DigiTimes Claims Display Improvements in Next-Generation iPhone

[Bytor65]

Have you ever compared the iPhone side-by-side with a screen with a modern resolution? It's a huge difference, on other phones you get a lot sharper text, pictures look sharper, you can fit more text on there that is still visible.

Have you noticed they also have bigger screens? Or OLED contributing to that? You also have an installed base issue. All the software is written for the 480x320 screen, scaled on the new screen it will actually look worse than on the lower resolution screen. Not terrible but certainly not better until you have native software.

I didn't buy an iPod touch because the screen was so freaking tiny. If they bring out a Touch with 960x640 in a 5" screen. Sign me up. That resolution in a 3.4" screen, zero interest.

No doubt that resolution will increase but quadrupling the pixel count for minimal benefit is very unlikely.

 

[StefSSU]

might not be the only reason as to why it may have 512. do you think 256 will handle multi tasking and video chat? 256 might work just enough but 512 may make everything work more smoothly

Who needs to have video chat in the background?
Apple's multitasking api's are designed not to be either processer or memory intrusive. Maybe your right, but given how smoothly OS 4 runs on the 3GS, and given that the iPad itself only has 256mb ram, it seems unlikely.

 

[Data]

Wouldn't a higher resolutio, make everything that is text on the iphone screen much smaller? Or whill it all be the same size as it is now and just look better, i don't know how this works on the iphone, but i have my 27Inch imac's screen set to 1920x1080 otherwise i can't read anything on the screen from my bed.

I would not like to have the iphone have smaller text so you can fit more on to it if that mean i then have to zoom in for just about anything to be readable on the device.

 

[LoganT]

There's no real competition for the iPad. There wasn't really any when it was announced and not any right now. The iPhone is a completely different story, there is some really good competition. What sold the iPhone in 2007 was the screen, that's probably what's selling the iPad now. The competition has greater resolution screens than the current iPhone and people are flocking to them. To make my point just because Apple didn't put something in the iPad doesn't mean it's not going to put something in the iPhone. They don't really work that way.

 

[MacAgnostic]

Well that's an easy question, because then the iPad would be shaped like a large iPhone (long and thin). The iPhone shape works for a phone, it fits in your pocket. The iPad shape works well for a tablet, you get decent screen real estate.

Apple knew apps should be redesigned for the iPad - it's a different beast. It's no big deal to develop for a different resolution if you're going to make a new app anyway

Well, it wasn't a question, just rhetoric, but okay.
So then we don't get any new apps that support 960x640 .
If you're commited to scaling (not just pixel doubling) you can easily scale to 150% too and it will still look good.
To actually USE the native resolution the app will need to be written to support it somehow.

 

[Robbadore64]

If the screen is directly proportional to the old iPhone (i.e. 960x640 as opposed to 480x320), this shouldn't be a problem.

Since iPhone apps use Apple's APIs for UI and text, apps'll just render it in higher resolution I'd imagine, as Apple will update the APIs. And low-resolution images shouldn't look pixellated since they'll just pixel-double in the same place.

Since the proportions are the same, developers won't have to make any layout changes.

I agree with that scenario but what I'm curious about is if an app is written to take advantage of 960x640, would it be capable of running on an older 480x320 iPhone? Does it get "pixel-reduced" for lack of better wording? And I'm not trying to be a prick, I really want to understand because I don't code apps. I'm all for the increased resolution but I've always wondered how "easy" it would be going forward with such a large install-base and a developer's obvious desire for backward-compatibility ($$$).

 

[Baller10]

FYI

The Cortex-A8 core used in the A4 is speculated to utilize performance enhancements developed by chip designer Intrinsity (which was subsequently acquired by Apple)[8] in collaboration with Samsung.[9] The resulting core, codenamed "Hummingbird", was able to run at far higher clock rates than other implementations while remaining fully compatible with the Cortex-A8 design provided by ARM.[10] Other performance improvements include additional L2 cache and a doubling of the RAM bus width.

The A4 processor does not contain RAM, but the top package of the PoP contains two low-power 128 MB DDR SDRAM chips,[11][12] which are connected to the processor using a 64-bit-wide data bus, twice the width of the RAM data bus used in the iPhone and iPod touch devices, to support the greater need for graphics bandwidth in the iPad

256MB SDRAM (128MBx2) within the A4 package
256MB DRAM on logic board

512MB total system RAM

 

[Anuba]

Wouldn't a higher resolutio, make everything that is text on the iphone screen much smaller?

