When Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone 4, he also introduced us to Apple’s definition of a Retina display. “There’s a magic number right around 300 pixels per inch, that when you hold something around 10 or 12 inches away from your eyes, is the limit of the human retina to differentiate the pixels… text looks like you’ve seen it in a fine printed book.” That Retina branding has become an industry misconception according to LG, and the company made a point of it during its G3 smartphone unveiling earlier today.
Jobs also said that the Retina display was a first for a display on a phone, but that might not be the case for Apple’s new iPhone 6. Since the iPhone 4, Android manufacturers have one-upped Apple with higher resolution and larger displays. LG’s comments aren’t just relevant when comparing current iPhone models, but also when thinking about what’s planned for iPhone 6. It didn’t mention Apple by name, but it was clear LG was referring to the iPhone and Apple’s 300ppi Retina definition:
There’s one common misunderstanding within the smartphone industry. There’s a misconception that the human eye can only distinguish differences in display quality up to around 300 pixels per inch. However, this is not the case. The human eye can in fact discern differences in display quality above this measure and this is a fact that’s already understood in the printing industry. Today what they consider the best print quality is what LG has achieved with the introduction of its first Quad HD display, as seen in the G3.
LG also compared an HD display at 269ppi to Full HD at 403ppi and its Quad HD display from the new G3 at 538ppi: “If it were true that the human eye could only discern differences in display quality up to a maximum off 300ppi, then you wouldn’t be able to notice these differences in clarity and sharpness between the images shown.”
The current iPhone lineup remains at the 326ppi that was introduced with the iPhone 4 despite later moving to a 4-inch iPhone 5 and introducing scaling modes that improved the overall quality on displays of later models. We recently reported that Apple is currently working on a 3x pixel tripling mode that would likely bring a 1704 x 960 resolution display to the next-generation iPhone. That would give the rumored 4.7-inch model a pixel density of 416ppi and the 5.5-inch model 356ppi assuming they both use the 1704 x 960 resolution. If LG is to be believed, Apple’s new larger display might not blow away the competition like iPhones of years past.
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Really misleading “QuadHD” name for 1440 resolution. May make some people think it is a 4K screen.
I believe the QuadHD is used because it is the same amount of pixels as 720p displays. You may very well already know that and are just commenting on the marketing / deceitfulness of it, but figured I’d chime in anyways.
1440 is QHD, 4K is UHD.. nothing misleading here.
Nah, it’s totally misleading, and it’s done on purpose. Any consumers outside of the tech sphere that have heard of 4K screens has heard that they are basically a doubling of 1080p resolution by using what amounts to four 1080p screens in one.
The name “QuadHD” is intended to build on that perception and confuse the consumer into thinking they are getting more than they are. It’s blatant and obvious IMO.
More evidence of their intention to deceive is provided by the presentation itself which is somewhere between pure bullshit and a marketing scam. You can only even see the difference between “QuadHD” and 1080p because they have blown it up on a 100″ screen.
Also, if you look carefully at the images, they are tight zooms of tiny pixelated logos. Doing this completely exaggerates the “flaws” (wiggly lines, unsharp corners etc.), in the 1080p selection. Since when is a graphic element like that all wiggly and bent on a 1080p display? Answer: only when the company hand picks a distorted wiggly image so as to make the screen look bad.
The whole presentation is misleading flim-flammery from the start. They want you to pay for pixels that you literally cannot see.
Yeah, I really don’t understand the use of all of these abbreviations. WXGA+?
If you’re talking about 16:9 ratio displays, just use the vertical resolution like we’ve been doing for years.
720p
1080p
1440p
2160p
Nothing new, the food industry works in the same way. Nothing is as it seems.
I didn’t realize my 720p projector was so bad. The image behind the man is roughly the same as my projectors screen. I think they took the minimum zoom needed to make the Quad HD picture look good then worked their way back. So of course it will look bad.
Indeed.
The passive human resolution perception for moving continuous-tone images is pretty weak. It’s a bit better for non-moving continuous-tone images (still photos) and for moving discrete-tone images (cartoon animations), but not much.
That said, a phone has to display a wider variety of things. Still, since the iPhone 4, I’ve never looked at any display thinking “I cannot wait until my phone can match that crispness” or conversely looked at my phone thinking “I wish this display could have a higher resolution”. For all practical purposes, I suspect 300dpi is indeed enough.
How doe LG explain the fact that they have 65″ TV’s that have a ppi of 34?
