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Problem if Ipad 3 goes retina

G

gadget123

macrumors 68020
Original poster
The display will be darker and not as bright like comparing the 3GS to Iphone 4.

Also the Ipad 1 cost more so if it goes retina I think it will be £450 at launch and Ipad 2 sticking around at £369 as an entry model.
 
That's not the real reason why the display brightness changed. The iPhone 3GS used TFT display technology while the iPhone 4 used significantly higher quality IPS technology. The iPad will not change in brightness, as the display technology will not change.
 
w00t951 said:
That's not the real reason why the display brightness changed. The iPhone 3GS used TFT display technology while the iPhone 4 used significantly higher quality IPS technology. The iPad will not change in brightness, as the display technology will not change.
Click to expand...
Not true, it all has to do with the pixel density: the higher the pixel density, the more trouble light has to pass through the display.

Apple is rumoured to use either other screen technology (IGZO instead of IPS) ór to add a second LED bar for extra brightness.
 
That new retina screen with two light bars has got to be more expensive than the old IPS screen.
I think they may have a 32GB iPad3 starting at $599 with a 16GB iPad2 in the $499 bracket too.
 
Well I think my iPhone 4 screen is bright enough. I usually have it on about half anyway.

Aside from brightness, the colour quality is infinitely better, so I'd happily sacrifice a bit of brightness for colour & resolution.
 
People seem to not know that technology gets cheaper every year. If they would use the same display that's been used since the iPad 1, I would feel ripped off because it'll only cost a fraction of what it cost in 2010. A lot of internals will probably stay the same, resulting in a lower price for those components, making room in the budget for more expensive things as a retina screen.

People also think that more powerful processors are by definition more expensive. The cost of a CPU is mainly determined by the die size, which will probably stay the same as with the iPad2, resulting in a similiar cost.
 
vixducis said:
People seem to not know that technology gets cheaper every year. If they would use the same display that's been used since the iPad 1, I would feel ripped off because it'll only cost a fraction of what it cost in 2010.
Click to expand...

It's hardly a fraction of what it cost then, the estimate for the screen assembly for the iPad 2 was about 20-25% higher than that of the iPad 1. Not all component costs plummet. The costs for the iPhone 4S display assembly were pretty much the same as for the iPhone 4.
 
i'll be willing to pay $1000 for a 64gb 3g retina display iPad 3. the screen will be like nothing u ever seen before in your entire life. but the ugly thing is low res pictures in websites will look suck.
 
Pictures on web sites will look identical to how they look now. Identical. Now, relative to the new crisper text next to them, they may feel worse, but they won't actually be different.
 
redscull said:
Pictures on web sites will look identical to how they look now. Identical. Now, relative to the new crisper text next to them, they may feel worse, but they won't actually be different.
Click to expand...

Well, they will be blurry, because they would need to be upscaled.

For example - take current apple.com webpage - its prepared for aproximately 1024px vertical resolution. When you load it in traditional browser on computer, its always rendered relatively to resolution - when your display resolution is higher you get bars of free space on sides, and when its lower you need to scroll to see whole page.

In iOS (and all other mobile OS) pages are rendered to fill whole area available for displaying content - which make sense, mobile devices have small screens with small resolutions (what i mean is that resolutions are lower than resolutions which are web pages created for).

But with rumored retina screen for iPad 3 (2048x1536), this is no longer the case. If the apple.com webpage will be rendered to take all 2048 pixels of new screen in landscape - picture of three iphones with horizontal resolution 579px and which fills round about 60% of width of the web page will need to take 60% of new rendered resolution (0,6 x 2048 = 1228px) so it would be needed be upscaled 2,1x times.

It depends on how good upscaling they will use, bud still - picture will look blurry, unless there will be special version of page for iPad and other rumored HiDPI devices (new MacBooks etc.)

Also sorry for my English, not a native speaker.
 
ThatsMeRight said:
Not true, it all has to do with the pixel density: the higher the pixel density, the more trouble light has to pass through the display.

Apple is rumoured to use either other screen technology (IGZO instead of IPS) ór to add a second LED bar for extra brightness.
Click to expand...

So why is my iPhone 4S then much brighter than my 3GS?😕
 
I made a simple diagram for you guys:

retina.png


I used black lines to seperate pixels. Every pixels gets doubled, so for every pixels there was, two will be created. But since the pixel size is halved, the image will look exactly the same (think without the black lines).Of course it's not as simple as this, but this is the essence (if you don't look at the display at 1 inch distance).
 
vixducis said:
I made a simple diagram for you guys:

Image

I used black lines to seperate pixels. Every pixels gets doubled, so for every pixels there was, two will be created. But since the pixel size is halved, the image will look exactly the same (think without the black lines).Of course it's not as simple as this, but this is the essence (if you don't look at the display at 1 inch distance).
Click to expand...

Pixels are not halved - you need to have everything created in 4x resolution or it will be upscaled and look terrible (see non retina application on iPhone 4). Of course for vector things it done automatically, but for pixel things (icons, controls, most of apps graphics and pictures you need high resolution version.
 
I have both 3GS and 4S, and after comparing them I think there's basically no difference in brightness. If you look at a white part of the screen on both, it's pretty much the same.

Overall though the 3GS screen gives out a lot more light. Why? Because the screen is crap, and blacks aren't so much black as grey. Whites are no brighter, but everything else is - which gives you really poor contrast and viewing angles. It also makes it a lot harder to read in direct sunlight.

