Will the iPad Aspect Ratio Go From 4:3 to 3:2?

[[Coi] Mr.CLuBBeR]

You may remember Dr. Raymond Soneira, President of DisplayMate Technologies, who's helped us explain why so many advertised display specs are hokum and misdirection. Now, the respected display scientist is offering his own predictions about the future of the iPad. The following report comes via MacLife.com, a Maximum PC sister site.

With the rumors circulating that the iPad 2 will come with a beefier, higher resolution display, Dr. Soneira weighed in with his guess for how the next generation of Apple tablets could share aspect ratio as the iPhone. "The hardest thing for any app [developer] is writing for two different screen shapes and aspect ratios," says Dr. Soneira. "3:2 fits well with camera photos and is an excellent compromise width for widescreen HDTV and movies." He adds that any app written for the original 4:3 1024x768 iPad would just automatically show up centered on the new 3:2 1152x768 screen with a 0.26-inch border on each side.

That means app developers will no longer write code for two types of aspect ratios; instead, the iPhone and iPad would have the same screen shape. That could also mean that you'll no longer have to double the size of your iPhone-only applications and have them look blurry and stretched--the idea of "seperate" applications might be omitted entirely! While this may not happen with this year's iPad update--and we won't really find out what's really brewing until tomorrow's Apple iPad 2 event--we actually like the sound of this. If anything, this is something Apple should consider for future iterations of the tablet device. Readers, what do you think?



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