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andyyardley

macrumors member
Jun 5, 2010
67
31
The idea is exactly to not design apps UIs for specific resolutions, but let the UI adapt and fit to the screen. No need to know if the device is @2x or @3x and what size or resolution its screen has, Apple ensures consistency of pixel density and rendering on different sizes, devs only have to conform to HIG and provide adequates BMP resources.

That's an ideal concept which doesn't play out very well in reality.

If you try to design a resolution/aspect ratio independent design there are only realistically 2 scaling options.

Either scale the whole UI proportionally or scale the whitespace to fit. Whitespace scaling might not work as you also have usability guidelines which need to be considered especially if it's a larger project, this usually means the most cost effective option is proportional content scaling, which as I mentioned before using this approach and the resolutions being discussed here will result in an asset catalog approximately 3 times it's current size and also rounding issues in the UI which may or may not (depending how the rounding works) result in minor software content scaling.

On a personal level i'd rather Apple just went to 1080p for both devices to bring them inline with the current flagship Android phones, not because I care in the slightest about image quality but more because it brings both platforms in parity for UX design (full screen layouts) and asset resolution generation during development.
 

ThatsMeRight

macrumors 68020
Sep 12, 2009
2,314
295
Okay that makes sense in a slightly strange way, the reality is if everything was just scaled for the large screen nobody will really notice that a button is bigger on the 4.7 or 5.5" screen, like how is done on most Android devices.
I get the way how you are thinking, but this is incorrect. iOS works entirely different here than Android. If everything was just scaled, than on the 4.7" iPhone everything would be 1.2X bigger (so app icons, text, etc. would look about as big as they do on an iPad Air) - that's still acceptable. On a 5.5" display, however, everything would be 1.4X bigger - app icons, text, etc. would look significantly bigger than they do on the current iPhone 5S and quite a lot bigger than they do on the iPad Air.

Most developers will not make use of the extra screen real estate due to it requiring a totally new set of UX and UI designs for 3 different phones and possibly a lot of extra code to support these, most likely developers will either make everything proportionally bigger or just add more whitespace, the side effect of the proportion is this causes 4 different resolution set of assets to be included and the extra download/storage costs of these for devices which they aren't required. For example:

Non Retina - 50 x 50
Retina - 100 x 100
4.7" - 117 x 117 (rounded down from 117.18 x 117.18)
5.5" - 129 x 129 (rounded down from 129.37 x 129.37)

Using this logic you've probably at a minimum trebled the size of the asset catalog in your app.

Again, if the rumoured resolutions are true, this is not true - image assets will remain the same. This is what it would look like:

Non-Retina (iPhone 2G, 3G, 3GS) - 50 x 50
Retina [2X] (iPhone 4, 4S, 5, 5C, 5S, i6 4.7") - 100 x 100
Retina [3X] (i6 5.5") - 150 x 150

So, yes, apps will be slightly bigger in MB size... but... the 50 x 50 one will be dropped (as non-retina iPhones are not supported by iOS 8).

Developers will either do two things:

- Do a bit of work so apps make optimal use of the screen (e.g. what developers did when the iPhone 5 came out)
- Do nothing (e.g. the apps on iPhone 5 with black bars on the top and bottom)

The reworking won't be that big of an issue: with iOS 8, Apple is heavily pushing for apps to be resolution independent - if developers do that, they won't have to care about the three different displays (4", 4.7" and 5.5").

Additionally, developers will have to supply image assets for the [3X] Retina resolution. If they don't do this, than apps will simply look a bit more pixelated (e.g. like iPhone 3GS apps running on an iPhone 4).

Obviously this also results in an usual set of rounding challenges when scaling from a standard size of 320pt. This carries onto the web, which again currently most screens are designed at 320pt width and scaled accordingly for both Android and iOS and the number of mobile websites which don't provide retina quality assets is already annoying me a lot (BBC New for one).

If auto layout is the answer at present some of us still need to support iOS5, and auto layout makes animations (especially complex ones) quite difficult. Thats not saying that Apple won't have a magic bullet to solve all of this on the 9th of course.
This won't be an issue. The suggested resolutions require very little work by developers.

Try to look at it like this:

Remember when the iPhone 4 came out? All developers had to do was supply the app with higher resolution images.
Remember when the iPhone 5 came out? Developers had to deal with some extra pixels in height (e.g. more space for content).

