iPod touch Don't expect to be blown away by the quality of the retina display on the iPod 4.

[terraphantm]

Everyone knows that "Retina Display" is a fake thing, right? Its just a marketing slogan that Apple uses to describe the fact that the screen has somewhat higher pixel density than their competitors, currently, and bound to change in the near future. I always detect some confusion about this form posters on this forum.

Higher pixel density is great, but "Retina Display" is not a technology. It is a marketing slogan.

Have you ever looked at the display on the iPhone 4? If not, then go spend some time with one and you'll understand where they're coming from with the term.

The pixels are so dense, that most human eyes lose the ability to discern the individual pixels when viewed at a normal viewing distance. Hence it's a display that matches the retina's resolution - as far as our eyes are concerned, it's a smooth picture with no gaps at all.

Retina display is a marketing term, but it happens to be one that describes the product pretty nicely, especially for those lay peole who don't understand the advantages of high pixel density (which is a lot of people - just look at how many people would buy a bigger PC monitor even if the resolution is the same or lower than another display that's 2" smaller)

 

[tubemonkey]

Wow... seriously dude? Some of you people here absolutely astound me.

Not only is the CPU MUCH better, but the new iPod Touch has not one, but TWO cameras, and a MUCH higher resolution display all while retaining the same price! And thats not an improvement? My god, it is impossible to please some of you. Yikes... absolutely no logic in your reasoning GoodBoy. None at all.

Outside of the A4 chip, those other features aren't important to him. What's wrong with that? We each have out own preferences.

 

[terraphantm]

Outside of the A4 chip, those other features aren't important to him. What's wrong with that? We each have out own preferences.

It's one thing to say that the other features aren't important to him, and another to say that there are no improvements.

and frankly, I don't understand what he's looking for if the features improved aren't important to him, and the CPU isn't enough. They updated pretty much every aspect of the device.

 

[tubemonkey]

It's one thing to say that the other features aren't important to him, and another to say that there are no improvements.

and frankly, I don't understand what he's looking for if the features improved aren't important to him, and the CPU isn't enough. They updated pretty much every aspect of the device.

He said "real improvement". He didn't say it wasn't an improvement. He gets to decide what's important to him and what constitutes a real improvement worthy enough to upgrade to.

 

[chrono1081]

yep they would, they posted this as the ipod touch...but look at the bottom of the right ipod....it has a "phone" button....all those pics are probably fake/photoshopped pic of iphone 4 screens to make the display on ipod look better than it actually is

http://www.apple.com/ipodtouch/features/more-features.html

This is VERY common to the point that product photography is getting rare. If you go to the CG society forums and look at peoples profiles it will amaze you how much stuff is renders now a days. (Nike shoes for example) and they are done so well its almost impossible to tell. (Some people you seriously think you are looking at a picture they are that good.)

 

[Ivan P]

I'm pretty sure it has to say "screen image simulated" or something to that effect if it's not an actual photo in an advertisement.

At least I'm sure that Apple wouldn't blatantly mislead the public with some doctored images if it'd just be easier to avoid showing it at an extreme angle.

Nah, Apple has put pictures like that on their site for every generation of iPod touch so far - showing the devices on different angles yet with a screen that was perfectly viewable. As a user of both the first gen (had two different ones) and second gen (had three different ones) touch, I can confirm that the screen was next to unreadable at the angles shown on Apple's site, definitely just a rendered image - I'd say it'd be the same case with the 4th gen.

 

[GoodBoy]

Wow... seriously dude? Some of you people here absolutely astound me.

Not only is the CPU MUCH better, but the new iPod Touch has not one, but TWO cameras, and a MUCH higher resolution display all while retaining the same price! And thats not an improvement? My god, it is impossible to please some of you. Yikes... absolutely no logic in your reasoning GoodBoy. None at all.

Well you may not see a logic, but I see it clearly. Aside from A4 chip and maybe face-time camera, there's really no improvements worth upgrading from iPod touch 3rd generation. TN panel is a joke, 0,7mpix rear camera is a joke. My point is, 4th gen touch is the first touch that doesn't follow "it's an iPhone without a phone" scheme. iPod touch 1st, 2nd and 3rd generations were all identical copies of an iPhones, only without GSM module and camera. Touch 3rd gen was even slightly speedier than 3gs. iPod touch 4th gen is the first iPod in touch family with many more cuts in cost production compared to iPhone4. It's very very sad that Apple started behaving like this.

