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NEWSFLASH

"Retina" is just a made up marketing word for Apple

So is HD. From Wikipedia:
High-definition video is video of higher resolution than is standard. While there is no specific meaning for high-definition, generally any video image with more than 480 horizontal lines (North America) or 570 lines (Europe) is considered high-definition.
The definition we know was created after.
 
So other than all the negatives of more cpu work, gpu work, decrease in battery performance, bigger backlight, bigger apps, app fragmentation.... the positive is you can brag to your friends about your DPI compared to their phone? :D
 
I think this is a pointless it's most likely the Iphone 6 same rumours about Iphone 5's larger screen before the 4S.

They might be testing the Iphone 6 screen right now but chances are Iphone 5S is exactly like the 5 and already getting ready to launch. A few camera improvements and finger print sensors ect will be enough to make it good.
 
i feel like a broken record or parrot for saying this :

apple needs a 4.5 inch 1080p iphone, that would set for 2 years at least

While I don't see the benefit of 1080p on a small screen, Apple might as well get it over with and introduce an iPhone with a 1080p display (maybe 4.8"). Keep selling a lower resolution 4" iPhone for those who keep saying they don't want a larger phone.
 
You don't get it, do you? I'm not saying we're dealing here with a 'fake resolution' - that is what you make of it, because you don't understand what 'we' are saying.

Effectively, in normal apps (like News apps), the effective resolution is 480 x 320 on an iPhone 4S. That's because in most apps, the normal UI elements are used. Those apps who use those elements take up the same space and show just as much content as an iPhone 3GS with non-retina display.
So what about images? Developers provide images for the 'standard resolution' (480 x 320 displays) and for the 'Retina resolution' (960 x 640).

Really, the only apps which actually show more content on an iPhone 4/4S than on an iPhone 3GS or older, are gaming apps and video apps because than all pixels are utilized.

If Apple settles with the 1704 x 960 resolution, all most developers need to do is upload higher-res images. The effective resolution is still 568 x 320, because that's just how much content is shown.
Even most games scale perfectly, because most popular games make use of scalable gaming engines.

I'm not claiming developers can't use and can't adjust every single pixel if they wish. That's what you make out of it, but that's not what I am saying.

Don't say that it is not true, because most apps effectively only 'use' 568 x 320 unless a developer decides to specifically create differences for every single pixel.

Are you an iOS developer? You make a lot of bold claims using broad and vague terms like "effective resolution" and "normal UI elements".

So let me summarize your post: you're saying that because standard UI widgets appear the same size on both a retina and non-retina version of the same device, and that because retina apps show the same amount of content, it means that most retina iOS apps "effectively" (vague term) use only half of the native resolution?

This simply makes no sense. It would be ridiculous for devs to make buttons 4 times smaller and show 400% more content by making it 4 times smaller on a screen which is not bigger!

We're talking about touch devices having more or less the same screen size. Of course buttons are the same physical size on the retina version, they are targets for average human fingers!

Most content also has touch targets. Why does the contact app doesn't show twice as many contacts on a retina device? Because it would make it really hard to click on contacts to select them! (Duh!)

As for content that does not have touch targets, devs have chosen to show a manageable amount of information given the small physical size of original non-retina displays, resolution was not the issue. The fact that DPI increased doesn't change that.

Do you have any specific example of an app that could show more content but does not because of these supposed limitations?

iOS developers, using the standard point units can and do address every single pixel of the screen. They're not "adjusting pixels". They simply do what they do on other platforms, using coordinates to put stuff anywhere they want on the screen, "effectively" using the full resolution.

Just because some apps don't show as much content as you wished does NOT mean or prove in any way that the "effective" resolution is halved.
 
The pixel-war is getting stupid.

I have an iPhone 4 - I complain about it all the time (iOS, slow, no app interaction, can't connect to iPad, &&&) - one area I NEVER had a complain about is the display. More pixel will not make a visually better display (at least with my eyesight), it will just but more drain on the CPU and battery power.
 
what's the point?

This will put unneeded stress on the GPU and battery life... for what?
So the CPU GPU and battery technology is not improving at the same pace?
I'm not sure why this is hard to grasp... Engineering is about tradeoffs. You can't have everything at once-- you have a fixed level of technology that you're allowed to apply to a problem.

You are allowed N transistors and M Joules of energy. How do you apply them? You could place a second retina display behind the aluminum back of the phone, and use resources to run high resolution video on it. It is possible. Nobody is saying it isn't. But is it the best use of limited resources to drive a display nobody can see?

That is essentially what's doubling the pixel density of the iPhone5 display would do-- use your silicon and battery for a feature nobody can see. I'm sure someone did the math earlier in the thread, but even if the iPhone 5S went to a 5" display using the same 16x9 aspect, I'm getting 550ppi-- compared to 326ppi now and 440ppi on the S4.

Wouldn't those transistors and battery be better put to a use people can detect?
 
My only question is - why?

Are people really going to see that kind of difference? On a 4" phone?

Only when you zoom in on a high resolution picture. If you have a 8-12 Megapixel macro image then yes it would make a difference but just your average website then, no..
 
I'll be heavily disappointed by apple if they do that. The retina displays are almost perfect, increasing they're pixel density would kill battery life, kill processing power, increase App. sizes to include the ultra high res images but it wouldn't increase quality, ease of use or comfort.

To distinguish pixels on my phone I have to hold it 1-2 inches from my eyes. Any farther and it looks like print with better colors.
 
