And bragging about having 3 more PPI than the iPhone is just lame...just as bragging about having "better than HD" display because you have 48 extra pixels, is.
One that has succeeded, and more people know what it means than "High PPI". I'd say leap on it, and argue in court that people don't associate it with Apple, they associate it with not noticing pixels.
Which is even worse, because no other company can use this term that people "associate with not noticing pixels". Even when their devices outdo iPhone in terms of PPI, they will never be able to market it as retina.
If we really are going to use a term for "high PPI", it should be a standard word that nobody has trademarked.
Do we really need a term for "high PPI"? If iPhone 4 is retina, then what is Xperia S? It is certainly not retina, because it would be insulting to call it retina when its pixels are even more indistinguishable. What about Galaxy Nexus? It is 316 PPI, slightly less than iPhone. Is it enough for being retina or not? Who determines?
The original contention is that it is the absolute (useful) peak of screen resolution, as in, at the distance the screen is normally viewed from, the individual pixels are imperceptible to the human eye, and adding more will not result in any perceptible difference.
Similar to print media, where beyond a certain dpi your eyes just can't tell the difference if you added more dots.
Your definition of retina is based on 2 assumptions:
1) Everyone has the same eyes.
2) Everyone holds their phone at the same distance.
Both of these assumptions are incorrect. Therefore, a display that is retina to you, may not be retina to me. It is therefore meaningless to talk about whether a display is retina or not (unless a specific human and a specific distance is specified).
You are confusing with "these assumptions are not true 100% of the time" with "these assumptions are not true most of the time". In fact, just like sound perception, motion perception, and eyesight resolution, the vast, vast, vast majority of the world is tightly clustered around a maximum.
There are a small number of humans who can hear above 20kHz, but that doesn't change the fact that 99% of the world can't - in fact, most adults sit closer to 16Hz. Ditto, for the vast, vast majority of the people on this fair planet, framerates above somewhere between 70-80Hz become imperceptible, with a lot of people sitting closer to 60Hz.
Both audio and video equipment are engineered with these limits in mind, and there is no fundamental problem with engineering screens with the limitations of the ultramajority in mind.
The fact that there are a few extraordinary individuals whose sensory abilities far exceed that of the rest of the population, does not make it "meaningless" as a concept. What is "retina" as defined above, is retina to everyone but the statistical outliers.
To address your original post, it seems like you're taking out your Apple rage against a concept that is older than Apple. "Retina" as Apple uses in its own advertising is really whatever the damn hell Apple feels like calling retina, but the concept predates Apple's usage of it and has validity. The Xperia S, the Galaxy Nexus, are all "retina" in the non-Apple-marketing sense of the word.
For me, after a threshold (which is what the iPhone display reaches), it doesn't really matter. The returns are exponentially diminishing after that point. Having 10% ppi more than the iPhone's will not make the display 10% better.
Having 3 more ppi than iPhone is not much. Having that amount of PPI in a screen that's 1 full inch bigger is. And have you ever compared a ClearBlack display with an iPhone screen? I have. The iPhone is better due to the resolution, at night! But in daylight I'd prefer a ClearBlack display over any iPhone. Unless you only go out at night in which case you'll probably be better off with the iPhone.
Well, Windows Phone has failed to gain traction in the marketplace and therefore lacks a proper app ecosystem.
Second, I think the WP8 UI very divisive. You either love it or you don't. Personally, I think it's a Pepsi. Sweet on first impression, but cumbersome to use every day. Too much scrolling (can't use muscle memory) and giant typography which distract from the content.
> Well, Windows Phone has failed to gain traction in the marketplace and therefore lacks a proper app ecosystem.
Could you expand on what you see as a proper app ecosystem?
- It can't be the tooling, Visual Studio and .NET have a pretty huge install bases.
- Is it the distribution channel?
- Is it that there aren't 60,000,000 apps like for Android? If so that number should be reduced down to about the ~5000 apps that are actually worth a crap in Android in which case Windows phone would probably stack up pretty well.