The assumption is that old iPhone graphics will be scaled up to fit the screen, and new iPhone graphics will be designed at a higher resolution (which will likely make them unusable on previous generation iPhones, since scaling down to 50% size is likely to screw up the graphics bad.

 

[Geckotek]

FYI



256MB SDRAM (128MBx2) within the A4 package
256MB DRAM on logic board

512MB total system RAM

nowhere has a second chip been reported

 

[MacAgnostic]

Wouldn't a higher resolutio, make everything that is text on the iphone screen much smaller? Or whill it all be the same size as it is now and just look better, i don't know how this works on the iphone, but i have my 27Inch imac's screen set to 1920x1080 otherwise i can't read anything on the screen from my bed.

I would not like to have the iphone have smaller text so you can fit more on to it if that mean i then have to zoom in for just about anything to be readable on the device.

It will be like using 2X on the iPad, pixel graphics will get scaled, 3D graphics and text will be the same size but higher resolution.

 

[mcmlxix]

I didn't buy an iPod touch because the screen was so freaking tiny. If they bring out a Touch with 960x640 in a 5" screen. Sign me up.

I absolutely agree, but after a year, and no larger model, I broke down and bought one. That thing is a gateway drug. Now I must have an iPhone.

But for the iPod touch I was hoping for a 5-7 inch screen. Some people say that that size isn’t pocketable. Obviously they don’t live in a climate where you have to wear a coat for 9 months out of 12.

The iPad is a good size (for what it is), but will we ever see an iPad mini?

 

[StefSSU]

I agree with that scenario but what I'm curious about is if an app is written to take advantage of 960x640, would it be capable of running on an older 480x320 iPhone? Does it get "pixel-reduced" for lack of better wording? And I'm not trying to be a prick, I really want to understand because I don't code apps. I'm all for the increased resolution but I've always wondered how "easy" it would be going forward with such a large install-base and a developer's obvious desire for backward-compatibility ($$$).

Google "Resolution Independence".
Now, theres been no rumors that I'm aware of, but ideally Apple would introduce something like this, so the same software intelligently scales to different resolutions. That way, iPhone OS retains compatibility as much as possible over as many platforms as possible. It's been a long time coming to OS X, so who knows.

 

[MacMan86]

No offence, but that's a stupid answer, what does the shape of the hardware have to do anything with the screen resolution? You see some smaller TVs have the same resolution as larger TVs.

If you're going to call someone out for being stupid, at least be right.

It's called Aspect Ratio, look it up, it's simple division.

1920/1080 = 16/9

Yes the smaller TV may have the same resolution as the larger TV, but it will be the same shape! The width and height will be in proportion.

Pixels are squares, if you change the ratio of squares you get a different shape

 

[Anuba]

I agree with that scenario but what I'm curious about is if an app is written to take advantage of 960x640, would it be capable of running on an older 480x320 iPhone? Does it get "pixel-reduced" for lack of better wording?

In order for the new 960x480 graphics to fit the old screen they would have to be scaled down to 50%. This will usually look like garbage, especially for text, parts of it will slip between the cracks or be blurry as hell due to anti-aliasing.

The only way to make it look OK when scaled down, would be if designers first made the 480x320 graphics, then they would take those source files and scale them up 200% and design the higher-res graphics using the low-res ones as reference (i.e. round off corners that became blocky, etc, but keep everything intact in terms of placement and proportions). Then it would look OK-ish when scaled down to 50%.

 

[StefSSU]

I absolutely agree, but after a year, and no larger model, I broke down and bought one. That thing is a gateway drug. Now I must have an iPhone.

But for the iPod touch I was hoping for a 5-7 inch screen. Some people say that that size isn’t pocketable. Obviously they don’t live in a climate where you have to wear a coat for 9 months out of 12.

The iPad is a good size (for what it is), but will we ever see an iPad mini?

Why the hell would you want that? Do you really watch that much video on the go? Personally, I find the touch a waste of cash. When it comes to music, imo the click wheel is still the best interface available. Try using a touch in your pocket, or switching songs in the car. The iPhone on the other hand benefits much more from the touchscreen, as it's more versatile.

 

[koach]

No offence, but that's a stupid answer, what does the shape of the hardware have to do anything with the screen resolution? You see some smaller TVs have the same resolution as larger TVs.

