Apple’s iPhone 6 may adopt a higher resolution display. It is rumored that Apple is planing on increasing the resolution of its next gen flagship phone from 1136 x 640 ( iPhone 5s’ resolution ) to a sharper 1704 x 960 resolution resulting in a display with 416ppi and 16:9 ratio on the rumored 4.7-inch model, while a 5.5-inch model at the same resolution will carry a density of 356ppi.
KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo suggested last month that Apple would maintain the current 326 ppi density, which could be achieved by bumping a 4.7-inch display to 1334 x 750. But 9to5Mac says that Apple may adopt an even higher-resolution display that triples the base number of pixels of the iPhone screen in both length and width.
This “3x” mode would take the base “1x” resolution of 568 x 320 and expand it to 1704 x 960. Using this method, Apple would retain the Retina branding at 416 ppi and keep the current 16:9 ratio of the iPhone 5/5s/5c.
MacRumors forum member pgiguere1 has taken a look at how non-optimized apps would appear on a 1704 x 960 display, moving up from the current “2x” pixel doubling technique to achieve Retina quality to a “3x” technique.
In Apple’s earlier transition to 2x Retina displays, it was relatively simple for non-Retina assets to be scaled up using automatic pixel doubling techniques to represent a single non-Retina pixel as a 2×2 grid of Retina pixels until developers could get up to speed. But with a potential move to 3x (or 1.5 times current Retina), many have wondered if that transition would be awkward.