Sounds like time to have a class action against LG for selling, admittedly, bad 34 ppi displays! :)
When I bought my tv for my home theater I used the 1.5x rule as a baseline; meaning for a 60″ TV you need a minimum seating distance of 90″. I bought a 60″ 1080P Sony and my seating backrest is almost 110″ from screen front and I can defiantly see pixels when screen action is low. I understand there are lots of signal factors that go in to that, but I can defiantly see the driving need for 4K stuff.
I don’t think 300ppi is too low for something like a cell phone, but people are delusional to think you can’t see better than that.
The screen on my S3 looks far sharper when displaying text and images than on an iPhone, and my wife’s S4 looks far better than my phone [ not that she cares :-) ].
That’s weird, because the s3 actually has LOWER ppi than an iPhone
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Galaxy_S_III
Stand very corrected. I must be swoon by the over-saturated greens or maybe its just the smaller size HAHA
I email photos to my sister in law all the time so I have seen same files side by side on both devices and I genuinely think they look better on the s3. Either way, my wife’s s4 crushes my phone, but that seems to be right in line with the iPhone 5 in ppi.
You’re preferring the AMOLD over-saturation .. not the PPI..
Yea frank, a lot of my buddies have s3’s and s4’s and they are indeed great screens
You “defiantly” see pixels?
(yeah, I know it’s a typo.. it’s one of the funnier typos though)
I hope you know that your 1080p Sony TV is probably around 40 PPI….. Hence why you can see what you say from a distance, problem when you increase screen size without increasing resolution results in reduced PPI so therefore less sharper images….
By saying what you said actually backs up what Steve jobs said since the iphone has more PPI than your TV also if you had 4k that would bring your TV up to about 160 PPI still not half to the sharpness of the iphone 4……
This world is sold on stupid abbreviations thinking they are what’s best when in fact they mean very little to the experience!
The only time I’ve seen pixels of any sort on my iPhone 5s is when a droplet of water acts as a magnifying glass, allowing me to see there are indeed pixels on the screen. Otherwise, nada.
Let goobers like Sumsang shoot for 1,000 ppi.
That however is not a misconception nor misrepresentation on Apple’s part.
There seems to be however, some misinterpretation on LG’s part… allow me to explain.
Apple indeed claims 300ppi as the magic number but did also mention that was for around “10 to 12 inches” away from your eyes, is the limit of the retina to differentiate the (individual) pixels”, that was left out on LG’s part in their presentation.
Anybody who needs more in-depth explanation can read this article: http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2010/06/10/resolving_the_iphone_resolution.html
Also to learn (in a fun way) more about the resolution of the eyes, I recommend watching this video on Vsauce:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4I5Q3UXkGd0
I was going to post the same thing but you’ve done so already. It’s embarrassing the author didn’t address this.
I was totally going to say the same thing. It’s guaranteed a higher resolution is going to look sharper if you zoom all the way in. That would have nothing to do with how Apple clarifies it.
Thanks, I’m also one of the guys who were scrolling down the comments and going “oh, no one is seeing the obvious stupidity of that LG dude” and then I was happy to find your comment. But I guess this guy just holds his phone 2 inches away from his eye.
I hope, and I’m quite sure, Apple won’t go down that stupid road, as they didn’t do for camera pixels.
There’s a magic number right around 300 pixels per inch, that when you hold something around 10 or 12 inches away from your eyes within a screen 3.5″ 8in diagonal.
If you try to display the pixels that reside in a 3.5″ screen area, in a 60″ display you will effectively end up with 0.6 ppi and a crappy image, as shown in the picture above.
It seems that these display companies will go the extra mile justifying making these higher ppi displays for the purpose of gaining better profits.
Why? Aside from the measly smaller hardware and software bumps, one of the main reason people buy these display-selling companies’ smartphones is due to the promise of a supposedly “bigger and better” display.
Samsung and LG, the most prominent players among the flagship phone market are also the manufacturers of these displays most of the smart devices use. Sadly, due to this “Pixel-race” every other company tries to follow them to not feel inferior and get stoned for having smaller “Pixel-count”.
Yet, for the sake of enjoying their greater profits along with outright lying to the consumer, these companies falsely advertise these ever growing displays that steal from the processing and battery power of the smart devices.
Exactly what I was about to post as a comment. You can’t say that pixels are visible on a 4″ screen because you can see them on a giant projection. That’s a terrible argument. By that argument there really is no good display because with a big enough display you could pixelate even the “best” (aka 4K) of resolutions.
That’s a really dumb argument that would only get dumb people to believe. If you project whatever pixel onto a screen, of course the pixels will be distinguishable ON A BIG SCREEN. What idiots! When they compare the REAL display from the iPhone to their display and people can distinguish the difference, then they can claim whatever. So their entire presentation is a misconception and only really stupid people would believe it.
