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iPad 3 Confirmed To Have 2048x1536 Screen Resolution

bonch writes "After months of reporting on photos of iPad 3 screen parts, MacRumors finally obtained one for themselves and examined it under a microscope, confirming that the new screens will have twice the linear resolution of the iPad 2, with a whopping 2048x1536 pixel density. Hints of the new display's resolution were found in iBooks 2, which contains hi-DPI versions of its artwork. The iPad 3 is rumored to be launching in early March."

10 of 537 comments (clear)

  1. Re:whoa by MobileTatsu-NJG · · Score: 4, Informative

    Nobody with a smartphone using a 200+dpi display would agree with you.

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    "I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)

  2. Re:Nice. by EdIII · · Score: 4, Informative

    It looks really nice, but I just can't bring myself to drink the Koolaid and walk into the walled garden. I like a little more freedom in my devices.

    Now if you could jail brake it and install Android 4.0 I might consider it for the specs. I have to hand to Apple, they do look damn good.

  3. Re:hmm by BasilBrush · · Score: 5, Informative

    Apple will only multiply the resolution by two. Anything less compromises the quality of artwork on existing apps.

  4. Re:DPI comparison? by MobileTatsu-NJG · · Score: 4, Informative

    The DPI measurement is only a measure of width, not a measure of area. You don't quadruple the count when measuring that.

    Take a look, you won't find anybody calling the iPad3 500+ dpi. It has a LOWER DPI than the iPhone 4.

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    "I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)

  5. Re:DPI comparison? by perpenso · · Score: 4, Informative

    You're going to need to show your work on that one... It looks like you tried to just double the 132, and accidentally came to 234 instead of 264. You're wrong regardless, since the resolution is doubling in both the X and the Y dimensions, meaning that the total pixels per inch should be quadrupled. 4 x 132 = 528.

    Pixels per inch is a one dimension unit. 2 x 132 = 264 is correct. 264 ppi along X and 264 ppi along Y.

  6. Why would you not just get a monitor? by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 4, Informative

    There are a number of 27" and 30" displays that are 2.5k. The NEC PA271W and PA301W, the HP ZR2740w and ZR30w, the Dell U2711 and U3011, the DoubleSight DS- 277W and DS- 307W and so on.

    They are 2560x1440 for the 27s, 2560x1600 for the 30s.

    It isn't hard to find for regular old computers. However I imagine anyone shooting in the digital cinema 2k format is probably not concerned about having to get pro gear because they already have it. You have to step up to some pretty expensive cameras before you start talking that. Everything even remotely prosumer is 1920x1080 max since that is what you are targeting for home, of course. If you have to get expensive cameras, an expensive display isn't likely to be a show stopper.

    However as I said, plenty of computer displays that do 2k (and more) no problem.

  7. Re:PrtSc by AresTheImpaler · · Score: 4, Informative
    But Apple fans should find a way to say that having that DPI is better.

    I believe there are a few android devices that have their DPI very close to the iphone 4/4s. I'm pretty sure there's at least one that is higher. Anyway, there is a reason why having a higher DPI is better. It makes everything A LOT clearer. Text becomes much easier to read. This picture compares the iPhone 3GS and an iPhone 4. If you can't see the difference or why one is better, then you should check your eyesight.

  8. Re:Unfortunately by JDG1980 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Unfortunately users at my company will still find a way to run them at 800x600

    You laugh, but this is actually a serious reason why we don't have high-DPI displays on the mainstream desktop.

    Not everyone has perfect 20/20 vision, or the same tolerance for small print. Many users already have problems reading text on existing displays when set to the default of 96 DPI. Unfortunately, the art of DPI scaling on mainstream OSes is still stuck in the dark ages. There are a LOT of poorly-written applications that assume 96 DPI and display badly broken output if anything else is set. Windows 7 is better than XP in its DPI scaling, but even so, it's far from perfect. Windows doesn't even support vector icons! The best you can do is to create a high-quality raster icon at 256x256 and hope it looks OK when downscaled.

    This is why so many users run a LCD monitor at less than the recommended resolution. The slight blurriness is better for them than crystal-clear text too small to read, or various graphical nastiness from broken DPI scaling. Just today, in fact, I dealt with such a situation at work. One of our librarians said that some icons in the library management software were appearing all-black. I'd seen this issue before and knew it was due to the software not supporting 120 DPI, which this librarian had set for easier reading. I tried a few different things to see if I could get it to work – I set the "Disable display scaling" option in Compatibility properties, and also tried XP-style DPI scaling as well as the native Windows 7-style scaling. None of this worked. Ultimately, the only fix was to switch back to 96 DPI and run the monitor at a non-native resolution.

    As long as this situation continues, monitor makers see no advantage in higher resolutions than 1080p, since so many users will just sacrifice that resolution for readability anyway.

  9. Re:4:3 comes back! by tlhIngan · · Score: 5, Informative

    Eleven years ago you could buy a 24" monitor that could do this resolution, and 21" monitors that did 1600x1200 were commonplace. Inch for inch a 4:3 monitor will have more usable space than an equivalent widescreen display, they got popular because companies figured out they were cheaper to make and gave more panels for a given investment.

    I hated CRT monitors - they always got blurry when you ran them at super-high resolutions. Of course, I never bought the $2000 high end ones... (and having to run at 85Hz meant the monitor really only did 800x600).

    The real reason cheap screens are 720p or 1080p is because the processing electronics is trivially cheap. It's basically the same as a regular HDTV. And that gives you a VGA and DVI/HDMI input "for free". To do 1920x1200 requires a different video processing chip for the monitor, which costs a lot more money because of the limited market (one reason why a 24" 1080p is available for under $200, while a 24" 1920x1200 is $500+).

    Apple can do this because they're making these things by the millions, so they can buy in such huge quantities that high res stuff is cheap for them.

  10. Re:Finally some screen advancements? by Lord_Jeremy · · Score: 5, Informative

    Are you kidding me? I'm voiding a couple mods I made but I just had to respond to this... utterly false statement. Have you ever done any iOS development at all? How about any Mac OS X development? Have you ever seen the Xcode developer tools? How about the Interface Builder component of Xcode? I've got a hunch that you haven't so I'm going to describe what it's like.

    Interface builder is a WYSIWIG UI layout tool that generates XML files defining an application's interface to be loaded at runtime. Just about every app written for iOS has at least one of these interface files. The programmer uses Interface Building by dragging and dropping UI elements onto a sample device screen. You can resize and remask any element, as well as define new object templates with different appearance and behaviors. UIView objects, the base type of any interface element in the API, can be tweaked in an uncountable number of ways, as well as nested in other UIViews. The UI elements are linked to an Objective-C class that they are considered members of through a graphical relationship view.

    Merely playing around with Interface Building for ten minutes will show you just how well iOS handles graphical scaling. Every piece of the UI kit is vector graphics and runtime rendering. Your uninformed conjecture has no basis in fact. Slashdot really needs a -1 wrong mod.