This time, with the iPhone 6, Apple is doing both at the same time: adding more pixels in height (and width) for extra content - and on the 5.5" model, they are increasing the 'Retina factor' to [3X] (instead of the current [2X]).

History has shown us that some apps will remain unoptimized, but the majority of the apps will be updated and the work developers have to go through is not that much.

One could argue that developers should do no work at all, but let's be honest here: these resolutions can provide an even better user experience and developers have to do very little work while potentially tens - if not hundreds - of millions of iPhone 6 devices will be sold within a year. So little work, yet a very big market for developers.

So, in conclusion, and I don't want to repeat myself, but: Gruber's suggested resolutions make a lot of sense.
 

iamthedudeman

macrumors 65816
Jul 7, 2007
1,385
246
Ram is used for essentially the same reasons on an iphone as on a PC. Multitasking, gaming, etc. The higher end phones that have 2gb+ ram can even load 2 apps side by side(you can watch youtube and type and email).

PPI stands for Pixels per inch(ppi is actually more important for small devices since you keep them so close to your face vs. a laptop or a tv). So when a galaxy s5 prime has over 500ppi and iphone has over 300, it means that if u take 1in x 1in squares from both displays you will have over 60% more pixels in one display vs. the other, resulting in greater clarity.


But it doesn't equal to greater clarity. Not at all. Many factors play into how good a display is. And if you eyes can't see the difference between pixel count how is it beneficial? It isn't. Contrast is a better indicator, the difference between black and white balance. This is why OLED or a Plasma display looks better than a 4K led display on a TV. Plasma is highly regarded as a better display technology as is OLED which is even better than Plasma. Neither require a backlight to provide light. Meaning Blacks are truely black. Not grey. Local dimming LED is much better and comes close to Plasma and OLED by you get my point.

Plasma is too costly to make, hence as is OLED. This is why you see LED everything and Plasma is now almost gone despite the fact that it is a better display technology. Profit margins are too low on both.

http://www.cnet.com/news/budget-tv-resolution-rumble-720p-plasma-vs-4k-led-lcd/

The same rules apply to smartphone displays.

I would like to see Apple go to a better display technology than LED. AMOLED on samsung phones is a better technology or IGZO OLED than a higher PPI phone. Yes bring on the higher PPI if it is beneficial. If not leave it as is.

http://www.displaymate.com/Galaxy_S4_ShootOut_1.htm

----------

See my above post, with some more information/links/picture. Being 41 and having issues with reading may well be the reason why you don't see a difference.

Link:

https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/19549647/

I am 40 with 20/15 vision with my contacts in. And I cannot see a difference between my Galaxy S4 and Iphone 5S. Even posted a zoomed in picture of both above.

What is my issue than?:rolleyes:
 

zipa

macrumors 65816
Feb 19, 2010
1,442
1
A display that looks better isn't necessarily a great display. Having over saturated colors makes the display looks vibrant and really nice. Do these colors have anything to do with reality? No.

And how exactly is "having to do with reality" an important criteria on a phone? I can see it being important on your desktop if you're a graphical designer, but on a phone?
 

petvas

macrumors 603
Jul 20, 2006
5,479
1,808
Munich, Germany
And how exactly is "having to do with reality" an important criteria on a phone? I can see it being important on your desktop if you're a graphical designer, but on a phone?

It is important to me. I didn't say that is important to everyone.
 

iamthedudeman

macrumors 65816
Jul 7, 2007
1,385
246
Because you can. Way more than that.

Really? I sure cant. And I have better than 20/20 vision with my contacts in. I guess you have the eyes of a eagle? This is the iphone 5S zoomed in all the way. Is the image pixilated? Where are you people coming up this stuff. This pretty much blows up any argument regarding PPI. Literally makes it a moot point. Even zoomed in its not pixelated. Now viewing normally there isn't any at all viewable pixelation. Zero pixelation. This is why magazines have a 300ppi limit. Because there is no need to have more.

Now if the iphone 6 does have a higher display great. But if not you will not be missing anything.

Seriously.
 

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iamthedudeman

macrumors 65816
Jul 7, 2007
1,385
246
Certainly not.

Also, I'll leave it to you to figure out why your so called comparison screenshots are completely worthless.

Your sentence is worthless without any point to back it up. A picture says a thousand words. Every hear that saying? This applies perfectly here. Makes the whole PPI argument a moot point and meaningless.

