iPhone 4 to 3GS screen comparison

It seems that Apple products are the only ones that get my blogging juices flowing these days… Oh well, I guess I’ll just roll with it. Besides, this is barely a “real” blog post.

There’s been a lot of talk about the new iPhone 4′s “Retina Display” screen, with some amount of tech controversy around the idea that the eye can’t discern its pixels at 12 inches. I guess that doesn’t really matter in the end; what does matter is whether or not the screen looks good / better than previous ones.
And it seems Scoble put an end to the debate with the pictures he posted today. The result leaves little doubt… Here’s part of the picture (click to get a larger-but-still-manageable version):

I have to say: I’m not incredibly excited about this feature, but all “Retina Display Marketing Magic” aside, the screen does seem to be pretty awesome. Oh well, I guess we’ll all see for ourselves in a couple of weeks anyway…

Side note about the WWDC keynote: Forget about iPhone 4 and Retina Displays, the most interesting thing in it all was the release of iMovie for iPhone. Because it opens the way to iMovie for iPad, which itself opens the way for more content *creation* apps on the device, as opposed to our traditional view of content a *consumption* device. Interesting when put in context of Steve Job’s interview at the D8 conference, where he stated that he didn’t see any reason why these machines couldn’t also do content creation. I guess we might see more iLife apps for iOS devices in the future…

June 13th, 2010

  • http://buildingiphoneapps.blogspot.com/ JF Martin

    Wow. What a screen !!!

  • Greg

    Looks beautiful. Samsung has claimed that it is an energy pig, though. As if iPhone didn't have enough battery life issues to live down!

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  • Lava

    Samsung's insinuations about the iPhone 4's battery is very weak sauce when Apple has published battery life times that are very impressive

    10 hours video playback (which means the screen is on the whole time).

    I doubt any other smartphone even comes close. And we've seen that Apple is generally right on the money with their battery estimates (case in point how the iPad made a fool of one ZDNet writer who proclaimed the only way iPad would get such great battery life with an IPS screen was if it had a nuclear reactor on board)

    In any case the iPhone can play 10 hours of video on a single charge. Immediately makes Samsung's claims irrelevant.

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  • http://patrickbeja.com/ Patrick

    @Lava
    Not so sure the iPhone 4 will last as long as Apple claims. iPad's battery is fantastic, but the hog in the phone is the 3G (push, etc). Just look at the iPhone 3GS numbers and actual life…
    I'd love iPhone 4 to have better battery life and I hope it will, but I don't think you can take use iPad / MacBooks as a reference. Still, I guess your point was about the screen, which does make sense.

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  • Anand

    The iphone 3GS photo above is deliberately blurred to show Iphone 4 in good light as Apple wants to sell us a cosmetically modified Iphone4 as some sort of revolutionary phone. I am not buying it.

  • http://patrickbeja.com/ Patrick

    Both pictures were taken by Robert Scoble, who is hardly an Apple PR guy. I doubt he would blur anything at all, much less a comparative picture like this… Seriously, Scoble is a very trusted person in this industry, and accusations like this would seem to me like they're coming from a person who's not very well informed. At all. :)
    But I guess you'll be able to check for yourself in a couple of weeks!

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  • http://twitter.com/jeffhume Jeff Hume

    Oh the irrational Apple hate. This is clearly the best screen on the market by a huge margin but people will still find a way to criticize Apple. There's lots of reasons to be critical of Apple but this is so far from one. Stop making a fool of yourself.

  • Neil McLachlan

    What difference would blurring make? You can clearly see the lines between pixels, so it's pretty much impossible for that to be blurred. The only other meaning of your statement is that the image being displayed on the 3GS isn't a live image of a website, but a screenshot that was taken of a website and then blurred prior to being displayed on the phone. It's pretty unlikely given that you can see the search area at the top at exactly the same level of dithering.

    The final explanation is that the bottom photo is actually a screenshot of any iphone that's been uploaded to a PC, pixelated, then displayed on the PC's LCD monitor. The photo is of the LCD monitor.

    That is possible but given the source it's incredibly unlikely. Scoble is a pretty unbiased guy, ex-Microsoft if I remember correctly, not an Apple lover.

    One thing I will say is that the photo of the new screen is considerably more contrasty than the other, which definitely makes it look better. But you still can't deny that the DPI is impressive. If you look at the blown-up version, in the area containing the story 'Dispersal of Oil Means…', you can actually see the pixels if you look close enough. They are outrageously small, and it seems that you can comfortable read a website in portrait orientation. Quite an achievement. All high-end phones will have this or better pixel density in the next generation. Lucky us.

    I own a Sony Xperia X10 so I'm hardly an Apple fan.

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  • Romain Michaux

    Bonjour, j'aurais aimé savoiur à qu'elle heure on pourra avoir iOS4 aujourd'hui ? :) , merci

  • http://patrickbeja.com/ Patrick

    Aucune idée ! Disons que la côte ouest des états-unis se réveille un peu tard par rapport à nous, donc sans doute pas avant ce soir ou la fin d'après-midi au minimum…

  • Romain Michaux

    C'est bien ce que je pensais , avec le décalage horaire :) merci

  • sonicoliver

    Where’s my retna display MacBook Pro you twats! :)