Consider the total number of pixels that GPU would have to push:
- Current iPad Air (A7): 3.1 Million
- iPhone Plus (A8): 2.7 Million (scaled down to 2.1 Million on screen)
- 15" Retina Macbook Pro (Intel Iris GPU): 5.0 Million
- any 4K display: 8.3 Million
- rumored iPad Air: 7.1 Million
I think it is highly unlikely that a SoC, even an improved A8 with 4 cores, would be able to provide acceptable performance on such a crazy amount of pixels...
The iPad Air is a "2x" scale. It is a scale from the original iPad not from the iPad Air/3/4.
Quote:
Originally Posted by 1983
If this 3x res is applied to the current iPad Air it'll give 594ppi! Even to me that sounds a little like overkill res-wise. And I like my Retina displays! But if you apply that 3x res to the rumoured large screen iPad Pro - at 12.8" that works out to exactly 300ppi or print quality. Or if its the rumoured 12.9" then just over 297ppi. Anyway this new info adds much more interest to the upcoming 16th October event.
If this 3x res is applied to the current iPad Air it'll give 594ppi! Even to me that sounds a little like overkill res-wise. And I like my Retina displays! But if you apply that 3x res to the rumoured large screen iPad Pro - at 12.8" that works out to exactly 300ppi or print quality. Or if its the rumoured 12.9" then just over 297ppi. Anyway this new info adds much more interest to the upcoming 16th October event.
How do you get that for an iPad Air? (1024 * 3) × (768 × 3) = 3072 × 2304 = 7,077,888 px. On a 9.7" display that's 396 PPI. Even for a 7.9" display I only get 486 PPI. Your math does concur with mine for a 12.9" display.
There would be no point in increasing the resolution of the retina 9.7" with the implicit penalties that would bring. The obvious reason would be a larger screen size.
YES.
Same reason why Apple didn't introduce Retina HD until the larger iPhone 6's.
There's no reason to increase pixel density on a normal sized iPad unless the screen is stretched/made bigger.
More proof a bigger iPad is coming even a blind man can.......
How do you get that for an iPad Air? (1024 * 3) × (768 × 3) = 3072 × 2304 = 7,077,888 px. On a 9.7" display that's 396 PPI. Even for a 7.9" display I only get 486 PPI. Your math does concur with mine for a 12.9" display.
Yes you're right my math was way off for the iPad Air here! Sorry about that.
If the iPhone like display and 2GB RAM is just for some iPad "pro" like device then I'll save my money and keep my Air. A8 and Touch ID is not enough of an upgrade from the current Air.
Not sure where you get that double scaling thing (software downscaling??). On the iPhone 6 plus, the UI is rendered natively on a 2208x1242 canvas like it would on a 2208x1242 iOS device, nothing fancy here. The whole thing is then hardware downscaled to 1920x1080 by the A8 chip.
The reason why Apple did this on the 6 plus is that to keep standard UI elements the same size as previous iPhones, as the density needed to get native pixel perfect 3x was 489 PPI. Since they used a lower density screen at 401 PPI, this would've made the UI uselessly large at native 3x for such a small device, and not much different than the current zoomed mode.
The downscaling trick brings down the 3x UI size down to compensate for the lower than 489 PPI screen.
Now, the 9.7" iPads always had a lower density and we're used to have buttons and UI elements that are larger than on the iPhone. To keep the UI the same size, only 396 PPI is needed for the 9.7" iPad. This means, no downscaling trick would be needed for 3x at 396/401 PPI on the iPad Air 2.
Hey VL- good write-up. I typed it wrong (it was late and I am a little under the weather). You are correct about it being hardware (not software) that scales it down. But yes- Double scaling- specifically video. Software would scale 1080p video from 1920x1080 to 2208x1242, and then hardware would scale it back down to 1920x1080. That's double scaling. Where I said it feels like a stopgap, is that I could see Apple releasing a 489 PPI screen in the future, but just not now due to cost and battery limitations. If that were the case, only single scaling would occur- or more likely, no scaling at all if that was the native resolution.
