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iPhone 6 Screens Demystified

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Re: iPhone 6 Screens Demystified

#31

Post by fidotron »

0x0 wrote: post #12

I wonder if it will be possible to opt-in to 1:1 pixel rendering on the iPhone6+ after all, particularly for opengl/metal/video playback. It seems the downscale hack is mostly required for UIKit backwards compatibility and to maintain approximately equal physical sizes for UI elements only. Very nice visualization in the OP, by the way!

Have to admit I'd be surprised if a full screen OpenGL or metal thing wasn't available, as for gaming the overhead of writing to a much larger offscreen buffer and then to the screen is not going to be a good idea. Quite often the reverse is done of scaling up a smaller buffer.

Re: iPhone 6 Screens Demystified

#32

Post by pfranz »

MCRed wrote: post #16
fidotron wrote: post #8

This fuss about the iPhone screens is, to me at least, hilarious. A good part of my career has been being the "Android guy" in organisations where for better or worse the products would de facto lead on iOS. The number one headache was designers pushing "pixel perfect design" which is doable on Android, but is a pointless headache when your tiny screen is 720p or higher. The fact Apple have a phone coming out for whi…

Since the points are rendered in pixel-perfect form and then down sampled on the iPhone 6+, the only potential loss of fidelity is in the downsampling step. Since we're in an age of not even being able to see pixels, there should be no fidelity loss. The image displayed will be rendered at a higher resolution than the display, and thus every pixel on the ultimate display will be "perfect". Back when pixels were big e…

I think the reason raster icons have stuck around so long is the proportions of icons need to change as the scale gets really small to keep them recognizable (I think formats like svg has support for this now). Any vector icons also need to be rasterized before drawing to the screen which can take up memory and make things less speedy.

Vector icons were the new hot well before the original iPhone was released. Here's an article about OSX 10.4 Tiger released in 2004, 3 years before the first iPhone[1].

[1] http://forums.appleinsider.com/t/45544/mac-os-x-tiger-to-sup...

Re: iPhone 6 Screens Demystified

#33

Post by morganvachon »

I'm not a UX designer by any stretch, but as a consumer I can say that if Apple can pull off the downsampling/downscaling correctly, good on them. I have a Kindle Fire HDX 7", and recently upgraded to a Fire HDX 8.9". The former is 1920x1200 and 323 PPI, the latter is 2560x1600 and 339 PPI. That's not a huge difference in PPI in fact it's far less than the difference in the two new iPhones, yet so many apps (mostly games) render incorrectly on the larger Kindle, to the point that small text becomes unreadable.

If Apple can release two new phones with greater disparity and seemingly get the app experience right, why can't Amazon? I don't use an iPhone but seeing these explanations that break down how they pull off such a feat really impresses me.

Re: iPhone 6 Screens Demystified

#34

Post by jarek »

rayiner wrote: post #18
ianlevesque wrote: post #6

I know it's dangerous to armchair speculate about Apple's moves, but it really seems like they should have held out for a true 3x screen instead of compromising on a 1080p. I certainly would never buy the 6+ after reading about their cheesy resolution hack. It feels rushed and short term.

I think it's actually pretty clever. Developers clearly have trouble writing apps to support arbitrary scale factors. Resolution independence was supposed to be a feature of Windows since Vista was codenamed "Longhorn" (before 2004), and Windows is still a mess on higher-DPI screens 10 years later. Making it so developers only have to think about 1x and 2x and 3x makes the task easier. Also, look at it this way: with…

I'm imagining the commentariat's reaction to such a "pretty reasonable trade-off" on a Nexus 5 or a Galaxy S4

Re: iPhone 6 Screens Demystified

#36

Post by [deleted] »

mrb wrote: post #27
MCRed wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since the points are rendered in pixel-perfect form and then down sampled on the iPhone 6+, the only potential loss of fidelity is in the downsampling step. Since we're in an age of not even being able to see pixels, there should be no fidelity loss. The image displayed will be rendered at a higher resolution than the display, and thus every pixel on the ultimate display will be "perfect". Back when pixels were big e…

