I understand that screen resolution is the number of pixels measured horizontally and vertically. Then the size of the screen is used to calculate the PPI. But if my screen resolution is only 2796×1920, how would I be able to view any video in 4K?
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Let’s consider a simple example. Imagine you have a large painting, but you only have a small window to look at it. You can’t see the whole painting at once, but you can see different parts of it by moving the painting behind the window, right?
Now, if you have a 4K video (which is like the large painting), but your iPhone screen has less than 4K resolution (which is like the small window), you still can see the video. But you can’t see all the detail at once because your screen doesn’t have enough pixels to display all the detail that the 4K video has. The video has to be squeezed down to fit your screen.
This process is called “downscaling” or “downsampling”, and it’s done in real-time by your phone’s hardware. It takes the detail from multiple pixels in the 4K video and merges it into fewer pixels to be displayed on your screen. This can still result in a sharper image than if the video was originally in a lower resolution, because it’s using more source data to generate each pixel, which can result in more accurate colors and smoother gradients.
So, even though your screen doesn’t have 4K pixels, it can still display a 4K video (In a lower resolution). But you won’t be able to see the full level of detail that you’d see if you were viewing it on a 4K screen.
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