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New iPad Uses Retina Graphics When Running iPhone Apps

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Original poster
Apr 12, 2001
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retina_icon.png


When the iPad was first introduced there weren't many iPad-specific apps yet available. As a solution, Apple allowed apps designed for the iPhone's smaller screen to run on the iPad in a form of emulation. The apps could be run as if they were on the iPhone, using only a fraction of the iPad's screen. Alternatively, those apps could also be run in a 2x mode, using a technique called pixel doubling to fill the iPad's screen. However, when in 2x mode, both artwork and text would look blocky and pixelated.

Since the original iPad's launch, both the iPhone and iPod Touch has been upgraded to high resolution Retina displays. While Apple could use the Retina graphics from apps that had been upgraded to work with the iPhone 4 and 4S's 960x640 display (nearly all iPhone apps nowadays), so far, they've chosen not to. Instead, the iPad 1 and 2 continue to just pixel double the 480x320 display from the original iPhone's screen. In fact, there is even a jailbreak app called Retinapad that enables the use of iPhone Retina graphics on the original iPad, filling this gap in functionality.

The new iPad, however, now displays the Retina graphics of apps designed for the iPhone in both 1x and 2x mode, resulting in a significantly improved visual experience, as pointed out by a user on the TouchArcade forums. The user experience issue still exists -- in 2x mode, interface elements are twice as large -- but it looks much better .
I just tested this with NBA Jam, which the iphone version looked like crap on my ipad 1, but looked great through retinapad when I had it jailbroken since it was tricked into loading the iphone 4's retina enable graphic assets. Now, on my brand spankin' new ipad third gen, it looks fantastic, without retinapad, just by enabling the 2X option at the bottom right of the screen.
Click to expand...



Click to compare in full size to Native iPad version.​
In this image above, the graphics of the iPhone version of Cut the Rope have been compared side-by-side on an iPad 2 (left) and iPad 3 (right). Note that while there is an iPad-native version of the app available, we used the iPhone version to illustrate the differences. The iPad 3 version uses the iPhone Retina graphics found in Cut the Rope for iPhone, resulting in a much sharper image.

In fact, the iPhone version now looks nearly identical to the iPad native version of the game:

ipadversion.jpg



Note that Cut the Rope HD has not yet been updated to support the iPad Retina display, so of course, native Retina iPad apps will look even better on the new iPad. In the meanwhile, iPhone apps running on the new iPad will also see a notable visual improvement, approaching previous iPad native apps.

Article Link: New iPad Uses Retina Graphics When Running iPhone Apps
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2012/03/20/new-ipad-uses-retina-graphics-when-running-iphone-apps/
This is a clear example of apple's stupidity. Why is this not enabled on older iPads???

I'm glad you all voted this down. It makes perfect sense! It is totally not a valid complaint that all Apple has to do is slightly change some software, so that hundreds of thousands of apps can be useful, but they don't. I guess it is ok, 480x320 looks awesome on my 1024x768 display!
 
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Hopefully 5.1.1 will bring it back to the OG iPad and iPad 2... like gestures for the original iPad, the limitation appears to only originate from an excess of greed from Apple...
 
nickn said:
This is a clear example of apple's stupidity. Why is this not enabled on older iPads???
Click to expand...

Such are the ways of Apple. Tho I agree, it sounds stupid they don't do it.

Anyways, I never use iPhone apps in my iPad. They feel just wrong.
 
Makes good sense. Won't like to see 480 x 320 apps running on 2048 x 1536 pixels...
 
So basically, Retina iPhone apps look like non-Retina iPad apps when displayed on a Retina iPad.

Aka, even tiny phone apps look as good as what people are used to on their iPad. Pretty cool.
 
nickn said:
This is a clear example of apple's stupidity. Why is this not enabled on older iPads???
Click to expand...

There are a few reasons why the new iPad would do this and the old one doesn't. The most basic reason is that on Retina displays, apps run with Retina assets if available. Non-Retina displays never use Retina assets. In this regard, the new iPad is behaving exactly the same way as the old ones.

