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."

Comments

4:3 comes back!

[Bobtree]

I'm looking forward to desktop displays getting increased resolution and 4:3 aspect ratios back some day. It's mildly ridiculous that we'll have the mobile device market to thank for it.

Re:4:3 comes back!

[qxcv]

Why is 4:3 such a useful aspect ratio? Just curious because I tend to prefer wide-screen monitors that I can flip on their sides or use in landscape orientation depending on what you're doing, and it seems to me that the monitor market is going that way. I'd have thought that square-ish monitors tend to be less comfortable given that humans have a greater horizontal than vertical field of vision (I feel a bit boxed in when using 4:3 CRTs, but that may just be the low resolution).

Re:4:3 comes back!

[Shadow of Eternity]

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. Marketing convinced people that instead of getting an inferior display with less usable space they were getting the Next Big Thing.

I've been waiting for resolutions and refresh rates to catch up to what they were a decade ago ever since we made the switch to widescreen flatpanels.

Re:4:3 comes back!

[Bobtree]

> Why is 4:3 such a useful aspect ratio?

I don't know, but I agree with the question's implied premise (4:3's high utility).

It's a good question and I wish I knew the answer to it. I couldn't find any historical reference as to why 4:3 was originally chosen for televisions (the details behind the NTSC format are brilliant, but that's a separate topic). I don't feel anything like "boxed in" when computing on a 21" 1600x1200 CRT, and I don't want to give up vertical resolution for a widescreen of the same size. Lets speculate.

The closer the ratio is to square, the more usable area you have for the size of the device. If wider screens were better, why wouldn't we keep making them wider, why not 3:1 or 4:1 or 5:1 ratios? Maybe 3:4 is just a sweet spot for compromise between high area and our forward facing binocular vision. It's a mistake to even call them wider than conventional displays, as aspect ratio is independent of physical size. Have laptops really gotten wider, or have they gotten shorter? I think wider ratios are actually mis-marketed short-screens, with their prevalence reflecting cost (smaller area) in pushing HDTV sales, and not quality.

I know newspapers print in short columns for readability, as its easier to keep your place with short lines than with very wide ones, and computer screens were dominated by text long before graphics. Books too are mainly tall rather than wide ratios. Wider aspects are preferred for landscapes and juxtapositions of people in films, but whatever we gain in video game FOV we're losing in visible detail under our feet (and performance is lost to render peripheral objects you barely see, at increasingly skewed projection angles, versus more sky and ground in a taller ratio, which are virtually free performance-wise).

The bottom line is always useability. Do you really want to squeeze every vertical pixel out of an interface (browsers for instance), to deal with displays that are just too short? I sure don't, and I don't care to move a physical setup around when resizing display elements is sufficient. It may even just be tribalism or convention, but I know I like it. Long live 4:3!

Re:4:3 comes back!

[macshit]

> Why is 4:3 such a useful aspect ratio?

I don't know, but I agree with the question's implied premise (4:3's high utility).

It's a good question and I wish I knew the answer to it. I couldn't find any historical reference as to why 4:3 was originally chosen for televisions (the details behind the NTSC format are brilliant, but that's a separate topic).

I suspect it was less because it was "optimal", and more because it was an acceptable compromise between a desirable aspect ratio and technical limitations. Remember, back then, when they were using primitive CRTs, the closer to a perfect circle, the easier it was to manufacture, and most efficient rectangular shape was a square. But humans with their two eyes generally want something wider than it is tall (note movie aspect ratios, which were less constrained by technology). A 4:3 aspect ratio provides something which is close enough to a square to efficiently use the technology of the time, but wide enough to provide a somewhat comfortable shape for viewing.

With non-CRT tech, and modern manufacturing technique, there's a lot more freedom to choose a shape which is good for viewing, so it makes sense there's a lot of experimentation with aspect ratios these days.

Personally I love the "medium-wide" aspect ratios like 16:10 for my main hacking monitor; 4:3 feels constraining. Note that I tend to have multiple windows open (multiple editor windows, an editor and some terminal windows, etc) at the same time, and side-by-side windows are vastly preferable to vertically adjacent windows when the windows are tall (typically true of editor windows). A wide aspect ratio fits this usage pretty well. People whose main mode is the MS-style "one-app-window-always-maximized" may have different preferences.

