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The iPhone's display blows away every other display we've ever seen
In resolution and detail that is -- there has been a lot of fuss about the iPhone 4's new so called retina display and now that we've had some time to check it out ourselves we have to say, there hasn't been enough fuss about it. As videophiles we understand that resolution isn't everything, but boy is it a lot. Now we realize that all the talking in the world can't convey how awesome the screen displays text and video, so instead we crunched a few numbers to put things into perspective. The advertised pixels per inch (PPI) of the iPhone's display is 326, but what does that really mean? Well the calculated PPI of our 1080p 60-inch Kuro: it's a meager 36 -- luckily we don't sit 12 inches away from it. In fact a 1080p TV could only be 7-inches if it wanted to match that PPI. A 60-inch HDTV would have to have a resolution of 16815x9500 to match it -- gasp -- which is four times the horizontal resolution of 4k! Speaking of which, a 4K display could only be 14-inches. But the iPhone isn't like an HDTV; its main purpose is to display text, not video. So what about a 20-inch PC display, how many pixels would it need to match the PPI of the iPhone? Try 5600x3500, which is about double the horizontal resolution of WQXGA at 2560x1600. But like we said at the start, resolution isn't everything and a Blu-ray Disc on our 60-inch HDTV is still more enjoyable than watching video on a phone no matter what the resolution. This is mostly due to the size of the display, but also because of the distance we sit from it. And in addition to the small size there is the lower contrast, and the lack of surround sound. But that doesn't change the fact that once you spend some time using the iPhone 4, all of a sudden everything else does seem to lack detail and other screens we used to love, like the older iPhone and the Zune HD, look down right fuzzy -- can you tell which image above is the Zune HD and which is the iPhone 4? Sadly the iPhone isn't the perfect HD fanatic's companion though, because it still requires us to convert our 1080p content to 720p, and although the video looks great on the display, there's no way to get HD on to our bigger screen -- we're keeping an eye out for a HDMI to iPhone dock. One thing is for sure though, when it comes to detail and flat out resolution per inch, the iPhone is the new boss.
LG Display busts out 84-inch 3DTV with 3,840 x 2,160 res, we want the 2D version
Yesterday we brought you Samsung's 19 inches of transparent AMOLED goodness, today LG counters with an 84-inch 3DTV boasting UHD resolution and a claim to being the world's biggest of its kind. To be honest, at that size you really can't get away with old reliable 1080p, so it's comforting to see LG's keeping pixel pitch in mind when designing its headline grabbers. In other news coming out of the SID 2010 show, LG is demonstrating a "liquid lens" TV that'll give you glasses-free 3D, though the details of how that works are a bit scarce, while the company's also pushing its IPS wares in a big way, with a 47-inch HDTV, a 32-inch pro monitor, and a 9.7-inch (sounds familiar) smartbook on show. Also at 9.7 inches, we have color e-paper that's slated for mass production before the end of the year, while that flexible e-paper from January is also making an appearance. A pretty comprehensive bunch of goodies from LG, we'd say. Update: We just noticed a small but freaky 3.98-inch UHD LCD with a world's best 394ppi density. Amazing.
On resolution independence
There is a lot of buzz and speculation floating around as to what we'll see in the Mac OS X 10.5 update that will be previewed (and I suspect released) at this August's World Wide Developer's Conference. One exciting 'fundamental feature' John Gruber hinted at last November has been mentioned again by a developer named Dustin MacDonald: resolution independence.Gruber broke this concept down in a November '05 post titled Full Metal Jacket (under the Display heading), but to summarize: most of the dimensions of elements in Mac OS X (and other OSes to my knowledge) are defined in pixels - the menu bar is 22 px high, for example. This explains why things 'seem to look a little smaller' when you move from the 1024 x 768 dimensions of a 12" display to the 1440 x 900 resolution of the latest 15" PowerBook G4 or MacBook Pro displays. Conversely, if you decrease the resolution on the machine you're working on now, things will look a bit bigger; you have smaller resolution and fewer ppi (or dpi) on screen, so some elements change size. This can become a problem in the context of notebook displays and their resolutions - if you take the 15" MacBook Pro's resolution higher than 1440 x 900, things could become smaller than what many might consider usable (these same rules apply to Windows and I believe Linux as well). Further, you can't just keep increasing notebook display sizes like you can with desktop displays; I've heard of the 19" notebooks Engadget has come across, and I personally don't consider a 16 lb computer worthy of the 'portable' adjective.
