The screen dream
Apple’s big Let Loose event on May 7 delivered an iPad Pro (2024) with impressive new ‘tandem OLED’ display technology, which combines two panels to make one super-thin and super-bright screen. But while some commentators are speculating that this new display tech will now likely come to the iPhone 16, there are a few good reasons why that’s unlikely to happen.
First, a quick primer. The iPad Pro’s tandem OLED screen – which Apple dubs the Ultra Retina XDR display – is in fact comprised of two panels. This “combines the light from both to provide phenomenal full-screen brightness,” Apple says, and allows the iPad Pro to reach up to 1,000 nits of SDR brightness (up from 600 nits in the previous model) and an incredible 1,600 nits of peak HDR brightness.
As well as that, Apple says it has enabled “sub-millisecond control over the color and luminance of each pixel,” while the iPad Pro itself has been made thinner and lighter thanks to its more advanced display.
That’s all good news – and as some commentators like Daring Fireball’s John Gruber have speculated, it would seem like a no-brainer to migrate it across to the iPhone 16, right? After all, that’s Apple’s most popular device and the one where Apple loves to stuff high-end features.