In the case of the ipad, of course, the main style does seem to be "one app visible", and they strongly want a shape which is viable when used either vertically or horizontally. Given those factors, 4:3 does seem a reasonable choice.

Re:4:3 comes back!

[tlhIngan]

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.

Re:Nice.

[Tablizer]

My eyesight is too crappy to take advantage of that. I don't think I would personally pay extra for that resolution.

Confirmed by who?

[mkraft]

Apple sure as hell didn't confirm anything. So basically we have someone who looked at a screen, that may or may not be for the iPad 3, under a microscope and "counted the pixels".

Again Slashdot titles are redefining words in the English language.

Finally some screen advancements?

[Jmanamj]

Before the flames rise and Slashdot begins to slash the dots, I'd like to thank Apple for helping break the "HD = 1950x1080" fixation the market has. Hopefully monitor tech will get some advances soon.

Re:Finally some screen advancements?

[martin-boundary]

I'd like to thank Apple for helping break the "HD = 1950x1080" fixation

You big meanie! For every extra pixel over 2106000, a young Chinese worker cries himself to sleep every night.

Re:Finally some screen advancements?

[jo_ham]

Look at the screen on an iPhone 3GS and an iPhone 4/4S and you'll see why - at that very high ppi, it's virtually impossible to distinguish the individual pixels by eye and you end up with a screen that can display text as if it's printed on paper.

It really does look outstanding. It really shines when reading text especially.

Re:Finally some screen advancements?

[Jeremi]

You big meanie! For every extra pixel over 2106000, a young Chinese worker cries himself to sleep every night.

Nonsense. Chinese workers aren't allowed to sleep at night, that's when they work their third 10-hour shift.

Re:Finally some screen advancements?

[Lord_Jeremy]

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.

Re:Nice.

[cshark]

Well yes, but I have better than perfect vision, and could really appreciate it. Besides, I've been wanting to get one download pointless noise making apps for months now. How did we ever live without pointless noise making apps? It's beyond me. Even now, my lack of pointless noise making apps is tearing at my soul. My android tablet has a few pointless noise making apps, but those are all free, and it's just not the same unless I'm wasting money on them.

Re:Nice.

[Eponymous Coward]

I suppose you also have rejected laser printers in favor of good ol' dot matrix. Am I right?

Re:whoa

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

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

Re:Nice.

[EdIII]

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.

Re:hmm

[BasilBrush]

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

Re:DPI comparison?

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

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.

Can this be hacked for digital cinema?

[wisebabo]

So the most commonly used format for digital cinema is 2048x1080 (4K is not widely used, yet). Notice that it is just a little bit wider than 1080p (128 pixels). So either cinematographers have had to scale down the outputs from their digital cameras/post production workstations to use "standard" HD displays (and suffer scaling artifacts), throw away the pixels on the side, or use very expensive professional equipment.

Could the iPad 3 display be used instead? If the iPad 3 has thunderbolt (now THAT would be interesting), could it be used as a (very) portable display?

I am such an Apple Fanboi you wouldn't believe but if Samsung came out with a tablet that, at the flip of a switch, coud be used as a portable, digital cinema ready display, I would buy it so fast it would make Steve Jobs spin. (hope that wasn't too morbid or disrespectful).

Re:Nice.

[Darinbob]

If only you could get a desktop monitor at that resolution and price.

Re:DPI comparison?

[perpenso]

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.

Re:Give it a month

[NoobixCube]

Do yourself a favour, and play with a Transformer or Transformer Prime at your local electronics store, compare the price tags, and then tell me others are struggling to compete on price for something "tolerable". True, Motorola haven't put out a good device that's lasted more than six months since the original Razr, Toshiba really cheaped out on screen quality, and Samsung aren't doing enough to really be different in appearance or utility (not in that they're copying but that there's no reason to get a Galaxy Tab compared to any other tablet), but Asus are easily wiping the floor with Apple in the tablet market right now.

