When Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone 4 in 2010. Its 960 x 640 Retina Display marked an important turning point in smartphone display technology. Since then, smartphone screens have rapidly grown more pixel dense; soon after the iPhone 4 was released, smartphones with 720p and 1080p displays started to make their way into the wild.
Now, phones like the HTC One M9+ are releasing with 2K QHD displays, and if Sharp has any say in the matter, smartphones with 4K displays will quickly replace those as well.
On Monday, the company announced a new 5.5 4K smartphone display. The Sharp IGZO LCD boasts a 806 ppi pixel density. To put that number in perspective, the iPhone 6 Plus’s 5.5-inch screen has a pixel density of 401 ppi.
According to PocketNow, Sharp is set to producing the new display in early 2016, though it probably won’t make it into any devices that are coming to Canada anytime soon. The site says that, at least initially, the screen is set to grace handsets produced by Chinese manufacturers.
Now, whether people actually need a 4K display on their smartphone is an entirely different matter. After all, it’s not like there’s a bevy of 4K content out there, and all those pixels come at a cost: mainly the dismal battery life of our already power hunger smartphones.
