iPad 3 to rock Retina display?

+Lewis Curdie Jul. 20, 2011 at 16:00 More articles by Lewis Curdie

iPad 3 to rock Retina display? There were whispers of an iPad 3 even before the iPad 2 hit shelves, specifically suggesting that the resolution would be the main driver. Those rumours were given some credence when the iPad 2 arrived with an identical resolution to its predecessor.

John Gruber, a chap who’s generally thought to be in-the-know when it comes to Apple, suggests that the iPad 3 will indeed have a significantly improved resolution.

Posting on Daring Fireball, Gruber dropped a big iPad 3 bomb in a fairly matter-of-fact way. John says: “These magazines and newspapers that render each “page” as a static 1024 × 768 image are going to look like utter ass on the iPad 3’s 2048 × 1536 retina display.”

Yes, because everyone knows the iPad 3 will have a 2048 x 1536 display, huh John?

The iPad 3 is one of a handful of completely-unofficial-but-seemingly-inevitable devices (along with Amazon’s tablet(s)) currently receiving the rumour treatment. There are suggestions we might see an iPad 3 – or iPad 2 Plus – as soon as September.

via: T3

I never seen a laptop with anything close to 2048 x 1536. I doubt iPad will be anywhere close.

Hmm... so pretty much every web site would have to be scaled or only fill half the screen, HD movies will be cropped/ stretched with black bars, FaceTime will look like talking to Lego characters, the battery will get munched and there could be all sorts of app problems. Also running games at native resolution will be a big struggle for the processors. I don't think anyone would complain about a 1080p screen, so that'll be more than enough.

Last edited by blizzard7, Jul. 20, 2011 at 17:05

Good point, blizzard
You need massive GPU processing power to output such a high resolution.

Indeed, so either texture quality/ polygon counts will suffer, or it'll have to run below native res (which on an LCD is a no-no).

Actually I wouldnt at all be surprised if it was 2048 x 1536. Thats very close to the rumored resolution to the Xoom 2 that has been doing the rounds the last week or so. The bigger question will be what powers that improved screen res. The new Xoom is rumored to have a quad core cpu which it would need to a screen boost like that - surely the iPad would need a quad core too and I hadent expected to see them in mobile devices before the end of the year.

I think only quad core with such power is new nVidia chip.
Time to get ARM license for nVidia and begin a quest for world domination.

Seeing as this would be 4x the resolution of the current ipad it would need a graphics processor that is 4x as powerful just to maintain performance. Considering the retina display on the iphone is designed for viewing at a distance of 12 inches having a display with the same pixel density at twice the viewing distance would be a total waste of resources. The eye would be incapable of resolving such a resolution anyway. 1920x1080 (or the 4:3 cropped equivalent 1440x1080) is likely going to be the most you will ever see on a 10inch screen.

For 9.7" screen with 300PPI you need resolution of 1611x1208.

@CTPAHHIK
You sure? Plugging those numbers into here only gives 208 PPI. 200 PPI would be way more than enough at the distance you use a tablet from your eyes anyway.

Pretty sure. Will rerun MATLAB, unless my formula is wrong.

I bow down to a fellow MATLAB user

You right, made a mistake in aspect ratio when writing equation.
It's 2328 x 1746 for 9.7" with 4/3 aspect ratio.

Last edited by CTPAHHIK, Jul. 22, 2011 at 10:07

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