iPhone 4G put under microscope, 640x960px resolution confirmed?

The iPhone 4G continues it’s Magellan routine and going around the Earth - this time it showed up in the Czech Republic. Those clever Czech bloggers put it under a microscope to find out the screen resolution of the upcoming iPhone.

Now, it’s not a 100% certain, but with Apple’s poor track record recently we wouldn’t be at all surprised if an iPhone 4G went missing in the Czech Republic too. But even after all those lost iPhones springing here and there, one feature remained still unconfirmed - the screen resolution.

Rumor has is it’s going to be quadruple the current HVGA - 640x960, up from 320x480. A peek at the iPhone 4G under a microscope reportedly confirms this rumor and adds that the screen uses the same LCD IPS matrix as the iPad's. So no AMOLED screen this year as well. But considering the iPhone’s screen is the yardstick for TFT screens, that’s not a bad thing either.

iPhone 3GS, iPod Touch and Nexus One iPhone 4G

Anyway, the iPhone 3GS, iPod Touch and Nexus One screens were photographed under a microscope as well and were used as reference points. Then, a photo was snapped of the screen on the iPhone 4G under the same magnification.

The Czech bloggers used these photos to calculate the resolution. Note that the iPhone 4G screen was shot while turned off, because the phone was dead on arrival.

iPhone 4G screen under higher magnification

To illustrate what kind of impact the higher resolution would have on image quality they did some more calculations. The iPhone 4G with its 640x960 pixels resolution, has 320ppi pixel densitiy, while the iPhone 3GS (and the ones that came before it) has only 160ppi.

For comparison the HTC HD2 has a 217ppi, the Nexus One goes slightly higher at 252ppi (but uses a different kind of sub-pixel arrangement) and the Motorola DROID/Milestone has 265. The iPad has a much bigger screen and clocks in at 132ppi.

So in essence, not only would the iPhone 4G have the highest resolution among GSM phones but it would also have the most pixel-dense screen ever fitted on a smartphone.

The best thing for iPhone users and iPhone developers is that the resolution is exactly four times higher than the current crop of iPhones. That means upscaling of the already available applications should be easy as cake.

The iPhone 4G would definitely need some serious horse power under the hood to cater for the increased demand of the higher resolution output - especially in graphically intensive applications. So the rumor of the 1 GHz iPad SoC powering the iPhone 4G definitely sounds more credible now.

Source (Site in Czech)