What do you think is the reason that Samsung puts such a beautiful high res screen in the SGSII (Skyrocket of course) then sets the DPI to 240?
Coming from my Atrix, everything looks HUGE and not just because the screen is bigger.
I have installed a utility that I can use to change the DPI to 180, which I like much better. Some apps don't like it, like the phone app doesn't size appropriately etc.
I'm just curious as to why they limit screen real estate like that?
I actually like the big icons. Easier to see looks lezs cluterd. Mabye the thougt most people would prefer it that way. Bigger is better. I wish we had a 5.5 inch display
if the icons were any smaller they would look blurry and underscaled on the SR, cause your Atrix i believe had a qHD 960x540 screen and the SR has a 800x480 which has a lower dpi and keep in mind the icon PNGs are 72x72 and they are displayed as 72 pixels wide on both of the devices, and the Atrix is 60 pixels wider and 160 pixels taller so icons are going to appear smaller than they do on the SR cause of the extra screen real estate
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I'm very surprised the Nexus S didn't come out with a higher resolution Super Amoled screen. Apparently, 2.3 supports higher resolution according to wikipedia. I'm just waiting for a new android phone with a higher resolution/pixel density to put the iphone 4 to shame.
Imagine, a Super Amoled screen with a 1024x768 or 1280x720 resolution would be the best mobile phone screen in the world.
When do you think we will realistically see android phones with higher resolution displays?
The current Super AMOLED screen already trades blows with the Retina Display. I'm sure there will be higher res screens at some point but whats the rush? Wouldnt a higher resolution screen be more of a burden on battery than the current screens already are anyway? I'd see resolutions that high being more relevant for tablets and PMP than phones.
Why? It will drain battery more and more, and higher resolution don't need for still small display. Just imagine, MP3 player with Desktop resolution.
Haha? Try push sensor button, wtf it's so small...
U wanna get more ability to use sensor keyboard? (sarcastic)
Well, android definitely needs to match or better the 640x960 resolution of the iPhone 4 to maintain feature parity.
The current SuperAMOLED screens are less battery consuming than old LCD and Retina, so bigger resolutions shouldn't be a battery problem.
But what's the point of having 1280x768 on a 4" screen?
I'm pretty satisfied with 480x320 on 3.2" and 800x480 on 4" looks also awesome.
The Meizu M9 have a 960x640 display, but (even if you are in china) this little boy is still difficult to find.
The next Meizu (M9ii) will have a 1280×854 or 1280×800 4" screen, and should be animated by a Tegra2 with 1Gb of RAM. They said that the release date will be on middle 2011, so maybe we will be able to grap it in the late 2011.
The two phones are running on a custom android 2.2 (the UI is very different from the classical Android).
For the battery, it's more backlight that drains power.
A higher resolution will only put a little more stress on the GPU, but if the OS is well coded, it should not consume a lot more.
DPI, its all about DPI
You can have all the DPI in the world, but all its gonna mean is LAG and Battery if we're still relying on the CPU to push pixels.
dimon222 said:
Why? It will drain battery more and more, and higher resolution don't need for still small display. Just imagine, MP3 player with Desktop resolution.
Haha? Try push sensor button, wtf it's so small...
U wanna get more ability to use sensor keyboard? (sarcastic)
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You have absolutely no comprehension of what resolution is. Look at the iphone going from 480x320 to 960x640. Did the icons get smaller? No I didn't think so. You simply put more pixels into an icon the same size. Because it seems you're under the impression that pixel count determines image size.
however, there is no need for a higher resolution because the display is that too small. better resolution would look like the same as the resolution looks on current phones.
I can see several reasons to be interested in higher screen resolution (but IMHO you will need at least a 3.5" display):
Games
ok, that's not for today, but with ports like the unreal engine on android, phones will become more like a mobile console (PSP phone, for example). A better resolution sounds like a better playing experience, but will still need more powerful hardware (and that's on the way with multi core SOC)
Video
isn't that obvious? and it's essential if you're watching videos with subtitles
Internet
I don't know for you, but on my 800x480 handset, i have to zoom out to have the full page, and zoom in, etc...
