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This is terrible news! An elongated phone does not make sense at all! I like the current screen size. I am willing to go a bit bigger but I want it proportionally bigger. I know people complain about every new iPhone that comes out. But this is completely different. The iPhone 4/4s always looked sexy. This is plain stupid and I hope to God that somehow this isn't true. I don't know what I am going to do.

Oh come off it, the iPhone could have had this screen size since day 1 and they could be shrinking it to 3.5" now and you'd still complain.

Personally, I can't wait.
 
Most phones also had loads of buttons when Apple released the iPhone, but Apple didn't go with that..

I wasn't talking about phones. I was talking about EVERYTHING. 16:9 movies, for one, will be better on a 16:9 screen. Everything is formatted for 16:9.

Buttons are a different story. This is about formats.
 
They have a definition they've stuck to though. The average human eye cannot perceive the pixels at a given (reasonable) viewing distance for the device. They just haven't divulged what that viewing distance is. However, I've heard no complaints about seeing pixels on an iPad 3rd gen, RMBP or iPhone 4/S, so I assume their definition is still good.

Sure they have. 12" for the iPhone. Steve said so in the original keynote.

But again, since it's just something they invented out of thin air, they can redefine it at will. Moot in this case, since a 4" 1136x640 display is the same PPI as a 3.5" 960x640 display.

As for the screen, the PPI isn't changing, nor can you expect someone to hold it closer, so I'd say the name will stick without question. The only trouble they'd hit is they tried to call it HD. Technically, you have to be at least 720p to be called 'HD', so they just miss out on that.

Much less if they tried to claim "full HD" like the other poster said (of course, I think they can output 1080p out of HDMI since the iPhone 4S, so they could tack on Full HD through that feature).
 
Checkout this thread before committing suicide:

https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=15416641

Haha that's awesome! This is what we should show to whiners.
attachment.php
 
I'm not sure what all the hemming and hawing is about. This has been speculated about for months now, with increasing evidence and details coming out.

It's possible, just possible, that Apple may switch to a more frequent update cycle. If they actually do release slightly updated iPads (along with a smaller model) with the new connector and possibly updated internals next month, it would be one indication that they will go this route. If they don't add a "5" or similar modifier and just call it the new "iPhone," it would be another such indication. They may be trying to smooth out the sales cycle.

Apple's innovation tends to be with brand new products. Once a product is out, it is usually just refined. That's been the case with their Macs, OS X, the classic iPod, iPod Touch, iPad, and iPhone up to now. I'm not sure why anyone is expecting something radically different like a 5.3" Galaxy Note-sized device, or multiple models now. That hasn't been their modus operandi. The iPod was a bit of an aberration since they radically redesigned the mini/nano models, but those were essentially throwaway accessories.
 
Well you're right about the lines of resolution, but forgetting this is marketing and advertisers don't much care about technicalities.

The 16:9 will be sold as 'native widescreen retina to watch your HD movies as never before' or whatever.

Sure, but they won't claim Full HD which would be deceptive marketing as Full HD is a term that points to 1080p support. This screen isn't even close to that. The poster I was responding specifically used "Full HD resolution". Don't move goalposts.
 
My guess is they are going to make add a row on numbers on the keyboard with the extra room...perhaps in landscape they are going to add a giant delete button and send button on the left and right side...

I can text without even looking at my phone now, I hope they don't change it...it's a rather nice trick to show people, not to mention could be handy in some situations.

I'd rather they add a row up number for portrait mode and a "numeric pad" on the side in landscape mode. That would be a better use of the extra screen space.
 
Sure they have. 12" for the iPhone. Steve said so in the original keynote.

But again, since it's just something they invented out of thin air, they can redefine it at will. Moot in this case, since a 4" 1136x640 display is the same PPI as a 3.5" 960x640 display.

But did they say the distance for the iPad or RMBP? That's my point. They gave the initial reasoning with the iPhone 4 and haven't explained the details for successive "retina" products.

It's a name they invented out of thin air for a physical, tangible phenomenon. It's not as if they're lying or making something up. They just gave it a fancy name.
 
it's too bad they didn't add an additional row of icons and shrink the overall size of them to make that row fit. I guess I may be in the minority, but I would like to be able to compress the size of the icons a touch, and have more applications per page.

