is resolved, I haven't followed it.

 

[MacMan86]

First off it isn't anti-aliasing, its scaling, which the hardware already does. This would only apply to bitmapped graphics, text and 3D graphics are rendered at native resolution.

Here is an example of 100% vs. scaled to 150%, is that so terrible?
BTW. I just scaled everything, in a real-case the text would be higher resolution.

No, it is scaling and anti-aliasing, suggest you check the definition of anti-aliasing - Definition..

Imagine a 13x13 pixel cube (a png graphic). If it were pixel-doubled, it would be a 26x26 pixel cube - it would look fine on a 960x640 display.

If it were scaled to 150%, it would be a 19.5x19.5 pixel cube. Obviously you can't have half pixels so the OS would anti-alias the edges, to give the impression of it being the right size.

To get a real idea of it, look at your iPhone for a bit and imagine that all the straight lines you see looked like all the curves you see. It wouldn't be pretty. Curves and rounded edges on the current iPhone are noticeably poor, imagine that applied to everything that wasn't text or 3D graphics - it wouldn't be good enough for Apple

And for those people saying Apple never uses cutting edge tech, preferring to use older and cheaper tech, how do you explain the 27" displays in the new iMacs?

 

[ARF900]

Not sure I believe the RAM thing. They wouldnt give it more than the iPad. Especially if the 3Gs handles multitasking ok.

 

[Anuba]

And for those people saying Apple never uses cutting edge tech, preferring to use older and cheaper tech, how do you explain the 27" displays in the new iMacs?

It's a rule of thumb, not without exceptions.

Yes, the 27" LED displays were fresh, but in the past, Apple has often taken a lot of flak for using older display technology, like those 20" iMac 6-bit twisted nematic screens someone tried to sue them over, or the 30" ACD which for a long time used an older generation LG panel when cheaper 30" screens from Dell and others used a later generation by LG.

You have to remember that this panel would be going into a product that sells in the 10's of millions and has to be competitively priced, not to mention the fact that it would probably also go into millions of non-subsidized iPod Touch's.

I'd love to be wrong on this one though, since I can't wait to see what 330 PPI looks like.

 

[andy721]

ok

At least they put 512mb of ram thats a start. WHo cares about the resolution of the screen still going to look the same but LED. I wish they would widen the screen a little more.
Also where the F is dual core processor? Is it the A4 or is it just BS?

FFS technology, what a joke. Better have flash by this time or else.