With a better screen resolution, the navigation will be easier
It's not interesting for everybody, but I think clivo360 and I are not the only guys looking for a higher resolution screen
Although 4.3" is probably the upper limit for what you'd consider "pocketable", I'd still be attracted to bigger screens and more powerful phones because there are things that can take advantage of them, such as video. Imagine 1080p screens on a phone!
At some point though, phones are probably going to suffer the same problem that PCs did - that hardware outdoes all user needs. Imagine a point where the hardware has reached such a point where for the average user, they don't need the most potent phone anymore. We're already well on the way there. It happened with PCs, where the average user needs office software such as word processing, a spreadsheet, and the Internet, but nothing that demands crazy hardware (the average user is not a high end gamer we're talking here).
A better resolution makes even more difference on an SAMOLED screen compared to an LCD/SLCD - due to the PenTile matrix configuration of pixels a 800x480 SAMOLED screen doesn't really have as many pixels as an 800x480 standard LCD.
Just take a close look at the screen of a Nexus One or Nexus S at some text and you'll see it's slightly fuzzy. See here for more info
Better resolutions aren't available yet because a) it's a relatively new technology and b) manufacturers are having a hard enough time making enough just to cover the existing devices that use them.
AFAIK, there is only one Android device with a larger screen resolution that, as long as you don't live in the good old US of A (and even there it can be done), can make calls: the Samsung Galaxy Tab. But not exactly small enough to fit in your trouser pocket (although it does slip easily into a jacket pocket).
PS: The Tab is fantastic for video (1080p MKV supported), games and general browsing (with plugins set to on-demand) plus the odd short book, although you do look very strange if you answer calls on it without a BT headset (very Trigger Happy).
Ugh, I won't flame people saying we don't need higher resolution, though I wanted to...
Here is one basic application where the higher resolution really does make a difference: Reading text .PDFs.
I tried reading PDFs on my 800 x 480 Samsung Fascinate (Galaxy S) and I wish the text was a little smoother. Sure, I'd like a slightly larger screen (no more than 4.3") but if the screen was larger I'd be even more desperate for higher resolution. I'd like to see 1024 * 640 on a 4" Android.
Higher resolution does not nesc. need more battery/CPU power: it's the brightness that uses the battery most.
critofur said:
I tried reading PDFs on my 800 x 480 Samsung Fascinate (Galaxy S) and I wish the text was a little smoother. Sure, I'd like a slightly larger screen (no more than 4.3") but if the screen was larger I'd be even more desperate for higher resolution. I'd like to see 1024 * 640 on a 4" Android.
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Doesn't your phone's AMOLED screen use the PenTile matrix? If so, that's a huge factor. I have 2 Droid Incredibles, one AMOLED w/PenTile matrix, the other SLCD. The SLCD has MUCH smoother text despite both being the same 480x800 resolution. AMOLED w/PenTile matrix has a "screen door effect".
Anyway, Toshiba might make your dream come true, and even exceed what you'd like to see.
http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/16/toshiba-enters-pixel-density-fray-with-367ppi-lcds-for-cellphone/
its true about the screen door effect. texting the g2x is very smooth dispite the resolution being the same as the vibrant.
Not sure I could put larger than 4.3" in my pocket
Read a post today regarding why Android phones are so much bigger than the iPhone and it makes my blood boiled:
http://www.displayblog.com/2012/01/16/why-android-smartphones-are-bigger-than-the-iphone/
If he was true, I wouldn't complain. But that guy totally made things up by himself. It's clear that he had not done research to back up his "theory" -- he just made it up himself. Any Android users who had changed the LCD density of their devices would know that it's fairly easy to change the lppi. When a manufacturer increase the physical resolution of its device, it will adjust the LCD density to accommodate the denser display. That guy could find out the truth easily by asking around.