How do you figure certainly not? You are saying this just because why? Please do explain. See above. :rolleyes:
 
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zipa

macrumors 65816
Feb 19, 2010
1,442
1
I think he means that apple doesn't own any iphone manufacturing facilities and rather uses foxconn, which isn't a real problem in my opinion.

No, I mean what I write. Apple does not make any parts, everything comes from 3rd parties.
 

andyyardley

macrumors member
Jun 5, 2010
67
31
I get the way how you are thinking, but this is incorrect. iOS works entirely different here than Android. If everything was just scaled, than on the 4.7" iPhone everything would be 1.2X bigger (so app icons, text, etc. would look about as big as they do on an iPad Air) - that's still acceptable. On a 5.5" display, however, everything would be 1.4X bigger - app icons, text, etc. would look significantly bigger than they do on the current iPhone 5S and quite a lot bigger than they do on the iPad Air.

iOS currently scales the content on the iPad Air and Mini. On the iPhones it scales the contents based on the pixel density but fundamentally they are the same phyiscal size on screen and have been since day one (first iPhone). And the size difference is actually 1.171875 on the 4.7" which isn't especially good at multiplying whole numbers and resulting in a new whole number which can easily be represented on a fixed density screen you have to start rounding and thats when images end up looking messy. A bit like when you look at a picture in photoshop at 117%, it just looks odd.

Again, if the rumoured resolutions are true, this is not true - image assets will remain the same. This is what it would look like:

Non-Retina (iPhone 2G, 3G, 3GS) - 50 x 50
Retina [2X] (iPhone 4, 4S, 5, 5C, 5S, i6 4.7") - 100 x 100
Retina [3X] (i6 5.5") - 150 x 150

This is the approach where the developer adjusts the whitespace, which is fine but you would most likely end up with a lot of unusual wasted space and a non ideal experience for the user, most developers will probably want to scale their content accordingly which results in 4 image assets for the different devices, the xcasset files used in iOS development since iOS 7 are technically designed to support this fragmentation. Obviously this is fine if you have a new 128GB iPhone 6 but what about the people on a 16GB iPhone who now have to start deleting apps because all of sudden everybody has tripled the size of their resource bundles? Against most developers won't care their app is massive but that's naive on their part, i'll struggle to sleep at night knowing this.

The reworking won't be that big of an issue: with iOS 8, Apple is heavily pushing for apps to be resolution independent - if developers do that, they won't have to care about the three different displays (4", 4.7" and 5.5").

They've been pushing this since iOS6 with Auto Layout, however i'm not aware of a simple way to animate Auto Layout, most developers I know dump it when an app requires any dynamic animated layout.

Additionally, developers will have to supply image assets for the [3X] Retina resolution. If they don't do this, than apps will simply look a bit more pixelated (e.g. like iPhone 3GS apps running on an iPhone 4).

A bit more pixelated? With the 3GS to 4 jump assets were simply doubled, meaning they looked the same on the 4 as they did on the 3GS, just as pixellated as they were shown 1:1 (they only looked pixellated in reality because the text was rendered at a higher resolution). However, with this jump we are now talking 1:1.17175 and 1:1.29375, which is a considerably harder scaling to result in nice smooth images, even with bilinear filtering they're going to look a bit crap, and they will also be quite the performance hog.

Remember when the iPhone 4 came out? All developers had to do was supply the app with higher resolution images.

I was there, it was a case of just providing double resolution assets

Remember when the iPhone 5 came out? Developers had to deal with some extra pixels in height (e.g. more space for content).

Fixed height layouts were in trouble with the iPhone 5 release, however anybody who had used scroll views were okay, getting an iPhone 5 resolution just required adding the h568 asset for the splash screen and your app iPhone 5 resolution out of the box. We are talking something considerably more complex here and i'm not sure you fully understand this.

This time, with the iPhone 6, Apple is doing both at the same time: adding more pixels in height (and width) for extra content - and on the 5.5" model, they are increasing the 'Retina factor' to [3X] (instead of the current [2X]).

If they were increasing the retina factor to 3X then both devices (or just the 5.5) would have a resolution of 1704 x 960.

History has shown us that some apps will remain unoptimized, but the majority of the apps will be updated and the work developers have to go through is not that much.

