I got somewhat lost here :- )
Maybe I did not phrase everything quite right.
Last time when I bought a kindle I chose the hiPPI version instead of the lower res one. But in that case it came with no drawbacks.
Same with phones - they just need to render a bunch of text and photos so they can afford to have high resolutions and it looks good. But I believe with many intensive 3d games, phones will use much lower resolutions and upscale to fit the screen.
And some years ago when I checked my eyesight it was good, no need for glasses :) so yeah I can see the difference and having a screen like a high quality magazine is nice, but years ago (and today) everyone struggled with not enough power for their graphics, and no one complained about their crysis game or 3ds max not looking like a super high dpi magazine.
People saying "once you go retina screen" you can't go back, but I guess I'm lucky in that regard because I see the difference but I have no discomfort working on "normal" resolutions screens.
I think people should switch to hiDPI and super high refresh rates when most of the things in graphics will become real-time.
I used to work in music production and I witnessed that happening. Everything switched to real-time at some point and it was great.
I guess the same thing will happen in graphics. With 2d graphics work it already kind of happened. So now we just need to wait for the 3d part :)