Italy 150
I’m proud of being here in this day, born in one of the greatest countries in the whole world.
Today our memory should go to all those men and women that one and an half century ago bring our shattered land together again giving us the right to call ourself italians again.
They fought for all of us, even for those lost souls that are now trying to void their sacrifice.
There couldn’t be italians without Italy.
A great and proud 150th anniversary to all italians.
How to easily re-arrange files at no cost
My mobile phone picture folder was full of old picture coming from last five years of old phones. Simply browsing them become a nightmare with new and old pictures mixed together in a quasi-random fashon. Getting pissed of all the running up and down the folder to find my last shot, I decided to fix it. I connected the phone to the PC and shiver in terror, a long and boring renaming session was all I had in mind.
Being lazy, I choose to look for an enlighted savior who already solved my not so uncommon problem. A quick web search drove me to the nice Bulk Rename Utility, a free, geeky tool for Windows PCs, that put my picture folder back into shape in a snap.
Bulk Rename Utility main screen
Despite the crowded interface, Bulk Rename Utility is not difficoult to use and has a broad range of options to fulfill even the trickiest requests. A really useful tool that should stay on every hard drive… just in case.
A whole new Galaxy
Amongst the hundred tech company crowding our world I always liked Samsung. Many Samsung’s product I had surprised me in positive way earning them a not neutral aptitude towards them. Nevertheless I was not thrilled about their newborn tablet project and I even overlooked previews, blogs and news regarding it.
Since Apple (who else?) refreshed the not-so-new-and-magical tablet concept with the iPad there was a spawning of too much tablets. None of them catch my imagination.
Call me Apple hateboy, but I see no magical anything in the iPad. I think an e-book reader like the new Kindle is a thousand time better reading device than the iPad and color magazines are too small bonus to let me pay the huge difference between the two. Browsing, messaging, e-mailing, chatting and almost everything that is now popping in my mind, could be done much more easily on my home desktop PC’ 19 inch display than crammed in a tiny display (I know what I say, I own a 10 inch netbook too…) with the added malus of not having a full size keyboard (I type with all my fingers, reverting to one finger or two fingers typing is not something I seek).
On the mobile side, I see no big advantage of a tablet over a good mobile phone. It could be a good solution for a first class airline traveler but being a daily train commuter, I’m sometime forced to stand in a crowded corridor. I couldn’t see myself holding a large tablet to surf the Internet. Just to clarify, I wrote this post while standing on a shaky train using my phone; doing the same holding a tablet would be impossible.
I do not hate tablets: their business case simply do not fits my needs. I prefer using a mobile phone rather than a extra-huge iPod/iPhone clone. I admit that the tiny three inch Xperia screen is not the best one could find, but I’ll still save those 700 euros for buying an iPhone4 rather than a tablet. At least you do not need a bag to carry it around. I’m not scared by the size of a device; since the beginning of mobile computing I carried around an HP Jornada 720 first and a Dell Axim X51v later (that’s why the blocky look of Xperia X1 is not scaring my pockets). Nevertheless all of them were still fitting my pockets without odd solutions (joking or not).
During my daily scavenging in the third millennium of knowledge (i.e. Internet) i found a preview of the new GalaxyPad and glanced at it with the usual “uhm, another tablet” approach I adopted from the release of iPad: “… 1GHz processor, 7″ display, 1.3MP camera… Hey, what the f**k… a 7″ display? I have a seven inch portable DVD player and it’s display is not SO big”.
I, then, re-read the whole article with a better focus and I discovered what was probably obvious to the whole world except me: The GalaxyTab is not a tablet. It’s more a large mobile phone.
Ok, said this way is less sexy and will make Samsung people shout at me, but, damn, it’s a phone. A big, shiny, full feature phone. It also has Android 2.2 on it. If you read all the specs without considering the screen size line, you’ll see a smartphone coming out, not a sub PC thing smuggled as “tablet”.
Damn, I like it. My smartphone usage is 99,5% Internet browsing, chatting, e-mailing, messaging and 0,5% phone calling. My Xperia is handling all of it like a breeze but a seven inch thing could do the trick and still being pocketable. I could see it used in my car as navigation equipment or used at home as always on video calling equipment. Its size is big enough without being cumbersome and the usage of a 4000mAh battery coupled with Android sounds really good choice for a all day long jack-of-all-trades equipment.
I’ll need to take a real glance at it and test it to being able to say the final word, but all I saw looks extremely promising. Just take a look on your own here.
