Next iPhone: Double Resolution Display, Front Camera, Multi-Tasking?

[iansilv]

The increase in resolution will not matter for existing applications- anything that is not an image map or some sort of bit map will scale instantly without any problems. The apps run with the UI elements apple has created, not everything is art that does not scale. In fact, most things are scalable. A gradient and overall size of a graphical element will render no matter what the resolution. the iPhone has some resolution independence built in.

That said, I hope these rumors are true- the Sprint EVO is looking awfully damn good.

 

[The General]

This is covered repeatedly on this forum. Raw number of pixels is not "resolution". Resolution is a measure per linear inch/cm/etc. Number of pixels is just number of pixels, resolution puts those pixels in a physical size context to tell you how "detailed" the output theoretically can be. Twice the resolution = 4x the number of pixels, because--again--resolution is a LINEAR measure.

incorrect. my opinion > your opinion.

 

[Kesuke]

960x640 is the same aspect ratio as 480x320. to scale it up would be completely trivial. each pixel of the app would be displayed by 4 pixels of the display.

Thats exactly what I said - the problem is that the 4th Gen isn't going to have a 960 x 640 pixel display, so it won't be a simple aspect ratio conversion.

So where as on the iPad you just double everything up in the horizontal and vertical plains (so a 1 x 1 black pixel becomes a 2 x 2 black pixel), the iPhone won't be able to do that. Instead there will have to be some kind of hardware based processing, that could include dithering to allow for a ~1.5 times increase.

Personally, my guess is the resolution will either stay the same, or only go up marginally. I would bet the Nexus one/Droid screens will retain the highest resolutions for now, and apple will be aiming for a 960 x 640 for the 5th generation.

 

[str1f3]

Arn just linked to three instances where he made wrong predictions or his rumors were completely obvious.

What's your personal problem with Gruber? Of the links arn provided, which one turned out to be false? No one knew if there was going to camera on the iPad and most speculations had a camera on it.

Every single one of those links has Gruber speculating about stuff, and the only inside information he had was that it was going to be called the 3GS. Likely something he got from a trademark filing.

Many of his assertions are either obvious (faster processor, more flash storage were true about the previous releases as well) or simply guesses (its easy to predict that Apple will release an imac and a macbook when they are both lines that were long in the tooth at the time.)

I know you've met him, but you give him too much credit.

Every single one of the predictions in this story is an obvious upgrade.
-- A4 - obviously if they have made custom silicon better to use them across the line and spread the R&D costs over more units. R&D is the highest cost for semiconductors, especially custom.
-- Double Resolution Display-- this is an obvious next step given that competitors are coming out with higher resolution displays, the iPhone is 3 years old, and apple has already demonstrated the feature in the ipad
-- Third party multitasking- another obvious one, though it won't really be the multitasking everyone's asking for. It will be a limited sandbox where some code can run in an environment tightly controlled by apple. Thus "apps" will be able to run in the background and do polling, etc, but not be able to take too much horsepower or use the network too much. I can even predict that these apps will have some ability to update status info on the homescreen or a dashboard like interface. (EG: facebook will be able to put the latest FB status message from a friend or GMAIL will put the latest email you've gotten, the first few lines of text, on the homescreen.) BTW, if that happens are you going to decide that I have an inside source? This is just me speculating based on what apple has already done. But put it out there as a rumor and people believe I know insiders, right?!
-- Front facing camera. A perennial feature request from the mac rumor mongers that does not make much real sense.

When the new iPhone doesn't have a front facing camera, will you strike gruber from your reliable rumors list? Or will he get to slide because he was "obviously being sarcastic"?

Reread his 3GS article again. It was essentially the talking points that Jobs had made onstage at WWDC.

You keep stating that all these things are obvious. Besides multitasking, where has any of the rumors been posted on any Mac news site? You even manage to attack him on saying there will be a front-facing camera in saying it's an unnecessary feature. He didn't wish the webcam into existence. This something that has barely been mentioned anywhere else.

 

[coleridge78]

incorrect. my opinion > your opinion.

Hey, knock yourself out. I'm not going to argue about it; it's simply a fact. You can either find appropriate references--it's not hard--or keep being ignorant.

 

[Kesuke]

The increase in resolution will not matter for existing applications- anything that is not an image map or some sort of bit map will scale instantly without any problems. The apps run with the UI elements apple has created, not everything is art that does not scale.

