What is Retina display? So far, you may have heard many times that Apple products use a Retina display, but what does that really mean? In this article, we are trying to examine what you need to know about any Retina display.
In recent years, displays have become an inseparable part of digital products, and we see them in almost all of the electronic devices we deal with, from small smartwatches to large TVs and monitors. The display is the only user’s visual gateway to the digital world, and a high-quality display can improve the user experience and immerse people in their content. This has prompted companies to continuously increase the quality of their panels and displays.
Apple is one of these companies that is known for using high-quality displays in its products. The company has been using Retina displays in all of its products since almost 2010 and the unveiling of the iPhone 4,but what is Retina, why does Apple use this name and how is it different from other market displays? These are questions that may have occupied your mind, and in this article we are trying to answer and examine all of them. Follow along with Wironal.
What is Retina Display
Let’s put it simply; Retina is a name for marketing the display of Apple products, for which there is no clear definition. Simply put, Retina is any type of display that Apple has decided to call it, but there are features that distinguish the Retina display from other displays.
The first and most important criterion is pixel density, which naturally increases the resolution of the display. When Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone 4 along with Retina’s first screen in 2010, he described the phone as facing a display with very dense pixels (326 pixels per inch), claiming that this density was not visible to the human eye. At a distance of 12 ions, the user does not see separate pixels and only sees the image created by the pixels.
A decade after the launch of the iPhone 4, Apple has equipped all of its products with a Retina display, but not all of them have the same pixel density. Some of them have a density greater than 456 pixels per inch, while others are less. The question arises is, how does Apple call them Retina? In fact, the difference goes back to two very important elements: density and distance.
The further away the user’s eyes are from the screen, the lower density will be needed to make the pixels disappear. In other words, the larger the display, the more distant the user looks at its content, and therefore the lower the pixel density required to qualify as a Retina display. For example, the image density of current Peruvian MacBooks is 227 pixels per inch and the iPhone 12 Pro is 460 pixels per inch. Despite the more than double difference, in both cases users are not likely to notice pixels because people usually view the laptop display from a distance and certainly won’t see separate pixels with the naked eye, hence the MacBook Pro display is also named Retina.
This may be a little vague, but the approximate idea is that a display is known as Retina if it’s clear enough that the human eye can’t detect separate pixels at a normal distance. In fact, by doubling the number of pixels vertically and horizontally, Apple converts the display of a device to Retina, meaning that its pixels are four times higher than the same non-Retina sample, but it should be noted that non-Retina displays are meant by Apple’s own previous displays, as most current displays from other brands also offer the same or even greater resolution than the Retina examples. They do.
But increasing the number of pixels makes UI elements like menus and icons look very small. To compensate for this, Apple created hiDPI mode, where the size of each interface element doubles vertically and horizontally, allowing the content of the Retina display to look clearer like a regular display and, subsequently, everything including text and content on the Retina display.
What Retina extensions mean
The iPhone 6, released in 2014, used a vertical resolution of 750 pixels, slightly more than the 720-pixel vertical resolution, which is one of the standards for HD videos. In addition, the iPhone 6 Plus had a vertical resolution of 1,080 pixels and much higher than the HD shooting standard. Apple never misses the opportunity to recover its products under attractive names, hence the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus display technology called Retina HD.
The label Retina HD continued until the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus in 2017, but the tech giant, on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the unveiling of the first generation of the iPhone, unveiled a new, fully redesigned phone called the iPhone X, taking everything one step further. Using a 5.8-inch OLED display, the iPhone X brings a density of 458 pixels per inch and deserves a new name for its high-quality display. Apple named the display Super Retina HD and used the extension until the iPhone XS series.
Of course, it should be noted that the names mentioned do not necessarily adhere to the basics of Retina displays, i.e. pixel density and distance. Apple only uses HD and Super HD stickers because of its higher resolution.
In 2018, the tech giant used the Liquid Retina HD extension for the iPhone XR LCD display. The display resolution is 828×1792 pixels and, like previous iPhones, offers a density of 326ppi, so the reason apple is named is not the display resolution. This screen is the first full-screen LCD with rounded and curved corners on the iPhone, and unlike most Android phones at that juncture, it has no low margins.
Apple says the display has the most accurate LCD panel among all phones and offers a high brightness and contrast ratio, allowing it to display a range of colors for HDR videos and photos, as well as True Tone, which adjusts the exact colors regardless of ambient brightness;
The latest extension is the iPhone Super Retina XDR displays, which were unveiled in 2019 with the iPhone 11. The name is referred to not because of its density and resolution, but because of its high brightness and contrast, and has remained so far.
Retina 4K & 5K
Now HD quality has become almost an outdated and outdated standard on large, modern displays. Today, TVs and monitors have a 4K display that consists of 4,000 pixels horizontally. Of course, displays with crazy 8K and 16K resolutions have also been introduced, but they still remain a long way from standardization and generalization. Retina’s 4K and 5K names are also due to their resolution, and are actually related to the unveiling of the 27-inch i Mac equipped with 5,120 horizontal pixels in 2014 and the 21-inch i Mac equipped with 4,096 horizontal pixels in 2015.
Next Generation Retina Displays
It is unclear how Apple will name the next generation of the Retina display, but it is likely that with the unveiling of the iPhone 13 series, it will also announce the new Retina extension. Rumors suggest that the display of the Peruvian models of the iPhone 13 will be accompanied by significant changes, and apparently Apple plans to use LTPO technology in the display of this series of phones, probably enough that Apple will use a new name to market its new display.
The thin film transistor based on the lowest temperature poly crystal oxide (LTPO), which is tasked with turning on and off the display’s various pixels, leads to more efficient display production. The technology allows the smartphone to change the image renovation rate from 1 to 120 Hz in a variable manner according to the needs and increase energy efficiency. Without reducing charging, the technology can provide a 120 Hz refresh speed for smoother and more smooth navigation, smooth animation movement, and improved response to mandates.
How Retina’s display compares to competitors
If you’ve followed the article so far, you’ve definitely noticed that Retina displays are almost no different from other current high-quality displays, and this is Apple’s patented branding, marketing and business right that leads no other manufacturer to use the name Retina in its product. In some cases, we even see displays from other brands that offer far better specifications on paper than Retina displays. When the iPhone 6S was unveiled, for example, Sony’s Xperia Z5 Premium offered a 4K resolution and a staggering density of 806 pixels per inch, much more than Apple’s.
Of course, many people will not be able to recognize the difference between a high-resolution 4K display in dimensions the size of a smartphone, and if steve jobs is correct, the density of 300 pixels per inch in smartphones will be enough to make pixels invisible, so it seems that adding more pixels is useless and playing with numbers to attract customers.
It should be noted that the quality of the displays is not only in resolution or pixel density, and many other components are effective in creating a good display, so the Retina display may not have the highest resolution available, but it certainly holds the optimal balance between the resolution and the power needed to deliver content in very high quality.
