If you've ever used an iPhone 4 or the newest iPod Touch, you've probably seen a "Retina Display". First off let's define what a "Retina Display" is. That's a bit tricky, since "Retina Display" is just a marketing term used by Apple. So, I will use what Apple believes a retina display to be. To Apple, a "Retina Display" is a display that uses a LED backlit TFT LCD capacitive touchscreen that has a pixel density that is 326 pixels per inch. Along with that, every pixel must be 78 micrometres wide and must have a contrast ration of 800:1. Apple believes that an average person cannot distinguish the individual pixels when a screen with at least 300 pixels per inch (ppi) is held 12 inches away. While this feat is receivable on a rather small 3.5 inch screen (the size of screen the iPhone and iPod touch), on the a 9.7 inch screen (the screen size of the iPad) it is almost impossible! A WQXGA (the cheapest standard resolution that can bring the iPad over 300pixels per inch ) would cost more than $1000 itself! With the entire iPad costing a mere $500 you should wonder how Apple (the makers of these iProducts) would be able to pull this off. Sure, they could charge users $1400 for each baseline iPad, but at that price, users would probably choose the cheaper and infinitely more powerful Macbook Pro or Macbook Air. On top of all that, this new resolution would lead to fragmentation of Apps, as it is not easy to port apps that are designed for 1024 x 768 to a display resolution of 2560x1600. When Apple bumped up the resolution of the iPhone 4, Apple avoided fragmentation by carefully choosing the precise resolution that had exactly twice as many pixels as the current iPhone 4. That means that for every single pixel on the iPhone 3GS screen, there were 4 pixels on the iPhone 4 screen (that's not a typo). So, we can effectively debunk the idea that the iPad would get a WQXGA resolution.
In recent times, 9to5mac has found different elements and icons in Apple's iBooks application that were optimized for a 2048x1536 screen. If you've been paying attention, you'll notice that this is exactly twice the resolution of the current iPad. Also, if you're a math whiz, you'll notice that the pixels per inch of a 9.7 inch screen with a 2048x1536 screen only leaves you with 263.92 pixels per inch. While that may not bee a retina display if you are holding it at the viewing distance of an iPhone, the typical viewing distance of an iPad is much larger and results in a much smaller requirement in pixel density. If you hold the iPad a mere 15 inches away from your body, this new resolution is more than enough to be named a "retina display". So, case solved, right? Not quite.
I've already mentioned the cost of the display itself, but there are other costs that this display would require. First off it would need RAM, a huge amount of RAM. 2048x1536 is a huge resolution (probably higher definition than the computer you are on right now) and for the iPad to be able to control each pixel, while saving other apps for fast app switching would require a huge amount of RAM, around 2 GBs. For reference, the current iPad has 256 mbs of RAM, 1/16 of what is required for this new resolution. Along with that there would need to be a new and more powerful GPU and CPU. There are rumors of Dual-Core processors coming to iOS, but in order for these processors to actually have the 100% performance increase that is promised, iOS has to fully optimize it's software for these new processors. The optimization itself will take at least one more year. All of this adds up to a lot more than $500. The components would cost more than $1,000.
There's one last problem with a super high res screen on the iPad. The highest quality standard format for video is 1080p. Currently when you try to watch a 720p video on the iPad (the highest quality video available for the iPad) you see black bars over and underneath the video. With this new resolution screen, there will be black bars surrounding the video. There is no quality of video that is high definition enough to be able to take advantage of this new resolution.
Sorry, but no new screen on the iPad. Maybe we'll get something brighter, or something from Pixel QI, but as far as resolution is concerned, 1024x768 is as good as it's gonna get. At least for this generation.
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