back to article Next-gen iPhone pegged with 320ppi display

A trio of intrepid Czech fanbois have arguably proven that the display on the upcoming next-generation iPhone will have a resolution of 960 by 640, and a pixel density of an impressive 320ppi. How Vláďa Janeček, Tomáš Holčík and Filip Kůžel got their hands on Apple's decreasingly top-secret iPhone, they don't say — and proving …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Excellent...

    Just what we need on a touch screen... Even smaller things to stab with our increasingly sausage like fingers... I assume the device comes with a finger sharper?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Or maybe...

      ...they'll simply make the buttons twice as many pixels wide and tall, so they are still the same size?

      As for the supposed resolution, it does seem un Apple-like to make such a "our numbers are bigger than your numbers" move, which isn't tradionally their style. However, the fact it gets around the rescaling exisiting apps fact lends it a lot of credence.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Happy

      @finger sharpener

      Nah, you're thinking of Windows touch devices.

  2. Popup
    Boffin

    Nexus one isn't really 252dpi

    The Nexus One uses an AMOLED display, with Nouvoyance's famous PenTile RGBG pixel arrangement. That means that even though there are 800x480 pixels, not all pixels can show all colours. Not that it really matters as long as you stick to showing off photos, but if you want to compare resolutions you ought to reduce it by 33%, as explained by Ars Technica:

    http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2010/03/secrets-of-the-nexus-ones-screen-science-color-and-hacks.ars/2

    Personally I wish that they would have gone for the PenTile RGBW array instead, but for some reason they never asked me...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Nexus one isn't really 252dpi

      The Nexus One's PenTile arrangement (also seen on the HTC Desire - my other half has one) isn't my favourite thing; the blue/red speckles are distracting compared with phones that have a "genuine" WVGA screen. While reviewing possible phone upgrades I'm currently looking very closely at reviews in an attempt to avoid it. (It's fine for a lot of people, and I defend their design decision, but it annoys me.)

      The Ars Technica article and following discussions make a lot of cases in either direction for the screen; it's probably better than an RGB stripe screen with 2/3 the resolution in a lot of cases, but it's not as good as a genuine WVGA screen. However, no need to look at Ars, since the Reg article itself shows the N1's screen quite nicely. I'm glad to see Apple (allegedly) haven't gone with it.

  3. Pavlovs well trained dog

    I'm going with iPhone HD

    Probably also wrong, but maybe not.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    New name

    If 4G is too confusing, what about G4? It would work for consumers and even cause arousal for the old school fanboys, who I'm sure would love St Job's little in-joke.

    Then, after the G5, they can switch to Intel Atoms. There's my little in-joke too, you see?

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Jobs Horns

    A tricky situation

    It's possible that Apple have finally decided that some people have been avoiding the iPhone for years mostly because of its low resolution. If they were going to increase it, 960x640 is by far the most obvious choice (and I'm kind of surprised they didn't go with this for the iPad). 320ppi isn't so unreasonable - I've already got a 311ppi phone (Toshiba G900). The screen resolution isn't especially influenced by the sensor resolution - placing a finger accurately even at 160ppi is tricky; the benefit of a stylus is less that it's sharp than that you can see what you're poking.

    Still, I'd just made up my mind to jump ship from Windows Mobile (my Touch Pro 2 has decided to crash whenever it displays a photo), with Android being most obvious as a platform I can write my own apps for (cheaply); a Samsung Beam or HTC Evo look tempting. Unfortunately, I'm a resolution junkie, and if Apple *do* break the habit of a lifetime and accept that 100ppi isn't the perfect dot pitch, I'm going to have to think carefully about this. If they do this, I wonder how long it'll take an Android phone manufacturer to catch up?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Flame

      Re: A tricky situation

      " I wonder how long it'll take an Android phone manufacturer to catch up"

      Cool - more Android fragmentation. Pretty soon developing for this platform, you'll either choose one handset only (and be limited in how much you can sell), or you'll spend more time making allowances for every handset.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: A tricky situation

        Android fragmentation? Android already has to deal with 800x480 and 852x480 screens, along with smaller variants and use on netbooks or external screens. It's been a long time since Android devices were all the same resolution - unlike the situation with the iPhone. On the other hand, the G1 had exactly the same pixel format as the iPhone, so I would hope most apps that were written to cope with it and use virtual coordinates might work okay. At least, it would be less work than a WXGA phone. (Aside: anyone got an acronym for 960x640? DVGA?) If the worst comes to the worst, you could always run an 800x480 app with black borders.