- It can't be moentization, just yesterday most of read of the heartbreaking case of Retickr (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4475918), after a year of nearing the top of the app store for iPhone (which is assumed to be a more profitable demographic) they still shut down after burning through (some/all?) founder savings, plus a seed round plus a funding round. It seems if you make a profit in ANY app ecosystem you are an outlier.
What is Microsoft missing that would make it "proper"?
> What is Microsoft missing that would make it "proper"?
Apps on par with Android and iOS. Sure WP has a Twitter app, but it's ancient. Several other popular "must-have" apps are there, but are not at feature parity with competing platforms.
I think that's the one big thing Windows Phone is missing: versions of apps that don't suck, and don't lag features behind competing platforms.
Outside the Microsoft crowd, developer/buyer interest is virtually non-existent, which is sad because I think it's a rather great platform. It's fast, pretty, elegant and useful.
In my experience of having used a WP7 phone for the last two months, I'd say a twitter app is almost useless on the windows phone. Twitter is already baked into the the people hub, as is facebook. I would appreciate a proper Google+ app though.
I can't speak to all the competing apps. I do wish there were a version of DragonBox algebra for WP. That's the only one I've pined for that wasn't available, although I am looking forward to the new Evernote mobile features making their way over to me eventually.
I was referring to the Windows Phone app ecosystem. There is no app ecosystem for WP8 yet, and I assume that it will allow you to run WP7 apps.
And I did use WP7 for a week. My impressions of the Metro-style are that it is love-or-hate and I fall into the latter. WP8 is a continuation the Metro design language.
They do indeed have marginally higher PPI, but they, understandably, didn't mention it in spec sheet. Because it's just lame to brag about 2 more PPI. Although I think it is impressive that they have achieved it in a screen that is 1 inch larger then iPhone's.
Sidenote on marketing: this is probably an amazing screen, but the gadgetmarketspeak designation of "Pure Motion HD+" makes me tune out instantly.
The cleverness of "retina display" was that a single explanatory sentence told you everything you need to know - this phone has better resolution than your eyes can fully perceive.
"Pure Motion HD+" means nothing to me - is that better or worse than 'true HD'? (For that matter, was the original just plain 'HD' actually fake HD?)
I had the unfortunate experience of trying to gauge displays at Best Buy yesterday, where machines in the same category would variously have resolution designations from "1280x800" to "SXGA" to "True HD" to nothing whatsoever, depending on what they thought sounded best, and the cumulative effect was that I felt less aware of my purchase options looking at the actual machines than simply checking opinions on Newegg.
I can't imagine trying to navigate that process as a consumer with other priorities in life. And they wonder why Apple has such healthy profit margins in comparison...
There are some things other companies never seem to learn from apple:
1) Differentiating their phones by weird model numbers that no one remembers
2) Making product announcements with no details about price and availability
3) Cramming all kind of high end features and adding non catchy names like this PureGodKnowsWhatEver+ in their product descriptions and praying people will buy them.
Both are marketing gimmick at the end of the day. And Apple (Jobs) has been leading in that department very well - Nokia had 3G long before iPhone 3G was released. Nokia had multitasking long before it was there in iPhone 4. And Nokia E6 had a PPI of 328, much before 'Retina Display' was advertised... and such high PPI is useless except for marketing anyway.
That's great news. All of us time-travelers who sport extra-high resolution artificial eyes will be able to see all the extra detail this higher density allows.
Now, seriously, there is absolutely no need to increase pixel density
We have seen this kind of competition everywhere. It's not about whether human eyes can tell the difference or not. It's about something of product A has higher number than that of product B. This has been the game everywhere (e.g. digital cameras with 10000000 MP). Don't hate players. Hate the game.
> Now, seriously, there is absolutely no need to increase pixel density
Isn't that what they said in 2010, and 2005, and 2000?
When we have a display that's "retina" when being held 1 mm in front of sharp eyes you might be able to say there's "no need." Until then, the market will decide.
> I don't think anyone was saying that there's no need to increase pixel density in 2000 or 2005, at least not to me.
