If any disappointment is present with the iPhone, it can be broken down to the price tag, the limitation of one carrier and now, the wide screen? It seems that Apple"s iPhone, not to be mixed up with Cisco"s iPhone, sports a non-standard wide screen. It uses a 1.5:1 aspect ratio as opposed to the accepted 1.33:1 (4x3) or 1.78:1 (16x9) screen dimensions.
The iPhone has a pixel count of 480x320. It is possible, however, that the iPhone has rectangular pixels in order to portray a "true" 16:9 picture. Although uncommon nowadays, this has been done in the past. Based on the photos of the iPhone on Apple"s website, such a possibility seems unlikely. A nearly perfect 1.5:1 aspect ratio can be seen on the device"s 3.5-inch screen when it is positioned in landscape mode.
The nonstandard screen shape will force users to either have the left and right sides of the screen cut off or to have black bars on the top and bottom. Nevertheless, compared to the current iPods, users should still see an improvement when viewing wide-screen content. It probably won"t bother the average Joe too much, but the geek in the rest of us will curse Apple every time he watches a wide-screen video.