Why is iphone simulator bigger than the actual iphone?

Has anyone noticed that the iphone simulator is way bigger than the actual device? If so why is it larger? Is there a way to make it same size as the actual device?

Why I ask? For several UI design, what looks fine on simulator started looking way too small on the actual device. So basically the simulator sizes were not real. Example is font size.

My display is 1280 x 800. Is it because my resolution is low? One thing I can think of is the number of pixels are probably same. Because of difference in resolution one looks bigger than the other.

In that case what is the ideal macbook resolution to show the iphone exactly same size a开发者_StackOverflow社区s the actual device?

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The pixels/inch on your screen is much lower than it is on an actual device.

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It's because the resolution of the iPhone 4 is 960 x 640, the size of the simulator is matching that resolution.

The pixel density of the iPhone 4 is much higher than the pixel density of your laptop display hence it seems much larger, physically.

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Size has nothing to do with resolution. You can have a 320*240px resolution on 5inch displays or same resolution on 17 inch (crazy but possible). resolution represents the number of pixels and a pixel doesn't have a defined size, it's defined by the real size of the device.