The iPhone 4 ‘Retina Display’ Controversy; Did Steve Jobs Exaggerate?

Apple makes a pretty ballsy claim about the iPhone 4′s display: “The pixel density is so high that the human eye is unable to distinguish individual pixels.” They’re pushing against the limits of the human body. Is it true? The iPhone 4’s screen may be the best mobile display yet, but its resolution does not exceed the human retina, as Steve Jobs (Apple) claims.

But what exactly is a Retina display and how will it, along with other screen technologies, benefit the new slimmer, HD-ready iPhone? To put it simply, Apple’s figurative Retina display is an LCD that boasts a super high pixel density by squeezing a 960-by-640-pixel resolution into 3.5 inches–a pixel density of 326 pixels per inch (ppi).

As announced in the WWDC 2010, The Retina display has four times the number of pixels as previous iPhones; its screen size is unchanged, resulting in double the pixel density. When compared to the now $99 iPhone 3GS, which has a 163ppi screen with a 480-by-320 resolution, it’s easy to imagine just how this new screen will shine. But make no mistake; the Apple iPhone 4 Retina Display is still NO match for the unaided human eye and the claims are mere false marketing according to Wired!

As it turns out, Apple’s claims behind the iPhone 4′s Retina Display aren’t completely true, display research veteran Raymond Soneira claimed. While Apple claims that 300 pixels per inch (PPI) is the limit of the human retina and that the iPhone 4′s 326PPI easily exceeds it, the DisplayMate president notes that the resolution would need to reach 477PPI for the pixels to truly be ‘invisible’ to a healthy human eye. Apple’s claims don’t become completely true until about 1.5 feet from the LCD.

A display with more resolution than most people can detect would have been a true statement. But instead, Steve Jobs said that the display resolution exceeded that of the human retina. Plenty of people have better than average vision, so Jobs claim is clearly exaggerated. Whether Jobs was lying or not depends on if he believes what he said. He could have received bad information or misinterpreted what he heard. Either way, it’s still an exaggeration of the truth.

Soneira noted that Apple would likely need to go above the retina’s actual resolution to have a visually “perfect” display. Apple’s Retina Display claims are thus another example of “spec exaggeration,” he said. The researcher was nonetheless careful not to undermine the significance of the display, as he still thought it was the best mobile display on the market.

It ultimately comes down to how far you hold the iPhone 4 from your face. The further away, the better it’s going to look. And about the whole “Retina Display” thing — Could it get better? Sure, but we got to admit that so far this is the closest thing ever done in smartphone display technology for the consumer market that matches the human retina resolution.