More Evidence for 2048x1536 iPad Retina Display

[eagandale4114]

If iPad 3 (or, the retina iPad, since perhaps the next iPad revision will do nothing more than have a better screen resolution; A6 won't come out until next year at earliest) comes out late summer 2011 with the iPod and iPhones, it would be a swift and decisive strike against the other tablets emerging on the market.

Face it: A5 + "Retina" display + $499 would kill other pads in an instant. Even a finger hold HP would hope to gain would be obliterated.

Why nit an A6.

 

[Yamcha]

Unless Apple somehow includes a hex or octo-core GPU, there's no way an iPad with a 2048*1536 display would have the same or better graphics performance as the iPad 2. iPad 2 has 786,432 pixels, a retina display iPad would have 3,145,728 pixels.

The graphics hardware would need to be 4 times as powerful as it is now for the same performance. Even traditional desktop/laptop GPUs from Nvidia and ATI are a little stretched at that kind of resolution, so I wouldn't think we'll be seeing a retina iPad for a few years yet. Even if Apple did manage to cram another 6 GPU cores into the iPad, it'd play havoc with the battery life.

+1 Exactly, I still find this resolution hard to believe on an iPad, i guess we'll wait and see..

 

[Thex1138]

Can people just stop and think of the practicality (or lack thereof) of 1536x2048 display on something like the iPad before even considering the possibility of such thing.

The obvious benefit is crisper display and text, and thus much better content-viewing/reading experience.

The drawbacks are:
Higher manufacturing price (and thus potentially more expensive retail price)
Apps will be much larger in size (and with some games already hitting 1gb in size, we can potentially see 4gb apps on a device which only has between 16gb and 64gb of storage)
The device will have to quadruple the amount of RAM (from 512mb to potentially 2gb) to still be able to run smoothly.
The higher res images will tax iPad's graphics more and, potentially, decrease battery life.

iPhone 4 was same price as iPhone 3Gs...

 

[Mak47]

A retina display for the iPad is a common sense move. They'll have to make other upgrades to it though. If you double/quadruple the size of every image it might slow things down.

I'd imagine it will eat up battery life as well. I'm sure this upgrade will happen, but I'm not sure doing it before the end of the year would make any sense.

 

[Redline13]

It says it right in quotes...

The section that you're referencing discusses the fact that the new twitter framework included in the iOS 5 beta includes the large images that are the genesis of the speculation about a future hi-res ipad. It doesn't infer that the only changes to the future ipad 3 will be the ones mentioned in this article which is what the poster I was responding to was implying.

 

[Elijahg]

Actual games won't run at 2048x1536, they will probably run at a much lower resolution, but you still get the retina display..

Yeah that's a good point, perhaps games would be limited to the old 1024*768 res. Doesn't seem very Appley though, "Retina display for everything other than games!" hmm... Some games use pixel doubling as it is, due to poor/inefficient programming really, it looks pretty rough.

 

[Peteman100]

I'm not so sure this is possible, running applications is not an issue at that resolution, but if there is gaming at that native resolution then it cannot be done..

However I'm beginning to think actual games won't run at 2048x1536, they will probably run at a much lower resolution, but you still get the retina display..

Hey if they can make it possible then great, but I don't know how they plan to do it, especially at that price point..

For games, they could easily run at half resolution. Problem solved.

 

[gorskiegangsta]

Yes but if we all thought this way we would still be in the stone age.

This is Apple we're talking about. They aren't a company that wastes their time on including impractical features into their products. Including a display of this resolution, at this point in time (or even next year) will reap benefits to neither Apple, nor customers.

 

[karohan]

If Apple offers a screen like to this on their iPad, what kind of screens would they offer on their Macbook Pro/iMacs. They surely can't sell a Macbook Pro line with screens that all have lower resolutions than their far cheaper and far weaker iPad line, right?

 

[QuarterSwede]

This is Apple we're talking about. They aren't a company that wastes their time on including impractical features into their products. Including a display of this resolution, at this point in time (or even next year) will reap benefits to neither Apple, nor customers.

Similarly, they don't update resources for no reason.

 

[Neodym]

Steve stood right next to this when the iPad 2 was launched. No iPad 3 until 2012.
View attachment 289610

The Apple FISCAL YEAR runs until September. An iPad 3 released in October would technically fall into FISCAL YEAR 2012 for Apple, so Steve would not even have lied with the statement that 2011 would be the year of the iPad 2...

 

[ECUpirate44]

The Apple FISCAL YEAR runs until September. An iPad 3 released in October would technically fall into FISCAL YEAR 2012 for Apple, so Steve would not even have lied with the statement that 2011 would be the year of the iPad 2...

I think it was obvious they were referring to the calendar year

 

[lavrishevo]

No way iPad 3 this year. Apple can't even produce enough iPad 2's let alone release the iPad 3. Moronic conclusion.