It seems at this point companies are just in a ppi war and they don't want their phone to seem weaker then another's. It is hard enough to see the pixels on my iPhone 4S. If they doubled at some point that would really be as far as it needed to go with our current tech because we likely will not even be able to tell with a magnifying glass. Once the screen can be capped out they will just focus on other accepts as when it comes to power, ram etc.. there really are no caps on that and even new creating new features we have never seen.

I never heard people use the term ppi until the iPhone was released.
 
I don't see this as likely. It's too soon to add another resolution (like they did with the iPhone 5) and they will never go to fractional scaling as it looks horrid.

Perhaps they'll go to 1728x960, but I think that's quite excessive. Even anything over ~350 PPI is a touch overkill.
 
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doesn't matters on a 4 inch phone, although the huge amount of pixels will make it brighter but for me the iphone 5's display is bright and sharp enough.
 
If a solution is easy and obvious, I would have not used the word "innovate"

Thats never going to happen when you have different DPI's.

Everything in an app with the exception of non image text and webview CSS content is just images. If you make an image and you scale it, it looks crappy no matter what you do unless its a vector which doesn't work in every case.

Apple's way of @2x is the easiest way to do it. And they can always add in @3x or @4x depending on what they decide a devices resolution is.

Since with iOS7 the original 320x480 resolution will no longer be supported Apple can make the base resolution anything they want.
 
Only when you zoom in on a high resolution picture. If you have a 8-12 Megapixel macro image then yes it would make a difference but just your average website then, no..

You're confused. That has nothing to do with the display and everything to do with the image resolution.
 
It's a terrible idea. You cut effective GPU performance in half, extra burden on the CPU to decode 4x larger images, increased space used by images, increased power used from the display backlight and all for a benefit that is basically chasing a spec war. If Apple said that the retina display looked good enough 3 years ago to where you "couldn't see the pixels at a normal distance", you have to ask yourself what would justify adding more.

And as a developer, creating assets that high resolution would be an absolute pain in the ass.

Maybe it'll be true, but I really wish it wasn't. The hardware on the iPhone is fine. The software is what needs major work.

Exactly... The additional power from a new chip/GPU would be much better spent on increasing things like polygon count, texture resolution, dynamic lighting, anti-aliasing, etc than just adding more pixels to the display...
 
Only when you zoom in on a high resolution picture. If you have a 8-12 Megapixel macro image then yes it would make a difference but just your average website then, no..

You've been hammered on this enough already, but I figured I'd throw in my 2 cents to explain the issue.

Words like "retina", "effective resolution", and all that crap confuse what's actually a pretty basic concept. Just think of monitor resolution as what it is: a bunch of little squares that light up different colors all packed together into a single space. The more tightly packed the little squares are, the more physical resources it has to work with to draw an image in detail.

To put this into an example, say you decided to look at a 12MP picture on a 1920x1080 screen and a 2880x1800 retina screen. We'll assume that both are 15" monitors with the same aspect ratio, and the image is fit vertically.

At a quick glance, you wouldn't be able to tell a huge amount of difference between the two. If it's a picture of a tree, both will look like the same tree. But if you were to study both in detail, you'd be able to pick up smaller details on the retina image. Like the leaves look a little more crisp and defined. You can see the texture of the bark a little more clearly. You might even notice smaller splashes of color that aren't obvious on the 1080 screen without zooming in. It'd look sharper, better, nicer. That's because the retina display has more pixels to draw the image with, and can define much smaller details in the same amount of space.

That's resolution. And to get on topic with the thread, there is a point of diminishing returns. The iPhone is already capable of displaying a perfectly smooth image on a 4" screen at the resolution it's currently at. You might be able to get a slightly clearer image with a small bump in resolution, but go up too much, and you wouldn't be able to discern any of the super small details without using a powerful magnifying glass.
 
The killer fact is people are actually saying that its bad for Apple to attempt to improve anything. If they can improve it and keep the performance the same or better I'm all for it flat out give me the best I can possibly buy since I'm spending my money the better the screen the happier ill be.

I'm betting that if this new screen does exist it will be IGZO better resolution faster response time and best of all half the power consumption.
 
The killer fact is people are actually saying that its bad for Apple to attempt to improve anything. If they can improve it and keep the performance the same or better I'm all for it flat out give me the best I can possibly buy since I'm spending my money the better the screen the happier ill be.

I'm betting that if this new screen does exist it will be IGZO better resolution faster response time and best of all half the power consumption.

I'm all for Apple improving, but think of it like this. What advantages would a screen with twice the pixel density of an iPhone 5 offer? Even if they could give us a 2272x1280 screen without sacrificing battery life or general performance, would we even notice it? Like I said in my previous post, there's a point of diminishing returns. A screen that dense wouldn't look much different to the unaided eye than what we've got now, but eat up tons more resources to push it. It'd be better to give us just a slight res bump, but take the technology they'd be using to try and equal performance on the 1280x screen and put it to better use by giving us more battery life and a GPU that can flex its muscles without being bogged down over what's ultimately nothing more than a pointless number game.
 
My suggestion: Make a 4.7" 1920x1280 screen. That's exactly double the pixel count of 4/4S and PPI is comparable to recent top-of-the-line Android phones like HTC One and Galaxy S4. I have a tablet that uses the exact same pixel count (Nook HD+) and love the 3:2 aspect ratio.
 
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