iPhone 4 App pixelation

[designernate]

Hey everyone,*

I was just wondering if any of you have noticed some odd things with the pixelation of your apps. The new iPhone 4 has a beautiful display and because of this the older apps on your phone appear much worse than before (just compare the safari icon to your older 3rd party app it's noticeable )

I know this is a normal issue the developers just have to update their icon to support the higher resolution. However I've noticed a strange phenomenon where if you update or redownload a old app the greyed out image with the loading bar appears to be a hi res image until it installs where it reverts back to the low res....

Has anyone else encountered this? Try it and see if it happens to you.... Here's pics to show what I mean:

http://att.macrumors.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=235080&d=1277831422

http://att.macrumors.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=235081&d=1277831422

 

[fuzion]

There was a thread on this, iOS overlays a loading layer onto the app icon when it's downloading, this layer is high res and darkens the developers icon, which makes it look good until it finishes installing.. then you see the dev's icon again.

 

[darngooddesign]

There was a thread on this, iOS overlays a loading layer onto the app icon when it's downloading, this layer is high res and darkens the developers icon, which makes it look good until it finishes installing.. then you see the dev's icon again.

If this were the case then the icon in the first screenshot would be dark and pixelated, but it is dark and high res.

Weird issue though. Have you tried deleting the app from your phone and then reinstalling it?

 

[sleyeu]

the icon probably isint updates for the retina display so you are making a small icon bigger.

and we all know what that means...

 

[Mike84]

Doesn't this have to do with the developer not updating the app yet?

 

[designernate]

If this were the case then the icon in the first screenshot would be dark and pixelated, but it is dark and high res.

Weird issue though. Have you tried deleting the app from your phone and then reinstalling it?

Yep even tried deleting reseting then reinstalling one thought I had was if you look in iTunes at your apps you'll notice the developer made hires versions (shows up where music album art shows on the side) this would explain how it's able to be hires I just want to keep the hires one and not go back to the crap icon lol

 

[designernate]

the icon probably isint updates for the retina display so you are making a small icon bigger.

and we all know what that means...

Oh I completely understand that but what the weird thing is that it's previewing higher res versions of the app while installing then it reverts back to the low res.

 

[Jason S.]

Developers have to submit high resolution icons for use in iTunes, so I don't know why they just can't update all icons to use these images right from the get-go. There should be no reason that the icons in iTunes are different from the icons for the app on the phone.

 

[designernate]

the icon probably isint updates for the retina display so you are making a small icon bigger.

and we all know what that means...

Developers have to submit high resolution icons for use in iTunes, so I don't know why they just can't update all icons to use these images right from the get-go. There should be no reason that the icons in iTunes are different from the icons for the app on the phone.

I completely agree and for some reason I'm seeing these when I install but they go away after installed! It would be an easy way to quickly get rid of all the pixelated icons.

 

[DemonJim]

I completely agree and for some reason I'm seeing these when I install but they go away after installed! It would be an easy way to quickly get rid of all the pixelated icons.

It would be easy but would use more memory and be slower if all the home screen icons were all being scaled down from 512x512 at run-time.

They could generate all the scaled down versions on install of course, but another reason they don't just use the iTunes icon is so developers have full pixel control of all icons, especially for the 29x29 pixel icon used for spotlight results and the settings icon. They might want to simplify it for the small ones and have more detail in the main iTunes 512x512 icon, detail that will just blur out when scaled down.

An app can have the 512x512 png icon embedded in the actual bundle (just called iTunesArtwork, used for Ad Hoc distribution) and this may be what is getting displayed during installation (either that or the actual iTunes one is transferred temporarily) - which explains the higher res during install before it finally unloads that and switches to the 57x57 icon also provided [if the 114x114 icon isn't present].