LG Aims To Beat Apple's Retina Display

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LG Aims To Beat Apple's Retina Display

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday May 29, 2012 @10:45AM from the busy-times-for-pixel-collectors dept.

angry tapir writes "LG Display has introduced a 5-inch full HD LCD panel for smartphone displays — the highest resolution mobile panel to date. The widescreen panel is based on AH-IPS (Advanced High Performance In-Plane Switching) technology and has a 1920-by-1080 pixel resolution or 440 pixels per inch (ppi), according to LG. That compares well to Apple's Retina display, which has 264 ppi on the new iPad and 326 ppi on the iPhone 4S."

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Cool tech, but by 93+Escort+Wagon · 2012-05-29 10:47 · Score: 5, Insightful

If the Apple Retina display is already beyond the point a human eye can resolve - what's more resolution going to get you?

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1. Re:Cool tech, but by DinDaddy · 2012-05-29 10:49 · Score: 2
  
  Also, the LCD panels Apple' displays are made from are available to all other phone manufacturers as well. They don't seem interested in that, so why would they go for something that is likely a higher component cost?
2. Re:Cool tech, but by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-29 10:50 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Sorry I couldn't read your comment, can you increase the font size.
3. Re:Cool tech, but by dgatwood · 2012-05-29 10:50 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  If the Apple Retina display is already beyond the point a human eye can resolve - what's more resolution going to get you?
  Bigger numbers. Also, it is beyond the resolution that the human eye can resolve at a typical usage distance. That doesn't necessarily mean that you can't see the difference if you're holding it wrong.
  
  --
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4. Re:Cool tech, but by Spaseboy · 2012-05-29 10:51 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Apple locks up component supplies by negotiating massive amounts, this has been known for years. The retina displays may be available to other manufacturers, but most likely not until 2015 or so
  
  --
  "I don't want more choice, I just want nicer things!"
  -Jennifer Saunders as Edina Monsoon
5. Re:Cool tech, but by PCM2 · 2012-05-29 10:51 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  If the Apple Retina display is already beyond the point a human eye can resolve - what's more resolution going to get you?
  Single-pixel tracking GIFs that are only visible under a scanning electron microscope.
  
  --
  Breakfast served all day!
6. Re:Cool tech, but by SQL+Error · 2012-05-29 10:59 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  If the Apple Retina display is already beyond the point a human eye can resolve - what's more resolution going to get you?
  You want the pixels to be smaller than the eye can resolve so that you can stop futzing around with anti-aliasing. That's why decent printers are 1200 dpi or more.
7. Re:Cool tech, but by danbob999 · 2012-05-29 11:01 · Score: 2
  
  Pretty sure that even in 2012 other manufacturers are not interested by that display anymore. It is already beaten both in density and number of pixels.
8. Re:Cool tech, but by cpu6502 · 2012-05-29 11:03 · Score: 2
  
  Maybe 1920x1080 eliminates the hassle of downconverting HD video to some lower value?
  326 pixels per inch for this screen versus "For a human eye with excellent acuity, the maximum theoretical resolution is 50 Cycles per degree" (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye#cite_note-30). Whatever that means.
  (eh) I'll just keep using my e-ink kindle. Looks like paper with dots smaller then I can see.
  
  --
  My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
9. Re:Cool tech, but by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-29 11:07 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  HTC Rezound, 4.3" and 720p display which came out like 6 months ago, among others of course...or just go back to reading Apple news and how all their stuff is the bestest evers
10. Re:Cool tech, but by Bill,+Shooter+of+Bul · 2012-05-29 11:19 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  1a) Yes its a spec
  1b) Yes Android Manufactorers compete on specs
  1c) No, some bigger specs do make better phones within reason. I'd gladdly take a 4 inch screen over a 3 inch. I'd gladdly take two cores for one. Apple increases specs ever version of the iphone, that doesn't make them idiots, does it?
  2) No, Competition is fierce, so they must make a better product. Why is that a bad thing? The phone will be foreced to be sold at the same price point as last years best phone due to competition. Who loses in that scenario? Not the consumer.
  
