Point and Pixel

So what is a point? On the iPhone 3GS and earlier models, as well as the corresponding iPod touch models and the iPad 1 and 2(including mini?), one point corresponds to one pixel. That's easy. 

Pixel is the smallest element that a screen is made up of. The display of your iPone is a big matrix of pixels that each can have their own colour. Images are produced by changing the colour values of these pixels.

However, on the iPhone 4 and new iPad with their high-resolution Retina display, one point actually corresponds to two pixel horizontally and vertically, so 4 pixels in total. On older models, you only get 320*480 pixels but on the iPhone 4 those dimensions are doubled to 640*960 pixels, which gives you four times as many pixels to work with. 

The iPad 1 and 2 has 1024*768 pixels while 2048*1536 on the Retina iPad.