Ummmm

[Sycraft-fu]

There have long been higher res displays. However there's some serious limits to their usefulness, which is why they aren't widespread.

One big one is that until recently OSes didn't have good resolution independence, and still to this day many apps don't. Windows Vista got top notch resolution scaling but if apps don't support it they can break badly, or just fail to scale.

Another is video memory. More pixels = more VRAM particularly when you talk 3D. Now this is not a big deal, we have lots, but wasn't long ago that 256MB was considered "high end" and 64MB was common for cheaper stuff.

Along those lines there is GPU power. If you are just fiddling with 2D stuff this isn't a big deal but if you are pushing 3D, more pixels means more strain. Double the rez in each direction you need 4 times the ROPs to get the same framerate at a given detail level.

Then there's interface bandwidth. Gets to be a bit of a trick to push lots of data through inexpensive connectors. Dual link DVI was the only way to go, and that capped out at not all that high of a rez. DP 1.2 and HDMI 1.4 solve this, but are quite new.

Of course then to all that there is the cost. Pixels mean transistors and more transistors mean more cost. You can't just increase pixel density and expect pricing to be the same.

So it is a situation that only now are all the pieces falling in to place. Only once you have an OS (and apps) that support it, a readily available interface that can push the data, a GPU that can produce the data and has the memory to hold it and costs are low enough to make it economically feasible does it make sense to start pushing it on a larger scale.

However for all that, if you want higher rez displays you can have them. There are 2.5k 27" and 30" displays that aren't too bad price wise. You can have 4k displays too, but they are extremely expensive.

Futurama reference

[Patron]

- "Hey, John. Stop playing around with your tablet and get out in the real world."
- "But moooom, this is the iPad 3!, it has BETTER resolution than the real world!"

Re:Nice.

[Kell Bengal]

I tried to jail brake my phone once, but it slowed it right down.

Re:After the service I got on the ipad1 to ios5

[AresTheImpaler]

I use my ipad 1 everyday. I updated it to iOS 5 the day it was out. Your personal experience does not mean everyone has the same experience.

I'm not sure why your post was modded insightful either. If all ipad 1 were having problems and this was all over the net, then I could see how something like "apple cripples their old products, so screw them" would be a good argument against the evil company. A personal experience + a nonexistent widespread problem is not.

Why would you not just get a monitor?

[Sycraft-fu]

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.

Re:PrtSc

[AresTheImpaler]

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.

Re:Nice.

[CheerfulMacFanboy]

My android tablet has a few pointless noise making apps, but those are all free, and it's just not the same unless I'm wasting money on them.

What an obvious Apple shill you are - https://market.android.com/search?q=fart&c=apps says there are at least a 1000 fart apps on the Android Market alone, and on the first page there are already 3 paid apps.

Re:Give it a month

[microbee]

Is Asus wiping the floor because it's collecting dusts?

Re:so the last one

[WiiVault]

Hmm perhaps its because (most) people don't upgrade to a new model everytime it comes out. Do you know that cars usually come out every year too? What about GPUs and CPUs? Heck those come out all the time! By your logic everybody must upgrade those annually as well to avoid being "obsolete". Not to mention iPads like most devices are usually supported well past their discontinuation date. I must hope you've been drinking this weekend say something so bizarre.

Re:Nice.

[Hadlock]

I test out betas of people's android software on my phone all the time. I didn't have to sign up for a silly developer account. I just went in to the settings and checked the box that said "run unsigned code" and it just worked. Good times.

Re:Unfortunately

[JDG1980]

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.

Re:Nice.

[LordLimecat]

Man I miss trinitron tablets, they were so cool.

Re:Nice.

[PopeRatzo]

[android.com] says there are at least a 1000 fart apps on the Android Market alone, and on the first page there are already 3 paid apps.

Ah, so you admit that Android was the first with fart apps and Apple copied them!

It's the Xerox PARC story all over again, except wetter.

Re:Nice.

[EdIII]

Freedom to do what exactly?