It’s clear that LG did fool eveybody by projecting images 100x larger than they would have been on a 5.5″ display. In that case of course the 538ppi will make a difference. Most surely not on a 5.5″ display.
Megapixles all over again.
Its nice, but classic Android overdone yet still half-baked. Their presentation showing the pixels at an insane magnification is also quite laughable.
I take it you have expertise in this area and you know what you are talking about?
I take it you have a rebuttal other than a logically fallacious appeal to authority?
He has all the expertise he needs by apparently not being an idiot.
Never felt the desperate need for anything above what’s offered on my iPhone 5S. Personally I think a 720P display is just fine for something small like a mobile phone, at most I’d say 1080P. But once you start getting into 2K and 4K it’s just wasted and all in the name of the pixel race. The vast majority of TV’s are only 1080P, shouldn’t we start upping the pixel count on those first and at least getting higher resolution content out the door before we start on mobile devices.
Truthfully, I can barely tell the difference between the Full HD and QuadHD samples even if I look hard. I guess that’s how it is when your eyes get old and blurry. Sorry to say, but for me they can just stop making higher definition displays and give my devices better battery life.
Why drain the battery by displaying more pixels that I will never see?
Actually the silly thing is that both Samsung and LG sell their displays to Apple which is they main customer for huge profits … and at the same time they attack Apple claiming nonsense and telling that what Apple is selling would suck while their products would be the best on the market… What a dumb silly thing these manufacturers are doing just to attack Apple they are actually attacking themselves.. their managers must be so clever.. their marketing depts even smarter, indeed.. full on drugs surely they are…
Most people won’t care.. their explanation in this presentation will likely not touch 5% of the prospective buyers and will be lost in the noise of: Do I like it, does it feel comfortable, and what does my friend have..
Really.. we spec-junkies are a minority..
In other news, LG announces they have discovered that increasing the brightness of a projected image tricks people into thinking the display is clearer.
PPI is the new megapixel. Manufacturers are just going to exploit people who are ignorant to the fact that there are other factors that contribute towards display quality.
Not quite, resolution is the new megapixel. Just as cameras should prioritize on lenses and photosensitivity over megapixels, displays need to prioritize on ppi instead of WxH dimensions and silly terms like 2K, 4K, 8K.
That’s true to a certain point. But I don’t want or need a 400+ DPI display when it will un-necessarily waste CPU and battery with no perceptible display improvement.
That’s the misconception, higher ppi will always grant greater clarity and discernible improvements, higher resolutions however will not as clarity is dependent on the size of the display. More pixels in a display does not mean increased battery and performance drain if hardware and software is adapted accordingly.
It appears people here don’t understand the concept of ‘ppi’. It’s a consistent, regardless of screen size. These manufactures need to focus on ppi instead of resolution. 600 ppi is the least a screen needs to be for the human eye to be incapable of discerning individual pixels.
Consumers – do not be fooled by terms like 2K, 4K, HD, QHD, UHD and so forth. When purchasing a new display your attention should be given to the ‘PPI’. Smaller screens will always be better but do not settle. The whole Retina, 4K and 8K craze is a farce, just like the ‘new generation’ consoles. 600+ ppi is what you should wait for across all displays, that is my advice to you.
ppi growth marketed as an improvement for a display is pure farce.
If you are to ever comment on this particular topic, please read: http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2010/06/10/resolving_the_iphone_resolution.html
For example, the differentiable pixel visibility for a 3.5″ screen at a distance of 10″ is 326.
Now for a 1″ or 2″ screen at a distance of 10″, this would be the same, however, due to visibility issues of such a small screen you need it closer to your face. That would mean that to view a 1″ or 2″ image that got displayed on a 3.5″ display you would need to keep the display at distances of ~2.9″ and 5″, respectively to view the image in same detail. However, at these distances, in order to view these images with the same quality you would need the displays to have 1141 and ~570 ppi, respectively.
Hence, the ppi of a display on a mobile device should only increase when screen size gets smaller. Though this is only valid for LCDs. For a display solely manufactured with LEDs (The current so called LED displays are LED backlit LCD displays) we would need a different form of measure.
So what matters here is the distance you have between you and your phone/tablet/phablet. Though for your ocular health purposes a minimum distance of 10″ should be held between you and your device.
So at this point the conclusion is that in terms of screen size, anything that needs to be functional and has 2″ resolution will either display crappy images or going to be harmful to your health.
…and by the limit of 10″ minimum in distance is to be kept for a handheld device, ppi over 326 is pretty much overkill.
Steve Jobs’ term of retina display was not a market trick but a properly coined term and does hold a merit even if some bozos try to bash it at every turn just to boast their egos with how bigger their ppi are.