That being said I'm not saying new touch is a crap or something, it's still a good iPod touch for a person who owned 1st, 2nd gen touches or never owned an iPod touch before, but unfortunetly it's no longer "an iPhone without a phone", because of too many inferior things to the iPhone4.

 

[GoodBoy]

He said "real improvement". He didn't say it wasn't an improvement. He gets to decide what's important to him and what constitutes a real improvement worthy enough to upgrade to.

Exactly, thanks for saying this!
Those new features would be great improvement, if they were like those in the iPhone4. Sad thing is, they're simply not... Worse screen, worse camera. I would not be surprised if there won't be 512mb of ram in the new touch, but it's yet to be confirmed, since it's still a gossip. And I'm waiting for an iFixit teardown to find out what else is inferior compared to the newest iPhone.

 

[MaCamZa]

Watcha say about this convo?

EDIT: Check the convo on the right.

 

[SnowLeopard2008]

The iPod touch 4G doesn't have the IPS panel. It does have the retina display resolution however. Either way, it will still be a better screen than any Android device and any previous iPod touch.

 

[MaCamZa]

The iPod touch 4G doesn't have the IPS panel. It does have the retina display resolution however. Either way, it will still be a better screen than any Android device and any previous iPod touch.

Evidence?

 

[GoodBoy]

Watcha say about this convo?

EDIT: I will do another convo from a different person on the Apple Store to double check the results.

My god, she's gonna be fired when "not an IPS screen in new touch" gonna be official

 

[MaCamZa]

My god, she's gonna be fired when "not an IPS screen in new touch" gonna be official

lol, but if you check the convo on the right, she contacted technical support and they confirmed it has the IPS panel? Confused?

 

[GoodBoy]

Evidence?

Here

IPS screen technology are characterized by much wider viewing angles, so the screen in new touch can't be IPS. You can clearly see wider off-axis viewing in an iPhone4, colors don't shift like on iPod touch screen.

 

[vanzantapple]

Here

IPS screen technology are characterized by much wider viewing angles, so the screen in new touch can't be IPS. You can clearly see wider off-axis viewing in an iPhone4, colors don't shift like on iPod touch screen.

Reminds me of this:

NO, I don't think the new iPod Touch is crap.

 

[joe1946]

Here

IPS screen technology are characterized by much wider viewing angles, so the screen in new touch can't be IPS. You can clearly see wider off-axis viewing in an iPhone4, colors don't shift like on iPod touch screen.

Only a total retard would view it at that angle , go to the Apple Store this week and view the same image on both and you will not see any difference. Do you people get your cookies being a BS artist or what ?

 

[fertilized-egg]

I don't get the point of all this complaint. Even the iPhone4 screen wasn't THAT special outside the pixel density and the gap-less design for the capacitive touch panel. (yes yes I'm fully aware that there had been a few other phones with similar pixel density, but let's not go there)

So as long as they keep the pixel density and the brightness, the screen will rock even if it's TN. Would I prefer if it was IPS? Sure. Would I not be blown away just because it's TN? I don't think so. Also let's not forget that much of the appeal of iPhone/iPod touch display is from Apple's GUI design and overall smoothness as well as iOS' competency in handling resizing and fonts.

I do have one area of concern which is the black level. The older iPhone/iPod screens were darned bright but the blacks were also too bright and consequently the contrast ratio suffered badly. Will this TN panel have the same problem or will it have improved significantly? That's something I'll have to see it in person.

On a somewhat related note, I'm personally so glad that Apple didn't bite on the AMOLED hype. I've tried various phones with AMOLED, including the Samsung Galaxy S phone and they all had terribly inaccurate colors where everything looked as if someone boosted saturation by 200%. In some cases it was so bad that I swore the reds were bleeding. Yet to many, the colors look "punchy and amazing." It just boggles my mind people believe those AMOLED screens display "good" colors. Then again, people usually prefer highly sharpened pictures even though the actual detail might be lacking.

One thing AMOLED does do well is its excellent black level where black is really black but it's countered by its less-than-stellar brightness for white, which really shows when I try to read websites in bright lighting. Plus all current AMOLED phones I've tried suffer rather badly in comparison to the iPhone4's screen in website and text reading due to their pentile arrangement.

So in short, the new iPod Touch screen might not be as good as the iPhone4's screen, but I fully expect these to be good enough to blow away most people with its pixel density.

 

[GoodBoy]

Only a total retard would view it at that angle , go to the Apple Store this week and view the same image on both and you will not see any difference. Do you people get your cookies being a BS artist or what ?