One could argue that developers should do no work at all, but let's be honest here: these resolutions can provide an even better user experience and developers have to do very little work while potentially tens - if not hundreds - of millions of iPhone 6 devices will be sold within a year. So little work, yet a very big market for developers.

Developers potentially have a lot of work, if they aren't using auto layout they will have a lot of work in updating XIB's and possibly re-working programatic layout. If they are using Autolayout there is a fair chance most of them will have done it with fixed 320pt width screens and with variable length. This will be a problem when those screens get scaled horizontally as there is no really good way to know how the linear equation engine which powers auto layout will round your views, meaning creating pixel perfect assets will potentially be a massive headache. Not to mention the fact your assets will triple in size as i've mentioned countless times.
 

zipa

macrumors 65816
Feb 19, 2010
1,442
1
A picture says a thousand words. Every hear that saying? This applies perfectly here. Makes the whole PPI argument a moot point and meaningless.

How do you figure certainly not? You are saying this just because why? Please do explain. See above. :rolleyes:

Again, I'll leave it as an exercise for you to figure put why your screenshots mean absolutely nothing in this discussion.

But since you seem keen on pictures, here's a good one that lets you see why the iPhone screen is nowhere near sharp enough.

112592-1280.jpg


----------

Really? This is the iphone 5S zoomed in all the way. Is the image pixilated? Where are you people coming up this stuff. This pretty much blows up any argument regarding PPI. Literally makes it a moot point. Even zoomed in its not pixelated. Now viewing normally there isn't any at all viewable pixelation. Zero pixelation. This is why magazines have a 300ppi limit. Because there is no need to have more.

Seriously.

There is some serious pixelation in the signal strength circles in your screenshot. Same goes for the percentage sign and the corners of the battery symbol.
 

iamthedudeman

macrumors 65816
Jul 7, 2007
1,385
246
Again, I'll leave it as an exercise for you to figure put why your screenshots mean absolutely nothing in this discussion.

But since you seem keen on pictures, here's a good one that lets you see why the iPhone screen is nowhere near sharp enough.

Image

----------



There is some serious pixelation in the signal strength circles in your screenshot. Same goes for the percentage sign and the corners of the battery symbol.

You can't be serious? :rolleyes:

Again, I'll leave it as an exercise for you to figure put why your screenshots mean absolutely nothing in this discussion.


If your eyes can't see a difference and most cannot. How do the screen shots matter in the least? Talk about meaning less. Are your eyes seeing pixels like a microscope? No. This fact seems to fly over your head. The shots I posted are just me zooming in on some test which your eyes can see. What you posted is meaning less because it was taken under a microscope comparing pixels which the eyes cannot see. Zoom in on some text on your phone and tell me it looks like the screen shots you just posted. No it does not. So how is what you posted meaning full? It isn't. Period.

What you posted is a pixel comparison. Not a screen comparison.The picture was taken under a microscope displaying the pixel arrangement and density. They were measuring pixels. Not screen shots. I read the article. If you zoom in on your phone it will not look like that comparison you just posted. Will your eyes see the pixels. No. Go ahead. I will wait..................................................

The ATT and status bar are not pixelated on my phone. Sorry to tell you. Nothing is pixelated on my screen. Maybe you should a better monitor or phone. Click on the screen shot. Nothing is pixelated.

Like I said a picture says a thousand words. You dont even own a iphone do you? I have a Galaxy s4 and iphone 5s. zoomed in it is hard to tell the two apart. If you don't own a iphone you have no point of reference. Zero. And you have no argument to make since you have nothing to compare anything to. This is like explaining color to a blind man. You just can't do it.

Any one reading this thread can do the same thing. Just zoom in on some text and tell me if it is majorly pixelated.Or take a glance if you have a iphone 5S at your ATT logo(or other carrier) or status bar indicator and tell me if its pixelated.

Epic fail on your part. I will leave it up to you to figure out how meaning less your post is. :rolleyes:

This is zoomed in more than before with my fingers holding the screen in place. This isn't near sharp enough? Really now.;) Like I said this picture makes your point meaning less.
 