        Frankly, I'll live if a few games are broken if it means I have more room for surfing, PDFs, editing...

  6. jubtastic1

    It's about the iPad

    Very few people not armed with microscopes are going to notice the difference between 160 and 320 dpi on a 3" screen.

    Almost everyone will notice how much better an iPhoneHD app looks running on an iPad, bigger buttons for sure, but they'll be as crisp as the native iPad apps rather than current 480x320 apps which are pixel doubled to drop the iPad display down to an apparent 80dpi.

    Can't argue with IPS though, that's just pure win.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: It's about the iPad...

      "Very few people not armed with microscopes are going to notice the difference between 160 and 320 dpi on a 3" screen."

      Codswallop. This kind of thinking is why I've been stuck with Windows Mobile for so long, as the only source (until recently) of decent-resolution phones. Lots of people claim that you'd never see the difference, and then someone actually reviews one and comments on how incredibly sharp the screen is. Some people claim you'd never want more than XGA on a monitor, but the same people tend to go "whoah" when presented with a T221.

      Some people aren't comfortable with the phone held near their face. Fine: I won't begrudge them their original iPhones or G1s. I'm comfortable with the phone close up (in fact, after eye surgery, *only* with the phone close up), and I can see the pixels at 311ppi.

  7. Tom Cooke

    Never mind the quality, feel the width

    That second to last one looks like the pinstripe on my suit trousers - anyone think so too?

    1. Jerome 0

      Pinstripe

      I don't know, I've never seen the pinstripe on your suit trousers.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Good decision

    IPS will make for a very good viewing angle, the resolution will make for incredibly sharp text and images. It's all good.

    I'm not a fan of the iphone due to Apple's way of doing things, but the hardware is cool. Though 320dpi is a bit over the top.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Grenade

    960-by-640 pixel count so what , that's still crap compared to Oct 17th 2006 tech

    "According to the Czechs, the 320ppi pixel density of the display they examined is unmatched in any other handheld — the HTC HD2 tops out at 217ppi, the Motoroloa Droid at 265ppi, and Google's Nexus One, 252ppi. The current iPhone 3GS is a veritable fogey at 163ppi.

    The 960-by-640 display would jibe with what DigiTimes analyst Ming-Chi Kuo reported mid–last month:"

    960-by-640 pixel count so what , that's still crap compared to Oct 17th 2006 tech...1920x1080 pixels and 1024x768 XGA

    http://www.engadget.com/2006/10/17/sanyo-epson-announce-7-1-inch-1080p-lcd-by-far-the-worlds-smal/

    Sanyo-Epson announce 7.1-inch 1080p LCD: by far the world's smallest

    By Thomas Ricker posted Oct 17th 2006 8:21AM

    "....

    Sanyo-Epson 2006: UMPCs to bump that all-too-common 7-inch, 800x480 display to a whopping 1920x1080 pixels -- assuming same or greater battery life, naturally. What, who ya callin' greedy!? Now if that's still not small enough for you then try on their 2.6-inch TFT LCD panel also announced, touting a 1024x768 XGA resolution and destined for PMPs and cellphones. The panels will be on display at FPD International in Japan starting tomorrow where we hopes to gets additional details and wafer-thin snaps held by waffer-thin models -- you know, as these things tend to go."

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      So what happened to it?

      Interesting sounding tech, AC, but... Nearly four years and no sign of this technology in current devices?

      My guess is that it probably still costs $4,000 per screen or some such madness.

    2. Aaron 10
      Jobs Halo

      Resolution

      I doubt your eyes can resolve significantly better than 300 DPI on a display anyway. Anything higher and you're just pushing pixels with no benefit.

  10. Jolyon Ralph

    iPhone 3GTi

    That's what it'll be called. For certain.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    So what happened to it?

