The iPhone has come a long way since its original 3.5-inch, 480 x 320 display. Now the iPhone 6 Plus ships with a massive 5.5-inch, 1920 x 1080 “Retina HD” display with individual pixels that are basically indiscernible to the human eye.
The above screenshot shows an original iPhone screenshot inside a 6 Plus screenshot. It doesn’t even fill a fourth of the new resolution.
Screenshot from the original iPhone compared to a screenshot from an iPhone 6 Plus. Crazy. https://t.co/OL3L9SEU0Q
— Kyle Van Essen (@kyleve) September 21, 2014
Alex Heath is a journalist who works for Tech Insider. He’s the former co-host of The CultCast. He has been quoted by the likes of the BBC, KRON 4 News, and books like “ICONIC: A Photographic Tribute to Apple Innovation.” He lives in Lexington, Kentucky. If you want to pitch a story, share a tip, or just get in touch, additional contact information is available on his personal site. Follow him on Twitter.
8 responses to “How far has the iPhone’s display come? This screenshot says it all”
That’s pretty mad, even crazier when you look at the statistics of it. The iPhone 2G had a 320*480 display which equates to 153,600 pixels whilst the iPhone 6+ has a 1920*1080 display which equates to 2,073,600 pixels. That’s 13.5 times as many pixels as the original iPhone. If you threw the Galaxy Note 4 into the mix with its 2560*1440 display which has 4,096,000 pixels which is almost 27 times as many pixels as the original iPhone. All of these advances have occurred within a space of just 7 years, a truly remarkable jump in technology. Imagine if the iPhone 6+ had a 320*480 display on it, it would have a pixel density of just 104 PPI. If you think the iPad Mini 1’s display was crummy, this device would trump it for the title if the display had that resolution
While Android may seem like it has more pixels, actually has twice the number of green pixels vs. red and blue. This means, that pixels get “paired” to display the appropriate colors. It’s called a PenTile display, and it’s way cheaper than the iPhone’s display. It tends to over-saturate colors and, at the end of the day, it’s a lower pixel density where it matters.
Android is an operating system, not a type of screen ;) Only some Android phones have pentile displays
LG G3 and OPPO Find 7 do not have PenTile displays. Good ol’ IPS LCD. Safe to say their screenshots would embarrass the iPhone.
Those that feel they need more pixels than Retina level, should go for a trillion pixels on a screen. The battery will last about 30 min and you still will not be able to see anything more. Maybe we should for the 46 inch tablet. Then you could replace your tv with it.
Just so much fun here. LOL
That image isn’t entirely accurate but it still is pretty amazing. I’d like to see that up against the note 4. The original screens from yesteryears would be represented by a single icon (or close to it). Saying that if anyone produces a phone with a display smaller than 6inch with a higher resolution than 2560*1440 they are wasting their time/money and chasing marketing numbers. Even those with 20/20 vision would not notice anything higher than that. Time to work on colours and battery saving technologies seeing as the screen is normally the biggest drain on battery.
This is inaccurate. The resolution of the screenshot of the ‘large’ iphone screen has been resized up to 1242×2208, while the small screenshot is accurate at 320×480. To be accurate, the screen in background should have remained at 1080×1920.
Original image: http://f.cl.ly/items/220h1O0a0L052L1m2z1D/6plus-vs-iphone1.png