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iPhone 4's "Retina Display" Claims Challenged
adeelarshad82 writes "Of the many things that buyers might need to know about the new iPhone, Raymond Soneira — president of DisplayMate Technolgies — added one more to the list. Soneira challenged Apple's claims that Apple's new iPhone contains a so-called 'retina display.' According to Soneira, the resolution of the retina is in angular measure, 50 cycles per degree, where a cycle is a line pair, which is two pixels, so the angular resolution of the eye is 0.6 arc minutes per pixel. So, if you hold an iPhone at the typical 12 inches from your eyes, that works out to 477 pixels per inch. At 8 inches it's 716 ppi. You have to hold iPhone 4 out about 18 inches before it falls to 318 ppi. So the iPhone has significantly lower resolution than the retina."
According to Wikipedia:
For a human eye with excellent acuity, the maximum theoretical resolution is 50 CPD (Cycles Per Degree). A rat can resolve only about 1 to 2 CPD.
I guess "rat-ina display" didn't sound as good to Apple marketing :-)
But really, so it may be 18 inches for "true" retina display versus 12 inches. Ok... Big deal.
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This sober, fact-based scientific argument will surely force Apple to adjust their bombastic, exaggerated marketing tactics.
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It isn't meant to have the same resolution as the retina, it is meant to have sufficient resolution at reading distance, just that pixels are not detectable by the retina. Also remember, the colour resolution of the eye is far poorer than the b&w resolution of the eye, and the aim here is about colour. So I think the original statement by Steve is squishy enough to hold up to this scrutiny.
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Here's Apple's page about the new display: http://www.apple.com/iphone/features/retina-display.html
They say "the Retina display’s pixel density is so high, your eye is unable to distinguish individual pixels." I suppose we can assume that they imply "at the typical distance at which you hold your iPhone" because otherwise the claim would be nonsense. Because surely you can hold it close enough to distinguish the pixels. (Unless you really can't, I haven't seen the screen).
But in any case, it's more of a marketing claim than a technical spec. They do not literally mean "this screen has the same 'resolution' as your retina". Your retina doesn't even have pixels! They just mean "it makes web pages looks great!".
So this "president of DisplayMate Technolgies" [sic] is tilting at windmills here.
Now holding iPhone in front of face at comfortable distance... Ruler tells me I'm holding it 18-20 inches away.
However, 12 inches is still comfortable, and I do see people holding their phones that close, just not me. And 24-30" seems to be where I hold it when I'm looking at it in the discreet from-the-waist manner.
This guys argument reminds me vaguely of the guy who asked about Itchy striking Scratchy's same rib twice and making two distinct notes.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
Notice how the mouse sensitivity is set at 80-year-old-grandmother level on Mac's?
You know, there is a preference panel for that...
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
It's all just marketing speak anyway. It IS a higher-resolution display, but giving it a name like "retina" to a display is just the marketing guys trying to make you think that you won't notice any pixelation. That being said it is a better looking display than what's on the 3G/3GS. I think it's also likely that the average person won't notice much pixelation on the new display anyway.
This space for rent...
Jesus, is this guy an Oompa-Loompa or something? I can't wait for the public relations backlash from the Union of Amputees and Thalidomide Children, complaining that Apple's marketing is biased towards people who can hold the Iphone 18 inches from their faces.
In other news, the iPad is not actually magical.
Android OS is not actually an operating system by or for Androids.
Windows 7 wasn't really the idea of some random people in cafes and showers.
Saturns - not actually made on Saturn. Surprising, I know.
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Magic Markers have no magical properties.
Well, *I* recommend that you place the display right up against your eyeball and then carefully pull your bottom eyelid under the lip of the display to keep it in place.
So, technically, you can say it's recommended that you do so.
Seriously, do you have any citation for that recommendation? My understanding was that as long as you take frequent breaks to change your focal length to long distances, the risk of long-term vision* damage was low.
*I do recall reading something about problems with circadian rhythms due to electronic displays, however. But not permanent, IIRC... circadian rhythms can be reset in a few weeks.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
The PC mag article linked is confusing and poorly worded. I also think it's not quite correct. Basically, the human eye at 12 inches, according to their expert, can resolve 477 pixels per inch. Anything higher than that won't make the picture any clearer, but anything lower will look fuzzier (or pixellated). Since the iPhone 4 has a pixel density of 326 per inch, the expert says the claims of retinal resolution are false. However, he assumes the human eye has a resolution of 0.6 arcminutes (there are 60 arcminutes to a degree). I doubt most people have that good of eyesight; the number I always hear is about 1 arcminute for the eye. At 12 inches, that corresponds to a display of 286 pixels per inch to get retinal resolution, which the iPhone surpasses. So sure, if someone with extremely good vision uses this new iPhone, it'll be ever so slightly blurry. But c'mon, we're geeks here, and all wear glasses anyway, right? And either way, I don't think this means the claims by Jobs are *false*. At worst they're are very slightly misleading.
