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Shouldn't Retina display come to ipad first...

T

thirumalkumaran

macrumors member
Original poster
Apr 22, 2010
42
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The Retina Display aims at bringing display fineness to print level..

But shouldn't it be used at the ipad 1st. Which is designed specifically for books, web & photos..

I'm sure RD will come to Ipad, But the question is Why it didn't make to ipad 1st..

@ Apple: Can we expect Retina Display on Ipad version 2.
 
It's been covered many times on many threads over the last few days. To summarise - to run a display like that on an iPad's size screen would require a number of pixels that would be somewhere in the region of the resolution of an iMac 27" - try powering that in a form factor of an iPad.
 
Thats a bad idea for many reasons. 2 of them being the power/battery requirements and a much more powerful graphics chip to push those pixels.
 
Dagless said:
Thats a bad idea for many reasons. 2 of them being the power/battery requirements and a much more powerful graphics chip to push those pixels.
Click to expand...
Add cost to that. Right now, even if they could find a manufacturer able to make it in volume, what would the price be? $2,500 for an entry-level 16GB WiFi unit anyone?

Regarding power, I totally agree regarding the CPU/GPU to push those extra pixels. That'll be here next year no problem within the current power envelope. I'm less clear about the screen itself though.

Does going to a higher resolution have a linear relationship between pixel count and power consumption as far as just the display is concerned? Isn't the big power drain the backlight and isn't that more a factor of the screen area rather than the number of pixels (although maybe the pixel density affects the opacity of the system)? I know little about display panel technology but I'd be very interested to know the answer.

- Julian
 
I think if Apple were going to put the Retina Display in the iPad they should have done it for the current iPad so developers could build their apps to that resolution. I have to say a 2048*1536 (or more, that would only be 264PPI) sounds very attractive in a 9.7 inch display. 1080p movies anyone?
 
well right now it makes sense that batteries and processors simply won't push that much retina real estate.

but if you buy into the retina hype, which i do, that technology was made for a device like the ipad far more so than a tiny little phone.

it may take a couple years, but i can't wait.... ipad with retina will be amazing
 
thirumalkumaran said:
I'm sure RD will come to Ipad, But the question is Why it didn't make to ipad 1st..
Click to expand...

You are assuming the technology was ready to go when the iPad hardware specs were finalized which was probably over a year ago. But even if it was, remember that Apple needs something to make you want to buy Version 2. 3G wasn't in the original iPhone even though ATT had 3G at the time.
 
JulianL said:
Regarding power, I totally agree regarding the CPU/GPU to push those extra pixels. That'll be here next year no problem within the current power envelope.
Click to expand...

When that time comes, and you're left with the choice, which option would you choose?

An iPadX with as much resolution as now, but with a magical 24h playtime.
Or an iPadX with double the resolution, but just as much usage time as now?

It'd be a dilemma for me..
 
JulianL said:
Add cost to that. Right now, even if they could find a manufacturer able to make it in volume, what would the price be? $2,500 for an entry-level 16GB WiFi unit anyone?

Regarding power, I totally agree regarding the CPU/GPU to push those extra pixels. That'll be here next year no problem within the current power envelope. I'm less clear about the screen itself though.
Click to expand...

Sorry but totally disagree with that. You're talking about a panel with close to 3,000 horizontal pixels and over 2,000 vertical.... it's a screen resolution greater than that of the 27 inch iMac to put that into perspective (if you shrank the iMac down to the same size as the iPad you'd end up with 285.7ppi as opposed to the 300ppi plus you need to match iPhone 4). That bumps EVERYTHING up to a ridiculous degree. If we assume for a moment that you tripple the resolution (for a ppi of 395.88, above what we need but it makes the maths easy) then you are having to push NINE times the pixels that you do right now.

Everything gets so much harder when you make that sort of exponential jump. You need a graphics card than can work a multiple faster than the current one (not nine times necessarily but still a massive increase), you need more memory for the screen framebuffer, power consumption goes up... this is NOT a trivial exercise and it's a totally different problem than that of the iPhone 4

Actually let me put it this way: It'd be like taking a gaming PC that produces 30fps at 1280 x 800, sticking a 30" cinema display which runs at 2560 x 1600 and expecting it to still produce the same results. And that's only a doubling of pixel count, not the near-trippling that you'd need to do to get 300+ppi on an iPad.
 
I agree with what everyone else has said. It will require a lot of power to drive that many pixels and display cost increases exponentially with size.

But even if the iPad could push the display and maintain battery AND, even if the cost was the same as the current display I still think they would have released it on the iPhone first.

Case in point: the front facing camera on the iPhone. We know that they could have put the same camera on the iPad. In fact, we know from the teardowns that the iPad has a slot at the top that perfectly matches the camera module used in MacBook Pros. So... why no iPad camera? Because they wanted the iPhone to have it first.