  --
  Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
11. Re:Cool tech, but by xevioso · 2012-05-29 11:21 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  This makes no sense. Silly foreigners have no idea how to tell a fat joke. The fat joke you just told has nothing to do with how fat a person is, and is merely a thinly veiled attempt at racism.
  A proper fat joke would be something along the lines of "You are so fat, I swerved to avoid you while I was driving, but I ran out of gas."
12. Re:Cool tech, but by sootman · 2012-05-29 11:23 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  You beat me to it. What we need is a chart like this but for handhelds. Then, print it out, wrap it around a 2x4, and smack OEM presidents in the head with it until they quit making tiny screens better and start shipping a goddamn laptop screen at something better than 1366x768.
  
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13. Re:Cool tech, but by Fluffeh · 2012-05-29 11:23 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  If the Apple Retina display is already beyond the point a human eye can resolve - what's more resolution going to get you?
  The Apple display is "Beyond what the human eye can resolve" while holding it at a certain distance. That means if you hold it closer, you will start to see the pixels. This makes the LG display able to be held closer to the eyes while still not being able to see the pixels. Does it mean much for the average user who always holds their phone at a distance of two feet from their eyes? Nope, but it is still bragging rights.
  
  /Rant/
  Now if only the folks that make monitors started playing this game, I would finally be able to get a monitor that has a higher resolution than my phone. Seriously, what's with the huge drop in screen resolution on both laptops (unless you buy the $5k model) and run-of-the-mill desktop screens? 1366x768? The nineties called, (Yes, I did warn them about the earthquakes in Haiti and Japan) they want their resolution back!
  
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14. Re:Cool tech, but by jo_ham · 2012-05-29 11:40 · Score: 2
  
  The definition includes a qualifier on the sight of the person using it, although it does not mean that everyone will be in that range - people with better vision than the typically 20-20 will likely be able to make out pixels. For you folk, just move it further away :p
15. Re:Cool tech, but by oxdas · 2012-05-29 11:45 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Nearly all the current retina displays are made by Samsung (with a small percentage made by Sharp). Do you really believe that Samsung (which shipped nearly 25% more smartphones than Apple last quarter) could not simply switch to the display they sell to Apple if they so chose? Samsung has chosen to go with their AMOLED displays because they offer more contrast and lower power consumption than the "retina display." AMOLED displays currently can not be produced at the pixel density desired by Apple, however, so Samsung is using more conventional technology on the display they sell to Apple.
16. Re:Cool tech, but by mdmkolbe · 2012-05-29 11:50 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  If the Apple Retina display is already beyond the point a human eye can resolve
  Sort answer: It isn't beyond the point a human eye can resolve if by that we mean the resolution beyond which there is no perceptable improvement.
  Long answer: Apple's display has pixels that are 1 minute of arc in size when the screen is held 18 inches from the eye. Apple's marketing would like you to believe that 1 minute of arc is is the limit of the human eye, but that isn't quite true.
  First, the pixels are rectangular and the 1 minute of arc was only on the sort side of the rectangle (at least when they first came out, they may have improved the specs).
  Second, if you hold the screen closer than 18 inches (which I think most people do), the pixels are larger than 1 minute of arc.
  Third and most importantly, the 1 minute of arc number is determined by how small the parts of a capital letter "E" can be for a person with 20/20 vision to determine what letter it is. (The entire "E" is 5 minutes of arc tall.) For other tasks (e.g. determining if two lines are parallel or where the point of a thin wedge ends), humans can detect features 10 or more (100?) times smaller than 1 minute of arc. Aliasing is easily detectable at 1 minute of arc given the right conditions.
17. Re:Cool tech, but by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-29 11:59 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Is this where I brag about my U820 (5.6" netbook screen, 1280x800) and my self-upgraded Thinkpad T51 (15" laptop screen, 2048x1536) and my T221 (22" desktop screen, 3840x2400)?
  No, no, this is where I say... How in hell can you blame them for selling WHAT EVERYONE BUYS; every time they offer an ultrafine display (like the three I listed), it makes very few sales, because ALMOST NOBODY will actually pay a premium for better displays. Unless and until Apple, or someone equally awesome at marketing, tells them they need it.
18. Re:Cool tech, but by squiggleslash · 2012-05-29 12:00 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Here's an idea, rather than letting the manufacturers get away with making the dick waving contest be about screen resolution, why not force them to fix the fucking smartphone battery life problem?
  