Although in reality- it's not that big of a deal at all really.
I didn't actually run the numbers regarding the iPad- so thanks for doing that. Looks like they won't need to downscale like they do with the plus.
Again- it was a long day. It was dumb for me to even get on last night
There would be no point in increasing the resolution of the retina 9.7" with the implicit penalties that would bring. The obvious reason would be a larger screen size.
Indeed. No reason to pump Air 2 resolution to 3x retina while they can just improve it with Retina HD for the same resolution. For 12.9" iPad, it makes more sense to bring in 3x Retina to make it 298 dpi
Hey VL- good write-up. I typed it wrong (it was late and I am a little under the weather). You are correct about it being hardware (not software) that scales it down. But yes- Double scaling- specifically video. Software would scale 1080p video from 1920x1080 to 2208x1242, and then hardware would scale it back down to 1920x1080. That's double scaling. Where I said it feels like a stopgap, is that I could see Apple releasing a 489 PPI screen in the future, but just not now due to cost and battery limitations. If that were the case, only single scaling would occur- or more likely, no scaling at all if that was the native resolution.
Although in reality- it's not that big of a deal at all really.
I didn't actually run the numbers regarding the iPad- so thanks for doing that. Looks like they won't need to downscale like they do with the plus.
Again- it was a long day. It was dumb for me to even get on last night
Hey thanks!
I kind of suspected that you made a mistake in your post, but I thought it was a good opportunity to explain how iOS (and especially the 6 plus) deals with screen resolution and density (not just to you) since a lot of people seem confused about it.
You're right that some double scaling can happen with 1080P video, but I'm pretty sure the first upscaling phase is also done in hardware. Remember that other iOS devices that don't have 1080P screen also have to scale 1080P video (once) to make it full screen, and I highly doubt it's done in software (the iOS compositing engine has been using HW to scale stuff since the beginning).
One thing to note is that it was recently discovered that developers can specify that their video or OpenGL view use 1:1 pixel mapping at 1080P on the 6 plus, so that no scaling at all is needed. Also the standard video players embedded in apps will automatically use 1:1 mapping when full screen, unless controls are overlayed on top of the video.
I agree that it's a stop gap (I don't think it's that big of a deal though), and that we may see a true 3X ~489 PPI screen on the 6S plus next year.
There is a possibility they do up the display, but why not keep it? I could see a 12 inch IPad with same resolution as 10 and 8 inch but that makes no since, if tgey did it they would probably want larger one(like 5.5 inch iphone is to 3.5, 4, 4.7 inch) to have advantages.
If the iPhone like display and 2GB RAM is just for some iPad "pro" like device then I'll save my money and keep my Air. A8 and Touch ID is not enough of an upgrade from the current Air.
Comments
Consider the total number of pixels that GPU would have to push:
- Current iPad Air (A7): 3.1 Million
- iPhone Plus (A8): 2.7 Million (scaled down to 2.1 Million on screen)
- 15" Retina Macbook Pro (Intel Iris GPU): 5.0 Million
- any 4K display: 8.3 Million
- rumored iPad Air: 7.1 Million
I think it is highly unlikely that a SoC, even an improved A8 with 4 cores, would be able to provide acceptable performance on such a crazy amount of pixels...
The iPad Air is a "2x" scale. It is a scale from the original iPad not from the iPad Air/3/4.
If this 3x res is applied to the current iPad Air it'll give 594ppi! Even to me that sounds a little like overkill res-wise. And I like my Retina displays! But if you apply that 3x res to the rumoured large screen iPad Pro - at 12.8" that works out to exactly 300ppi or print quality. Or if its the rumoured 12.9" then just over 297ppi. Anyway this new info adds much more interest to the upcoming 16th October event.