The iPhone is Apple's flagship device and it will always be the innovator.
 
Isn't the new iPhone got a lower resolution than the iPad?

Hence the new iPhone apps will be the same size as the 2x mode on the iPad?
 
DenniZ said:
Isn't the new iPhone got a lower resolution than the iPad?

Hence the new iPhone apps will be the same size as the 2x mode on the iPad?
Click to expand...

I don't believe the iPhone Apps "see" the full resolution but are just upscaled from 480x320 to 960x640 to keep them compatible with the older iPhones/iTouch's.

So in effect no difference for the iPad upscaling 2x for iPhone Apps.
 
Julien said:
I don't believe the iPhone Apps "see" the full resolution but are just upscaled from 480x320 to 960x640 to keep them compatible with the older iPhones/iTouch's.

So in effect no difference for the iPad upscaling 2x for iPhone Apps.
Click to expand...
You are correct for older iPhone apps. However newer apps will be redesigned with the higher resolution display in mind. Look at the apps in the demo. Their icons have substantially more detail than the apps that shipped with the older iPhones.
 
Julien said:
I don't believe the iPhone Apps "see" the full resolution but are just upscaled from 480x320 to 960x640 to keep them compatible with the older iPhones/iTouch's.

So in effect no difference for the iPad upscaling 2x for iPhone Apps.
Click to expand...

Yeah, the new iPhone has 4 times the pixels, but the screen is exactly the same physical size with the exact same ratio so current apps will look exactly like they to on a 3GS. It doesn't seem like it would be hard for developers to update their apps to the new resolution. They don't have to do anything with the size or dimensions; they just have to up the resolution.
 
MisterMe said:
You are correct for older iPhone apps. However newer apps have been redesigned with the higher resolution display in mind. Look at the apps in the demo. Their icons have substantially more detail than the apps that shipped with the older iPhones.
Click to expand...

This is true for all of Apple's native apps, but not for 3rd party apps. Though I suspect that many 3rd parties will have theirs ready in the next two weeks.
 
macboy4 said:
We know that they could have put the same camera on the iPad. In fact, we know from the teardowns that the iPad has a slot at the top that perfectly matches the camera module used in MacBook Pros. So... why no iPad camera?
Click to expand...

Because that's not a camera slot, that is for the ambient light sensor.
 
88Keys said:
Because that's not a camera slot, that is for the ambient light sensor.
Click to expand...

When I say, "we know from the teardowns there's a slot for the camera" I'm not talking about the ambient light sensor. Go review the teardowns.
 
I'm in favor of having display technology that meets or exceeds the limits of the human eye. Looking at an app in 2x on an iPhone 4 will not be nearly as ugly as looking at it on an iPad. In fact, it will probably be difficult to tell it's not a regular iPhone. Only when our eyes become accustomed to finer detail in full res apps written for iPhone 4 will we notice 2x looks more "blocky". What we need are devices where individual pixels are so small that any app designed to run at native resolution cannot possibly look "blocky" without a magnifying glass.

Pushing larger numbers of pixels around is a tough problem. Let's say you want 16 bit color depth on a 1024x768 display. Let's say you are using a 32 bit micro, so every memory cycle pushes 2 pixels. It takes 393216 cycles to do one screen refresh. At 30 fps, that's 11.7 million "memory write cycles" per second just to keep the display updated. Now let's keep the same color depth but triple the size of the display. You need 3.5 million cycles for one screen refresh. At 30 fps, your "memory write cycles" required to keep the display refreshed are suddenly up to 106 million. We've done nothing about figuring out what color those pixels should be. Our program workload is 9 times more as well. Basically, Apple would need to overclock its A4 chip by a factor of 9 to get this done. Ain't gonna happen. Yet. But it definitely should happen. The days of pixels being less than 300 per inch should someday be behind us. I just don't think we will see it in time for second gen iPad.

What we might get instead is a smaller iPad that still sports 1024x768 resolution.
 
macboy4 said:
When I say, "we know from the teardowns there's a slot for the camera" I'm not talking about the ambient light sensor. Go review the teardowns.
Click to expand...
4685450627_50ebfa8a22.jpg
 
It should be stated now that the reason why desktop and laptop screens today don't have incredibly high DPIs is not because it isn't technically possible, but because neither Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux are resolution independent right now. And because they aren't, when you run apps on a display that has a high DPI, everything becomes tiny because apps hardcode positions based on pixels.

With the iPhone, nearly all apps use Apple's APIs for development, meaning that changes to how the APIs function can add new functionality. Trying to do the same thing on desktop OS's would break too many apps for it to be worthwhile.
 
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