Friday Takeaway: Why iPhone 4 Makes iPad Better

Earlier this week, we asked whether the introduction of the iPhone 4 would overshadow the iPad. Considering that DigiTimes just declared that Apple is shipping 1.2 million iPads per month to keep up with demand (and could reach 2.5 million units per month by the end of the year), the answer to that question seems to be no. On the flip side, then, just how might the iPhone 4 make the iPad better?

In our estimation, there are four major reasons that the introduction of the iPhone 4 will actually help the iPad in the long run.

The Gateway Drug Effect

Even though both the iPad and the iPhone 4 are selling in record numbers, there are still a lot of fence sitters out there. Early adopters get the sales rolling, as is always the case, and word of mouth then generates continuing buzz to attract the rest. Now, many of those who have pre-ordered the new iPhone are undoubtedly people upgrading from the iPhone 3G, Apple's 2-year-old phone. These people are bound to fall in love with the sheer speed of the device after years using a much slower phone. This rejuvenated love affair with Apple's mobile hardware could then spark the desire to experience all that the iPad has to offer, as well.

There are also those who are getting their very first iPhone with the iPhone 4. In fact, it may even be their first hands-on experience with a touchscreen device. Remember when Steve Jobs, in announcing the iPad, talked about how iPhone and iPod Touch owners already know how to use the iPad? The interface is the same. We early adopters knew we wanted an iPad before we even touched one precisely because we fully understood the experience. With more and more people having had that same experience on a zippy iPhone, the attraction for the iPad to fill in other gaps in their lives will become more pronounced. In a nutshell, the iPhone 4 may draw brand new clientele for Apple to the iPad.

The Screen Resolution

This is a big one. Make Coffee has been playing around with the gold master of iOS 4.0 that's in developers' hands and have revealed something intriguing: iPhone 4 apps will fill virtually all of the iPad's screen. With current iPhone apps, to fill the screen of the much larger iPad, the apps must be stretched to display two times the pixels, because the iPad's resolution is1024x768. The iPhone 4 has a resolution of 960x640, meaning that without any stretching, iPhone apps will fill the iPad's screen. And because iPhone 4 supports much higher resolution apps, they will look fantastic on the iPad.

What this means for you is that you won't necessarily have to wait around for new iPad apps or universal builds to enjoy great-looking apps on the iPad. The promise of virtually the entire catalog of iPhone apps running on the iPad is finally being realistically fulfilled. So thanks to iPhone 4, the iPad is about to get a boatload of more usable apps, at least assuming that developers take the time to convert their apps to take advantage of iOS 4.0.

See the images below provided by Coffee Maker to demonstrate our point. The image on the left is a normal iPhone app (pre-iPhone 4), and the image on the right is an iPhone 4 app running on the iPad.

The Horsepower

The iPhone 4, with its faster and more efficient A4 chip, not to mention the confirmed 512MB of RAM, is far more powerful than even the 3GS. This means that as developers create new games and apps, they will be able to do a lot more. The iPad lacks the extra 256MB of RAM, but being built around the A4 chip, it's still a powerful machine. This means that as iPhone apps are developed to take advantage of that extra power, iPad ports (or even upscaled iPhone apps) will also be better on the iPad.

This is important for a simple reason: making multiple versions of a game adds to development time, which subsequently adds to cost. If iPhone 4 and iPad apps can run relatively the same, sharing a common OS means that little adjustment needs to be made for running on the iPad. And this means that porting an iPhone app to the iPad will be a fundamentally easier task.

iOS4 Testing

The iPad won't see an OS update until sometime this fall, even though iOS 4.0 is being released next Monday. To date, we have not even witnessed a single example of the new OS running on an iPad. We suspect this means that additional features may be planned for the iPad.

More importantly for this discussion, though, is the fact that with these extra months of playtesting by consumers on the iPhone, Apple will have a better idea of what works and perhaps what doesn't work. We can thus consider iOS 4.0 on iPhone 4 to be a big beta test for the iPad. Apple will be able to get feedback from consumers and see firsthand what developers are able to do with the new core APIs in the OS. This in turn may spark new or solidify existing ideas of what should be put into the final release for the iPad.

So, as we see it, there are significant benefits to the introduction of the iPhone 4 into the marketplace right now. We're certainly excited at the prospects and can't wait to get our hands on the results.