What Apple Must Do to Keep Retina Branding on New iPhone

To keep the Retina branding, Apple must keep the pixel pitch of the screen at around 320ppi or better. Since the new iPhone – the ‘iPhone 5’ assumed name – is expected to have a 4 inch screen versus the 3.5 inch screen of the iPhone 4s, the pixel count will have to increase.

Paul Semenza, senior vice president of analyst services at NPD DisplaySearch had some informed opinions on this point, “To the best of our knowledge, the display will be 4 inches, with the same 326 ppi [pixels per inch] resolution, which would make it 1,136×640” which confirms current speculation. This pixel density would keep the new iPhone ahead of its competition such as the 4.8 inch Samsung Galaxy S3 with a 306ppi, 1280×720 Pentile display.

Semenza also commented on the touch capabilities and thickness of the new display, “we expect the display to have in-cell touch, which means the touch sensor is integrated into the TFT array of the display, which we think can make the display about 0.5 mm thinner”.

So, what kind of enhanced processing power will be needed to drive this higher resolution display? It might not actually be much different to what we have now, since the new resolution is not that much higher than the 960×640 of the current iPhone 4S.