Earth reloaded
Some days ago I saw Pandorum. I won’t review it (there are plenty of them around) but it make me wonder (warning: some spoilers ahead).
A new Earth
The whole movie is about an ark spaceship hosting an hypersleeping crew traveling to a remote twin of our dying planet to colonize it. This is a common concept in science fiction and is also something studied by real space agencies. Fictional or real, sooner or later our efforts to find another planet capable to support life will succeed and the idea of creating off-planet colonies will begin a real topic to discuss.
Crash-landing on a faraway world
Colonizing a planet light-years from Earth will be a daunting task on its own, but even assuming that all the required interstellar travels technologies will be available (even knowing if they’re feasible is a challenge right now), the movie sketches a quite interesting topic that is left undeveloped by the “happy ending”.
I, honestly, won’t be so happy of being a castaway on a life blowing alien world without any food except the potentially poisonous alien creatures. On top of it, the random survivors of the once big colonization team is happily wandering around with cannibal zombie like mutating agent in their veins. No, I definitely won’t be “oh so happy”.
But even removing all these copycat sci-fi events, the goal of colonizing a distant planet (much more a light-year distant one) is very hard indeed. In the Pandorum movie we got some hints of a crew of farmers (obvious) and a crew of biologists with an “archive” of creatures to be introduced to this new world. Having an “archive” of Earth creatures is indeed a good idea because the local creatures could not be good for feeding a growing colony. But even more interesting is the idea of starting a whole new civilization. The question that was spinning in my mind was: will we be able to create a working colony on a distant earth-like planet with the same technology level we will have on Earth?
In the movie this question is brought to its top consequences since the survivor are the last human being in the universe and all the technology equipment are buried at huge depth below the sea of the new world. But even for a successful colonization ship, will be possible to re-create a technological based colony or it will sooner or later fall in a sort of technologically savvy middle age?
A differential world
Here on Earth, all our technologies were built in a huge amount of time. Every time we build something, starting from a chair up to the LHC, we are relying on an existing infrastructure made of services grown on its predecessors. No matter how good and sturdy an equipment is, it will fail after an interval of time and it would need to be repaired. Even in the optimal situation of having periodic equipment shipments from Earth (i.e. one unmanned ship every year) to support the development of the colony, they will stop after a while or won’t even start (interstellar travel is a huge cost after all).
For sure a new colony will need a power source and a production plant capable of creating all the spare parts for equipments and vehicles. Furthermore, even having a full spectrum production capability, there’s the need for raw materials to be fed into the production plants. This means that they needs to, either, be transported from Earth or be extracted on the new planet. Given the horrific cost per ton of interstellar travel and the fact that chemical elements are the same all over the universe, the latter option seems the best choice for supporting a colony. Even if the spaceship itself could be used as a source of spare parts during the first years of the colonization, there will be the need of, at least, some prospecting and digging equipment on it to continue to sustain the growing population.
Once upon a time, on a far far away world…
Let’s sketch down a shopping list like plan for wannabe interstellar settler.
The best approach (this is my opinion, of course) will be to use a ark type spaceship to stop in a geosynchronous orbit over a favorable spot on the new planed to be settled (landing or crash-landing isn’t a great option here). The ship must be able to host the full crew operation. An orbital lift equipment is the best technical solution to avoid landing a kilometer long spaceship full of equipments on a unknown environment or wasting fuel shuttling back and forth from the planet surface (I assume that a technology able to deliver goods to another stellar system is advanced enough to deploy an orbital lift). From this starting point it will be possible to slowly deploy the first colony with houses, factories and food production areas until a positive feedback in growth allows leaving the spaceship and begin the new life on the planet.
This is a “woo hoo” colonization, but if you’re to leave for a 40 years travel in the unknown I guess you want to have a B plan just in case something will go wrong, even terribly wrong (Something like your homeworld blew off and you find yourself in a deadlock ship full of cannibal mutants feasting on your canned hypersleeping crew).
