Japanese Display Company Announces LCD with 651ppi

When the late Steve Jobs announced the iPhone 4, he heaped praise on the device's screen, which Apple was calling 'Retina Display.' Why? Because Steve said that its pixel density of 326ppi meant that holding the phone at a distance of 12 inches from your eyes would be unable to distinguish individual pixels. Since then, other companies are battling to produce displays that compete with the iPhone (and now iPad) display.

Today, another contender stepped up to the mark. Japan Display Inc has announced an LCD with a pixel density of 651ppi. If your jaw is on the floor, you might want to take a moment to pick it up, because this announcement is made a little less impressive by the size of the display in question: It measures just 2.3 inches. Still, that hasn't dampened JDI's spirits one bit.

"Although the screen size is only 2.3-inches, the resolution format of the display is 1,280 × 800 pixels (WXGA), which is comparable to those used in typical notebook PCs," the company said in a statement. "From another perspective, the resolution format of the newly-developed display is nearly twice the resolution of today’s high-resolution smart phone displays."

JDI's display is on show at the Society for Information Display’s (SID) Display Week 2012, which is taking place in Boston this week but hasn't provided details on what kind of devices, if any, we can expect to see packing this tiny but beautiful display. To put things in perspective, the iPhone 4S has a pixel density of 326ppi, while the iPad 3's Retina Display clocks in at 264ppi. Amazon's Kindle fire has 169ppi, HTC's One X has 312ppi, LG Optimus LTE has 329ppi, and Samsung's just released Galaxy S III packs a pixel density of 306ppi.

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