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ThatsMeRight

macrumors 68020
Sep 12, 2009
2,314
295
iOS currently scales the content on the iPad Air and Mini. On the iPhones it scales the contents based on the pixel density but fundamentally they are the same phyiscal size on screen and have been since day one (first iPhone). And the size difference is actually 1.171875 on the 4.7" which isn't especially good at multiplying whole numbers and resulting in a new whole number which can easily be represented on a fixed density screen you have to start rounding and thats when images end up looking messy. A bit like when you look at a picture in photoshop at 117%, it just looks odd.
First of all, thanks for responding but I believe you are absolutely off and that Gruber is absolutely right.

With Gruber's suggested resolution for the 4.7" model, the size different is non-existent. It's 1.00X. As I said, apps, text, etc. will remain exactly the same in size.

You are correct that if they scaled the 1136 x 640 resolution on a 4.7" screen, that the scale would be 1.18 - but I'm not making a case for that resolution.

I'm making a case for Gruber's resolutions. I believe that his predictions are quite accurate.



This is the approach where the developer adjusts the whitespace, which is fine but you would most likely end up with a lot of unusual wasted space and a non ideal experience for the user, most developers will probably want to scale their content accordingly which results in 4 image assets for the different devices, the xcasset files used in iOS development since iOS 7 are technically designed to support this fragmentation. Obviously this is fine if you have a new 128GB iPhone 6 but what about the people on a 16GB iPhone who now have to start deleting apps because all of sudden everybody has tripled the size of their resource bundles? Against most developers won't care their app is massive but that's naive on their part, i'll struggle to sleep at night knowing this.
You're incorrect. There won't be 4 image assets. There will be two. Let's state that we have a 'non-Retina' image of 15 x 15, than we'll be looking at this:

Non-Retina: 15 x 15
Retina 2X: 30 x 30
Retina 3X: 45 x 45

Non-Retina is basically every iPhone before the iPhone 4.
Retina 2X is basically every iPhone since the iPhone 4.
Retina 3X is suggested to be for the 5.5" iPhone.

Non-Retina is being phased out. Assuming Gruber's resolutions are correct, than all developers will have to do is provide one image for the 4.7" model (20 x 20) and one image for the 5.5" model (30 x 30).

So, yes, apps will increase a bit in size - but the phasing out of the non-retina images compensates a little bit. E.g. 16 GB model owners will be fine.



They've been pushing this since iOS6 with Auto Layout, however i'm not aware of a simple way to animate Auto Layout, most developers I know dump it when an app requires any dynamic animated layout.



A bit more pixelated? With the 3GS to 4 jump assets were simply doubled, meaning they looked the same on the 4 as they did on the 3GS, just as pixellated as they were shown 1:1 (they only looked pixellated in reality because the text was rendered at a higher resolution). However, with this jump we are now talking 1:1.17175 and 1:1.29375, which is a considerably harder scaling to result in nice smooth images, even with bilinear filtering they're going to look a bit crap, and they will also be quite the performance hog.
You're wrong. As mentioned before, developers will need to provide two images:

2X Retina: 30 x 30
3X Retina: 45 x 45

Those images won't be scaled in all sorts of directions. Those images will remain exactly equal as they are on the iPhone 5.



I was there, it was a case of just providing double resolution assets



Fixed height layouts were in trouble with the iPhone 5 release, however anybody who had used scroll views were okay, getting an iPhone 5 resolution just required adding the h568 asset for the splash screen and your app iPhone 5 resolution out of the box. We are talking something considerably more complex here and i'm not sure you fully understand this.
As a developer, I do fully understand. I agree with you that it is a bit more complex because pixels are not only added in height - but also in width. That said, for most developers, it shouldn't be a problem.



If they were increasing the retina factor to 3X then both devices (or just the 5.5) would have a resolution of 1704 x 960.
No, a 1704 x 960 resolution would mean that no extra content could be shown. In other words, your iPhone 5S would show exactly the same content as a 4.7" and 5.5" iPhone with a 1704 x 960 resolution.

Also, if a 5.5" iPhone would use that resolution, everything would look 1.38X as big as it does on an iPhone 5. That's a massive increase in size. It would look ridiculous.



Developers potentially have a lot of work, if they aren't using auto layout they will have a lot of work in updating XIB's and possibly re-working programatic layout. If they are using Autolayout there is a fair chance most of them will have done it with fixed 320pt width screens and with variable length. This will be a problem when those screens get scaled horizontally as there is no really good way to know how the linear equation engine which powers auto layout will round your views, meaning creating pixel perfect assets will potentially be a massive headache. Not to mention the fact your assets will triple in size as i've mentioned countless times.
Yup, developers will need to do a little bit of reworking. If they don't, than apps will simply run with borders around them (like what they did with iPhone 4 apps on the iPhone 5).