  --
  You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
19. Re:Cool tech, but by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-29 12:15 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  BS Inkjet printers, which by definition can never be decent printers, have resolutions that high because they have to create dither patterns to make most colors. A good dye sublimation printer produces images which are substantially better, and dye sub printers are generally 300 dpi. The best photographic-process printers might be capable of slightly higher resolution (perhaps 600 dpi), but most of those also produce 300 dpi. It is considered photographic quality for the purposes of human perception. Actual photographic processes produce film image resolutions that can't really be matched by printers at all, and standard prints generally produce images that match the level of detail around 300 dpi.
20. Re:Cool tech, but by ae1294 · 2012-05-29 12:33 · Score: 2
  
  no.. it's like buying a sports car to drive down your 200ft driveway and get your mail. if you're going to use car analogies, at least have them make sense.
  Why is it called a driveway if you are using it as a parking lot?
21. Re:Cool tech, but by ae1294 · 2012-05-29 12:42 · Score: 2
  
  Sorry I couldn't read your comment, can you increase the font size.
  Not right now man. I am busy re-watching all my old porn vids looking for things I missed the first time around due to poor resolution from my PC. Now if someone could just fix the colour matching problem I could delete all this old flapping material and download some more. I wonder if fixmypc.com can help?
22. Re:Cool tech, but by Man+On+Pink+Corner · 2012-05-29 13:19 · Score: 2
  
  No
23. Re:Cool tech, but by ganjadude · 2012-05-29 13:27 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  why is it that when its an apple product, people say things along the lines of "really?? I mean apple already has this, we dont need anything more!"
  
  when will the "apple can do no wrong" idea disapareaR??
  
  --
  have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
24. Re:Cool tech, but by mug+funky · 2012-05-29 13:48 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  a name like that doesn't bode well for it's autocorrect capabilities.
25. Re:Cool tech, but by Darinbob · 2012-05-29 14:08 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  You need one of those magnifying glasses from Brazil that you put in front of the screen.
26. Re:Cool tech, but by mug+funky · 2012-05-29 14:15 · Score: 2
  
  citations? as a digital colourist i would like to see some facts on these displays.
  FWIW, the iPad 3's screen is poison for colourists. it's far too orange-biased. it looks beautiful with pics taken with the internal camera, but that means nothing if the pictures are displayed incorrectly, no matter how beautiful it may look. it's like mastering audio on a home theatre.
27. Re:Cool tech, but by MobyDisk · 2012-05-29 14:24 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  That's why decent printers are 1200 dpi or more.
  Actually, printers are 1200 dpi because they need to dither. You can print a perfect photo at 150 - 300 dpi if you don't dither. (Like dye-sub printers do).
28. Re:Cool tech, but by Anubis+IV · 2012-05-29 15:01 · Score: 2
  
  The pixels already are smaller than the eye can resolve at typical viewing distances. That's why it's called a retina display in the first place.
  Also, that is not why printers are 1200 dpi or more. They're that high because of issues with color dithering. Plenty of other people already responded to you on this point.
  Finally, if you want a valid reason for why extra pixel density matters, look no further than Vernier acuity. People can distinguish curves and alignment differences in lines beyond the point where they are no longer capable of resolving the individual pixels. Just because they can no longer see individual pixels does not mean that the curve on the letter P looks as smooth as it could to them.
29. Re:Cool tech, but by Rockoon · 2012-05-29 15:28 · Score: 2
  
  ..because nobody gave a shit when Apple touted it.
  