The re-evolute plan
Even in the (let’s hope unlikely) event of a total failure, the settlers will need an escape path for surviving. Assuming that some sort of basic survival could be provided by the environment and no deadly pest will exterminate them in no time, they could be thrown directly to stone age by some unlucky event. The only thing that they will have to make their day is their knowledge. Every crew member would have to be trained in basic survival and technology skills maybe providing them with a portable, rugged and manually powered survival unit enclosing a vast knowledge base. The best solution will be to provide the mission with a well studied protocol for recreating the basic technology needed to restart a new civilization in the minimum amount of time (something similar to technology tree as seen in games similar to Civilization) with optional choices just in case some technologies are needed or not in the new environment (why developing weapons if you live in a plant only world…). Even with this aid, there will be the need of finding raw materials to build the basic equipments needed to develop and create the more advanced ones. Re-evolving the last 6000 years of our history in a short amount of time sounds almost impossible but… what about being cast away on an unknown planet with nothing more than your fellow crew members and the knowledge of what has to be done? Wouldn’t you take the challenge?
Monsanto did the right thing. Or not?
There was a bit of turmoil in Italy during this month for the sowing of GM corn seeds in a small town in Friuli Venezia Giulia region. Activists from different environment protection organizations, such as Greenpeace, took action against the blossoming corn field to stop contamination of conventional corn fields in the surrounding. According to law, the corn field was not allowed to grow MON810 (the product name of the corn) because, even if European Union did release the authorization for MON810, many countries, and Italy is one of them, put a ban on its usage. Furthermore, the general law regarding GM food, requires specific authorization to grow GM plants. At the very end, the action against the corn fields, was the right thing to do in order to overcome the slowly application of the law from local authorities and avoid the contamination of other corn fields that is the core of the law itself.
GMO what?
A Genetically Modified Organism is a living being (plant, animal, etc…) where the original “natural” DNA is modified introducing genes of other plants or animals or deleting original genes in order to boost or introduce a specific characteristic to improve the original organism.
The MON810 corn was modified by Monsanto by introducing genes from a bacteria, the Bacillus thuringiensis, that made the plant to express a deadly toxin for many kind of insects (Bacillus thuringiensis insecticidal proteins are commonly used as pest control agent since 1920). All the plants expressing this toxin are identified as Bt from the name of the bacteria. This modification allows to increase the production of the crops by reducing the damages usually coming from insect pests. The usage of this kind of seeds avoid the usage of pesticides to protect the plants.
The result of this new kind of corn is an increase of productivity and more available food for all of us. In a world running at steady speed against the hard wall of overpopulation is a good thing indeed.
But?
A GMO, however, is a plant but not a “natural” one anymore. A Bt plant is producing its own pesticide, an environmentally friendly one, but still a pesticide. Converting, ideally, the whole world corn production to Bt one, could lead to extinction of some insects or evolution of a new sturdier breed that will be immune to the Bt toxin with unknown result to the rest of our biosphere. On the other hand the toxin, now part of the corn itself, could become dangerous for our health on the long run by slowly poisoning our body.
Should we give it a try?
The world population is growing at fast pace and food will be one of the great challenges we’ll have to face in the near future. Up to now, technology was the only answer to our need of growth. Genetic engineering could save us again by increasing the growth rate our planet is able to sustain.
On the other hand, modifying an organism could lead to unexpected results both for our environment and our health.
GMOs and genetic engineering are not Solutions, they are tools. A tool is neither good or bad, it depends on how it’s used.
On GMO field, too many things are not clear. GMO producing companies highlights the benefit of GMOs and minimize the risks. Environment activists, on the other hand, demonize the GMO at full spectrum spreading memes of improbable chimeras such as the fish strawberries or lamb coffee (“Guaranteed to stay warmer!”).
The real big problem with GMO is that there is no clear explanation to the general public of their risks and benefits. GMO are science and as such they should be treated in a scientific way. Currently (for the general public, at least) there is no clear and systematic approach. It has become a commercial/political issue with all its murky information pushed by both opponents. When things are unclear and brain-thinking is not possible, the streetman switches to stomach-feel where fears and beliefs are the only guidance. In this scenario the faintest risk becomes THE risk and a mild improvement become THE solution following the best sounding heading in the evening news.
Either loving or hating GMO is like loving or hating TV or weapons. You may hate Fishing Channel but love classic Star Trek series and you may hate nuclear ballistic missiles but love archery. I don’t know if MON810 is neither good or bad. All I ask is to be informed and live in a world where GMO companies are free to safely research for the good of us all, but were they can’t cheat and bribe to overcome the safety measures put in place by our governments.
Smartphone crazy
Since the advent of the iPhone, the user expectations of what a smartphone is, how it looks and what features it provide changed a lot. A direct comparison of the years old Windows Mobile concept with every of its recent contender not sporting the Microsoft OS, will lead to an inglorious defeat for WM. Being a Windows Mobile powered Xperia X1 owner, I know this very well. During the long reign of WM there were companies that tried to modernize the system using personalized UIs, but in the end the concept was considered obsolete and even Microsoft decided to jump on the iPhone cousins bandwagon with its soon to be launched Windows Phone 7.
