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The iPad 3 will feature a retina display, so we’ve been hearing for months now. Well Mac Rumors has got its hands on what it claims is this fabled display, and while it’s not attached to an iPad 3, it is the closest anyone’s come to confirming the screen’s existence.
That’s it up there. The ruler is apparently to prove it’s the same 9.7-inches across as on the original iPad and iPad 2.
Obviously with no iPad to power it up there’s no way of seeing it in action, so instead the sleuths got the microscope out. Placed next to an iPad 2 screen and inspected up close, the new screen’s pixels look one quarter the size of those on the previous iPad. Zoom in even closer, and you can see there are twice as many pixels (made of red, green and blue elements) in each direction as in the same-size area on the iPad 2.
And you know what that means: twice the resolution.
Apply Mac Rumor’s findings to the full-size 9.7-inch screen, and the resolution should be 2,048×1,536 pixels — twice the iPad 2’s 1,024×768. That’s what we’ve been hearing the retina display’s resolution will be, spelling sharper images, which will be great for media like games and videos. (And while everyone may claim to use their iPad for couch computing, I think we all know it’s really all about games and movies.)
While I’m less sure of a lot of other iPad rumours, the retina display seems a dead cert for the latest Apple tablet. A higher resolution screen will also help see off competition like the Asus Transformer Prime, though its own software update delays seem to be doing a pretty good job of that. An iPad 3 announcement in the first week of March is also pretty likely, a year on from the iPad 2 launch.
Will a retina display put Apple way ahead of the tablet competition? Or can Android catch up? Let me know in the comments, or on our Facebook page.
Image credit: Mac Rumors.
