| Samsung Retina 10-Inch Tablet Display Announced |
| Saturday, 14 May 2011 | ||
Samsung Retina 10-Inch Tablet Display AnnouncedThe 2560x1600 screen is not only the perfect size for tablets, but it uses 40% less power.The next generation of tablets could have ultra-sharp "retina" displays if Samsung has anything to say about it. The Korean electronics giant plans to demonstrate a high-resolution LCD screen with a pixel density of 300 dpi and with a 40 percent power savings over current models. The screen is based on a display technology called PenTile, which adds a fourth "color" to the traditional trio of colors in LCD screens, red, green, and blue (not to be confused with Sharp's QuadPixel tech, which adds yellow). The fourth color is white, which makes the panel much more efficient. Typical LCDs use a combination of the colored pixels to produce white light, but the PenTile panel primarily uses the white pixels for this. Since a large chunk of image content is white or light colors, less energy is needed overall. The other advantage to PenTile tech is that it needs fewer pixels to produce images at the same resolution. Or, put another way, a panel with the same number of pixels as a traditional screen will have higher resolution. The screen, which Samsung will demo next week at a trade show in Los Angeles, has a resolution of 2560x1600 and measures 10.1 inches diagonal, giving it a pixel density of 300 dpi. That would appear to qualify it as a "retina" display, though the term itself, popularized by the Apple iPhone 4, has no scientific definition. The PenTile screen overcomes at least one of the issues for making devices with higher-resolution screens: battery life. The biggest drain on the battery of any tablet is the screen, and the PenTile screen cranks up resolution while actually increasing energy savings by 40 percent. Of course, the processor in the device with the high-res screen would need to drive graphics at the higher resolution, which also drains power, so the actual energy savings wouldn't be as dramatic as that. PenTile RGBW screens are already in use, most notably in the Motorola Atrix, but this display shows off how beneficial they can be for tablets, where those extra pixels can be put to better use than on phones. The technology could lead to Apple introducing a retina display for the iPad 3, though there are serious practical issues to consider besides battery life and the processing power needed to drive such high resolutions. First, all apps would need to be revamped for an upgraded display. And one could question the need for so many pixels in the first place-far more than needed for even 1080p video. Samsung says it plans to have the PenTile screen commercially available later this year.
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