[PCWorld]

Post your comments for Does the iPhone 4 Really Have a "Retina Display"? here

[DTNick]

"Retina" display or no, the difference between old iPhone and new is pretty stunning: http://www.pcworld.c..._explained.html

[offthewall]

I guess it comes down to WHERE you hold your iPhone from your eyes. I just measured and I hold it 19" from my eyes. That seems to fall into Dr. Soneira's estimate of the resolution of the retina.

[AnthonyAmbrosio]

I think OLED screens are much better than LCD. OLED gives you much nicer blacks, much better colors, the displays are thinner and it uses less battery power. LCDs are easier to read in bright lighting conditions only because they are blasting a bright white light behind the image. This also results in wasted battery life and much worse contrast on LCD. Given the choice of displays I will gladly buy an OLED device.

[NCSUCPE]

Jason,

Steve was very careful if you listen to the keynote. He said that at 18", the eye could not distinguish pixels over 300 dpi. Your expert agrees. It is "Retinal" at 18". Good marketing too but he didn't claim more than what you found.

John

[scottjeffreys]

I think Steve Jobs indicated in the demonstration of the retina display that when the iPhone was held at the distance that a normal user would hold the phone (12" or so) that the average user would not see pixels. He never claimed that would be the case at very close proximity. Now his claim on batter life...that's another story all together.

[sroach23]

jobs is just overstating things, like every other company does. nvidia loves to pump their numbers up when comparing their stuff to competitors.

[yeshmiester]

Maybe your math is wrong. 20/20 vision means that your eye can distinguish objects that are 1 arc minute apart. If you say that you can only determine one pixel from another based upon the dot pitch, then the math shows that pixels become indistinguishable at around 11 inches (Yes I did do the math).

[sroach23]

AnthonyAmbrosio, on 09 June 2010 - 10:08 AM, said:

I think OLED screens are much better than LCD. OLED gives you much nicer blacks, much better colors, the displays are thinner and it uses less battery power. LCDs are easier to read in bright lighting conditions only because they are blasting a bright white light behind the image. This also results in wasted battery life and much worse contrast on LCD. Given the choice of displays I will gladly buy an OLED device.

i want the samsung galaxy s for the super amoled screen. you can see it at different angles, you can see it outside in the sunlight, and you have to quit trying to pull the stuff you see out of the screen because everything looks so real.

[KLanD]

Yes they do.

Since "Retina Display" is an Apple catch phrase for their new display.

Does "Retina Display" actually mean anything?

No, it's just a buzz word, something Apple loves to use.

[tangential]

My experience is that 18" is about the typical distance that most people have between their eyes and their iPhone. Those of us over 50 tend to hold it even further away. I think that the reality of that, couple with Jobs 18" comment make the marketing decision to call it a retina display reasonably defensible.

[honkj]

this is not correct, the author is using 2 distinct elements and the angle formed, the problem is most software uses anti alaising, and other methods that blur the distinction between 2 distinct elements...

for a somewhat simplified way to look at it, if you have a black pixel next to a white pixel, you may have a point about the arc, however even if you did have a white pixel next to a black pixel, the software will "grey" out the two pixels so they are no longer white and black, making them so close, that the eye can not tell at the same arc where one begins and the other ends...

so although he is an expert, he has a lot of things wrong there.. including not defining that 20/20 vision is subjective. so I challenge anyone holding the phone 12" away from their eye to try and distinguish between two different pixels, (and please where glasses to correct to what they feel is 20/20 vision...)

[slayman]

*R*eality *D*istortion = *RD* = *R*etinal *D*isplay

[honkj]

his other observation that it is .6 of an arc is also strange?? what is he using? a super human?

[JohnPasquale]

Another one of Apples Gimmicks to attract customers.

No doubt the phone has a beautiful display, its just don't blow it out of proportion when you darn well know that other screens on premium smart phones can be just as nice.

I'm still looking for that next great innovation from apple but haven't seen that since the first iphone release.

[DTNick]

KLanD, on 09 June 2010 - 10:16 AM, said:

Yes they do.

Since "Retina Display" is an Apple catch phrase for their new display.

Does "Retina Display" actually mean anything?

No, it's just a buzz word, something Apple loves to use.

Pretty much--I discount pretty much any and all marketing speak. So my question: does it really matter if it's really "retina" resolution or not? Or does it only matter that the screen, from all early accounts, is pretty dang good?

[StephenHultquist]

Let's be clear: Jobs, for all his gushing, definitely did not say that the "Retinal Display" has "higher resolution than the retina." Instead, he said, "...it turns out there's a magic number that is right around this ppi that when you hold it away from your face... all of sudden things start to look like continues curves. Like text in a fine printed book."

The two are definitely not equivalent. The good Doctor is correct, but it appears that in being so, he's agreeing with Jobs' statement: at 18" you won't be able to see the pixels. I just measured where I hold my iPhone, and it's at 18"... unless I'm squinting at something too small... or too pixelated... to distinguish.

This post has been edited by StephenHultquist: 09 June 2010 - 10:36 AM

[eRoc]

It's just a buzz word. Much like Google's "superphone". Who cares? It has a nice screen. Better then my Nexus, which is pretty awesome.

Call it super-ultra-mega retinal display, as long as it's BETTER that's all we as consumers should care about.

[lschuelke]

NCSUCPE, on 09 June 2010 - 10:08 AM, said:

Jason,

Steve was very careful if you listen to the keynote. He said that at 18", the eye could not distinguish pixels over 300 dpi. Your expert agrees. It is "Retinal" at 18". Good marketing too but he didn't claim more than what you found.

John

John,
Actually, what Steve Jobs said was "around 10 or 12 inches away from your eyes". It is in the keynote at 37:05.
Jason, thanks for sharing this information with us. I always appreciate when companies are called to task for their false claims.

-Law

[BenBurch]

I can't even comfortably focus much closer than 18". Jobs was not stretching the truth unless you are stretching the definition.