If you thought the iPhone’s 3.5 inch, 960 x 640 pixel display was sharp you ain’t seen nothing yet. Toshiba has just introduced a new 6.1 inch, 2560 x 1600 pixel LCD display.
The screen has a pixel density of 498 pixels per inch. Apple calls its 326 ppi display a “retina display” because at that density the human eye can’t really pick out individual pixels. In other words, Toshiba’s new screen is probably way sharper than it really needs to be.
Still, it’s a pretty impressive technology demonstration, and Toshiba says the display offers “photographic-quality” images. The screen can display 16.7 million colors and also offers viewing angles of 176 degrees.
Toshiba will be showing off the new display at trade shows starting next week. There’s no word on if or when we’ll ever see this screen in actual products.
via SlashGear
I’d really like to see a 23/24″ display with 300dpi for resolution. I’m amazed they don’t exist yet. I’d like to see them for the use with Photoshop and others. Do you have any idea why LCD haven’t seen the same dpi improvement as smaller screens?
Too many pixels to handle reasonably with current graphics cards and connectors. Consider that a 23″ 16:9 display at 300dpi would have a resolution of ~6014 x 3383. That’s 5 times the number of pixels of Apple’s biggest Cinema Display (2560 x 1600), and 5.5 times the number of pixels of their largest current Thunderbolt display (2560 x 1440). At 6014 x 3383, you’d need a machine with several linked graphics cards. I also imagine the waste heat from the LEDS at that total size and density would become problematic.
I do understand what you’re saying, Penn.
But then, I wonder why are these not problems for smart phones… those processors are certainly not designed for graphics, but they are handling it OK it seems.
Also, graphics cards hadn’t been able to handle even HD games until very recently, but we still appreciated those resolutions for desktop applications such as photoshop or word processing, etc. I think the same case could be made for publishing environments. I want to see on the screen a size representation of the document I’m working on. Anyways, it seems that no one has even tried to use the pixel density existing in phones for desktop environments, and it would be nice to see someone change that. Surely it ought to be a possibility if it’s working on phones.
The Problem with your proposed 300 DPI Monitor is soley one of Interconnect Bandwidth.
Although Graphics cards could technicaly produce these kinds of images, they couldn’t send them to any such display.
Disregarding ye olde VGA we find 4 (realy 3) types of Display connectors on Computers today.
single Link DVI (HDMI is essentialy the same with a differently shaped Connector), dual Link DVI, and DisplayPort.
At the Standard 60 Hz Refreshrate they provide these Maximum Resolutions in True Color:
1920×1200 – DVI / HDMI
2560×1600 – dual Link DVI
3840×2160 – DisplayPort
While these CAN produce higher resolution Images, they either need to sacrifice colordepth and/or framerate to do so.
The Reason why Smartphones/Mobile Device are able to have these incredibly high DPI Screens is not because their graphics processors or GPU=>Screen Interconnects are any more advanced, but because they simply have SMALLER pixels, and therefore more pixels per inch (PPI) or Dots per Inch (DPI).
So the Reason why we can have a 498 DPI, 6 Inch Screen is not, because of some magic, but because with its 2560×1600 resolution it still stays within the limits of dual Link DVI which is probably the protocoll used to drive it.
OK, I buy your argument about the display port. However, for the purpose of graphic design, I would not mind sacrificing framerate. I think that I have heard many graphic designers complain about dpi resolution not being really representative of standard print resolution. Anyways, I’m not trying to be difficult. I just have this feeling that they’re not doing as much as they could in the desktop LCD space to improve dpi.
As i said before, DPI/PPI just says how many dots/pixels PER INCH you have on the screen, but your typical viewing distance is different from Phone, to Notebook, to Desktop, to Flatscreen TV.
The distance to the display determines how many dpi/ppi constitutes “not able to distinguish individual pixels”. I mean, look at your monitor right now, and tell me if you can make out individual pixels at the NORMAL viewing distance.
Sure, being able to display more is allways nicer, and having monitors with professional print resolutions at a 1:1 scale would be awesome, but impractical for all the content out there today.Â
Because “Retina resolution is 300ppi” has conditions, that is centain distance. With a larger screen, you’ll tend to view the screen at a further distance. Thus your retina resolution is lowered.