LG Aims To Beat Apple's Retina Display 333
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."
Re:Cool tech, but (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
Yes, because we need more pixels we can't see! (Score:1, Informative)
The entire "point" of the "retina" display was that for the average 20/20 vision user holding the phone a foot away, you didn't NEED more pixels. You, the user, literally couldn't see anymore pixels even if they were there, your eyes don't have the resolution. And the claim was, and is, fairly correct for the most part. So display makers, take heed. We don't NEED your extra ultra high resmolutions anymore. We are human, we are physically incapable of appreciating a 4k 40 inch tv from the average viewing distance of most people's couches, just as we are physically incapable of discerning this stupid piece of crap display.
But you know what we CAN see? A damned whole lot of other things. Like hundreds of millions of more shades of color than most displays can produce. Adobe Colorspace RGB is an actual THING, professional artists actually buy and use monitors that can display the full range of color visible to humans all the time. Oh, and we can also see a much, much, MUCH larger range of brightness at any one time as well. Your proudly displayed "million to one contrast ratio!" between your maximum and minimum brightness still SUCKS compared to what humans can see.
So please, stop with the bullshit ppi race, we can't see it. And instead concentrate on things we actually can see.
Re:Cool tech, but (Score:5, 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.
Re:Cool tech, but (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
Re:Apple's display? (Score:2, Informative)
Apple don't design displays.
Re:What about laptops? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Cool tech, but (Score:5, Informative)
You beat me to it. What we need is a chart like this [carltonbale.com] 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.
Re:Cool tech, but (Score:1, Informative)
not really.
you have to request the image before you know it's just one pixel, and at that point it's already too late. The browser can refuse to display it, but that doesn't really matter. besides, it will just lead to images made of larger collections of full-alpha pixels.
Re:Cool tech, but (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.
Re:Cool tech, but (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.
Cycles per degree (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.
HTC Rezound is 342ppi (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:Cool tech, but (Score:5, 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).
Re:Cool tech, but (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.
Re:Cool tech, but (Score:5, 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.
Re:Cool tech, but (Score:4, 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
Re:Cool tech, but (Score:0, Informative)