Whatever your opinion on the iPhone 4, it’s hard to disagree that the Retina display is really rather excellent. Phrases like “It looks like print” are cliched, and entirely true. It’s the single biggest reason I’m not buying an iPad this year; no point buying one now, when I suspect one with a Retina-like display will be released next year.
The thing I find most fascinating about it is that it reminds me of when colour depth ceased to be a big deal to most people in terms of specifications. (At its extremes in the early days of home computing, to get the highest resolution on a BBC Micro, 640 x 256, you could only display two colours at once.) As soon as technology advanced enough so that 24-bit, 16.7 million colours in high resolution became standard, the general consumer stopped caring, as that’s the most granularity the eye can make out. Exactly the same is now happening with pixel density on mobile devices; we are approaching – or at, depending on your point of view – the point where it’s impossible for the eye to make out individual pixels, and there’s little point going much further. And whilst Apple may have got there first, this kind of display will surely become standard across all high-end phones over the next couple of years.