Because a 4x3 (non-widescreen) screen will have a 4x3 resolution (example 800x600), whereas a 16x9 (widescreen) screen will have a 16x9 resolution (example 1280x720). Pixels are square so the shape of the device WILL determine the resolution.

A 32" TV and a 65" TV can both have a resolution of 1920x1080 because they simply use larger pixels in the 65" TV. However what you will not see in a 65" TV is a resolution like 1440x1080 (4x3) because the pixels would be rectangular. Although I have seen some lower quality TVs use rectangular pixels and have odd resolutions for widescreen TVs like 1024x768, but that is not the norm because the quality is far inferior.

 

[Becordial]

There's no real competition for the iPad. There wasn't really any when it was announced and not any right now. The iPhone is a completely different story, there is some really good competition. What sold the iPhone in 2007 was the screen, that's probably what's selling the iPad now. The competition has greater resolution screens than the current iPhone and people are flocking to them. To make my point just because Apple didn't put something in the iPad doesn't mean it's not going to put something in the iPhone. They don't really work that way.

That's a good point. With a considerable chunk of Apple's revenue now coming from iphone and every sign that they want to continue to grow that as much as possible they have no choice but to compete in one of the most brutally competitive sectors that there is. To do that means continued investment in the platform (hardware and software) and keeping an eye on the price to make it harder and harder for the others to keep up.

 

[StefSSU]

If you're going to call someone out for being stupid, at least be right.

It's called Aspect Ratio, look it up, it's simple division.

1920/1080 = 16/9

Yes the smaller TV may have the same resolution as the larger TV, but it will be the same shape! The width and height will be in proportion.

Pixels are squares, if you change the ratio of squares you get a different shape

Not always true, ppi horizontally doesn't necessarily have to match vertically. It usually does, but look at the Nexus One, where "pixels" are separate, non square bands of specific coloured pixels.
It's funny though, because isn't the aspect ratio of the physical new screen size different from the original iPhone? I believe it was reportedly thinner, but I may be wrong so don't get angry if I'm mistaken.

 

[Anuba]

But for the iPod touch I was hoping for a 5-7 inch screen. Some people say that that size isn’t pocketable. Obviously they don’t live in a climate where you have to wear a coat for 9 months out of 12.

You never know with Apple, but I sincerely doubt they're going to introduce yet another size of device halfway between iPod Touch and iPad. The iPad is the halfway step between handhelds and laptops, I just don't see them doing a product they wouldn't know whether to call iPod Maxi or iPad Mini, even if there's a demand for it in Greenland.

 

[Justinf79]

Have you, during your use of an iPad encountered a situation where you wish the iPad had more RAM? In fact, have you even used an iPad? What benefit do you think throwing RAM at the iPad will have? There's more to life than specs

The iPad could of easily needed 512MB of RAM. Right now you can't open up webpages with a decent amount of pics on it (stops loading them prematurely), or even open up more than like 3 pages w/o having them to be refreshed later because of RAM storage limitations.

 

[StefSSU]

You never know with Apple, but I sincerely doubt they're going to introduce yet another size of device halfway between iPod Touch and iPad. The iPad is the halfway step between handhelds and laptops, I just don't see them doing a product they wouldn't know whether to call iPod Maxi or iPad Mini, even if there's a demand for it in Greenland.

How about the MaxiPad?

 

[SockRolid]

Wouldn't a higher resolutio, make everything that is text on the iphone screen much smaller? ... ...

Supposedly iPhone OS has, or will have, resolution independence. So a single app can run on any sized screen but still look the same. I'm not sure, but it sounds to me like a programmer can write an app that looks great on an HD-sized Mac monitor, then iPhone OS (and maybe Mac OS X) will scale it down so it will fit on smaller screens. Edit: So the size of text and graphics will be adjusted for each device's screen size at run time.

I remember Apple mentioning this somewhere years ago, and I figured it would be for future Apple handheld products (which turned out to be the iPhone / iPod Touch and now the iPad.)

 

[Data]

Ty for the info ;-).

 

[MacMan86]

Well, it wasn't a question, just rhetoric, but okay.
So then we don't get any new apps that support 960x640 .
If you're commited to scaling (not just pixel doubling) you can easily scale to 150% too and it will still look good.
To actually USE the native resolution the app will need to be written to support it somehow.

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

 

[Anuba]

How about the MaxiPad?

I dunno, it could result in some bad blood between Kotex and Apple. But it's better than iDepends, I'll give you that.