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Why did it take apple 3 years to increase the resolution?

B

boonlar

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Dec 30, 2008
259
0
Almost all good phones have had 800x480. Why did it take apple so long to catch up?

I remember people used to say they didn't want or need higher resolution but now that they have it I bet they would never go back to the 480x320 screens.
 
boonlar said:
Almost all good phones have had 800x480. Why did it take apple so long to catch up?

I remember people used to say they didn't want or need higher resolution but now that they have it I bet they would never go back to the 480x320 screens.
Click to expand...

most (actually i beleive ALL) phones with an 800x480 resolution have larger screens, the challange isnt in the resolution but cramming in pixels so densly in a small area. a resolution of 960x640 is damn good on a 4.2" screen, but it is amazing on a 3.5" screen.
 
melterx12 said:
most (actually i beleive ALL) phones with an 800x480 resolution have larger screens, the challange isnt in the resolution but cramming in pixels so densly in a small area. a resolution of 960x640 is damn good on a 4.2" screen, but it is amazing on a 3.5" screen.
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its a good pixel density and all but apple could have put the screens in. they had 3 chances to do so (2g, 3g, 3gs). sucks it took them so long and they finally do it and the phone has hardware issues lol.
 
I don't understand why you're complaining about this after they changed it already. Maybe you'd like to put in your $.02 about MMS or copy and paste, too?
 
Because, the retina display was way ahead of its time. There's no use making a phone with such high resolution so early into the game. The 480x320 screen was very good in the iPhone 2G and pretty good in the 3G. The 3GS lagged behind a little bit, but that was a lazy refresh. Apple usually designs a product, refreshes the internals a bit for a couple of years, and then completely revamps the product all at once.

Why would apple suddenly jump from a decent screen in the 2G to double the resolution in the 3G? Competition still hasn't caught up and they can save the feature for a future iPhone version. Lumping all features into early iterations isn't that beneficial. Even if the phone is crazy popular in the beginning, there would be no further improvements to subsequent models. Technology can only advance so fast.

A 960x640 screen also might not have been cheap enough until now. It makes sense that Apple waited until they could double the screen res, so older apps would still work; I doubt they would have resorted to a screen resolution used by some HTC phones (which although are hi-res, aren't the correct aspect ratio for the iPhone), until they reached the 960x640 resolution. That's way too much work for both Apple and the devs.
 
kockgunner said:
Because, the retina display was way ahead of its time.
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LG wasn't first with a print quality screen, Toshiba was. Even LG has used an even higher resolution screen than the one they now supply for Apple, two years ago in one of their own phones.

Many other LCD screens are close enough in resolution that most people cannot tell the difference. Many are "retinal" (no pixels discernible) if held just a few inches further away.

One reason Apple waited was because they failed to push resolution independence, and thus had to get a screen that was a multiple of their current size, so people could continue to use old apps.

A 960x640 screen also might not have been cheap enough until now.
Click to expand...

They also waited while the other phone makers who WERE using higher resolution screens helped get the price of them down.

Apple's trouble now is that there's no easy further upgrade path. Doubling resolution again makes no sense at the screen size they like for a phone. And they cannot make a physically larger screen, because their PPI would go down again... after making a big deal about it.
 
boonlar said:
its a good pixel density and all but apple could have put the screens in. they had 3 chances to do so (2g, 3g, 3gs). sucks it took them so long and they finally do it and the phone has hardware issues lol.
Click to expand...

beleive it or not, it is a challenge to manufacture such a high pixel desnity screen *GASP*! Either they didnt have the technology to manufacture consistently defect-free displays before, or making it would have been too expensive to be profitable.
 
I'm guessing that because without a screen of the iPhone 4's exact resolution they'd have to resort to more unsightly methods of resampling graphics, etc. At 980x640 it's a matter of pixel doubling, with all proportions remaining the same.
 
I'm happy for the resolution increase, but what I'd really like is a bigger screen. 4" please. I know 16:9 will never happen, but I think just .5" more would make a HUGE difference.
 
Could be a lot of factors, but the truth is the iPhone's old display didn't have much real competition. I'm sure someone will mention some phone that had a higher-pixel density than the iPhone, but I doubt they were any real competition to the iPhone. The iPhone's screen started off very strong and remained competitive until Apple upped their own game with the retina display. Now everyone will scramble to upgrade their ppi on their screens to match or best Apple's.
 
jb007clone said:
I'm happy for the resolution increase, but what I'd really like is a bigger screen. 4" please. I know 16:9 will never happen, but I think just .5" more would make a HUGE difference.
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probably wont happen at least for a while. changing the screen res would fragment the app store between apps for the bigger screen and apps for older iphones. knowing apple they will avoid that as long as possible, but eventually i think they will increase the screen size.
 
jb007clone said:
I'm happy for the resolution increase, but what I'd really like is a bigger screen. 4" please. I know 16:9 will never happen, but I think just .5" more would make a HUGE difference.
Click to expand...

I disagree with this. I think the screen size, for a phone, is fine where it is. I've used two 3.7 in screens, and while that sounds like a very small increase, I could not use the entire screen with one hand. It was a huge pain.
 
RC83 said:
because Millions were buying them the way they were..
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+1

That's basically what it comes down to, why put a more expensive screen in there when millions are buying the cheaper screen. Competition also has a lot to do with it, Android did us a favor by putting pressure on Apple. competition is good for us the consumer..... we have a better screen at the same price because of it.
 
1) Production cost was high back then
2) They need to save some features for the newest iPhones
3) Apple sometimes waits on technologies to make sure they're good before using/implementing them
 
They can increase the screen size without changing the screen resolution.

A 980x640 screen would look pretty damn awesome on a nice 4 inch or 4.3 inch display.

Drools.
 
kdarling said:
Apple's trouble now is that there's no easy further upgrade path. Doubling resolution again makes no sense at the screen size they like for a phone. And they cannot make a physically larger screen, because their PPI would go down again... after making a big deal about it.
Click to expand...

but why upgrade at this point, resolution wise at least?

sure, they can double again, but no one would ever be able to notice

they can increase screen size, but honestly, a few tenths of an inch is all I'd want. I've used an EVO and its just to big for me personally. Maybe someday Apple will make several models of iPhone with differing screen sizes, but for now, when only offering a single device, 3.5 makes the most sense

they can up the contrast ratio, and increase the number of colors it can display, but other than that, the screen is about as good as a screen can be. Ever. They've hit the limit of the human body, theres no sense pushing beyond that, because no person alive will benefit from it in any way. That I can think of. Feel free to correct me on that

The future upgrades to this phone will be in other aspects, not in the screen
 
The same reason why it took Apple two years to add copy and paste.
 
dccorona said:
they can up the contrast ratio, and increase the number of colors it can display, but other than that, the screen is about as good as a screen can be. Ever. They've hit the limit of the human body, theres no sense pushing beyond that, because no person alive will benefit from it in any way. That I can think of. Feel free to correct me on that

The future upgrades to this phone will be in other aspects, not in the screen
Click to expand...

...at a certain distance

If you hold the phone closer then you would notice a difference with higher resolution but I doubt it will be nearly as impressive as going from the 3GS to the 4. And of course there is always marketing, if the specs look radically worse then the competitors, Apple will be forced to upgrade.
 
so they need to put everything in at the same time? first of it called technology you need time for it to develop. at the phone would coast 2X more. jeez
 
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