  You simple never hear an iPhone user say "yeah but mine has a better display"
  
  --
  "His name was James Damore."
30. Re:Cool tech, but by oxdas · 2012-05-29 15:36 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Apple paid them less than $8 billion in total revenue last year (less than $6 billion by some accounts). This was in their low margin components business as well. Samsung Electronics division made more than $140 billion in revenue and more than 70% of their profits came from their own phones and tablets. The takeaway here is that Apple accounts for less than 6% of Samsung's Electronics revenue and less than that of their profits.
  Samsung Mobile Display is still a integral part of Samsung. It is 100% owned by Samsung Electronics and Samsung SDI. Samsung uses a complex circular ownership structure so the company at the top of the pyramid, Samsung Everland, can retain control of the entire company despite only owning a small piece. Either directly, or through Samsung Everland, Lee Gun Hee owns the majority stake in Samsung Life (and other subsidiaries), which in turn own the majority stake in Samsung Electronics (with other Samsung companies owning pieces as well). The company is firmly in the control of Lee Gun Hee and this family. I suggest you read up on the "jaebol" system in order to understand Samsung better. That is not to say that Samsung Mobile Display (or its parent Samsung Electronics) cannot push their own direction, but ultimately all these pieces must answer to same people.
  I agree with your argument about sunk costs, but I can't seem to find anything to back up the claim that Samsung receives "massive subsidies" from Apple. In addition, because Samsung is not using the same technology in Apple's displays, it weakens the argument that Apple's volumes drastically decrease Samsung's costs in their own products.
31. Re:Cool tech, but by oxdas · 2012-05-29 15:46 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  "Retina Display" is not a type of display, it is a marketing term for a dense pixel display. While LG has made dense pixel display's for the iPhone, they do not appear on the iPad3, marketed under the name "Retina Display." I responded to a claim that Apple had somehow locked up the supply of "Retina Displays," which seems to me to be demonstrably false.
32. Re:Cool tech, but by jbolden · 2012-05-29 16:03 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  There are phones with excellent battery life:
  1 Motorola Droid Razr Maxx 19.78
  2 Apple iPhone 4 (with 3G off) 14.55
  3 Apple iPhone 3GS (with 3G off) 13.4
  4 HTC Legend 12.75
  5 RIM BlackBerry Curve 9360 12
33. Re:Cool tech, but by tlhIngan · 2012-05-29 16:40 · Score: 2
  
  Also, Samsung's new AMOLED displays are 720x1280, which have more pixels than the iPhone's 640x960. You can put more stuff on a bigger screen with more pixels.
  Only the non-Pentile crap ones. I think Samsung has a 720p non-Pentile display which will be super-sharp, but the pentile ones, not so good. For normal use, because the UI is scaled to the size of the display rather than everything being super tiny, it's great. But once something tries to use all the pixels individually, it breaks down to a horrible mess - text becomes a shimmery mess of colors. Sorta like an Apple II display with all the purple and green fringing.
  The 720p display for most things on my Gnex is great - enough pixels are used that things don't look too bad. But some games think it's a larger display and make everything smaller, which starts showing the fringing and color oddity effects.
34. Re:Cool tech, but by Svartormr · 2012-05-29 16:44 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Until those battery lives are measured in days and not hours, there's still a lot of work to be done.
35. Re:Cool tech, but by dadioflex · 2012-05-29 17:51 · Score: 2
  
  If you think smartphones will ever last for days on a charge, you're delusional. Old dumbphones only lasted that long because they could only do 1/100th of what a smartphone can do.
  If you DON'T think smartphones will eventually last days and weeks or longer on a single charge, then YOU'RE delusion.
36. Re:Cool tech, but by Joce640k · 2012-05-29 18:01 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  My Android phone lasts a week with light use, 12 days if it's just in standby. I can drain it in a couple of hours if I turn everything on (eg. GPS navigation).
  The worst culprit for draining the battery was the screen auto-rotate. You'd think they'd turn it off when it's in standby, but, nooooo....
  