"there should be no fidelity loss" Heh. Yes there will be, most notably on webpages, for example those with box borders defined as "1px solid" lines. The lines will look fuzzy and unequal. Check the last image at http://www.paintcodeapp.com/content/news/2014-09-11_iphone-6... : it shows a "1 CSS pixel" line rendered as 2 black lines + 2 grey lines (one of the greys is very, very light). Some lines will not be interpo…

[deleted]

Re: iPhone 6 Screens Demystified

#37

Post by eddieroger »

morganvachon wrote: post #33

I'm not a UX designer by any stretch, but as a consumer I can say that if Apple can pull off the downsampling/downscaling correctly, good on them. I have a Kindle Fire HDX 7", and recently upgraded to a Fire HDX 8.9". The former is 1920x1200 and 323 PPI, the latter is 2560x1600 and 339 PPI. That's not a huge difference in PPI in fact it's far less than the difference in the two new iPhones, yet so many apps (mostly g…

Apple documents the crap out of it, and pages like on the dev site, and summaries like this are just built of that (usually aimed at a less technical audience than the dev portal). I think that's what helps the most - I've been able to tell every designer I've worked with what resolutions I need and how I need the files suffixed, and since they tend to use vectors anyway, it all just works out. Amazon must not put the same amount of effort into documenting, but admittedly I don't know about that.

Re: iPhone 6 Screens Demystified

#38

Post by rayiner »

jarek wrote: post #34
rayiner wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's actually pretty clever. Developers clearly have trouble writing apps to support arbitrary scale factors. Resolution independence was supposed to be a feature of Windows since Vista was codenamed "Longhorn" (before 2004), and Windows is still a mess on higher-DPI screens 10 years later. Making it so developers only have to think about 1x and 2x and 3x makes the task easier. Also, look at it this way: with…

I'm imagining the commentariat's reaction to such a "pretty reasonable trade-off" on a Nexus 5 or a Galaxy S4

Aren't the commentariat always asking "what's the point of going to 1080p or 4k on a 5" display?"

Re: iPhone 6 Screens Demystified

#39

Post by jarek »

rayiner wrote: post #38
jarek wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm imagining the commentariat's reaction to such a "pretty reasonable trade-off" on a Nexus 5 or a Galaxy S4

Aren't the commentariat always asking "what's the point of going to 1080p or 4k on a 5" display?"

We were until Android phones got higher DPI than retina iPhones ;)

Re: iPhone 6 Screens Demystified

#40

Post by MCRed »

morganvachon wrote: post #33

I'm not a UX designer by any stretch, but as a consumer I can say that if Apple can pull off the downsampling/downscaling correctly, good on them. I have a Kindle Fire HDX 7", and recently upgraded to a Fire HDX 8.9". The former is 1920x1200 and 323 PPI, the latter is 2560x1600 and 339 PPI. That's not a huge difference in PPI in fact it's far less than the difference in the two new iPhones, yet so many apps (mostly g…

I haven't worked in the Kindle division, but there is a huge cultural gulf between Apple and Amazon. Apple is very much a software company (well they're a design company that encompasses both hardware and software). They care a great deal about getting software right. At WWDC each year they have a session on how to do great software that illuminates a process that involves a lot of design and upfront work before you begin coding. A process that virtually nobody does these days. (I say these days because back in the 80s this is how CS students were taught "write your program out in paper before writing it in code". Nowadays nobody barely thinks about their work before they start writing code, for the most part.)

This is the polar opposite of Amazon, which I worked for in the past.

Amazon is perceived as a high tech company but it is a retailer and its management is the management of a retailer. Amazons engineering is overseen by non-engineers and the company culture is highly political and focused on making a show more than making a product. Quality is the last thing they actually care about (when it comes to software.) You get ahead at Amazon with press releases-- it never matters if your product makes no sense. (EG: Movie listings on amazon.com, mail-order catalogs, literally scanned, and posted to amazon.com, innumerable initiatives and features that were put up there getting someone a promotion, only to have the team disappear in the next quarterly company wide reorg and the result to just rot.)

This is why I would never buy a tech product from Amazon. They really don't give a damn as a culture, and any engineer who gives a damn will not survive long there (and will be punished).

Giving a damn about design and quality doesn't play well with stack ranking.

What plays into stack ranking is kissing your bosses peers butts, playing political games and making splashy new features.

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