Have actual ownership of my device that I paid for? Sounds crazy I know....

Have actually written anything for linux let alone Android? When I say "write", I'm not talking about downloading the source from some project SVN repo and doing a compile but rather writing something yourself.

All the time. It's my day job. Have not released anything as an open source project, but I am modest and most of my work is "work for hire" so I don't have that option. I have also modified quite a few open source projects to tweak it, or fix a bug that I did not feel like waiting for the developers to get around to taking care of.

I have not yet written anything for the Android platform specifically. Quite frankly I don't have as much time as I would like for personal projects.

You can also write something yourself with a mac and and a developer account. The advantage with iOS is that you actually have a chance to earn back your money and possibly make a decent living without selling your soul to advertisers.

With Apple I only have one choice. Apple. If I want their hardware I must accept their terms, drink the Koolaid, enter the walled garden, and become one the Shiny Happy People.

Blackberry is not an alternative anymore. Sad, the Playbook was pretty decent hardware and looked great. That platform is dead.

WebOS is on its death bed with constant rumors of it resurfacing in another company like a cancelled sitcom on another channel.

Android at least has more than one manufacturer. All it takes is one to offer a device that is, more or less, trivial to root. Android will allow me to not be part of a walled garden and I can do what ever I want. That includes be stupid and get malware installed, but at least I get to have actual ownership and responsibility over my device.

I don't pull punches about Apple. Their corporate culture and ideology is abhorrent. However, I will give respect where respect is due. They make some damn fine hardware that looks good. I really do want an iPad 3. Just not the walled garden.

Although I could jail break (I spelled it right this time Kell!) Apple hardware, I would still need to pay for it. The looks and the specs on the iPad 3 make it damn tempting to do so.

Re:Nice.

[deniable]

Meh, battery life was crap.

Re:Nice.

[NotQuiteReal]

Kids, these days.

Back in my time, we had to fart ourselves! And we liked it!

Wake up and smell the beans, no wonder your butts are getting so big, you aren't exercising them properly! Get off my lawn!

Re:Nice.

[EdIII]

You called me out. Well Played.

Principles are just *so* highly over rated. Giving in and just buying the device is the easier path and I should just take that.

Re:Nice.

[shutdown -p now]

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.

If what you want is a high-res screen, wait a few months - ICS tablets are coming in 1920x1080. Granted, not as high as this baby, but high enough for all practical purposes - Apple really only needs that crazy DPI because they want to be able to 2x-upscale existing iPad apps (just as it was with iPhone 4).

Specifically, I'd wait out for the next Transformer from Asus - by most accounts, it'll be much like Prime, which is already thinner and lighter than iPad 2 while looking mostly similar, except with fixed Wi-Fi reception and 1080p screen.

Re:Nice.

[cshark]

Yes, but Apple's iOs farting apps have superior usability.

Re:Nice.

[dubbreak]

I'd settle for less. Give me something over 1200 lines resolution and I'd be so happy. That or bring back 4:3 or 5:4 only bigger and with better resolution. I need some vertical height on my monitors. 16:9 monitors in portrait are like staring at anorexics. I need some meat on my metaphorical monitor bones!

Re:Nice.

[Vegemeister]

It'll address that resolution, sure, but it won't display it. I own one such Trinitron. The aperture grille pitch is about 1 pixel wide at 1600x1200. To meet the Nyquist sampling condition, the electron beams must be defocused to at least half that. The resolution of a 1600x1200 LCD is effectively greater than that of a 1600x1200 CRT. Furthermore, the LCD can use subpixel rendering.

Test it yourself: generate images consisting of alternating lines at 1 pixel spacing, and display them at 1:1 scaling on your CRT.

Re:Preference != Principle

[geekoid]

If you root you iDevice, you void the warranty .
Why buy something I have to root, and void my warranty instead of something that does what I want it to?

You sound like some who is trying to make excuse for locking themselves in a cage.

The poster was simply answering a question. He din't come out and say that. It was a response. Civilized peopel have 'conversations' to exchange ideas and concept.

I have no idea why you bring the tasty, tasty Big Mac into this conversation.