How do you get that for an iPad Air? (1024 * 3) × (768 × 3) = 3072 × 2304 = 7,077,888 px. On a 9.7" display that's 396 PPI. Even for a 7.9" display I only get 486 PPI. Your math does concur with mine for a 12.9" display.
YES.
Same reason why Apple didn't introduce Retina HD until the larger iPhone 6's.
There's no reason to increase pixel density on a normal sized iPad unless the screen is stretched/made bigger.
More proof a bigger iPad is coming even a blind man can.......
Marketing-wise it would make perfect sense to differentiate the iPad line further.
Not sure where you get that double scaling thing (software downscaling??). On the iPhone 6 plus, the UI is rendered natively on a 2208x1242 canvas like it would on a 2208x1242 iOS device, nothing fancy here. The whole thing is then hardware downscaled to 1920x1080 by the A8 chip.
The reason why Apple did this on the 6 plus is that to keep standard UI elements the same size as previous iPhones, as the density needed to get native pixel perfect 3x was 489 PPI. Since they used a lower density screen at 401 PPI, this would've made the UI uselessly large at native 3x for such a small device, and not much different than the current zoomed mode.
The downscaling trick brings down the 3x UI size down to compensate for the lower than 489 PPI screen.
Now, the 9.7" iPads always had a lower density and we're used to have buttons and UI elements that are larger than on the iPhone. To keep the UI the same size, only 396 PPI is needed for the 9.7" iPad. This means, no downscaling trick would be needed for 3x at 396/401 PPI on the iPad Air 2.
Hey VL- good write-up. I typed it wrong (it was late and I am a little under the weather). You are correct about it being hardware (not software) that scales it down. But yes- Double scaling- specifically video. Software would scale 1080p video from 1920x1080 to 2208x1242, and then hardware would scale it back down to 1920x1080. That's double scaling. Where I said it feels like a stopgap, is that I could see Apple releasing a 489 PPI screen in the future, but just not now due to cost and battery limitations. If that were the case, only single scaling would occur- or more likely, no scaling at all if that was the native resolution.
Although in reality- it's not that big of a deal at all really.
I didn't actually run the numbers regarding the iPad- so thanks for doing that. Looks like they won't need to downscale like they do with the plus.
Again- it was a long day. It was dumb for me to even get on last night
Hey VL- good write-up. I typed it wrong (it was late and I am a little under the weather). You are correct about it being hardware (not software) that scales it down. But yes- Double scaling- specifically video. Software would scale 1080p video from 1920x1080 to 2208x1242, and then hardware would scale it back down to 1920x1080. That's double scaling. Where I said it feels like a stopgap, is that I could see Apple releasing a 489 PPI screen in the future, but just not now due to cost and battery limitations. If that were the case, only single scaling would occur- or more likely, no scaling at all if that was the native resolution.
Although in reality- it's not that big of a deal at all really.
I didn't actually run the numbers regarding the iPad- so thanks for doing that. Looks like they won't need to downscale like they do with the plus.
Again- it was a long day. It was dumb for me to even get on last night
Hey thanks!
I kind of suspected that you made a mistake in your post, but I thought it was a good opportunity to explain how iOS (and especially the 6 plus) deals with screen resolution and density (not just to you) since a lot of people seem confused about it.
You're right that some double scaling can happen with 1080P video, but I'm pretty sure the first upscaling phase is also done in hardware. Remember that other iOS devices that don't have 1080P screen also have to scale 1080P video (once) to make it full screen, and I highly doubt it's done in software (the iOS compositing engine has been using HW to scale stuff since the beginning).
One thing to note is that it was recently discovered that developers can specify that their video or OpenGL view use 1:1 pixel mapping at 1080P on the 6 plus, so that no scaling at all is needed. Also the standard video players embedded in apps will automatically use 1:1 mapping when full screen, unless controls are overlayed on top of the video.
Based on what I'm seeing I wouldn't expect it for at least 2 years.