And yes, image assets will increase in size - but not as drastic as you suggest.
 

andyyardley

macrumors member
Jun 5, 2010
67
31
You're incorrect. There won't be 4 image assets. There will be two. Let's state that we have a 'non-Retina' image of 15 x 15, than we'll be looking at this:

Non-Retina: 15 x 15
Retina 2X: 30 x 30
Retina 3X: 45 x 45

This could go on forever as i'm not sure you understand what i'm saying and i'm not sure i'm representing my side of the argument especially well.

However tomorrow (as it's late here now) I will update you with some visuals to represent what i'm trying to say and I will also provide some example file sizes to cover why I believe there will be a large increase in app sizes.

I will also investigate what happens to an existing app using both Auto Layout and non Auto Layout based XIB's on a Custom size iOS device using the Xcode 6 beta and report back so there is at least some current evidence to back up either claim (i'm happy being wrong but my experience of this is telling me otherwise at this point). Hopefully that is acceptable with yourself?
 

zipa

macrumors 65816
Feb 19, 2010
1,442
1
You dont even own a iphone do you?

Yes. The iPhone 5. Like said, the signal strength circles and a lot of the other line graphics are pixelated, and small text becomes extremely fuzzy to the point of being totally unreadable. Which is quite apparent in the picture I linked to as well.

Now, for your exercise, when you take a screenshot, what you get is not a representation of what you see on your screen, but a dump of the contents of the video RAM. Maybe that'll help you figure out why it isn't really relevant.

Oh, and when you zoom in on vector graphics (as you have done), you'll see less and less pixelation because the object is recalculated and redrawn every time you zoom. The more you zoom in on text, the smoother and sharper it will look like.

If you want a meaningful test of the display, go find something with a tiny font and then zoom out as much as you can and try reading that. With a sharp enough screen, you can have the text come out as legible even though it is so small that your eyes can't make sense of it (i.e. you'd need a magnifying glass to read it), but with an iPhone, the text becomes too fuzzy and blurry way before I hit the limit of my eyesight.

Now, obviously, this isn't a huge problem, and it is not the end of the world. Still, when I pay premium prices, I do expect getting a product that matches the price.
 

osofast240sx

macrumors 68030
Mar 25, 2011
2,541
16
Yes. The iPhone 5. Like said, the signal strength circles and a lot of the other line graphics are pixelated, and small text becomes extremely fuzzy to the point of being totally unreadable. Which is quite apparent in the picture I linked to as well.

Now, for your exercise, when you take a screenshot, what you get is not a representation of what you see on your screen, but a dump of the contents of the video RAM. Maybe that'll help you figure out why it isn't really relevant.

Oh, and when you zoom in on vector graphics (as you have done), you'll see less and less pixelation because the object is recalculated and redrawn every time you zoom. The more you zoom in on text, the smoother and sharper it will look like.

If you want a meaningful test of the display, go find something with a tiny font and then zoom out as much as you can and try reading that. With a sharp enough screen, you can have the text come out as legible even though it is so small that your eyes can't make sense of it (i.e. you'd need a magnifying glass to read it), but with an iPhone, the text becomes too fuzzy and blurry way before I hit the limit of my eyesight.

Now, obviously, this isn't a huge problem, and it is not the end of the world. Still, when I pay premium prices, I do expect getting a product that matches the price.
You must have a defective phone take it back to the Apple Store!
 

iamthedudeman

macrumors 65816
Jul 7, 2007
1,385
246
Yes. The iPhone 5. Like said, the signal strength circles and a lot of the other line graphics are pixelated, and small text becomes extremely fuzzy to the point of being totally unreadable. Which is quite apparent in the picture I linked to as well.

Now, for your exercise, when you take a screenshot, what you get is not a representation of what you see on your screen, but a dump of the contents of the video RAM. Maybe that'll help you figure out why it isn't really relevant.

Oh, and when you zoom in on vector graphics (as you have done), you'll see less and less pixelation because the object is recalculated and redrawn every time you zoom. The more you zoom in on text, the smoother and sharper it will look like.

