I finally gave in. Yes I am fully aware that the white iPhone 4 launch is imminent (and Vodafone pictures are all over the Net right now) and that the iPhone 4S or 5 or whatever is launching soon, but I just couldn’t take it any longer.
My handy 3G that I have had since 2008 was barely doing anything useful. iOS 4 crippled the device so badly that even making calls was dicey. It got so bad that to use the Google Maps app it was actually faster to turn the phone off then on again to clear enough RAM and CPU to run it. After one frustrating evening of almost throwing my phone under a car tire I decided I would just drive over to an AT&T Store an pick up a new phone. That was probably 2 weeks ago.
Since then I have been using an iPhone 4 (black, 32 GB) and life has again returned to normal speed. I can use maps again. Apps don’t spontaneously crash. Phone calls actually work. The camera app works. Focusing is WONDERFUL. Finally I can rotation-lock the phone. And of course the Retina Dispaly is just amazing.
About that display: it’s not like I haven’t used friends’ iPhone 4s before. I would say that I know quite a number of people who did the upgrade or this was their first smartphone. Still, living with a display that has a high enough resolution that you can’t see pixels is pretty amazing. And now I can’t go back to any other phone.
There is just something about not being distracted by those tiny grid lines that makes using this device a pleasure. The type is so clear and easy to read that I subjectively feel that it is less effort to read text on it. Especially when it comes to small text, there is no blurring or antialiasing. That means a lot less strain all while packing a lot more readable information onto the screen. I am not distracted by the device because the computer pretty much becomes invisible.
All phone, tablet, and PC manufacturers ought to strive for a pixel density greater than 266 pixels/inch. I remember when I saw a Sony VIAO P with its 266ppi display. Windows was pretty much unusable because the UI didn’t scale its icons up, but oh man did the text look amazing when reading web pages. That same clarity is what I experience with the Retina Display. And now that we know it is totally possible to produce these super pixel-dense displays en masse, it’s just about time we can escape from pixels altogether. I am salivating for the day when we can use SVG or EPS as system-standard graphics formats that render amazing clarity for icons and UI elements at any screen size and resolution.