Well, there's that Apple marketing page that in 2004 said 100 ppi was the "ideal resolution" (http://web.archive.org/web/20041011130432/http://www.apple.c...). I'm sure internally they wouldn't have minded a 220 ppi MBPwRd display with around 100 ppi effective, but they weren't saying that - they were saying higher density causes eye strain.
> Can you even focus 1mm in front of your eyes? I can't, but I'm old.
Arbitrarily small distance. Vast majority of people physically can't hold a screen that close in front of their face, so a "retina at 1 mm" display would be retina for all feasible uses - unlike the current "retina at 25 cm."
Nokia should never have released the 900 if this was so close on their roadmap. I say this as someone who bought the 900 and stopped using it because the screen and camera sucked. My 2 year old iPhone 4 was better in almost every way.
(The yet unreleased) Nokia Lumia 920 is more retina than the (one year old) iPhone. Oh... I mean... more pure motion HD plus than iPhone! And: It’s surprising that Nokia didn’t mention that the Lumia 920 is just like iPhone, but with more widgets, therefore better.
I understand that this kind of marketing works. But how? How come people do not value true innovation and choose to buy "better than HD resolution" when what they really need is already crisp iPhone screen?
Too bad the Metro interface doesn't take full advantage of those pixels. Text is now smoother, but flat squares with sharp corners look the same at any resolution.
50 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 90.2 ms ] threadhttp://www.gsmarena.com/sony_xperia_s-4369.php
http://www.gsmarena.com/htc_rezound-4099.php
And bragging about having 3 more PPI than the iPhone is just lame...just as bragging about having "better than HD" display because you have 48 extra pixels, is.
If we really are going to use a term for "high PPI", it should be a standard word that nobody has trademarked.
Do we really need a term for "high PPI"? If iPhone 4 is retina, then what is Xperia S? It is certainly not retina, because it would be insulting to call it retina when its pixels are even more indistinguishable. What about Galaxy Nexus? It is 316 PPI, slightly less than iPhone. Is it enough for being retina or not? Who determines?
Similar to print media, where beyond a certain dpi your eyes just can't tell the difference if you added more dots.
1) Everyone has the same eyes.
2) Everyone holds their phone at the same distance.
Both of these assumptions are incorrect. Therefore, a display that is retina to you, may not be retina to me. It is therefore meaningless to talk about whether a display is retina or not (unless a specific human and a specific distance is specified).
You are confusing with "these assumptions are not true 100% of the time" with "these assumptions are not true most of the time". In fact, just like sound perception, motion perception, and eyesight resolution, the vast, vast, vast majority of the world is tightly clustered around a maximum.
There are a small number of humans who can hear above 20kHz, but that doesn't change the fact that 99% of the world can't - in fact, most adults sit closer to 16Hz. Ditto, for the vast, vast majority of the people on this fair planet, framerates above somewhere between 70-80Hz become imperceptible, with a lot of people sitting closer to 60Hz.
Both audio and video equipment are engineered with these limits in mind, and there is no fundamental problem with engineering screens with the limitations of the ultramajority in mind.
The fact that there are a few extraordinary individuals whose sensory abilities far exceed that of the rest of the population, does not make it "meaningless" as a concept. What is "retina" as defined above, is retina to everyone but the statistical outliers.
To address your original post, it seems like you're taking out your Apple rage against a concept that is older than Apple. "Retina" as Apple uses in its own advertising is really whatever the damn hell Apple feels like calling retina, but the concept predates Apple's usage of it and has validity. The Xperia S, the Galaxy Nexus, are all "retina" in the non-Apple-marketing sense of the word.
I'm afraid unless I buy an open source OS, I'll be pushed into an ecosystem without choice.
What are you basing this statement on?
Second, I think the WP8 UI very divisive. You either love it or you don't. Personally, I think it's a Pepsi. Sweet on first impression, but cumbersome to use every day. Too much scrolling (can't use muscle memory) and giant typography which distract from the content.
Could you expand on what you see as a proper app ecosystem?
- It can't be the tooling, Visual Studio and .NET have a pretty huge install bases.
- Is it the distribution channel?
