In the interest of testing a little side project I’m building on actual hardware (or maybe just because I’m terrible at using the iPhone simulator), I bought an iPod Touch around the end of February. Overall, I’ve been pretty happy with it. The interface is very intuitive, and even the touch keys have been surprisingly adaptive to my unique appendages (read: I got fat fingers). I haven’t had to pay $10 for the “privilege” of upgrading the system software yet, but I’m sure this is coming soon enough with the launch of the iPhone 3.0 OS.
When Steve Jobs announced the iPhone during the Macworld 2007 keynote, he made several references to the LCD. One of the most notable ended with “…it’s the highest resolution screen we’ve ever shipped, 160 ppi (pixels per inch).” I got my first close up look at the screen a few weeks after the launch, and at the time I could easily say it was the most impressive screen I’d seen on a hand held device.
Since the iPhone launch, nearly every major handset manufacturer has adopted a wide screen touch interface in at least one of their products. I assumed that the 480×320 pixel resolution would remain standard in these devices for some time, especially as they got cheaper to manufacture. Recently though, two devices have got me thinking that it would be in Apple’s best interest to bump the screen resolution on the iPhone with the next hardware rev.
The first is the Pandora, an open source hand held platform still under development that runs Linux. From the time of the iPhone announcement up until I first saw an article about the Pandora on Engadget, I had been under the naive impression that 480×320 was as good as it got in a small (3″ – 5″) LCD. The 4.3″ screen on the Pandora cranks out an 800×480 image. To put that in perspective, take a look at this comparison shot of the pixel real estate on the iPhone, the Pandora, the Blackberry 8000 series, and the Nintendo Wii (in 480p mode):
The second new device of interest that uses an 800×480 screen is the HTC Touch HD. This smartphone is easier to compare to the iPhone as it’s intended to compete directly with it. The screen itself is only slightly larger (3.8″ as opposed to 3.5″), and the overall device size is almost identical.
So why should anyone care? After all, 160 ppi looks great on a screen that small. At first glance, most people probably wouldn’t even notice a difference in image quality between the iPhone and the Touch HD, even though the HD’s screen is displaying more than 2X the pixels. But with higher screen resolution comes subtle differences that may be hard to quantify, but your eyes do pick them up.
Gradients, or the gradual changes from one color to another, are smoother. Complex curves that make up the individual letters in fonts are less “jagged” and appear more like printed type. Photos and other complex images are sharper and more detailed. But most importantly (IMHO), increasing the screen resolution gives developers, UI designers, and graphic artists a higher creative ceiling and more flexibility. But simply taking an existing piece of media and formatting it to display at a higher resolution usually won’t do the trick. BluRay is an excellent example of this type of transition. While at first it was prohibitively expensive and the discs were little more than re-branded DVD’s, BluRay’s market share continues to steadily grow as prices come down and newer movies are filmed in higher definition…allowing the home theater market to take real advantage of the technology.
I’m actually pretty doubtful Apple will release an iPhone with a higher res screen at this years WWDC. Most of the industry speculation is pointing towards an OLED screen (assuming they change the display at all). But I strongly believe in an ever increasing creative ceiling when it comes to display technology, and I hope the folks in Cupertino keep the iPhone state of the art.