iPhone 4 to Have Ultra-High Quality 'Retina Display'
CREDIT: Apple
The next iPhone will feature a so-called retina display that will make text and video noticeably sharper, according to Apple CEO Steve Jobs.
At a conference today where he unveiled iPhone 4 – the next generation of Apple's popular smartphone after the 3GS – Jobs provided visual demonstrations of the device's smooth graphical renderings.
"This is a biggie," Jobs said about retina display. "Awesome text, awesome images, and awesome video. We think this will set the standard, and no one is going to come close."
Key to retina display is pixel density, or the number of units of color and light on an electronic screen. For the new iPhone, "we dramatically increased the pixel density . . . four times the amount [of the iPhone 3GS]."
"Because we have four times as many pixels, we get really, really sharp text," Jobs said. Background images at the conference of a fuzzy and a clear letter 'a' on the third and fourth generation iPhone supported his claim.
The new iPhone screen also provides an 800:1 contrast ratio, which is four times better than the 3GS on its 960 pixel by 640 pixel display.
Essentially, the image quality is getting so good, according to Jobs, that objects on the iPhone 4 screen begin to lose their pixellated computer aspect entirely. "There's a magic number that is right around this [pixels per inch] that when you hold it away from your face . . . all of sudden things start to look like continuous curves. Like text in a fine printed book."
"Once you use a retina display, you can't go back," Jobs promised.
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