Jeffrey M Foster

marco:

But I’m still puzzled about the 960 × 640 move, if it’s real. The iPhone is already the highest-DPI display that Apple sells, and to double its resolution is very expensive: the panel costs more, it’s likely to use more power, it places higher demand on the CPU for rendering, it needs much more memory for frame buffers and textures, and it incurs big costs on developers and Apple’s developer-tools and developer-support teams. In other words, it strains nearly everything that is already strained.

To make that worthwhile, it needs to be a lot better for customers so this feature alone will drive sales. But I think it’ll have the same problems as Blu-ray (and before that, HD-DVD and HD Radio and DVD-Audio and SACD): consumers don’t care about improvements in technical quality unless they come with significant improvements in other areas like versatility or form factor.

What’s the average-person selling point for the high-density display that will overcome the downsides? And if the other specs have improved enough to eliminate the downsides — reduced costs, improved battery life, increased RAM — why is this better than having a cheaper, longer-lasting, faster iPhone with today’s display resolution?

[…]

I’m sure I’ll fall in love with the high-density iPhone display as soon as I see it. But on paper, I’m still unconvinced that it’s necessary.

My take is that a double res display keeps the high-end iPhone feeling & looking superior to the competition. And, maybe, it casts the 3gs as the “iPhone SD” - which is exactly your “cheaper, longer-lasting, faster iPhone with today’s display resolution” as the entry level.