Microsoft is recently making a quite surprising statement. You can take it as a direct “war statement” against Apple folks. According to the company’s official blog post, some upcoming Windows 8 tablet will feature screen and display quality that near New iPad quality. In the end, they might end up with similar specs!
David Washington, the senior program manager on Microsoft explain that there will be lot of Windows 8 tablet that posses at least 135ppi pixels density. This numbers are quite higher that usually we use on a tablet PC, he added. Microsoft is recently release the Windows 8 – Consumer Preview at MWC 2012. The company didn’t mention when they will release the full version of it, but some say that it might be available by the end of this year. You can read our full review of this initial Windows 8 release if you interested.
Pixels density is a value that used to determined how many pixels that been used by a tablet’s screen to display a part of current image. Higher numbers mean greater picture since you’ll get more pixels for a specific area. Washington noted that there will be some Windows 8 tablet that packed with HD Display with 190ppi and quad-XGA, which able to deliver users with 253 ppi screen.
On the other hand, the New iPad, which was introduced few weeks ago in San Fransisco and Texas, is currently claimed as the best tablet PC with highest 264ppi pixels density. That’s twice as much as iPad 2′s pixels density, which is measured at 132ppi.
Windows 8 is developed to support three different kind of pixels density factors. If manufacturers used it at 100% pixels density, there will be no scaling. On the other hand, some tablet that posses “HD screen” are manage to display images and videos with 140 percent pixels density. Finally, the “quad-XGA” tablet that Washington mentioned before should find no problem to deliver 180 percent pixels density.
Apple’s iPad is currently able to provide 200 pixels density scale. It is possible since the Cupertino based company has total control over it’s hardware, software and environment. iOS is only have to designed to support one scale factor.
Meanwhile, Microsoft has already determined new standard resolution for app coding and developing. Previously, they used 800 x 600 pixels resolution as the right standard. Now, the company plan to set the Windows 8 default resolution to 1024 x 768 pixels resolution. They said that lot of web developers and programmers are already get used to create and build apps/web in this kind of resolution. Microsoft also added that with the help from Virtual Machine program, users can run any application in lower or higher resolution without any problem.
One more reason to remove the old 800 x 600 standard is because it is not wide enough to display much content in Metro UI live tile styles. Microsoft said that with this new UI, it will require at least 1366 x 768 pixels resolution to get optimal result. Washington also said similar thing. If you interested to find out what tablet that has that kind of resolution, you can take a look at Samsung’s Series 7 tablet, which were recently introduced at Microsoft’s Build Conference back on September.
Aside from the standard version of Microsoft Windows 8, which will be compatible for both desktop PC and tablet, the company also plan to release Windows on ARM and Windows Phone 8 Apollo. The first we mentioned should be a dedicated OS for tablet PC that powered by ARM based CPU instead of Microsoft’s traditional x86 chipset, while Apollo will be the latest installment for all Windows Phone device that available in the market. Together, all of these OS will form a great environment. You can sync all your data from your tablet to your phone and then view it in your desktop computer at home. Not to mention that business and professional users are already accustomed to use Microsoft’s Windows on their daily activity. So we believe that Windows 8 will have a great future and manage to compete against other popular OS like iOS and Android.
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