Understanding the nature of a display's potential requires an inspection of the size, shape, and arrangement of individual subpixels. This lets you identify the type of LCD panel and calculate the smallest detail it's capable of rendering. If you're already familiar with our tablet and smartphone coverage, then you know we apply this level of analysis to every mobile device that passes through our lab.
![]()
Focusing closer with our lab microscope, we learn two important pieces of information.
First, Apple retains the familiar S-IPS technology on its new Retina display. We know this because the subpixel shape reveals a Samsung IPS design, which makes sense considering the previous iPad displays were also manufactured by Samsung. In short, you'll enjoy the same wide viewing angles on the iPad 3 as its predecessor.
Second, the relatively small size of each subpixel implies a significantly improved color palette. Since every pixel contains three subpixels (red, green, and blue), more pixels allows you to create a wider variety of colors. For example, a bluish-green can be created by turning on the blue and green subpixels, while turning off the red subpixels. The relative bluish tint is achieved by having a brighter blue LED and slightly dimming green. You can only so far, though, because pixels have a fixed range of brightness.
![]()
On the iPad 3, specifically, each subpixel measures approximately 30x65 microns. So, you can fit approximately four iPad 3 pixels into the space of a single iPad 2 pixel. Thus, a truer bluish-green hue is possible by turning on four blue subpixels and two green subpixels.
The problem with small pixels is that electrical leakage requires spacing to prevent color blending. Apple overcomes this challenge by cleverly elevating the subpixels off the base LCD circuitry. Though, even with our laboratory-grade microscope tilted at a 30o angle, combined with strong lighting, the gap is still difficult to see. The video above summarizes the technology's details.
Fail troll.
My thoughts exactly. I don't care that it outputs 3x FPS over Transformer Prime; the latter can actually integrate into my devices' ecosystem and that's what matters. I'm not buying any tablet or phone without inbuilt memory card reader.
When comparing the three iPads, the iPad 2 and iPad 3 are both said to be using PowerVR SGX545 GPUs (core-count is correct) while the table below it comparing SoCs the models are completely different and listed as SGX543.
I smell something fishy, dinner must almost be ready!
Fail troll.
My thoughts exactly. I don't care that it outputs 3x FPS over Transformer Prime; the latter can actually integrate into my devices' ecosystem and that's what matters. I'm not buying any tablet or phone without inbuilt memory card reader.
After playing around with most hi-end Android devices AND iPhone 4S/iPad 2, I happen to believe this "nonsense". Everything looks so much more hi-res... but that's only Android's fault. When are they going to fix the menu animation lag and make everything more hi-res? ICS kind of did a good job on it, though, and now it actually looks NOTHING like iOS and is beautiful.
Of course, the menu animation lag and low-res icons can't make me shift to Apple, especially now that I run ICS on my netbook (try that, Apple... oh wait, your toy MacOS IS already like a tablet OS, lol) - same way that MacOS's ability to take screenshots of a selected area of the screen can't make me shift from Windows/Ubuntu. It's just not nearly enough to compensate for the important features I'll lose. Sure enough, there're tons of people to whom all of them don't matter and they'll just go with the most hyped thing out there, but I prefer to know what I'm paying for. It's a habit that pays off on the long run.
The author comments it is suitable for watching movies. Which movie is even available in such a resolution??? For watching movies in your lap on 10", 720p is more than enough.
Typo, fixed.
Cheers,
Andrew Ku
This would rule out the galaxy tab 10.1, as it also uses adapters.
Agreed, I was NOT happy when I noticed that Samsung decided to follow that stupid trend.
But all of us have different needs so I am not saying it's bad with memory slots and USB ports, but personally I can do just fine without them, so for me iPad "3" is a win-win. I skipped iPad 2 since I felt it wasn't a good enough upgrade from iPad 1 (don't need camera, and speed was decent enough). But with this excellent screen AND better performance (compared to iPad 1) and the reduced weight and thickness (again, compared to my iPad 1) I feel I get enough good new stuff to warrant the expense.
And personally I don't like the current messy state of Android so iOS works just fine for me. Again, my personal opinion so you trolls and haters can go back under the rock where you came from.
And I wrote this using my Galaxy Tab.
I recommend them spend their $100 bil. USD for example developing more power efficient and powerful technologies, because this is going nowhere. What's next? Battery the size of a truck?
I had the idea of setting up a local DNS and web-server. With some simple HTML5 pages I could then serve all my media library to the device (HD videos, images, music etc). This would be one way round the ipad storage and connectivity limitations.
(Not sure if Safari can go 'full screen' on the ipad that would help with this though?)
I was shocked then to read "Safari, does not display high-resolution pictures in their native format."
I wonder if then if this has been done intentionally to cripple media access to the device through the browser? I wonder if this applies to hd video too? If so I really hope that apple are not that anal and do make a fix for upcoming releases. Then I could have the best of both worlds
Don't use the "scores" though, they're Apple biased. Tell us the actual numbers, they seemed to be fair.
i had fun seeing my iPod's A4 doing 66 MFLOPS...and then thinking that my Core 2 Quad does 40 GFLOPS