Second, if Apple did decide to use the Retina graphics for 2x mode on older iPads, it would introduce a few problems. One is that the original iPad is memory starved as it is. It came with 256MB and it wasn't until the iPhone 4 with it's Retina display did Apple bump up the RAM to 512MB. Second, should Apple use the Retina graphics for both the 1x and 2x modes? If they do, they are wasting CPU and battery to produce pixels that will only be scaled down. If they don't, they would need to come up with a way for apps to switch between 1x and 2x mode at runtime (they currently can't -- there is nothing in the API to even allow for that possibility). Also there is the issue of how the graphics would look when you take Retina graphics and scale them back down to 1x -- it's not nearly as nice as simply using the 1x graphics already.

One more thing to consider -- when the original iPad came out, there were no Retina display devices. All iPhone apps were 1x apps. The pixel doubling mode of the original iPad was just a way to allow iPhone apps to take up more of the screen than they would otherwise. Clearly Apple's goal was to have more iPad native/Universal apps. Spending engineering resources to make "legacy" apps run better is typically not a good use of time. Turning on Retina support on the new iPad for iPhone apps didn't require a large amount of engineering time. In fact, due to how the iOS APIs work, it may have not even required any time to get it up and running. Just the time required to verify that it did work okay.
 
So, they're now scaling the iPhone Retina version instead of the 'original' iPhone graphics, with some smoothing/anti-aliasing?

I wonder if the non-integral scaling; and smoothing requires the extra grunt of the A5X? Would love to have this on the iPad 2 - TBH this alone makes buying the new iPad far more attractive.
 
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gmanist1000 said:
Your comment is an example of your stupidity.
Click to expand...

Why? It is a valid point. If older iPads can offer a better experience when using iPhone apps, it is silly to limit it. This is not something that will drive upgrades. I am going to send Apple feedback.

Next time you comment, try to post something of value instead of insults.
 
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Nice, saw this in another article a few days ago.

While 98% of what we do on the iPad is through native (or dual device) apps, there’s a few holdouts that are iPhone only that will be great to run in this improved mode. The Apple Store and AT&T account manager comes to mind. Tank Hero too, though it looks pretty decent scaled up.
 
nickn said:
This is a clear example of apple's stupidity. Why is this not enabled on older iPads???
Click to expand...

On the old iPad, a retina display game would have to load two sets of graphics. Since the app wouldn't be designed to change resolution at run time it would have to restart the app when you switch display sizes.

In 1x mode the screen is only 320x480 so a retina app would have to be down sampled if it only loaded retina graphics. Making it look crappier.

This really is kind of a no-brainer upgrade for Apple though, as if they left it like iPad 1 in "2x" mode on the new iPad 320x480 would be scaled to 1280x1920 meaning 16 pixels for every 1 pixel of the non-retina iPhone app.
 
Apple decide not to take use of the retina graphics, until the release of the new iPad, because it would discourage developers from making native iPad apps.
 
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SmileyDude said:
There are a few reasons why the new iPad would do this and the old one doesn't. The most basic reason is that on Retina displays, apps run with Retina assets if available. Non-Retina displays never use Retina assets. In this regard, the new iPad is behaving exactly the same way as the old ones.

Second, if Apple did decide to use the Retina graphics for 2x mode on older iPads, it would introduce a few problems. One is that the original iPad is memory starved as it is. It came with 256MB and it wasn't until the iPhone 4 with it's Retina display did Apple bump up the RAM to 512MB. Second, should Apple use the Retina graphics for both the 1x and 2x modes? If they do, they are wasting CPU and battery to produce pixels that will only be scaled down. If they don't, they would need to come up with a way for apps to switch between 1x and 2x mode at runtime (they currently can't -- there is nothing in the API to even allow for that possibility). Also there is the issue of how the graphics would look when you take Retina graphics and scale them back down to 1x -- it's not nearly as nice as simply using the 1x graphics already.