The article makes perfect sense to me. I for one would much rather have a smaller screen with higher pixel density.
does it really matter. you have a device and it works for you, if you read every post where somebody whines about the most trivial things then i feel sorry for you. get a life
I think I'll try to rebut this.
There are four DPI levels (MDPI is baseline):
LDPI: ~120DPI
MDPI: ~160DPI
HDPI: ~240DPI
XHDPI: ~320DPI
What this means is that when resolution increases from ~120 ppi (I prefer ppi when discussing pixel-based digital displays) to ~159 ppi fonts and icons will get smaller. This applies to all three levels of in-betweens. And displays north of ~320 ppi will continue to get smaller with no reprieve.
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True. But manufacturers do not create screen sizes of EVERY possible density. They tend to aim for a certain density. And I don't see why they won't round up 159ppi up to 160. They wouldn't (with minor exceptions) create a screen perfectly at the middle between HDPI and MDPI, for example.
If displays size were kept at 3.2 inches from the G1, the corresponding resolutions (ppi) would be:
G1: 180.23
Nexus One: 291.55
Nexus S: 233.24
Galaxy Nexus: 458.94
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Why would you want to convert the screen sizes to 3.2 inches first? This doesn't make sense! Oh, and I think you calculated the Nexus S wrongly.
But because Android renders text and graphics like desktop OSes (e.g. Windows, OS X) increasing resolution above 320 ppi means smaller UI elements. The display had to grow in size to compensate for shrinking UI elements. iOS renders the Retina display not by shrinking UI elements by one fourth but by doubling clarity and sharpness. Unless Google adds an additional “DPI level” beyond XHDPI, Android smartphones that match or beat the iPhone 4/4S in resolution will always be bigger, much bigger.
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Android would never need to go past 320dpi, just like the iPhone, for it is at the verge of the human eye's visual acuity.
FYI for those who don't know, 4 copies of the UI elements are created, for each of the different display densities. So scaling up would simply mean swapping the element with the identical one of the higher density. Anything past the highest density is also past 320dpi, higher than the limit the human eye can distinguish.
UI elements created for XHDPI are usually purposefully created such that they are big enough for the density, allowing UI elements to be comfortably big enough for users.
Then why are 1280×720 Android smartphones much bigger? Because UI elements would get too small if they were much smaller than 4.5 inches.
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There is no point of having a screen higher than 320dpi. It would be hard for one to differentiate a screen of 320dpi and 360dpi of the same size. There is no point in google trying to compete in resolution with the iPhone at this point. And besides, a manufacturer could easily release a 3.5 inch phone matching the iPhone's screen perfectly with no problems.
So there is seriously no practical point in trying to squeeze 1280x720 into a small 3.5 inch screen. I doubt manufacturers will want to try that when a 320ppi screen could do the exact same job (which by calculations, a 960x640 screen fits perfectly), without users noticing any difference. This is when resolution does not mean everything. DPI is much more important than resolution.
Disclaimer: I am not an app developer, but this is what I understand from the documentation from the android developer website.
DirkGently said:
The article makes perfect sense to me. I for one would much rather have a smaller screen with higher pixel density.
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If what he said was true, then it made perfect sense. The problem is, he's wrong, completely. An OEM will change the ro.sf.lcd_density in build.prop to adjust the LCD density so that the font size and icon size scale up as the physical resolution increase, period. That's a fact and I have not seen a single OEM who doesn't do that. In fact, if an end user roots his device, he can change the setting himself.
No offensive to the iOS fans, but I just couldn't stand for some of them who think they know everything and keep inventing new things to praise how great their OS is, when they couldn't even get the fact right. I mean, if he's saying a 3.5" screen is the perfect size, that's one thing because it's personal preference and no one can argue that. But he wasn't doing that. He just made up a theory that is just plain wrong and present it as a fact.
Hi,
I have a Samsung SkyRocket and Infuse both are set at a HDPI of 240.The Infuse has a DPI (dot per inch) width of 234.46153
and DPI height of 236,27907. The SkyRocket has a DPI width of 160.42105 and DPI height of 160.0.
