With the advent of the new iPad, which has a retina display, I started thinking about what exactly a retina display is. I know it has higher resolution, but what exactly is the definition of a retina display?
What exactly is a retina display
display
Related Solutions
I practice, I can't tell any difference at all between the two models for most finger gestures on non-drawing apps.
Two things make this measurement hard - we don't get to see the raw pressure points and the unsmoothed and smoothed multitouch input. The end result of touch is highly processed which could easily hide changes in the detection grid / chip that does the processing / algorithms or tuning to make one iPad feel like the others.
The other is that our fingers cover the area we are selecting and for fine adjustments, you don't have to actually move your finger - just roll it to change the contact area of your deformed finger pad area that is either in direct contact or close proximity to the glass surface.
Once I learned to pivot and wiggle my fingers in place rather than try to slide it for fine adjustments - my precision (and feel of being able to control the precision) jumped immensely.
On the other hand - drawing with a stylus or deft and rapid strokes with a finger in a good drawing program makes the end feel on a retina iPad much better than before. I don't know if this is mental or real, but getting a finer line out of the same repeated gestures is incredible and makes the new hardware feel much more like pen or pencil and paper to me. I can't tell if it's the CPU/GPU or hardware or illusion, but the feel is quite real after a short adjustment period.
The retina display of the new iPad has both...
- a four times higher pixel density
- a better color saturation
More vibrant colors will improve the looks of anything displayed on the screen. So this should make "non-retina compatible" games more fun as well.
However, all of the iOS apps by Apple are in high-res and due to the huge difference in the used pixels, non-retina apps will appear to have worse graphics.
The retina display is theoratically able to display four times the content. Apps that make use of only 1/4 of the pixel resolution are perceived less detailed.
Related Question
- MacOS – Can retina display features be enabled on older (non-retina) displays
- IPad – How to use an iPad with a Retina display as an external monitor
- Retina display support for XQuartz X11 applications
- Why do higher resolutions not show in the display preferences
- IPad – Have all “ipad mini 2”s a retina display
- MacBook – Does higher-resolution display scaling improve movie quality
Best Answer
Retina displays
To user Philip Schiller's own words from the WWDC2012:
There is no industry standard for "retina display". The term retina display is relative, as the definition follows the human eyes's perception of a display's sharpness.
When the iPhone 4 was introduced, Steve Jobs made the following definition:
Because this definition is relative, calling a display a retina display depends on two factors:
Both the iPhone 4S and the new iPad have "retina displays" when you apply Steve Job's definition. A mathematical explanation can be found in this answer.