One more thing to consider -- when the original iPad came out, there were no Retina display devices. All iPhone apps were 1x apps. The pixel doubling mode of the original iPad was just a way to allow iPhone apps to take up more of the screen than they would otherwise. Clearly Apple's goal was to have more iPad native/Universal apps. Spending engineering resources to make "legacy" apps run better is typically not a good use of time. Turning on Retina support on the new iPad for iPhone apps didn't require a large amount of engineering time. In fact, due to how the iOS APIs work, it may have not even required any time to get it up and running. Just the time required to verify that it did work okay.
Click to expand...



This would be valid if there wasn't already a way to do this if you are jailbroken. This fact invalidates a lot of your post.
 
I thought it wasn't supposed to be called the iPad3?

I thought it wasn't supposed to be called the iPad3?
 
I'm not well versed in display technologies, but could Apple have done this because of resolution limits on the original iPad and iPad 2 and not because of "stupidity" or wanting us to buy the next new iPad?

Hear me out. iPhone apps on the iPad/iPad 2 run at 480x320. With 2x, that becomes 960x640. This fits within the 1024x768 resolution in the original iPad/iPad 2.

Now that we have a Retina iPad which runs at 2048x1536, iPhone apps can run at native 960x640 and 2x which pushes it at 1920x1280.

I'm not sure what the Retinapad jailbreak app does, but does it 2x scale outside the resolution limits of the original iPad/iPad 2 (1024x768)? Or does it just run the iPhone apps at native 960x640 and not allow for 2x scaling?
 
jclardy said:
On the old iPad, a retina display game would have to load two sets of graphics. Since the app wouldn't be designed to change resolution at run time it would have to restart the app when you switch display sizes.
Click to expand...

true, though does anyone actually use iPhone apps in 1x mode on their iPad? They should just have a "force 2x" mode and use Retina graphics.

arn
 
whooleytoo said:
So, they're now scaling the iPhone Retina version instead of the 'original' iPhone graphics, with some smoothing/anti-aliasing?.
Click to expand...

Looking closely at the Apple Store app running in 1x and 2x mode on my new iPad, it doesn't appear that Apple changed the scaling algorithm between the two modes. It still appears to be nearest neighbor (aka, pixel doubling). I could be wrong here, but most of the effect appears to be from using the Retina graphics instead of the 1x graphics.
 
do a lot of people have many iPhone apps on their iPads? I have none, so wouldn't benefit from this feature. I don't know of many people who do as well.
 
smileydude said:
second, if apple did decide to use the retina graphics for 2x mode on older ipads, it would introduce a few problems. One is that the original ipad is memory starved as it is. It came with 256mb and it wasn't until the iphone 4 with it's retina display did apple bump up the ram to 512mb.


Second, should apple use the retina graphics for both the 1x and 2x modes? If they do, they are wasting cpu and battery to produce pixels that will only be scaled down. If they don't, they would need to come up with a way for apps to switch between 1x and 2x mode at runtime (they currently can't -- there is nothing in the api to even allow for that possibility). Also there is the issue of how the graphics would look when you take retina graphics and scale them back down to 1x -- it's not nearly as nice as simply using the 1x graphics already.


Spending engineering resources to make "legacy" apps run better is typically not a good use of time.
Click to expand...
1. The ipod touch 4th gen has a 960x540 display, but only has 256mb ram. Everything works fine on that, so why not on the ipad?
2.Valid problem. How about they let the user choose with a setting or something. You could either set it to run like it currently does, in low res mode, or chose 960x540 mode and then disable the 1x/2x button. That is what retina pad does, and it works fine.
3. But now they have spent the time. All they would need to do is port it to the ipad 1's ios firmware for the next update.
 
Metal Dice said:
Apple decide not to take use of the retina graphics, until the release of the new iPad, because it would discourage developers from making native iPad apps.
Click to expand...

This makes way more sense than any "technology" based reason.
 
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