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Only two more days until Apple finally reveals what’s up its sleeve. At this point, it’s all but fact the public will get its first glimpse at the next iPhone, but until September 12, there’s still plenty of room for speculation. Enter DisplayMate expert Dr. Raymond Soneira, providing some educated analysis on how the iPhone’s screen needs to stack up to the competition.
Sure, the iPhone 4 (and 4S) Retina Display is wonderful. But as smartphone competitors like Samsung have also increased their own mobile displays, Apple will need to make a few upgrades to the iPhone 5 screen to stay on top. As Dr. Soneira notes on the DisplayMate site, “The iPhone 4 display is no longer state-of-the-art.”
So, what kind of specs does the sixth-gen iPhone need? Upgrades to resolution, size, aspect ratio, and even screen reflectance. Of course, some of the upgrades are a consequence of moving to a widescreen display.
“The current iPhone 4 Screen Resolution is 960×640 pixels. In order to maintain compatibility with existing apps, the iPhone 5 can’t stray too far from this,” writes Dr. Soneira. “Since the Aspect Ratio is increasing from 3:2 to 16:9, the best guess is that the iPhone 5 will keep the same 640 pixels and just increase the 960 pixel value based on the new aspect ratio. In that case, the screen resolution will be 1136×640 pixels.”
Moving to the new resolution — and the 16:9 aspect ratio — means older apps would need letterboxing to maintain appearance. Soneira also notes a 1280×720 resolution would bring the iPhone 5 to true HD, with the added bonus of lower processing requirements from side-stepping scaling issues.