Thats likely to be very glitchy though. Say for example the app that has UI gradient elements for a background, with a raster button.

How on earth are you going to scale 1 pixel into 1.5 pixels? - You can't do it. There will have to be on-the-fly resizing. OR apple will have to do some kind of batch-resize the image files on the appstore itself prior to download. But again, that could cause plenty of buggy issues (most obviously by increasing file size).

 

[Niko03]

Doubling the resolution would be quite a change, but that's still just a bit smaller than the iPad, so I can believe it.

That’s also higher res than the Droid. And I really like the sharpness of my friend’s Droid at 480x854. (Too bad it only looks good in the dark though! Not good in sunlight.)

An iPad-style, sunlight-friendly IPS LCD, plus super high-res, would look awesome.

And current apps could pixel-double and look no worse than they do today (which is excellent to begin with). Parts of the screen (text, OpenGL 3D) could take advantage of the new res without reprogramming, I would expect.

Is that 960x640 resolution possible on an iPhone size screen?
I mean I really don't know.
Definitely would be sweet.

 

[mattwolfmatt]

I just want copy and paste!! C'mon Apple!

Sorry, I kinda miss complaining about that one. It was so fun!

 

[The General]

Thats exactly what I said - the problem is that the 4th Gen isn't going to have a 960 x 640 pixel display, so it won't be a simple aspect ratio conversion.

So where as on the iPad you just double everything up in the horizontal and vertical plains (so a 1 x 1 black pixel becomes a 2 x 2 black pixel), the iPhone won't be able to do that. Instead there will have to be some kind of hardware based processing, that could include dithering to allow for a ~1.5 times increase.

Personally, my guess is the resolution will either stay the same, or only go up marginally. I would bet the Nexus one/Droid screens will retain the highest resolutions for now, and apple will be aiming for a 960 x 640 for the 5th generation.

dude what are you talking about? 1.5 times increase?

 

[Kesuke]

dude what are you talking about? 1.5 times increase?

If you saw my earlier posts, I was saying that there is no way the 4th gen will have a double sized screen (960 x 640). If it is any larger at all, it is more likely to be something like 800 x 480, the current industry benchmark. That would be a a SCALE increase of 1.66 times.

 

[itsvdiddy]

The Question Is This:

Do I renew 2 years to get the new iPhone HD in June and be stuck with AT&T another 2 years or do I take a risk and see if they release a new iPhone with Sprint/Verizon in September???

 

[sl1200mk2]

Too many new Apple devices and too little money.

 

[Jett0516]

same d***n rumor every year. and every year I believe it....

 

[iansilv]

Anyways, I doubt it'll be double resolution. That would make items onscreen microscopic, and impossible to touch. Then developers would have to up the size of everything, negating the effect of a higher res display. Why bother?! It's fine how it is, IMO

That's... not... true!!!!

This is driving me nuts! The iPhone's UI elements- menu items, fonts, button elements, etc. would al scale and display at any resolution. The icons for applications would have to be redone to take advantage o the increased resolution, but like the multiple resolution icons in Snow leopard, they would be just fine if they were not- they would just scale up until replacement art was rendered in an update to whatever app needs it.

The UI elements in the phone- take the slide to unlock graphics for example- are vector based. The OS would tell the graphics engine- "we have a higher resolution screen, so render them at the resolution necessary to maintain their size on the screen" or whatever. any elements not vector based would be replaced, such as curves, ect. but the majority of the iPhone's UI is based around simple shapes, gradients and fonts. that would all be fine, and for everything else it would just scale up, maintaining its size until replacement art was generated for the app by the developer.

In other words, Field runners would run just fine, and when it was updated the game would look sharper. I the new phone with a 100000 by 200000 screen dropped tomorrow, the iPhone OS would just scale everything. Maybe it would need a minor update, or maybe this is part of 4.0, but it would not "make everything small" or "break every app."

 

[iansilv]

Thats likely to be very glitchy though. Say for example the app that has UI gradient elements for a background, with a raster button.

How on earth are you going to scale 1 pixel into 1.5 pixels? - You can't do it. There will have to be on-the-fly resizing. OR apple will have to do some kind of batch-resize the image files on the appstore itself prior to download. But again, that could cause plenty of buggy issues (most obviously by increasing file size).