  --
  No sig today...
37. Re:Cool tech, but by thegarbz · 2012-05-29 19:48 · Score: 2
  
  Yep you're not using it enough. That's the problem here. People are running background services, spending all day reading the news, screen brightness turned all the way up, playing 3D games, and then crying foul that their batteries won't last a week.
  I get about a day and a half out of mine. It drops down to about 35% by the end of the day, loses a few % overnight when it's sitting there idle with nothing but the alarm clock consuming CPU cycles, and then the remaining 30% lasts a few hours of use the next day.
  I forgot it once when I went on vacation for a few days and got home to find it still 50% charged.
  Now on the flip side I've also managed to completely drain a full battery in under 2 hours while using it as a GPS and a WiFi hotspot at the same time.
  There is no battery problem. There's a user expectation problem. If we called these phones by their real names "computers" people would be amazed that they are getting such long battery life.
38. Re:Cool tech, but by psiclops · 2012-05-29 20:51 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  You get 6 hours out of a +1GHz multicore computer with +1GB of RAM and a screen bright enough to overpower the sun? I completely fail to see how battery life needs addressing.
  He gets 6 hours use out of a device that would be a lot more useful to him if it had longer battery life. As it would be a better device with longer battery life then battery life is something to be addressed.
  Increasing display will further reduce battery life (possibly quite drastically) while probably providing zero benefit as human eyes are unlikely to be able to discern the difference.
  
  --
  i spent five minutes thinking and all i got was this crappy sig
39. Re:Cool tech, but by coinreturn · 2012-05-30 00:18 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  no.. it's like buying a sports car to drive down your 200ft driveway and get your mail. if you're going to use car analogies, at least have them make sense.
  Why is it called a driveway if you are using it as a parking lot?
  I'm so tired of this particular "observational" humor, that I will explain.
  There are two ways to your house: the WALKWAY (you walk to your house) and the DRIVEWAY (you drive to your house) Simple enough for you?
  And while I'm at it, the PARKWAY is typically called that because it goes through a PARK (or once did), not because you park your car there.
40. Re:Cool tech, but by organgtool · 2012-05-30 01:39 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  Until those battery lives are measured in days and not hours, there's still a lot of work to be done.
  1 Motorola Droid Razr Maxx 0.82 days
  2 Apple iPhone 4 (with 3G off) 0.61 days
  3 Apple iPhone 3GS (with 3G off) 0.56 days
  4 HTC Legend 0.53 days
  5 RIM BlackBerry Curve 9360 0.5 days
  
  Better?
41. Re:Cool tech, but by tlhIngan · 2012-05-30 03:54 · Score: 2
  
  Reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend a while back. I'm not saying that Apple makes the bestest stuff evers, but if other smartphones really do have sharper screens than the iPhone, why are they not touting that? Am I just living under a rock?
  Because they aren't.
  If we take the 720p display on the Gnex, and assume that its Pentile resolution is equal to RGB resolution, it's got a lower pixel density still than the iPhone display.
  Reason? The iPhone display is 3.5", as it has been for the past 5 years. The Gnex has a 4" screen. That 0.5" extra is enough to drop the pixel density to under 300dpi.
  Assuming that the pixels on pentile are equivalent, though. If you're rendering a sharp edge like text, the effective resolution is much lower (pentile works best for photos and smooth transitions where the short-changed matrix is hidden by dithering).
Apple's display? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-29 10:48 · Score: 5, Insightful

Apple doesn't make their own displays.
1. Re:Apple's display? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-29 11:07 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  Apple don't design displays.
2. Re:Apple's display? by oxdas · 2012-05-29 11:54 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Apple only details specs, they do not design displays. The specs for the displays (size, pixel density, contrast, etc.) are sent to various manufacturers who design a display to meet the specs and submit examples to Apple. Apple then chooses displays that meet their targets and places orders. For the "retina display", only one company could originally meet all the requirements set by Apple, Samsung. Since then Sharp has also met their specs and will make some displays. LG is still trying to meets Apple's quality requirements. The result of this is that the vast majority of the "retina displays" were made by Samsung.
3. Re:Apple's display? by oxdas · 2012-05-29 14:53 · Score: 2
  