A modern phone
The iPhone concept (a sleek, flush, always connected slate device with capacitive touchscreen, touch UI and on-line application market) was a really successful one. It would be dumb not to emulate it. Microsoft choose not to follow this path and failed. Now it’s paying it with a big gap from the other OS competitor.
So far, so good. Right?
Well… it depends. I love my Xperia and I not so secretly think that its overall concept is still the best around, but is it an honest analysis or just fanboy nonsense? Let’s dig a bit more into this.
The iPhone concept does not really refer to the iPhone only. It’s more a macro-category that holds all new lineup from all main manufacturer that have a modern OS (Apple, HTC, Motorola Milestone XT720, Samsung, Nokia, LG, Sony-Ericsson, etc…). All of them are similar and very far from the old Windows Mobile world. Let’s put down these differences:
| Modern smartphone | Old Good Xperia X1 | |
| Size | Up to 4.0″ display | 3″ display |
| Weight | Up to 157g | 145g |
| Screen size | Up to 960×640 | 800×480 |
| Screen | Up to 326 ppi | 312 ppi |
| resolution | ||
| Colors | 16M | 65K |
| Touchscreen | Capacitive with multitouch | Resistive |
| Controls | Buttons | Buttons |
| Optical trackpad | Yes | Yes |
| QWERTY keyboard | No (but found on other models) | Yes |
| Stylus | No | Yes |
| G-sensor | Yes | No |
| Compass | Yes | No |
| Accelerom | Yes | No |
| Gyro | Yes | No |
| Proximity | Yes | No |
| Ambient lig | Yes | Yes |
| aGPS | Yes | Yes |
| 2G network | GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 | GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 |
| 3G network | HSDPA 850 / 900 / 1900 / 2100 | HSDPA 900 / 1900 / 2100 |
| Vibration | Yes | Yes |
| Audio jack | 3,5″ | 3,5″ |
| Speakerphone | Yes | Yes |
| GPRS | Class 12 | Class 10 |
| EDGE | Class 12 | Yes |
| 3G | HSDPA, 7.2 MbpsHSUPA, 5.76 Mbps | HSDPA, 7.2 MbpsHSUPA, 2 Mbps |
| WLAN | 802.11 b/g/n | 802.11 b/g |
| Bluetooth | v3.0 with A2DP | v2.0 with A2DP |
| IR port | No | No |
| USB | 2.0 micro USB | 2.0 mini USB |
| Camera main | 8MP with xenon flash | 3,15MP with led flash |
| Camera sec | VGA | QVGA |
| Videocall | yes | yes |
| Video rec | 720p @ 30fps | VGA @ 30fps |
| Radio | Stereo with RDS | Stereo with RDS |
| CPU speed | 1GHz | 528MHz |
| RAM | 512Mb | 256Mb |
| ROM | 2Gb | 512Mb |
| Storage | 32Gb | No |
| Cardslot | MicroSD up to 32Gb | MicroSD up to 16Gb |
| Battery | 1500mAh | 1500mAh |
Data taken from GSMArena. First column referred to Apple iPhone4, HTC Desire, Nokia X6, Samsung GalaxyS, Sony-Ericsson Xperia X10 and Motorola Milestone XT720. Second column is listing Xperia X1 data only.
There are differences, as obvious considering a two years old handset, but let’s keep in mind that “modern smartphone” is the union of the best characteristics of ALL the handset listed above. Furthermore, many of the differences are not related to the design itself but to the differences in technology between 2008 and now. I voluntarily omitted all the software features because are heavily dependent on the OS used and are not usually limited by the hardware platform. I installed Android 2.1 on the Xperia and is running fine, the only problem is the lack of drivers that made many peripherals not working properly or at all. But, again, it’s a support problem not a platform one.
The only real and big difference is the usage of resistive touchscreen. The lack of multitouch and the lack of touch UI were the death of WM phones concept. The new concept, however, has its drawback too. Of course Apple commercials (followed by all the other that choose “finger is better”) did not point this out, but the new design declared the death of the stylus.