If the gradients are done properly in the OS they would just render at the higher resolution. Just like running Quake at a different rez- everything is there, it just looks sharper on the higher resolution screen.

 

[Kesuke]

This is driving me nuts! The iPhone's UI elements- menu items, fonts, button elements, etc. would al scale and display at any resolution. The icons for applications would have to be redone to take advantage o the increased resolution, but like the multiple resolution icons in Snow leopard, they would be just fine if they were not- they would just scale up until replacement art was rendered in an update to whatever app needs it.

The UI elements in the phone- take the slide to unlock graphics for example- are vector based. The OS would tell the graphics engine- "we have a higher resolution screen, so render them at the resolution necessary to maintain their size on the screen" or whatever. any elements not vector based would be replaced, such as curves, ect. but the majority of the iPhone's UI is based around simple shapes, gradients and fonts. that would all be fine, and for everything else it would just scale up, maintaining its size until replacement art was generated for the app by the developer.

No, it won't work - the problem is with spatial references. Lets say I'm an app developer and I (like all app developers) use pixel references in my code.

So I might have a 10 pixel margin down the left of my apps homescreen. Now lets say the new screen is 800 x 480 pixels.... how am I going to make 10 pixels into 16.6 pixels? - I can't (that would be the scale factor). So Instead I'm going to have to make 10 pixels into 16 pixels, with 0.66 of a pixel missing. So there is no way this is going to work (because now my app is all out of proportion). You can only rescale apps by integers, and the next whole number after 1 is 2... and a 2 times scale would be 960 x 640 - but as has been discussed, that is very unlikely.

Quake scales because it is a rendered 3D process. Infact, if you play oldschool Doom when it wasn't 3D, you can only play at the set resolutions, unless the screen is large enough to do a 1:2 scale conversion.

 

[fruitpunch.ben]

while i'm not in the market for a new iPhone, since my 3gs has 15 months left on its contract, its pretty clear imo that Gruber has a source inside apple.
Whether its a true source or not is debatable, the accuracy and especially the timing of some of his 'rumors' lead me to wonder whether or not Apple leaks information to him to increase or decrease speculation pending a product update

 

[ELScorcho9]

You gotta figure that Apple is going to keep up with what other phone companies have come out with and then some. It makes sense. Upgraded camera, better resolution, multi-tasking, fancy swipe-back-of-phone-for-speakerphone functions . . . at least a few, if not all, of these features will be there. Competition has become pretty fierce. I think the 4th iPhone will be a pretty big leap.

And, although I think it's unlikely, if Apple does have a front-facing camera for the iPhone, then it'll for sure be Wi-Fi only, at least for the first several months. That just makes sense.


Also, did someone really not know what the iPod Touch was?? What the frak?

 

[Kesuke]

while i'm not in the market for a new iPhone, since my 3gs has 15 months left on its contract, its pretty clear imo that Gruber has a source inside apple.
Whether its a true source or not is debatable, the accuracy and especially the timing of some of his 'rumors' lead me to wonder whether or not Apple leaks information to him to increase or decrease speculation pending a product update

Apple certainly do have a knack for stimulating discussion about their products before a release. With the iPad shipping for saturday, It wouldn't be suprising if they were starting to sow the seeds for their next big product release, which we would assume is the iPhone around june-july.

 

[natasha69]

don't forget the lightsaber.

 

[DotCom2]

An iPad-style, sunlight-friendly IPS LCD, plus super high-res, would look awesome.

Unless Apple themselves made a mistake on their spec page, the iPad does not have an IPS LCD display but an IPS LED display FYI.

 

[profets]

Unless Apple themselves made a mistake on their spec page, the iPad does not have an IPS LCD display but an IPS LED display FYI.

no, it is an LCD display, but with LED backlighting.

 

[Niko03]

And what Network is it going to actually work on. AT&T cant handle the iPhone load it has now. Verizon one cant make a call and do data at the same time. SO i ask again it all pie in the sky until some on has a network that can keep up.

There's always wifi.

I don't believe macs have 3g but they do have video cams.

 

[DotCom2]

no, it is an LCD display, but with LED backlighting.

I stand corrected!
A thousand pardons!

 

[powers74]

iPhone

Glad I waited. Hope it's Aluminum.