    Good question Tony Chandler, perhaps Rik Myslewski and the other's on the Elreg team should make some serious phone calls, and write up exactly why we don't have these and other current mobile sized 1920x1080 pixels and 1024x768 XGA displays available in bulk everywhere in today's High profile AVC HD market place.

    i don't want no stinking 960x640 display when they were making these real HD 16:9 ratio displays way back then, i want to drop my existing AVC high profile 1080 and 720 mkv video directly on these mobile displays, i don't want to be farting about transcoding and re-scaling down to some sub standard lesser aspect ratio or screen size today...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: So what happened to it?

      I believe the Sanyo-Epson 7.1" screen was only even a technology demonstrator - although I can imagine it might have been handy for some professional TV cameras. If you do the maths, it was also only 310ppi, and wouldn't exactly fit in a pocket. I'd have loved one on a netbook, though (even with my pathological hatred of 16:9 as a format). Not that I ever stretched to a Sony Vaio P, which had probably the nearest approximation to this panel that I've ever seen in a product.

      As for the XGA panel, I don't know what happened to it - although you can get some pretty high-res LCDs that are intended for sticking into projectors.

      Nothing short of 1280x720 would actually be very useful for HD playback. The Android phones with 854x480 screens are at least 16:9 and have the same number of vertical pixels as US standard-def content (horizontal pixels don't help so much since the SD formats don't have square pixels anyway). I'm more interested in a high-res screen for web browsing, editing, reading PDFs, etc. - for all of these, 16:9 is detrimental. I'll save the HD resolutions for an integrated projector (or at least an integrated mini-HDMI). Roll on the Samsung Beam or HTC Evo. Preferably with a screen upgrade.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    Resolution

    "Aaron 10

    Resolution # ↑

    Posted Wednesday 2nd June 2010 15:16 GMT

    I doubt your eyes can resolve significantly better than 300 DPI on a display anyway. Anything higher and you're just pushing pixels with no benefit."

    you seem to be missing the point, the fact is people will be using these and other mobile devices to store and play an existing given personal selection of content for viewing/interacting with it on the move Yes...

    but they will also be taking this exact same content and connecting it to other far larger 52" + displays by wired 1gig and wireless 11N etc when available so a low bitrate and visually fuzzy "baseline" or even "main profile" 960-by-640 AVC.mkv will not do.

    and i don't want to be making several versions/conversions on the fly or stored somewhere, i just want to use my existing and growing Blue ray/BBC HD Veetle and even near future "Sonic waves $323m in DivX"http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/06/02/sonic_divx/ etc High profile 1920x1080 and 1024x768 AVC/H.264 backups directly TODAY, end of story.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Resolution

      "but they will also be taking this exact same content and connecting it to other far larger 52" + displays by wired 1gig and wireless 11N etc when available so a low bitrate and visually fuzzy "baseline" or even "main profile" 960-by-640 AVC.mkv will not do."

      Well, yes. Although you seem to mention some pretty exotic technologies compared with just plugging an HDMI cable in (the correct wireless video standard is a projector; everything else just knackers the available wireless bandwidth for everyone within yelling range). Still, there's no reason for the screen resolution of the phone to be the same as the target data resolution; just because it can play 1080p content and feed it down an HDMI cable doesn't mean the screen has to be 1920x1080. If you want 1080p content to look good on a phone screen, the logical panel would be something like 960x540, displayed with 2:1 downscaling; the alleged iPhone panel could do this merely by letterboxing a bit (aka somwhere to put the controls). Since everyone seems to have skipped 720p televisions (mostly because of 1366x768 panels making a mess of the picture) and most movie content seems to come out in 1080p, trying to fit a 1280x720 panel into a phone would probably make the image look only marginally better, and much more expensive. Keep the content at 1080p and it can be output to a larger screen in full resolution.

      I'm hypothesizing, and I'm no great fan of Apple (I'd prefer to see the alleged screen for the new iPhone on an Android device), but 960x640 is actually far from a stupid choice for video playback. That said, as it happens, video is the last thing I'm likely to use a phone for - unless Sky produce an app that lets you download programmes from your Sky HD box for later viewing. (Hmm. There's an app in that.)