It’s not a big loss indeed, but is a nice input method that I miss in newer phones. The touch concept with multitouch input is something that could be achieved even on resistive displays as shown by the great guys at XDA . Is also true that capacitive stylus are available as add-on so is not a real match of capacitive/multitouch against resistive/stylus. It’s just a matter of technical choices for the overall handset design.
I found a stylus really useful because I could take notes very quickly in written text and sketches, something that is really not good to be done with a finger. Furthermore the bigger the display the better the drawing. I could make a shopping list and delete things with just a line on the item and I could draw something with a simple paint-like software. That stylus (and the software that uses its use) is something I could live without, but that I’ll definitely miss in a new smartphone.
Long story short
Is what we currently have way better from two or three years in the past? Commercials aside, my opinion is no. If you have an old smartphone and manage not to be caught by “new is better” craziness, you probably just have what you really need in your hands. Your faithful device probably has also features lacking in the new handsets (such as the stylus or a IR port) that could be very useful for your daily use. Before rushing out to buy a 600€ new smartphone to replace a year old one, just honestly answer the question: “what do I really need from my unit?”
Match the answer against what you hold in hand… you’ll be surprised.
The power of Volt
I just read a newspaper article regarding the Chevrolet Volt prototype heading for market in US late this year with a sound 100.000 miles / 8 year warranty on its battery cells. I honestly did not know anything about this car but being quite interested in alternative means of pushing cars around I took a deeper look at it.
The idea is interesting, an electric car with a gas “range extender” engine to keep it going past the 40 miles electric range provided by its 16kWh battery pack. The numbers, out of the huge battery warranty, are very good and could be found in the official webpage. What really made my head spin is the possibilities of such car design. Turning this technology to, say, a city-car would be really interesting.
The idea
With a standard city-car in a typical medium size italian town is not common to drive more than 40 miles a day. Furthermore the car stays many hours parked in sunny places (we’re talking about Italy after all) where a solar panel charge is not that difficult to achieve (keeping the plug-in capability though). It would be also possible to switch the gas engine for a natural gas turbine or hydrogen engine (being the second source for a city-car it doesn’t need to have a huge range) and it would be possible to have a really low operating emission vehicle.
Some finger calculation.
I have no idea of the full specs of the Volt but I suppose that a similar tech city-car could weight two thirds of it. By reducing the maximum speed to, say, two thirds again it should be possible to limit the engine power and extend the driving range keeping its 16kWh batteries. I’m just guessing here but let’s suppose to be able to squeeze 80 kilometers (originally is 40 miles that means 64 kilometers. Extending it to 80 kilometers is 125% the original range, that is not that more giving the listed reductions).
Having 80 km on 16kWh means running 5 km each kWh of charge (roughly). If you use your city-car for common hometown trips such as shopping, cinema, school, etc… I guess you should have not more than 10 km each leg. It also means that you should be able to recover this depletion quickly. Chevrolet reports that a full charge could be achieved in 4 hours using a 240V outlet (and EU grid is all on 240V) that means about 30 minutes charge at full power. It could then be possible to have recharge stations near offices, schools, malls and other public interest buildings powered, maybe, by solar panels above the parking space (that provide the added bonus of not overheating the car, that is both good for you and the battery). During night-time, off peak grid surplus could be used to replace sun power.
Dreaming a little more, given the tremendous amount of power delivered from the Sun on our loved Earth, thinking of a self recharging EV is not that unbelievable. In a 10 year time frame, an in-car solar panel with an efficiency of 30% (not that unlikely given the current status of research) put on the roof (let’s assume 1,6m square of cells, roughly 2,5 sq.m of surface, but this could be extended by i.e. window flexible solar cells shades) and 1kW/sq.m power density (to be on the safe side), it would be possible to recover from a 10km trip in less than 3 hours just parking the car in direct sunlight. Definitely not bad taking into account already existing propulsion and battery!
The Big Project
When I started writing this blog, I promised to myself not to left it starving but, sadly, I failed. I feel guilty for it, but I need more resources for my very own “Great Project”.
What is it about?
Since months I’m writing a novel, a fantasy novel. Not a short story, but a full blown epic fantasy one with all the bells and whistles. At the beginning of the project I had plans for closing its first draft in a one year time frame, but night-time writing proved to drain my energy far more than expected. Being awake enough to compose decent sounding periods is tough. Doing it night after night, when your regular job alarm kicks in before 7.00 am, is, honestly, out of my reach.
But I didn’t want this to slip away easily. I forced myself to squeeze every single drop of my spare time (that is not that much, anyway) and devote it to writing. This meant to move all other activity on the low priority list but I succeeded.