Apple will call it Retina. Since it's just a term Apple invented out of thin air, whatever they call Retina is Retina.

It wasn't out of thin air. It's a noun that relates to the eye. Their intention for calling it Retina was to draw attention to the high pixel density being undetectable to the naked eye. Maybe just to me, but It actually makes some literal sense to use the word Retna in this context.

That said, I do cringe every time I have to verbally reference the 'retina display' to people I am talking to. It doesn't sound like a phone display technology as much as it does a medical instrument. :eek:
 
It wasn't out of thin air. It's a noun that relates to the eye. Their intention for calling it Retina was to draw attention to the high pixel density being undetectable to the naked eye. Maybe just to me, but It actually makes some literal sense to use the word Retna in this context.

I know where it came from, I know the math behind it, I was talking about this stuff 2 years ago, pointing to a then recent article describing what Apple meant back when people thought "Retina" meant "more than 300 PPI" :

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/06/10/resolving-the-iphone-resolution/

That said, it was invented out of thin air. Retina is not a term used in screen jargon in the industry, never was. Apple needed something to describe their "not HD but high resolution phone display", found Retina to be catchy considering the property of the retina not being able to resolve the arc at a normal viewing distance and used that as the name.

It's pure marketing, invented out of nowhere, backed by some math and boom, Steve gets to sound intelligent on stage saying the new display is "Retina", setting the iPhone apart from all other phones with high pixel densities that came before it. So what if Google had the HTC Nexus One 6 months earlier ? So what if Toshiba shipped a 315 PPI phone in 2007 ? Apple was the only one with a "Retina display". :eek:

That's what I meant "out of thin air". They had no industry precedent for it and its basis is not in display terminology or jargon.
 
Proportionally bigger = Apple's aesthetic sense under Steve Jobs.

Only Taller = Totally not aesthetically pleasing ...but financially pleasing to Tim Cook.

Just added a few more words to complete the thought.

I'll reserve judgement until the phone is actually released, but I refuse to believe that the longphone is what Jony (and Steve) has been working on the last two years.
 
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I'm a developer and I can tell you it will only have a big impact on apps that are built badly or use non standard layout/UI.

Well built apps should handle the taller sizes without too much modification. UIScrollView based screens should be fine as long as AutoresizingMask was implemented correctly and that the initial view frames are based off the app delegate.

Only games and apps with less standard UI layouts will probably have problems.

Most apps are vertical so extra height just means more of the vertical UI is visible which means slightly less scrolling, or there might be more white space.

I very much doubt there will be any kind of taller status bar or fixed notification bar.

The latest iOS 6 API's support AutoLayout which I'm guessing is to I help with adapting a single UI for multiple resolutions, iPhone 4/5.
 
no they arent

The two Android topsellers, the HTC One X and the Samsung Galaxy S3 are.

The problem is not a 16:9 screen, it's the phone's overall ratio of 2:1 (18:9), which is very close to looking ridiculous. Apple would have needed to make the top and bottom bezels a lot slimmer for it to look good, at least another 0.3-0.5 cm.

For comparison, the Samsung Galaxy S3 has a ratio of 1.88:1 (16.9:9) and the HTC X One a ratio of 1.92:1 (17.3:9) and have the advantage of being a lot wider and optically thinner to prevent a skinny "longphone" look.
 
This tall phone is a complete compromise and has a "Made by committee" look written all over it.

This generation phone was required to have three things: LTE, NFC and a min 4" display.

LTE and NFC makes each model more expensive, meaning they needed to save money on the display, so they went as small as they could to satisfy the marketing need for 4".

I wonder how much the battery life will suck?
 
Oh come off it, the iPhone could have had this screen size since day 1 and they could be shrinking it to 3.5" now and you'd still complain.

Personally, I can't wait.

Well who wouldn't want a screen size to decrease. I am not saying I wouldn't go bigger. I am just saying I am content now. But their is no other phone that is elongated like this. Movies and typing in landscape will make absolutely no sense.
 
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