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    its not even a generic old 4:3 ratio or current 16:6 ratio screen size

    just to clarify this so called next gen iphone 960x640 display is not even an old standard 4:3 ratio SAR 1.333 or current 16:9 ratio SAR 1.778 see

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_resolutions

    DVGA[5][6], expected resolution of next iPhone[7] 960×640 3:2 1.5 614,400

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    3:2 aspect ratio displays are bad (not good) for now and the future.

    "AC Posted Wednesday 2nd June 2010 10:29 GMT

    It's possible that Apple have finally decided that some people have been avoiding the iPhone for years mostly because of its low resolution. If they were going to increase it, 960x640 is by far the most obvious choice (and I'm kind of surprised they didn't go with this for the iPad)."

    bollocks is a good word :)

    960x640 is by no means the most obvious choice Today as its a crappy 3:2, not even reaching the old UK 4:3 ratio standard never mind the generic 16:9 everything and its dog are using now.

    see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_resolutions

    there's ONLY One single right and viable generic global Long term "most obvious" choice today, and that's a valid and current 16:9 aspect ratio both for generic current 720/1080P and fully comparable/compatible with the future 16:9 3D and super-HD AVC 2K and Super Hi-Vision 4K 16:9 displays.

    get with it man, don't keep taking everything apple PR tells you is good, 3:2 aspect ratio displays are NOT the future i want to use in the UK or the EU and far east....

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: 3:2 aspect ratio displays are bad (not good) for now and the future

      1) When I described 960x640 as the obvious choice, I meant it only in that it provides the fewest porting difficulties for existing apps aimed at a 480x320 device. This applies to Android as well as Apple, although the Android market has had a bit longer to get their heads around the idea of variable resolution.

      2) 3:2 is the right aspect ratio for displaying the output of most DSLRs. I'm a keen photographer. Gimme.

      3) 16:9 is the right resolution only for video content. It was picked as a compromise between 4:3 and 2.35:1. Numerically, it's a pain for processing (e.g. 1080 pixels doesn't divide by 16, so most 1080p content wastes some encoding on half the macroblocks on the last line). It doesn't divide into many obvious lower resolutions (that are convenient multiples of 8 or 16 for display algorithms). It's too narrow for displaying A4 pages - it doesn't tile obviously. In landscape, too much of the vertical real estate is typically taken up by window furniture (or on-screen keyboard); in portrait, it's too narrow for a typical page width. 16:10 is better (and nearer to the golden ratio); 5:4 or 4:3 are better still, especially for desktop displays where the horizontal footprint is usually far more limited than the height of the ceiling, but I'll admit that a less square aspect ratio fits in the pocket better. 2.35:1 works for cinema because of the large solid angle and sense of immersion; it doesn't translate well to a small screen on a desktop, let alone phone. If you treat your phone as a video iPod, 16:9 probably makes sense. I use my phone for document and web browsing and for editing; I'll take my pixels where I can get them, but for me 16:9 on a phone is almost as much of a pain as it would be on a desktop. That said, phone manufacturers will probably follow the desktop panels to a 16:9 model: a 22" 16:9 monitor is significantly smaller than a 22" 16:10 monitor, and I'm sure they'd like to get more 4" phones out of a piece of glass.

      4) While I don't think Apple's PR have said anything at all about a 960x640 screen (unless they were behind the alleged leak), I certainly have no interest in what Apple have to say - historically, what they've said is 100ppi is good enough for anyone. What I'd really want is this panel in an Android phone. After which, I still won't play videos on it. I have a TV for that, and its battery doesn't go flat when I need to make a phone call.

      I'm curious as to who might be making the panel, though, and whether it'll be an Apple exclusive.

  15. Jerome 0
    Boffin

    Microscopes

    "when they trained a zoom-capable microscope on the purported next-gen iPhone's display"

    Those zoom-capable microscopes are a wonderful invention. I never saw the point of the old variety, with their 1x magnification.

  16. Mokey Joe

    Going back to paper

    I think 300dpi will bring iphone content into line with printed media, not newspapers but magazine and the kind of 'rich content' people will consume with this class of device.

This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like