My current goal is to close the first draft before the end of the year (yes, THIS year) and having four more chapters to go, is something I could afford. This won’t end my work, many more hours will be spent on reading, fixing, rewriting, re-reading and so on… but it’s something easier to do on a finished draft.
THE project.
The novel itself is a classic (or epic) fantasy one. It tells a tale of magic, war and heroism. There are many races and locations, friends and villains. I tried to focus on developing characters and their interactions with a real-sounding world. I also tried to avoid overused cliches in my quest for developing a world that feels real. My goal was to design a world that “could live on its own”, where magic IS a resource with its own rules, where races, kingdom and places are there for a reason. For sure this is an heritage of my love for role playing games and years of adventure mastering. I hope I succeeded in it and I will re-read the draft countless times to be sure to achieve this goal. If I manage it or not, however, it will be a well spent time anyway.
I’m writing the story in italian language (I’m Italian after all). I thought about writing it in english, but I do not feel confident enough with my english writing to lay down a whole (quite thick) book.
This is also my first big project. I have some other stories sitting in my drawer but none of them so developed. Getting to this point taught me many things and tricks that I found useful. Some of them were collected from various resources on the web, others are plain common sense and some other I re-discovered all by myself.
Up to now it was, however, a great personal experience that I think could be interesting to share. I created a new writing category and I plan to share (at a slow pace, at least until the closure of the draft) my thoughts about the book and the experience of writing in general.
The title you ask? Well, it’s not defined yet. I have some sound ideas but I need to think more on it. I want it to be catching.
Retina display test
Test pattern
In order to experiment a little more on the perception of images an the real feel of retina limits, I draw this simple image ad uploaded it on my X1. I display it in full resolution and moved the handset far from me until the pattern blend in two gray rectangles. I found out that I need to put the handset at around 45 cm (about 18 in.) from my face (I usually have it around 25/30 cm – 10/12 in.) to loose the pattern feel and see the two gray blocks only.
So it seems that, perception wise at least, my calculations were roughly correct. =D
Good news: Xperia has a retina display too!
Now with its full display galore. =)
Yesterday the world was buzzing for the new Cupertino release, the iPhone 4. One of its main features was the “retina display”. Steve Jobs himself stated that above 300 ppi the human eye is no more capable of distinguish between pixels (due to the resolution of human retina).
Let’s dig a bit more into this. The resolution of human eye is something around 77 cycles per degree, that means that our eye is capable of distinguish (in good light condition, such as the one that we have with a backlit display) 77 full changes (black to white bars for example) every degree of vision. That translates in a cycle (black/white bars) every 0,78 arc-minutes (1/60th of a degree). This also means that increasing resolution above this value brings no real benefit to the crispness of the image since details get blurred by our own eyes. This, of course, depends also on everyone eyes… it’s just a mean value used as reference of the typical eyes (I saw you nodding, Mr. Hawkeye, up on the last row).
Back to our display things, we may calculate the spatial density of iPhone 4 display. The arc coverage of the display horizontally (but it’s the same for the vertical resolution if we agree on perfectly square pixels) is:
angle=2*arctan(half_display_lenght/distance).
Taking into account a mean reading distance of 40cm (about 15.75 inches), the size of a single pixel is 0,66 arc-minutes, that is below the 0,78 value of the human eye but is not fitting two pixels in the cicle space as a true “retina display” would have needed.
Ok, Mr. Numbers, but what it means? Basically, a black and white bars pattern is still noticeable at 40cm (The same pattern would be perceived as gray on a true “retina display”) since it would require at least 68cm of distance between eye and display to fit two pixels in the 0,78 limit value. On the other side, the usage of colors (since we have no B&W displays) allows to use antialiasing techniques that smooth edge blockyness and ends up with a really crisp image, on the fringe of our retina “resolution”. I guess that this is the reason for the term “retina display”.
But what about Sony Ericsson X1? Its 2008 TFT display packs a 800 x 480 pixel resolution over a tiny 3 inch display. Calculations at hand, fixing the different aspect ratios (15/10 for the iPhone against 15/9 for the X1), this means a close 0,69 arcminutes per pixel or 0,03 arcminutes per pixel worse than the brand new iPhone 4! The X1 display is capable of 65K colors, but this would be really noticeable on uniform color gradients only. The result is that, resolution wise, X1 was the first “retina display” phone around! Nice shot SE. =D
Rethink it 