If you want a meaningful test of the display, go find something with a tiny font and then zoom out as much as you can and try reading that. With a sharp enough screen, you can have the text come out as legible even though it is so small that your eyes can't make sense of it (i.e. you'd need a magnifying glass to read it), but with an iPhone, the text becomes too fuzzy and blurry way before I hit the limit of my eyesight.

Now, obviously, this isn't a huge problem, and it is not the end of the world. Still, when I pay premium prices, I do expect getting a product that matches the price.

I have a computer engineering and marketing degree. I will not embarrass you any further by explaining to your what you said makes no sense at all. Your doing that fine by yourself.

Yes. The iPhone 5. Like said, the signal strength circles and a lot of the other line graphics are pixelated, and small text becomes extremely fuzzy to the point of being totally unreadable. Which is quite apparent in the picture I linked to as well.

If you look down at the iphone 5 you are holding the signal bars and logo are not pixelated at all. This tells me either you really don't have a iphone 5 or that or your eyes are bad. Anyone reading this thread can do the same and see that your are making stuff up as we go. If you actually click on the screen shot I posted you will see the same. Shame you did not do that. Anyone reading this thread can see that.

Now, for your exercise, when you take a screenshot, what you get is not a representation of what you see on your screen, but a dump of the contents of the video RAM. Maybe that'll help you figure out why it isn't really relevant.


Like I said I will not embarrass your further by pointing out how this is utter nonsense. You can do that if you like. ;)

Oh, and when you zoom in on vector graphics (as you have done), you'll see less and less pixelation because the object is recalculated and redrawn every time you zoom. The more you zoom in on text, the smoother and sharper it will look like.

Wrong again. It can only look as sharp as the screen it is displayed upon. I know what vector graphics are and how they work. Apparently you do not.

Most icons and logos are stored in vector image files that specify perfect mathematical representations of their shapes. Unlike JPG and PNG images, vector graphic files don’t tell the computer how to display their contents in pixels; for a vector graphic to be displayed, the computer has to perform a translation from the mathematical vectors into something that can be displayed with pixels.

This translation process is relatively simple: the computer takes vector lines, lays them on top of a pixel canvas, and then fills in each pixel that the lines enclose. Display technology is the limiting factor. Its not that simple as you make it out to be.

It would matter if Antialiasing was used.Then your argument would apply. But in this case it's not.

Antialiasing repurposes pixels into building blocks that approximate what should be displayed on the screen instead of what is displayed on the screen. Instead of filling in boxes (pixels) with “on” or “off” states based on how they are enclosed by vector lines, antialiasing uses some visual and perceptual tricks to get closer to the real mathematical image. The most common trick uses things called half-pixels, which are pixels at the edges of paths displayed at different intensities around shape edges, to mimic the effect of having higher resolution.

When you zoom out, those different intensities simulate the look of a sharp edge. These half-pixels can fill in gaps that solid “on” pixels cannot. It tricks the brain into perceiving a sharp shape.This is why reading on high density displays feels so much better, you’re not looking at blurry shapes.

The problem is that computers are terrible at doing it automatically. Because the computer doesn’t know what is in the resized image, it doesn’t know where to optimize using half-pixels. And OSX does not use this natively. There fore making your argument null and invalid.

If you want a meaningful test of the display, go find something with a tiny font and then zoom out as much as you can and try reading that. With a sharp enough screen, you can have the text come out as legible even though it is so small that your eyes can't make sense of it (i.e. you'd need a magnifying glass to read it), but with an iPhone, the text becomes too fuzzy and blurry way before I hit the limit of my eyesight.

Then you must have bad eyesight.

Like this. Looks readable to me.
 

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taptic

macrumors 65816
Dec 5, 2012
1,341
437
California
To be fair I imagine that if the iWatch is announced on the 9th it probably won't ship for a few months, hence the lack of any leaked parts etc. I think this same pattern for the iPhone 6 5.5 inch version suggests a later launch date, too.

Yeah, thats quite likely the case, but still, if we were to try giving a keynote on it we wouldn't have much to say... but I understood where he was coming from with the iPhone.
 

fallenjt

macrumors 6502a
Jul 3, 2013
519
43
Stick with 326dpi then. Who the f needs more than that ?
So it's going to be 10Mp camera, ~1900mAh battery, 1.GB if RAM, A8 at whatever clock speed and 16GB based storage.
 

donnaw

macrumors 65816
Apr 19, 2011
1,134
6
Austin TX
This. Ding ding ding we have a winner. Give that man a biscuit. :)

Glad to see I was not the only person who saw it this way. Which logically makes sense.