Hah, you really don't get it, do you? IPS is not only about better viewing angles, but more importantly it has much better and rich colors (6bits in TN matrixes vs 24bit colors in IPS iPhone screen), not to mention true blacks, not some greyish try to be black fakes resulting in color shifting and inverting errors on TN panels... The picture was only to prove and demonstrate that iPod touch 4gen has different screen technology than the latest generation iPhone. When will you finally get this? :/ It's not about viewing angles (it's not that much important in such small devices), it's about everything else, quality of the screen. TN is the worst LCD technology on the market, IPS is one of the best. It's in the iPhone4, it should be in the iPod touch 4 too.

 

[joe1946]

Hah, you really don't get it, do you? IPS is not only about better viewing angles, but more importantly it has much better colors (6bits in TN matrixes vs 24bit colors in IPS iPhone screen) and true blacks, not some greyish try to be black fakes resulting in color shifting and inverting errors... The picture was only to prove and demonstrate that touch has a different screen technology than the latest generation iPhone. When will you finally get this? :/ It's not about viewing angles (it's not that important in such small devices), it's about everything else, quality of the screen. TN is the worst LCD technology on the market, IPS is one of the best.

BS, are you saying blacks will be grey on the iPod Touch Retina display when they both have 24bit colors and 800-1 contrast ratio ?

Display 1st-3rd generations: 3.5 in (89 mm), 2:3 aspect ratio, 262,144-color LCD, 320×480 px at 163 ppi
4th generation:
3.5 in (89 mm), 2:3 aspect ratio, 24-bit color, aluminosilicate glass-covered LED-backlit LCD, 960×640 px at 326 ppi, 800:1 contrast ratio

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPod_Touch

Actual unedited footage shot on iPod touch.:
http://www.apple.com/ipodtouch/features/hd-video-recording.html

 

[zepharus]

After watching Engadget's Hand's On video, i still feel the iPhone's display looks much better! I think Apple didn't add the 4x Contrast as they did on the iPhone 4... Although i really wanted it! Check it out for youself;

http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/01/ipod-touch-2010-first-hands-on/

^^ Video near bottom of the post, not page.

EDIT: I paused a part of the video in which you see both of the home screens. The photo is below and you can clearly see for yourself how much better the iPhone looks! (iPod Touch 4; left)

http://att.macrumors.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=250177&stc=1&d=1283643679

You can really see the difference on the Safari icon in the dock and the Camera icon in the top right.

IF you truly watch that Engadget video you can tell , very clearly, that the Touch is using a TN display. You got the "negative" image effect when viewed at that extreme angle. The iPhone4 was still very visible.

TN peeps... TN

 

[zepharus]

BS, are you saying blacks will be grey on the iPod Touch Retina display when they both have 24bit colors and 800-1 contrast ratio ?


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPod_Touch

Actual unedited footage shot on iPod touch.:
http://www.apple.com/ipodtouch/features/hd-video-recording.html

YEs .. when viewing OFF angle.. the Touch display will look like **** It will also have less accurate color rep than an IPS display. Go google a 24" TN display and look at the prices, then go ahead and google 24" IPS displays and compare. BIG difference, in the ballpark of 3x the price. You get what you pay for and TN displays suck

TN = ****

 

[joe1946]

YEs .. when viewing OFF angle.. the Touch display will look like ****

TN = ****

Who cares about off angle when anyone with a brain will hold it like this:

 

[GoodBoy]

BS, are you saying blacks will be grey on the iPod Touch Retina display when they both have 24bit colors and 800-1 contrast ratio ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPod_Touch

Wikipedia's specs are wrong and they will be corrected. They simply copied iPhone's 4 screen specs, and the iPhone's LCD is different, as we all have discovered so far.

24bits of color is something impossible to achieve in TN panels. TN matrix is physically capable of only 6bit colors at most. That's one of many reasons for being poor picture quality.

 

[GoodBoy]

Who cares about off angle when anyone with a brain will hold it like this:

Like stated before, viewing angles are not big of an issue in small screens. I care about screen quality the most, and unfortunetly TN panel will not give such colorful and vivid bright colors and pure true blacks as IPS screen in iPhone4. Quality-wise, screen in iPod touch 4gen is the same as those in 2/3gen, it's got only higher resolution, but quality is the same.

 

[whocaresit]

More details emerge. First post updated with Apple Expert provided info.