*** Phil Plait, aka The Bad Astronomer http://www.badastronomy.com
So, if you hold an iPhone at the typical 12 inches from your eyes that works out to 477 pixels per inch and at 8 inches it's 716 ppi. You have to hold iPhone 4 out about 18 inches before it falls to 318 ppi. So the iPhone has significantly lower resolution than the retina
No, no, no! Mr. Soneira has it all wrong! The math works out if you are inside a reality-distortion field, since all physical laws either change or do not apply inside said field!
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balderdash and poppycock, on so many levels:
(1) The human eye has very variable resolution. Down in the fovea it may be up at this guy's numbers, but much less everywhere else.
(2) The eye's color receptors are much farther apart, and therefore of poorer resolution, that the monochrome receptors. That's why the old NTSC standard had about 1/3 the color bandwidth than the Y bandwidth.
(3) The iPhone, and every other LCD screen, has three color elements per pixel, while the eye has like 1/3. That's a NINE TIMES difference that this guy is glossing over.
(4) It really doesn't matter. We don't spend our lives inspecting individual pixels-- we let our brain process the images into coherent high-level objects, such as "letters" and "faces".
Otherwise okay.
For a human eye with excellent acuity, the maximum theoretical resolution is 50 CPD[32] (1.2 arcminute per line pair, or a 0.35 mm line pair, at 1 m).
...A resolution of 2 arcminutes per line pair, equivalent to a 1 arcminute gap in an optotype, corresponds to 20/20 (normal vision) in humans
If my math is correct then this is 60% worse than the 'excellent' eye; so the figure of 477 ppi at 12 inches is 286.2ppi; so well within the retina display's capability.
" To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research. "
I call "bull" on the whole thing.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
No offense but you have issues. Either your integrity or your dexterity are in serious doubt.
I'm simply a more distinguishing user. Try the google search below. Note: I develop OSX kernel extensions and I'm writing this from the WWDC right now - Apple broke the API's all of the "fix" programs you will find below use to try and fix the acceleration curve.
http://www.google.com/#q=mac+mouse+acceleration+fix
"I don't know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots." George HW Bush
My boss just walked by my desk and saw me holding a 12" drafting scale and cell phone to my forehead. Thank you slashdot.
Either that or he insists on using a third-party mouse with inadequate driver support for Mac OS X, so what he thinks is helping him is really causing his problem.
Actually my solution is to not use any third party fixes, to use the default (or lower) mouse sensitivity setting, and then use a logitech mouse which will by hardware switch have a huge input DPI. This minimized the acceleration "step" behavior while still allowing me to cross two monitors with a very small and precise mouse movement. This is opposed to the normal mac mouse and user which consists of - elbow move the mouse across the desk, pick it up and move it back, repeat several times.
"I don't know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots." George HW Bush
"Yeah, that's the thing: You can't really talk about this sort of issue with pixel density alone. You can only talk about it as a function of both pixel density and viewing distance."
No, actually it's possible to simply say that the human eye cannot discern individual pixels. Just like we can't discern individual molecules, no matter how close we hold the object to our eyes. There is an average minimum focal distance for the human eye, and if the object is held closer than that to try and discern more detail then it will become out of focus. If the DPI exceeds the human eye resolution at the typical minimum focal distance then the claim is valid.
Better known as 318230.
It's about publishing, not anatomy. This argument is like saying we should have celebrated the millenium in 2001.
Jobs said "300 dpi is a magic number" and indeed it is. He is referring to an ancient publishing standard. In print publishing, 300 dpi is "laser quality". It is very common for a graphic artist to create a "print" version of an artwork at 300 dpi and an "online" version at 72 dpi (effectively zero, or "resolution unknown", or 1:1 pixel ratio). We have looked forward to 300 dpi screens for many years because then you just make one 300 dpi version for both print and screen. The most important number on the dpi resolution ruler is 300. It is extremely significant to ship the first 300+ dpi screen.
A similar magic number in audio is 20kHz, the generally accepted upper limit of human hearing and the standard for "CD audio". The CD was significant because it passed the 20kHz magic number, and consumer audio still uses that frequency range today, 30 years later.
The key thing with these magic numbers is that below them you get dramatically lower quality but above them you get severely limited returns. 300 dpi and 20kHz are the points where it takes an expert to tell the difference between them and a higher quality. Most people can tell the difference between 200 and 300 dpi, but most people cannot tell te difference between 300 dpi and 600 dpi.
So the author of this article should have done some publishing industry research, some graphic arts research, instead of researching the eye. That is what Steve Jobs talks about when he says Apple is not just technology but also liberal arts, a broader knowledge of the world than just science.
This article is not just ignorant, it's also mean-spirited, small-minded. Like people who say "Think Different" is bad grammar. It's poetry you fuck. Broaden your horizons.
I read books in dim lighting holding them 8-10 inches from my face all through high school. (Reading in bed ftw!) My eye doctor thinks that is why my eyes are so strong.
When it comes to eyes, everyone's different. What works for you may not work for me, and vice versa.
Next you'll be proving that, if you examine the facts carefeully, Pepsi isn't really the choice of a new generation.
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