355 ppi is still retina. More than the human eye can see. Heck I would be good with if they stuck with 326 ppi. I have a galaxy s4 and can't tell the difference between the two for sharpness. Even zoomed in.

To the trolls. Let's do a test.

Which one is the galaxy s4 and which one is the 5s?

http://www.displaymate.com/Galaxy_S4_ShootOut_1.htm

Very interesting link. Thanks!
 

chleuasme

macrumors 6502
Apr 17, 2012
485
75
That's an ideal concept which doesn't play out very well in reality.

If you try to design a resolution/aspect ratio independent design there are only realistically 2 scaling options.

Either scale the whole UI proportionally or scale the whitespace to fit. Whitespace scaling might not work as you also have usability guidelines which need to be considered especially if it's a larger project, this usually means the most cost effective option is proportional content scaling, which as I mentioned before using this approach and the resolutions being discussed here will result in an asset catalog approximately 3 times it's current size and also rounding issues in the UI which may or may not (depending how the rounding works) result in minor software content scaling.

With the hypothesis the 4.7" iPhone's pixel density will be the same as the current 4" models, you'd be holding it wrong fighting to make scalable UIs for an app. Either you conform and make an adaptive UI (that's the only way to go and AutoLayout is an answer to the problem), or you don't even bother and keep untouched 4" apps that likely with scale up fullscreen (at least, that's the benefit to keep the 16:9 aspect ratio on the larger size) rather than be run in an ugly letterbox mode with wide black borders: at 326 ppi, the scale up fullscreen will probably be visible but bearable, much more than scaled up iPhone apps on iPads as a comparison, and looking more like the alternative resolutions on a rMBP. Now, if users complain, developer will know what to do.

On a personal level i'd rather Apple just went to 1080p for both devices to bring them inline with the current flagship Android phones, not because I care in the slightest about image quality but more because it brings both platforms in parity for UX design (full screen layouts) and asset resolution generation during development.

I'd guess Apple is in position (iOS first) and not willing to ease portability across OSes. Google would welcome such a move and would wish it (Android first would be a win), and many developers could see it as valuable, but both OS and set of APIs aren't equal, they don't offer same funtionnalities and services, and UX can't be similar. An app can't be completely platform agnostic. Now, a 1336x752 iPhone would not be much different to a 1280x720 Android phone, only offering a slightly larger screen estate, so that's nothing impossible to work with when having multi-platform apps (a bit like 7" 8:5 Android tablets vs 8" 4:3 iPad).
 

sawah

macrumors 65816
Sep 13, 2010
1,126
686
You have to remember too that the majority of people that buy phones of any sort don't even know what ram is less care how much of it. And same with screen resolution. Its fluid and smooth and that's enough for them.
 

Casiotone

macrumors 6502a
Oct 12, 2008
825
111
Again, I'll leave it as an exercise for you to figure put why your screenshots mean absolutely nothing in this discussion.

But since you seem keen on pictures, here's a good one that lets you see why the iPhone screen is nowhere near sharp enough.

Image

----------



There is some serious pixelation in the signal strength circles in your screenshot. Same goes for the percentage sign and the corners of the battery symbol.

Your example is an extreme case of trying to read a full standard webpage on a 3.5"/4" screen without zooming, where letters are physically very small. I get though that some people want to do that and hate zooming.

The same text on the same webpage shown on the 4.7" iPhone 6 will have better sharpness and definition, even if the screen density stays at 326PPI, simply by the fact that webpages will be bigger on screen.

Safari on iOS doesn't work like a desktop browser where text is kept the same size and reflowed when you use a bigger screen or enlarge the browser window.

Mobile Safari always renders layouts as if they were on a 1024 pixels wide browser and then renders the result to fit the width of the screen (making the text as sharp as possible). The webpage text will be bigger and sharper on a 4.7" and 5.5" screen, just like it is bigger and sharper on an iPad mini and Air.

While the text may still not be sharp enough for you on a 4.7" iPhone at 326 PPI, it will be noticeably more defined than on a 4" iPhone at the same PPI. Doing the same test with the iPhone 6 will yield different results and the differences between the iPhone and others won't be as extreme.
 
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