While Apple’s iPhone tries to fight off the plethora of Google handsets coming for its throne with new technology, LG has unveiled a screen that we’re not sure anyone will beat this year, displaying Full HD in only 5 inches.
It’s the latest shot in the war for best mobile screens, a battle that Apple started when it launched the iPhone 4 with a Retina screen in June of 2011. In that handset, Apple set a benchmark with what was essentially a quarter-HD (qHD) screen, supporting a resolution of 640×960 on a 3.5 inch display.
This resolution provided a value of 326 pixels per inch (ppi), effectively making text and images clearer for regular viewing distances on a mobile phone handset.
Since the release of the iPhone 4, we’ve seen numerous companies release their own competitors to Retina screen technology, offering both lower and higher ppi values, but nothing like what LG is showing off in its announcement.
LG’s impressive Full HD smartphone display technology uses a new technology based on the high-grade In-Plane Switching (IPS) display technology that we see on devices including the Apple iPad, Asus Transformer, and HTC One X, able to provide wide viewing angles, bright colours, and low power consumption.
In fact, LG’s new 5 inch panel is the first to offer 1080p Full HD in a screen size of under 7 inches, and will provide a staggering 440ppi to what ever phone this technology graces.
The catch in all of this is, of course, your eyes.
There seems to be a general consensus that the human eye can’t work out  the detail differences beyond 300ppi, although the number varies based off eye sight and distance between the display in question.
The point is this: while a value of 440ppi is awesome, your eyes are unlikely to really see the difference, and you’ll probably love the quality a mobile phone screen offers once the pixels per inch is above 300.
