After all the speculations from the last few weeks regarding the fact that the iPad 2 could have a retina screen, John Gruber argues that the new tablet could have exactly the same resolution as the current model, or maybe a slightly higher resolution, but in no case double resolution. He bases his claims on the fact that the resolution of 2048 x 1536, which it should be if it had a Retina Display, is much too high for an iDevice because much more powerful hardware is needed to support it and the price of the device itself would increase a lot . He claims that the entire Retina Display technology involves doubling the resolution of the device, the integration of very powerful hardware components to support the resolution, and at the moment doubling the resolution is something difficult to imagine for the iPad.
The current iPad has a 1024 × 768 display; a double-resolution retina display iPad would have a 2048 × 1536 display. At the same physical size, that would be about 260-270 pixels per inch. Apple, I suspect, could legitimately call such a display a "retina display" on the grounds that the typical viewing distance for an iPad is further away from your eyes than with an iPhone. (The iPhone 4 display is around 330 pixels per inch.). A 2048 × 1536 iPad display would seem to be cost prohibitive today. Not just for the display itself, but for the RAM. The current iPad has 256 MB of RAM, which is shared between the CPU and GPU. I don't think 512 MB of RAM would be enough for an iPad with a 2048 × 1536 display.1 That's almost as many total pixels as on a 27-inch Cinema Display (resolution: 2560 × 1440).
Considering that the doubling of the resolution is not supported by the current hardware, then the iPad 2 will not have a Retina Display. Going further, John Gruber claims that the images discovered in the app iBooks which had a resolution of 2048 x 1536 would actually represent the work of a zealous graphic artist who made them long before they could be used on an iPad tablet available to the general public. Gruber also talks about affirmations made by Engadget, claims that announced that the iPad 2 could have a screen with a high resolution, but did not specify whether it would be a Retina Display with double resolution or a screen with a different resolution and a different scaling of the image. Gruber confirms that inside the Apple campus in Cupertino there are iPad tablets with Retina Display, but it is not the iPad 2.
I asked around, and according to my sources, it is too good to be true: the iPad 2 does not have a retina display. I believe the iPad 2's display will remain at 1024 × 768. Its display may be improved in other ways — brighter, better power consumption, thinner, perhaps. Maybe it uses the new manufacturing technique Apple introduced with the iPhone 4 display, which brings the LCD closer to the surface of the touchscreen glass — making it look more like pixels on glass rather than pixels under glass. But my sources are pretty sure that it's not 2048 × 1536 or any other "super high resolution".
Gruber explains that the information obtained by Engadget could be true if the iPad 2 had a resolution of 1280 x 960 with scaling of 1.2 or 1536 x 1152 with scaling of 1.5. Gruber obtained information about the iPad 2 from sources close to Apple and confirms that the iPad 2 will not have a Retina Display, but does not deny the information published by Engadget.
Now the only question is... when will the iPad 2 be presented?
