How Does the iPhone Super Retina XDR Display Impact Digital Marketing?

Apple released the newest iPhone on September 20. Dubbed the
iPhone 11—with iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 11 Pro Max versions available—it should
come as no surprise that Apple continues to improve on their flagship phone. It
should also come as no surprise that the masses are tripping over themselves to
get their hands on it.
With new technology come new wrinkles and new opportunities
for those of us that work in the tech and marketing industries. Always looking
to exploit the hottest trends and best features that technology offers, many of
us are wondering what the new iPhone means for our industries.
Perhaps you’ve had a lull in your marketing efforts. The
same tried-and-true methods are becoming watered down as more and more
marketers catch on. Maybe you’re looking to utilize the new iPhone features to
get a leg up on the competition and ride the wave that Apple creates every
year. Is there some new, groundbreaking feature that will unlock the next step
in marketing excellence? Or is the once-exponential growth in smartphone tech
starting to plateau? Let’s look!
New phone, new tech: an overview
While each version of the iPhone 11 comes with all-around
improvements—most notably the innovative triple camera—for the purposes of this
post we’re going to focus on the new Super Retina XDR display and its
capabilities.
For starters, Super Retina XDR is only available on the
iPhone 11 Pro and Pro Max; the base iPhone 11 has the same Super Retina HD Display
found on the iPhone X models. Super Retina XDR is a marked improvement over the
previous display, and we’ll break down the numbers so you can see how.
A super bright and sharp OLED display
The first thing you’ll probably notice about the new display
is just how bright it is. The Super Retina XDR Display touts an impressive 800
nits of typical brightness and a max brightness of 1,200 nits. A “nit” is
simply a unit of luminescence used to measure brightness on device displays.
For a frame of reference, a basic smartphone has around
200–300 nits, while most high-end smartphones will have 500–1,000 nits (the
iPhone XS has a typical brightness of around 600 nits and a maximum of 725
nits). For an extreme example, the best OLED TVs on the market can top 2,000
nits. In practical terms, Super Retina XDR’s 800-nits typical brightness is
more than enough to see your screen easily in direct sunlight.
Super Retina XDR also has incredible sharpness with 458
pixels per inch (ppi), though that remains unchanged from the iPhone XS Super
Retina HD Display.
Crazy contrast ratio and color range
One of Apple’s strongest assets is their ability to spin
existing technology into slightly different technology with a new, flashier
name and sell the hell out of it. In the case of Super Retina XDR, “XDR” stands
for Extreme Dynamic Range, which is a step up from High Dynamic Range (HDR) but
more or less on par with HDR10—the current, non-Apple standard. It should also
be noted that the Samsung Note 10 display features HDR10+, which is
unsurprisingly an improvement on HDR10.
But enough about Apple’s branding shenanigans; XDR is still
seriously impressive. Dynamic range, be it “high” or “extreme,” refers to
contrast and color range of media. Super Retina XDR has both of those nearly
perfected. Color contrast is measured by the contrast ratio, which is the ratio
of the luminance of the brightest shade (white) to the darkest shade (black).
Apple claims a contrast ratio of 2,000,000:1, which means that the brightest
whites are 2 million times brighter than the deepest blacks—in theory, at
least. How those numbers work out in reality is another matter.
When manufacturers advertise contrast ratios, the current
trend is to list the “dynamic contrast ratio,” which is not a standardized
measurement (like static contrast ratios, which are largely unadvertised these
days), and it makes it nearly impossible to use for comparisons. Taken at face
value, though, Super Retina XDR’s contrast ratio is double that given for the
iPhone XS, and it definitely shows.
Suffice it to say that Super Retina XDR rivals the best
displays on the market, and it’s as good as (and possibly better than) what the
human eye can actually perceive with a 1,000:1 static contrast ratio.
Aside from the ridiculous contrast ratio, Super Retina XDR
utilizes Apple’s True Tone technology and a cinema-grade color spectrum to
offer the most accurate, natural-looking color representation to date. Taken
all together, Super Retina XDR’s very bright and very sharp display, extreme contrast
and vibrant colors make for the best iPhone display yet.
What does it mean for marketing professionals?
To be upfront: not much, sadly, but we’ve done a lot of
research here, and it won’t be for nothing. At least you get your answers,
right? Short of rapid advancements in web development, browser display
capabilities or file compression, the media that Super Retina XDR excels with
is simply too big and unwieldy for web sites. We had a hypothesis, though,
which we’ll share here.
Web pages with High Dynamic Range Images (HDRI): a pipe dream for now
HDRI is nothing new. It’s been around in the photography
game for some time, but HDRI-capable cameras and technology were introduced
into new iPhone and some Android devices in the last few years. It has since
become wildly popular with amateur photographers.