  Sometimes I feel like a Samsung shill on this site (I am not and I have many less than cordial things to say about them and the "jaebol" system in general), but it's done exclusively to balance out the over the top Apple rhetoric. I would like to add that I think Apple selecting Samsung screens paints Apple in a positive light. Despite their many flaws, the fact that Apple is willing to buy perhaps its most important component from a company they are essential at war with all over the planet, speaks volumes about their priorities. Constructing a product with the best components is more important to Apple than fighting Android. I do wish I had more positive things to say about Apple because I used to root for them in the old days. I am sad to see the company they have become.
finally the war i wanted. by musikit · 2012-05-29 10:49 · Score: 5, Interesting

pixel density. it will be heaven to have clean graphics and now that portables get higher resolutions then desktops, people will start asking why. only thing i ask is more antiglare displays.
What about laptops? by torkus · 2012-05-29 10:52 · Score: 5, Insightful

Seriously, phones and tablets are getting ~1080P screens but most of the laptops on the market are stuck with the crappy 1366x768 even though they're MUCH larger and it would make a visible and FUNCTIONAL difference.

--
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1. Re:What about laptops? by DarwinSurvivor · 2012-05-29 11:21 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Yep, when your $600 phone has twice as many pixels as your $1500 laptop, something has most definitely gone terribly wrong.
2. Re:What about laptops? by adisakp · 2012-05-29 11:34 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  Seriously, phones and tablets are getting ~1080P screens but most of the laptops on the market are stuck with the crappy 1366x768 even though they're MUCH larger and it would make a visible and FUNCTIONAL difference.
  I'd like to see larger resolutions on desktop LCD Panels as well. You used to be able to get 1600X1200 21" 4:3 monitors everywhere. Now nearly all consumer grade LCD's are 1920X1080 / 16:9. For coders that's a bad thing to lose 120 vertical pixels (it's probably 6-10 lines less code you can see).
  
  An iPad can do on 2048x1536 on 1 9.7" display. It's sad when you get 50% more pixels in the short dimension on a tablet with a screen 1/2 as big.
3. Re:What about laptops? by steelfood · 2012-05-29 12:43 · Score: 2
  
  A lot of it is the manufacturing. A larger screen means a bigger physical production line, which means defects are more costly.
  A smaller screen means the production line size shrinks (as well the throughput increases). Or, more likely, the line size stays the same, but it gets more efficient (because defects tend to be random and localized, so the smaller the screen, the more you can cut "around" the defective part).
  
  --
  "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
4. Re:What about laptops? by Osgeld · 2012-05-29 13:03 · Score: 2
  
  not when they become the new standard
5. Re:What about laptops? by Nethemas+the+Great · 2012-05-29 13:13 · Score: 2
  
  Forget laptops. Why are the only panels I can get for my desktop 1080p? Well that is unless I wish to spend well north of $1000 to add 640 more to the horizontal and 520 to the vertical. Or sailing towards $10,000 and beyond for a nice 10MP medical diagnostic display.
  
  --
  Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once ... with negative results.
6. Re:What about laptops? by Smauler · 2012-05-29 18:33 · Score: 2
  
  There are quite a few high definition Korean monitors available cheap now. This page has a decent round up. They all seem to be running the same LG panel, an IPS at 2560*1440. The prices start at about £200, or $300, which doesn't include any tax, and those at that price only have 1 hdmi, and don't include scalers (which makes them great for gaming, because of the lower screen lag).
but all I want is an upgraded screen! by Chirs · 2012-05-29 11:22 · Score: 4, Insightful

I don't care about the rest. An i3 is fine for a cpu, I only need a couple gig of RAM. A full 1900x1200 screen would be awesome though, and currently there are only two laptops on the planet that I know of that still have them available.
1. Re:but all I want is an upgraded screen! by Osgeld · 2012-05-29 13:04 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  "(although I'm sure someone will reply and whine about aspect ratios and vertical pixels)"
  yea like those asshats who write stuff for a living and those extra pixels is just enough to show a full page while editing full screen
  pricks
2. Re:but all I want is an upgraded screen! by Amouth · 2012-05-30 00:51 · Score: 2
  
  a sneaky suspicion that it just so manufacturers can put a "FULL HD" sticker on the things.
  you nailed it.. when the "Full HD" thing started the monitor manufacturer where putting it on anything with a resolution equal to or greater than 1920x1080 but then they got slapped on the wrist and told they can only put HD on ones that fit the aspect ratio and size.. so if you want to put "full HD" it has to be 1920x1080 not 1920x1200 or even 2650x1600. knowing labels make a difference for marketing and that it is considerably cheaper to make one type of panel than two... well we get the crap we have now..
  