 

[haruhiko]

Apple will not kill the iPad 2 and enrage their recent customers so soon. iPad 3 with such high resolution will not appear before 2012.

 

[ljocampo]

Can people just stop and think of the practicality (or lack thereof) of 1536x2048 display on something like the iPad before even considering the possibility of such thing.

The obvious benefit is crisper display and text, and thus much better content-viewing/reading experience.

The drawbacks are:
Higher manufacturing price (and thus potentially more expensive retail price)
Apps will be much larger in size (and with some games already hitting 1gb in size, we can potentially see 4gb apps on a device which only has between 16gb and 64gb of storage)
The device will have to quadruple the amount of RAM (from 512mb to potentially 2gb) to still be able to run smoothly.
The higher res images will tax iPad's graphics more and, potentially, decrease battery life.

So if they can put a retina display in an iPhone 4, then I don't see a reason they can't technically put one in an iPad 3.

 

[HelveticaNeue]

I cannot wait for this. Apple has spoiled me with the iPhone 4's display. Daily I think about how pixelated the text looks on the iPad in Pages and iBooks.

 

[Wilson1313]

1 more year...

Let's settle this once and for all— there will be NO iPad 3 this year. Apple can hardly keep up the demand for the current model, months after its release. They can continue selling very strongly without a refresh this year. Coupled with iOS 5, the iPad 2 will still be hard to beat by competing Android tablets.

Will the iPad 3 or iPad 4 get a 2048 x 1536 display? Certainly. But with the cost of the display and the need for a more powerful chip to render all the pixels quickly, we will have to wait until next year for a refresh.

 

[gorskiegangsta]

iPhone 4 was same price as iPhone 3Gs...

Subsidized, maybe. Unlocked and unsubsidized, the iPhone 4 was upwards of $700 (for the lowest 16gb model) with 64gb models running upwards of $1,000. The most expensive model of 3Gs (64gb model) was $649 unlocked and unsubsidized upon its release.
iPads aren't subsidized by carriers, you pay the full retail price for it. It is very likely that adding a display of that resolution will drive the cost up $100 or more. Neither consumers nor Apple want that.

Besides, with the iPhone 4's "retina" display, Apple was only catching up to competition, since the resolution on the 3Gs was painfully archaic 320x480 HVGA, vs competition's obviously superior 480x800 WVGA.

 

[Elijahg]

So if they can out a retina display in an iPhone 4, then I see a reason they can't technically put one in an iPad 3.

That's because the iPhone's screen is only 3.7 inches, with a total pixel count of 614,400. As I said previously, iPad has 786,432 pixels, a retina display iPad would have 3,145,728 pixels.

 

[3goldens]

Yep, it's coming.
2012 Year of the Ipad 3

 

[haruhiko]

Subsidized, maybe. Unlocked and unsubsidized, the iPhone 4 was upwards of $700 (for the lowest 16gb model) with 64gb models running upwards of $1,000. The most expensive model of 3Gs (64gb model) was $649 unlocked and unsubsidized upon its release.
iPads aren't subsidized by carriers, you pay the full retail price for it. It is very likely that adding a display of that resolution will drive the cost up $100 or more. Neither consumers nor Apple want that.

Besides, with the iPhone 4's "retina" display, Apple was only catching up to competition, since the resolution on the 3Gs was painfully archaic 320x480 HVGA, vs competition's obviously superior 480x800 WVGA.

(edited)

I remember the iPhone 3G 16GB was HK$5400 ($692) in Hong Kong, and the iPhone 4 16GB is HK$4988 ($639) now.

 

[iPadThai]

Steve stood right next to this when the iPad 2 was launched. No iPad 3 until 2012.
View attachment 289610

Well, steve also said the following would be availabe (white iphone 4 but never delivered either):

 

[Erdnaqwe]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_3 like Mac OS X; fr-fr) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8J2 Safari/6533.18.5)

It's obvious that Apple will make a Retina display iPad at some point because all the other iOS devices have retina display, so why not the iPad. It would be a perfect match!

 

[DavidLeblond]

The section that you're referencing discusses the fact that the new twitter framework included in the iOS 5 beta includes the large images that are the genesis of the speculation about a future hi-res ipad. It doesn't infer that the only changes to the future ipad 3 will be the ones mentioned in this article which is what the poster I was responding to was implying.

The article speculated that because of finding this one piece of art in iOS5, it meant that iPad 3 will probably be released at the same time as iOS5. Which would mean the iPad 3 would only have one piece of artwork that fully used its screen. (Other than iBooks, I believe art has been found there too.)

I'm not saying iPad 3 won't have retina, just that finding ONE piece of artwork doesn't mean its going to be released simultaneously with the OS.

 

[twoodcc]

This would be great. Maybe next year?