The difference between the 3 resolutions on a 4″ screen might be to small to tell, but if you make the 4″ screen a 100″+ screen it is very easy to see how different the resolutions are.
Thus the essence of the trick they played on the audience to make them think “QuadHD” is a thing.
“If it were true that the human eye could only discern differences in display quality up to a maximum off 300ppi, then you wouldn’t be able to notice these differences in clarity and sharpness between the images shown.”
Well steve never said that about display quality, he said that you can’t difference the pixels, not the display
LG’s position here is both ridiculous and tainted by the fact that they are trying to sell “Quad HD” as a thing (as opposed to Apple needing to sell “retina” as a thing).
They are hopelessly biased, the example they show is highly misleading (because it’s HUGE), and if you take what they say at face value, it makes no scientific sense at all.
I think my biggest issue with this slide (besides the stupidity of what was being presented) is the totally unnecessary styling for their “QHD” misnomer. Like why couldn’t you just write it out in normal, legible letters like HD and “Full HD”? That’s so unnecessary it serves to downplay what is actually supposed to be gleaned from what is basically an advertisement.
The misconception is definitely there, but Steve Jobs did not say anything technically wrong.
It’s just that not being able to differenciate pixels is not the same as not being able to see any more details. In other words, you may gain in sharpness by increasing the pixel density even though you can’t differenciate the pixels.
Just think of how subpixel antialiasing works. On most displays, you can’t differenciate the 3 subpixels in a pixel at average viewing distance. They would just appear as a single white pixels when all 3 are on. Despite that, subpixel antialiasing is a thing and gives noticeable sharpness increase at average viewing distance.
No offence, but your statements are nonsensical. “Not being able to differentiate the pixels,” is actually EXACTLY the same as “not being able to see more details.”
He means details as quality, and he i right, i wrote the same thing some comments above
@Magnus: It still makes no sense. “Details” means details and they cannot be provided in that way. It’s simply impossible. “More quality” or “more perceived quality” would be a sensible way to make the same sort of statement and is in fact possible. It’s only possible however because “quality” is a subjective term that doesn’t apply to a particular, real thing.
So they used a strawman argument by saying that people say 300 isn’t high enough if you look at the screen up close. Jobs’ point was that it was at a certain distance.
Each generation of Android smartphones are getting larger for reasons more than just for the sake of a bigger phone. While display technology is improving battery technology has not improved to much. These companies are making phones with higher PPI and larger screens. On top of that they are also adding quad and octocore processors for the sake of saying they have it. All this requires the need for bigger batteries to power the phone and to not increase the thickness of the phone they just increase the height and width to fit in a larger battery.
Also I have held both an iPhone 4 and Galaxy S4 at the same time around to 10-12″ away from my face and I couldn’t tell that one screen had more pixels than the other.
Also the fact that LG projected the images from a small screen onto a screen around 20 times it’s size is going to cause the pixels to show. Take a 4K screen at 20 inches and then increase the screen size from 20 inches to 400 inches and guess what, even though it’s a 4K screen you can see pixels. Right now most high end smartphones have a pretty good pixel density of at least 300 ppi. At that point it’s not really how many pixels are in the display it’s the quality of the screen. For example are the colors in pictures accurate. I would take quality over quantity any day.
LG is misleading. We can make the difference in the image sharpness because the distance between viewer and their presentation screen is large sub standing a smaller angle per pixel on the human retina and hence with a larger field of view. Steve Jobs clearly mentioned the viewing distance as 10-12 inches where there will be little difference in the quality because a larger portion of the retina is stimulated.Ever wondered why pictures blur when zoomed out?. A marketing gimmick .
This is just another confused Android vendor rolling out the PC era specs race argument again.
So long as the components are in the same ball park, size doesn’t matter in this game, It’s what you do with it and all of the other constituent components that truly matters.
Maybe I’m reading this wrong, but Steve didn’t say you can’t discern PPI at all above 300 but from a certain distance i.e. held in your hand. Obviously if you have a large display in an auditorium many feet away, that would change, or is it just me? It seems to me that LG is playing the game where they quote one part and try to disprove it using a different scenario all together.
The main difference between the iPhone and the new LG G3 outside of obvious screen size and pixel density, is that people actually want to buy the iPhone. Having their flagship device at 5.5″ is assuming that everyone wants a monstrous phone.
Only in this industry can a supplyer ( like Samsung) talk crap about the product their contracted to provided to a 3rd party. Apple then moves screens to LG, and a loss to the amount of product they can produce, and knowing damn well what apple new screen will be capable of producing. They take to a stage and dog out their biggest customer ( apple) and even take it as far to pretty much say apples new iPhone screens will be far far behind. Not an apple fan boy, just looking in on the outside, seems nuts they could do that. These suppliers have apple by the nuts. Just like Putin and Obama.