So the "brighter 3GS" is just perceived, and it's a bad thing not a good one. If the iPad 3 screen improves as much as the 3GS -> 4 jump it's going to be amazing!
 
So 4 retina pixels are the same physical size as 1 non-retina pixel, right? If a scaler just doubles every pixel and maps it accordingly, the image will exactly the same. It's only logic.
 
vixducis said:
So 4 retina pixels are the same physical size as 1 non-retina pixel, right? If a scaler just doubles every pixel and maps it accordingly, the image will exactly the same. It's only logic.
Click to expand...
yes there will be 4 pixels where there is one. You confused the issue by saying the pixels were halved in size when they are halved in BOTH height size and length size so there are 4 times as many pixels not twice as many. Also there will be text fonts and pictures in the higher resolution so it will be the scaler's problem to know when to quadruple the pixels or not to. That's where the problem with displayed content comes in. The current graphics processor on the iPhone handles this but the iPad 3 will have many more pixels to manipulate and a more powerful chipset will be needed.
I don't think they can make an iPad3 for the same price as current iPads but we shall see soon enough.
 
Last edited:
Images won't be any more blurry than they are now really, because you're displaying the same image at the same size. Images that are too high-res for the current iPads will actually look better.

There's a huge BUT here though: the text next to those images is going to look incredibly sharp. The images aren't. Therefore the images are going to LOOK blurry whether they're any blurrier than they used to be or not.

Is that a problem though? I'd take incredibly sharp and easy to read text with slightly blurry images over blurry image AND text any day!

----------
WLS said:
The current graphics processor on the iPhone handles this but the iPad 3 will have many more pixels to manipulate and a more powerful chipset will be needed. I don't think they can make that for the same price as current iPads but we shall see soon enough.
Click to expand...

The way this works is a bit weird - the cost of a chip is mostly based on the size of the chip. You're right, it'll need a new GPU to drive the screen, and the new GPU will be bigger than the current one. It'll likely have a new CPU too, which will make it even bigger. That means more expensive. On the other hand, they'll likely move the chip to a new 'process', which can make the same chip smaller than the old process. Basically all the tiny parts that make up the chip get shrunk. End result: the new chip might be the same size as the old one and use the same amount of power - despite it being faster and more powerful and containing more parts.
 
In terms of processing power, the retina display will only affect games. Displaying most common apps takes little processing power of the GPU. Same as with desktop PC's: my netbook has no problems whatsoever driving my 2560x1440 display. It's games we should worry about.

psonice said:
You're right, it'll need a new GPU to drive the screen, and the new GPU will be bigger than the current one.
Click to expand...
Not perse if they lower the transistor size (which they will).
 
gadget123 said:
The display will be darker and not as bright like comparing the 3GS to Iphone 4.
Click to expand...
Yes, the 3GS screen is indeed not as bright as the iPhone 4 screen.

Newer high-resolution screens are actually more efficient than older, low-resolution screens due to an increased aperture (the area of a pixel which actually lets light through, pixels are not little squares), as well as improved materials, reduction of layers, and better LEDs.


w00t951 said:
The iPhone 3GS used TFT display technology while the iPhone 4 used significantly higher quality IPS technology.
Click to expand...
TFT stands for thin film transistor. All smartphone screens, including AMOLED, use TFT technology.


G77 said:
Well, they will be blurry, because they would need to be upscaled.

For example - take current apple.com webpage - its prepared for aproximately 1024px vertical resolution.
Click to expand...
Comparing apple.com on an iPad 2 at full landscape width to an iPhone 4 showing the same page at the same physical scale, the images look indeed a bit blurrier on the latter. Mostly because the upscale filter is simple bilinear. But in my eyes text crispness and lack of any screen door effect are far more important.

Interestingly, repeating the same comparison with the iPad in portrait orientation (thus with slight downscaling), the iPhone is the clear winner even with images. A higher resolution screen is good news for those who prefer portrait orientation for web browsing (most pages are taller than wide).


vixducis said:
So 4 retina pixels are the same physical size as 1 non-retina pixel, right? If a scaler just doubles every pixel and maps it accordingly, the image will exactly the same. It's only logic.
Click to expand...
It's not how the eye perceives it, though. Seen from a typical distance, the pixel-doubled, resolution-doubled image will look somewhat sharper and more pixelated. Four dots of light (considering one subpixel color) spread over an area leave a different visual impression than a single, bigger dot of light.
 
All I care about, with this new (possible) retina display is, will it look better than what we have now. Care less about pixel this or how it scales stuff. If it has a better screen, more memory perhaps, SIRI, and a better IOS, than I'm in. 😉 😀
 
Stressing the iPad GPU

Haha I think the only real problem if the iPad goes Retina is that games with HD retina compatibility would require more power from the GPU, thus leading to laggy gameplay.

Real life example: iPhone 3GS playing Modern combat 2. No lag whatsoever
iPhone 4 playing Modern Combat 2 and 3: Lag occurs when there are smoke and explosions or even when there are a lot of players on screen during multiplayer.

Why did the iPhone 4 lag? Because Apple chose to use the same old GPU that was in the 3GS to power twice* as many pixels. Result equals lag. Heck even Infinity Blade 2 lags a bit on my iPhone 4!

I do hope Apple sticks a better GPU into the iPad 3. 🙄
 
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