As you might have guessed, HDRI adds “dynamic range” to
photos, adding a greater contrast between light and dark shades. With mobile
devices, HDRI works by taking multiple shots (usually 3) with different
exposures in rapid succession. The phone’s editing software then automatically
merges the images into one image with greater contrast than would otherwise be
possible.
The upshot of this process is a vivid and vibrant image that
really catches the eye. Wouldn’t it be awesome if you could add beautiful HDRIs
to your site, or make an ad with an HDR video? Of course it would. Mobile users
with HDR-capable displays would be in for a treat, and your site would stand
out from the crowd. But there’s a problem: the file size is way too big for web
browsers to support.
For years, the standard for web images has been JPEG and PNG
files simply because they’re decent quality with a manageable file size. JPEGs
are an 8-bit image file, which means that each color channel (Red, Green and
Blue) uses 8 bits of data for every pixel to replicate a specific color. HDRI
is a different beast; it utilizes 32 bits of data for each color channel per
pixel.
With that information in hand, bear with us while we
extrapolate a bit here: 32 bits versus 8 bits supposedly means that every HDRI
pixel uses 4 times more data than a JPEG pixel to produce the same-sized image.
What’s more, HDRI needs to be a higher resolution (meaning more pixels) to take
full advantage of what HDRI offers.
When it’s all said and done, HDRI files are far too large.
Even if you were able to upload an HDRI file to a webpage, the page speed would
slow to a crawl as it struggles to load the huge image.
Lossless HDRI compression: not quite yet
Some of you might be wondering if it’s possible to convert
HDRIs into a more manageable file format like JPEG. And while you most
definitely can, there is yet another problem: your 32-bit HDRI file will then
be an 8-bit JPEG file. As a result, the HDRI will lose all of the qualities
that make it HDR. The converted JPEG file is now just a reasonable facsimile of
the HDRI, and your image won’t appear any differently on an HDR display versus
a standard LCD or LED display.
There may be hope on the horizon, though. There seems to be
HDRI compression technology available, but we’ll admit we’re far out of our element
when it comes to understanding what it all means—let alone explaining it back
to you. There are three lossless image compression standards that we’re aware
of: JPEG-HDR, developed by Greg
Ward of BrightSide Technologies and owned by Dolby and JPEG XT,
which is based on JPEG-HDR seem infeasible for most of us, or at least heavily
involved. The third is JPEG 2000, which may be our best chance.
JPEG 2000 (JP2) is actually the oldest standard of the
three—it was developed at the turn of the new millennium. JP2 supports any bit
depth, including 32-bit floating point pixels that HDRI utilizes. HDR to JP2
conversion software exists, but most browsers do not support JP2. According to scientiamobile.com,
nearly 80% of browsers don’t support JP2 images. The browsers that do support
it mostly exist on Apple’s iOS mobile operating system. You’re welcome to use
HDRI converted to JP2 on your site, but 80% of your audience won’t see it.
2x graphics: a stop-gap
When Retina displays were first introduced, Apple gave web
developers a workaround to serve up Retina-optimized images by uploading 2
versions of the same image: one “standard” image (1x) for the Regular Joes with
their non-Retina displays, and one “high resolution” image (2x) for Retina
users. The high-resolution image is the same as the standard image, but it has
twice the height and width—hence the “2x”. When a device with a Retina display
loads the page, it will load the 2x image. When a standard display loads the
page, it will load the 1x image.
If you haven’t already done this to your site, it’s a fairly
easy way to spruce it up for our friends with Retina and other high-resolution
displays. Take this scenario for example: You have a 600x300 standard image
coded into a 600x300 space on your page, but you’re pulling it up on your
Retina display and it looks a little blurry. To fix that, you create another
version of that image with 1200x600 resolution and prepend _2x before the file
extension (e.g., file.jpg →
file_2x.jpg) and add it into the same space as the standard image. The browser
will automatically load the appropriate 1x or 2x.
Now, 2x is not XDR or even HDR, but it is definitely a step
in the right direction for optimizing your web page for the future of super
high-res displays. As XDR and its ilk become more widespread, you can bet that
Apple will let us all know how we can best take advantage of it.
Where to go from here?
That’s about all the information we have for now. Until
JPEG-HDR, JPEG XT and JPEG 2000 become widely available and easy to use, it
seems that websites and ads will be stuck with JPEG, PNG and other similar file
types for the time being. Our friends with Super Retina XDR, HDR10 and HDR10+
displays will have to make do with viewing stunning imagery in their native and
3rd-party photo- and video-viewing software. The horror.
We do hope you’ve learned something, though. At MAXtech
Agency, we love to help wherever and whenever we can. Whether you need
marketing, web development or IT Managed Services, you’ve come to the right
place. Check
out our blog to stay tuned in, or contact us any
time with questions about our services.
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