Comparison of iPhone and IPT 4G image sizes
The iPhone 4 is almost 6 months old now. 3.2 or 5 MP iPhone cameras have quickly become the norm rather than the exceptions. The new high-res retina displays have a resolution of 640×960 pixels. Can you believe that there are still developers creating apps with super low resolution, even the dreaded 320×480 px?
We’re constantly exposed to the numbers of image resolution. A while back, I thought it would be interesting to see how the image sizes looked visually so I created the graphic above with the three image sizes from all of the iPhone cameras. I’ve updated it here to include the new iPod Touch 4th Gen, which got both a front and rear camera in its last update. As you can see, 2 1/2 times bigger mathematically looks very different visually. By the way, even the iPhone’s 2MP images can enlarge for prints quite nicely.
1024×768 (the thin, dark gray border around the iPod Touch image size) is the new 800×600. Some popular apps still max out at well below even the 2 MP of the original iPhone 2G. There are many apps that I test that still save at the postage stamp sized 320×480 pixels.
The new iOS 4 camera APIs allow these apps to be updated easily. Some developers, such as Cogitap with Slow Shutter Cam, have updated their formerly low res apps to support high res and even full res of an iPhone 4.
Hopefully the other, low-res apps will update or just fade away. Even when the cameras were 2 MP, 800×600 and 1024×768 resolution — both less than 1 megapixel — were just barely acceptable. Now, unless you’re trying to create a true digital lo-fi look, there is almost no reason any more to be constrained to this ever-decreasing canvas.
=M=
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