- Is it that there aren't 60,000,000 apps like for Android? If so that number should be reduced down to about the ~5000 apps that are actually worth a crap in Android in which case Windows phone would probably stack up pretty well.
- It can't be moentization, just yesterday most of read of the heartbreaking case of Retickr (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4475918), after a year of nearing the top of the app store for iPhone (which is assumed to be a more profitable demographic) they still shut down after burning through (some/all?) founder savings, plus a seed round plus a funding round. It seems if you make a profit in ANY app ecosystem you are an outlier.
What is Microsoft missing that would make it "proper"?
Apps on par with Android and iOS. Sure WP has a Twitter app, but it's ancient. Several other popular "must-have" apps are there, but are not at feature parity with competing platforms.
I think that's the one big thing Windows Phone is missing: versions of apps that don't suck, and don't lag features behind competing platforms.
Outside the Microsoft crowd, developer/buyer interest is virtually non-existent, which is sad because I think it's a rather great platform. It's fast, pretty, elegant and useful.
I can't speak to all the competing apps. I do wish there were a version of DragonBox algebra for WP. That's the only one I've pined for that wasn't available, although I am looking forward to the new Evernote mobile features making their way over to me eventually.
Can you even buy a WP8 phone yet? Give it a year after it's released before passing judgment on its app ecosystem.
You're confusing the old with the new.
Their whole deal here is that they are re-inventing the product line. It's not the old WP flop anymore.
> Personally, I think it's a Pepsi. Sweet on first impression, but cumbersome to use every day.
That's coming from someone that's never even used it once!
Personally, I think they have an awesome product. Once MS and manufacturers gear up their marketing, we'll see what happens.
And I did use WP7 for a week. My impressions of the Metro-style are that it is love-or-hate and I fall into the latter. WP8 is a continuation the Metro design language.
On the desktop this is the case. But on phones and tablets it has been universally praised, except by Android fanboys.
You can say "higher resolution", or even "retina when held closer to the face", but "more retina" really is nonsense!
The cleverness of "retina display" was that a single explanatory sentence told you everything you need to know - this phone has better resolution than your eyes can fully perceive.
"Pure Motion HD+" means nothing to me - is that better or worse than 'true HD'? (For that matter, was the original just plain 'HD' actually fake HD?)
I had the unfortunate experience of trying to gauge displays at Best Buy yesterday, where machines in the same category would variously have resolution designations from "1280x800" to "SXGA" to "True HD" to nothing whatsoever, depending on what they thought sounded best, and the cumulative effect was that I felt less aware of my purchase options looking at the actual machines than simply checking opinions on Newegg.
I can't imagine trying to navigate that process as a consumer with other priorities in life. And they wonder why Apple has such healthy profit margins in comparison...
1) Differentiating their phones by weird model numbers that no one remembers
2) Making product announcements with no details about price and availability
3) Cramming all kind of high end features and adding non catchy names like this PureGodKnowsWhatEver+ in their product descriptions and praying people will buy them.
5) Support products long after they are released
Now, seriously, there is absolutely no need to increase pixel density
Isn't that what they said in 2010, and 2005, and 2000?
When we have a display that's "retina" when being held 1 mm in front of sharp eyes you might be able to say there's "no need." Until then, the market will decide.
Can you even focus 1mm in front of your eyes? I can't, but I'm old.
Well, there's that Apple marketing page that in 2004 said 100 ppi was the "ideal resolution" (http://web.archive.org/web/20041011130432/http://www.apple.c...). I'm sure internally they wouldn't have minded a 220 ppi MBPwRd display with around 100 ppi effective, but they weren't saying that - they were saying higher density causes eye strain.
> Can you even focus 1mm in front of your eyes? I can't, but I'm old.
Arbitrarily small distance. Vast majority of people physically can't hold a screen that close in front of their face, so a "retina at 1 mm" display would be retina for all feasible uses - unlike the current "retina at 25 cm."
I understand that this kind of marketing works. But how? How come people do not value true innovation and choose to buy "better than HD resolution" when what they really need is already crisp iPhone screen?
Interesting.