Can someone explain 4:3 resolution to me? what numbers should I be looking for?
as someone else pointed out.. Apple is really the only quality tablet on the market with 4:3. Most others are 16:9 or 16:10.
The difference is that the 4:3 vertical orientation holds a single comic page with minimal unused space, and in landscape orientation holds a two page layout with even less unused space. To boot, a non-mini iPad comes out to a little smaller than digest sized trades in landscape, and a little smaller than normal trade in portrait.
16:9 fits single page on portrait a little worse than ipad, but two page on landscape is WAY worse.
16:10 fits single page a bit better than iPad, but two page on landscape is a lot worse.
so.. single page viewing is basically a toss up, with 16:10 being a little better. Double page viewing is greatly in favor of 4:3. So 4:3 ends up being the overall better solution.. with 16:10 being good ONLY if you don't intend to read in 2 page mode... the problem being that comics are still at times drawn/created with 2 page spreads including some kind of cool such 2-pagers in this week's Star Wars for example. And WAY WAY more so the further back you go in comics.
16:9 is basically just flat out worse than 4:3 and 16:10 on all accounts.
edit - for reference
modern comics are ~6.75 x 10.25 which comes out to an aspect ratio of 1.51 for single page, and 1.31 for 2-page.
4:3 is 1.33. 12% unused space on 1-page. 1.5% unused space 2-page.
16:10 is 1.6. 6% unused space on 1-page. 22% unused space on 2-page.
16:9 is 1.78. 17% unused space on 1-page. 35% unused space 2-page.