“Stop talking crap, and don’t cross this line” they cross it ” okay, now you damn well not cross this new line”, they do “Dough”” that’s a bitch slap like no other. Apple can’t do shit, unless they want to get into the screen buisness. Lmao
Yeah! Thanks Obama!
Lol. Sorry… Had to do it… =)
Doesn’t anybody remember how much better the iPhone 5 looked compared to the 4? It’s not just pixels. Just like the iPhone camera. Well said Darth Geekonius!
Looks like the “Full HD” render of G3 is being displayed on a QuadHD display at a lower-than-native resolution. Hence, the apparent fuzziness is due to poor antialiasing.
If Apple jumps to higher-than-retina resolution, it will be in support of software developers, by smoothing the transition for them. This in turns leads to a high quality experience for customers, regardless of whether the apps installed have been updated to support the higher native resolution.
Android handset manufacturers–and their CUSTOMERS–just don’t understand that it takes more than great specifications to create a great user experience.
I meant to point out that this isn’t false advertising by LG, since they’re sort of telling us that the display used in all 3 cases is that of the G3, which is QuadHD.
Its funny how some of you are critical of LG. At least LG is not pulling a Sammy
While LG may count pixels in an attempt to bash Apple phones, Apple doesn’t count pixels to sell Apple phones.
What Apple does is clearly state they exist to creatively challenge the status quo. It just so happens that Apple does so by designing leading edge innovative tech to get the job done, and that’s something we can all use. So, we’re buying what they’re selling.
But we’re not buying the computers, or in this case the pixels. If we wanted computers and pixels we could all buy much less expensive computers, phones, and whatnot, for far less than what Apple sells them for.
What LG doesn’t get is that Apple users buy Apple’s message first because it resonates, and its computers second, because we agree with their philosophy. Counting pixels doesn’t play an important role in much of this. So, while Microsoft can literally weigh its latest Surface on a scale and LG can count over-sized pixels till the cows come home, this is “what” MS + LG are selling, and not “why” they are selling it. For LG and Microsoft, what they are selling is the takeaway message–we have more pixels–and this is why they’ll never share Apple’s clear-cut financial success and brand loyalty.
Apple has always–since day one–had a very strong message of why they do what they do: to take a creative approach at changing the status quo for the improvement of everyone, in a beautiful, almost magical way. On account of this, Apple’s message touches people in a way that Apple’s–or LG, or Microsoft’s–pixels cannot. And people respond to this message fairly wildly in the form of brand loyalty. You’d think the competition would have picked up on this by now.
LG, stop counting pixels, and start counting the reasons you’re making them in the first place.
the LG statement ” “If it were true that the human eye could only discern differences in display quality up to a maximum off 300ppi, then you wouldn’t be able to notice these differences in clarity and sharpness between the images shown.” ” is misleading. Yeah, on a 20ft screen you can see a difference, on a 5″ device? doubt it.
Know what I find interesting in all of this? These numbers are all pretty much for the person with perfect eyesight. Want to guess what the proportion of people with perfect eyesight to those without is? Let me give you a hint, one study I found said that 64% of Americans wear glasses. Granted some of those are near sighted, but then add in things like astigmatisms and the group of people who actually do have eyesight good enough to practically tell the differences is rather small.
i think apple will has to swallow their words this year about display size and pixels:-)
In absolute numbers, you could take a display to a billion pixels per millimeter. But it wouldn’t do your retina any good.
In my e- and i- books, I show readers a perfect 1:1 square image of 100 alternating black/white lines, and invite readers to step back until it stops looking like lines and appears to be dead-center middle gray.
There’s your resolution limit. When you can no longer tell alternating lines from antialiased tonalities, there is zero need for more display detail. And the test also shows the viewer the point at which the graphic is 1° square.
You can always blow up pixels—as the screen shots show in the presenter’s display—but nobody can focus that close.
i think hi is really misunderstanding on steve jobs meaning.. steve said for iPhone size.. when the device goes big .. users use at far distance … no one use iPad as iPhone distance from the eyes… why so serious???
Hmmm. First they should know the difference between True HD-IPS + LCD and LED-backlit IPS LCD (retina display). It is like comparing two phones with 8mp camera. The difference is the sensor. For example, a 6mp Carl Zeiss camera of a Lumia 720 can even surpass the 13mp of other smartphone. Good claim but definitely not necessarily. Much better to improve the battery life because it is the users claim about their product.