  --
  '...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
Re:Yes, because we need more pixels we can't see! by mark-t · 2012-05-29 11:41 · Score: 3, Insightful

20/20 vision acuity can actually perceive something as small as roughly 30 microns across when it is only 12 inches away. That is roughly half the size of the pixels on the Retina display. In practice, the eye can discern even smaller variations than this, however... and so a pixel spacing of 15 microns or better is required to surpass the nyquist limit in any case where adjacent pixels can have potentially very high contrast. To cover all cases, including being equal to what even people with superior vision can detect, the Retina display should increase its resolution by a factor of about 5.

--
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Cycles per degree by tepples · 2012-05-29 12:17 · Score: 5, Informative

A "degree" is a unit of angle equal to 1/360 of a circle; an arc one degree long is about 1/57.3 of the distance from the eye. If a display is held 12 inches from the eyes, one degree is about 0.21 inch. This means the angular density of a 326 dpi display is 68 pixels per degree.
A "cycle" is a white pixel next to a black pixel, and thus a run of 50 cycles is 100 pixels. That's a bit more than 68, but then 100 pixels assumes "excellent acuity" at "maximum theoretical" conditions.
1. Re:Cycles per degree by tepples · 2012-05-29 13:00 · Score: 2
  
  Is this going to be graded on a curve?
  Yes, but it's an easy curve, and at the distances and angles we're talking about, the curvature is so low that it's close to a straight line (tan x ~= x). It's just unit conversion, something everyone learns in the first year of (for example) chemistry class anyway.
HTC Rezound is 342ppi by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-29 12:19 · Score: 2, Informative

The HTC Rezound's 1280x720 4.3" display is 342 ppi, so technically it is a "retina" display already on an Android phone. :-)
Re:Too big for phone by Savantissimo · 2012-05-29 13:15 · Score: 2

12" is a perfectly natural distance to hold a small device. Perhaps holding a device closer than 12" is awkward, but most people can focus closer than that. I'm over 40 and can focus both eyes from 9" to infinity. (Younger people could do better. At 10 I could focus at 1.5"-infinity.) I can also make out 1-pixel movements at 97ppi from 6 feet away. At 12 inches, that's the equivalent of over 580ppi. At 9 inches it's nearly 780ppi. The 440ppi of this device is not overkill.
And 3"x5" is not too big at all. I've had wallets bigger than that.

--
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
Vernier acuity by Anonymous Coward · 2012-05-29 13:25 · Score: 2, Insightful

Just because you can't resolve a single pixel doesn't mean you can't detect jaggies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vernier_scale#Vernier_acuity
Code name 11 by Grayhand · 2012-05-29 15:42 · Score: 3, Funny

Apple's response was to announce the new iPhone 5 would include speakers that produce sounds only a dog can hear.
Check your battery AND your phone... by Brit_in_the_USA · 2012-05-30 04:34 · Score: 2

I am a moderate to heaver android cell phone user.

I'm 9 month use into the factory supplied battery (1550 mAh) on my android phone (HTC sensation) and in the last week realized it was seriously failing, getting about ~2hours of moderate use before
Last week I switched over a cheap ebay one that I got several months ago as an emergency spare, that is supposed to be the same capacity, but I know is a cheap knock off and only ~1200 mAh. This one was now lasting longer.

Today I am on a new, good brand name, reliable vendor battery (claimed 1900mAh, same physical size as the factory one) and I am 6 hours in (without any top up charge) and only at 60% capacity.

So check you battery, especially if over 6 months old if you are a heavy user, they don't last for ever.