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Comment by aaroniba | Hacker News Reader

The math on increasing the pixel density for iOS touchscreen devices is such that it only works out perfectly if the resolution doubles, like when the iPhone and iPod Touch went from 480 × 320 to 960 × 640. Trust me, it’s double or nothing.

That's interesting. Can someone explain why this is the case?

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Developers use bitmaps for many visual elements. Bitmaps will appear blurry when scaled unless they are enlarged by double.

Since UI elements often include one-pixel lines, blurriness would be unacceptably noticeable.

Ah, I see. Thanks!

The obvious thing would be to rotate things sideways and display full iPad 1 resolution apps on screen with maybe 33% screen real estate left over for a menu of some type, or a second type of app, or tabs, or just blank space, and then to allow developers to make new iPad 2 apps if they really want.

1362 x 1024 would be feasible with current CPU tech, battery, and 512MB RAM, and would be a nice bump. Since the iPad works well in either orientation, I don't think this would be a big hit at all. They could also go for another non-standard resolution with a border around another dimension if 1362x1024 were not desirable. But, 1024x768 with 1024x594 left over for something novel seems like it wouldn't be the end of the world for ipad 1 apps, and then an easy way to expand to full screen for safari, mail, and any recoded apps.

The problem with that is that unless the screen size is increased proportionately, the apps will be physically smaller. On a laptop this doesn't matter, but on a touchscreen device it would make buttons on the screen harder to hit.

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