Since both phones are set at a HDPI of 240 I am assuming that the Infuse has a better screen than the Skyrocket? I thought they were suppose to be the same screen? Why are the dot density different?
Looking at both phones, the Infuse has much sharper and illuminated fonts.
Thank you for any useful information in advance,
Giovanni
DPI is length (in X or Y direction) / amount of dots (pixels - for ppi).
If both screens have the same size and same proportion (which means equal X and Y sizes) - it means both screens have the same actual DPI.
That is, unless one of the screens is Pentile and the other isn't - which is not the case here.
You can see in specs that both screens are approx. 207ppi (pixels per inch). This is physical measurement, HW.
Whatever is set in SW - can be changed.
Hi Jack,
Thank you for your response. What you say makes a lot of sense.
Would you happen to know? Why is it that Pixel Density (dots per inch) is much lower on the SkyRocket after a factory reset? The app that I'm using is Screen&System and is showing a DPI width of 160.42105 and DPI height of 160.0. for the SkyRocket. Is there anyway
to change that and make it the same as the Infuse's width of 234.46153 and DPI height of 236,27907? Both phone's
are set at a HDPI of 240 already.
Thank you for your help!
Giovanni
Jack_R1 said:
DPI is length (in X or Y direction) / amount of dots (pixels - for ppi).
If both screens have the same size and same proportion (which means equal X and Y sizes) - it means both screens have the same actual DPI.
That is, unless one of the screens is Pentile and the other isn't - which is not the case here.
You can see in specs that both screens are approx. 207ppi (pixels per inch). This is physical measurement, HW.
Whatever is set in SW - can be changed.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Since the app can't physically measure a screen, you'll need to know where the measurement comes from to see why it's shown as it is. Maybe it's another setting in build.prop, maybe something else.
Thank you for your response. Would you happen to know? Is there an app out there where I can verify where the measurement is coming from? I think I may have a defective screen with my Samsung SkyRocket
Thank you as your responses are much appreciated.
Jack_R1 said:
Since the app can't physically measure a screen, you'll need to know where the measurement comes from to see why it's shown as it is. Maybe it's another setting in build.prop, maybe something else.
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I have two android phones. Both of them have the same resolution and similar display size (as per company specifications), TFT capacitive touchscreen, 256K colors, WVGA resolution 480x800 pixels. The only small difference is..one has a display size of 3.5 inches and the other 3.75 inches....not much of a difference.
However, the phone with the 0.25inches larger display size shows pixel grids horribly and in the other one it doesn't show at all. What could be the reason? I also see banding on the larger display, which is not present in the other.
The larger display seems like a display with much less actual resolution. Does phone resolution specs on paper of the larger display lie? How do I check the actual resolution of a display?
The attached image below shows what I mean by pixel grids being visible.
It also depend on the technology being used (TN panel, IPS or AMOLED), the quality control come into play, and subpixels arrangement. Paper spec for display are useless, it's better to see the phone in person.
Hello,.
My current phone for years has been the Samsung Galaxy S4. I believe the aspect ratio of its screen is the same as a standard wide-screen movie (or wide-screen TV, 16:9. It seems like 16:9 widescreen is standard for laptops now too. (Although i preferred the older 4:3 taller laptop screens.) Likely desktop monitors as well. I think Android and Windows tablets are all 16:9 as well, although the Ipad (at least the older ones) is 4:3. So I think the 16:9 aspect ratio of my Galaxy S4 screen is pretty standard now for most types of screens, including phones 5 inch screens and under.
I am thinking of getting a bigger screen phone, or phablet. Although there are disadvantages with the increased size, I also see advantages, especially with my aging eyes, and think it might somewhat be able to function as a small tablet, while still fitting (even if not as well) in a front (male) pants pocket..
I think the size for a "phablet" is considered 5.5 inches and higher. Many are 5.5 inches, some 5.7 inches, and some even larger, such as 6 inches. By far the most common though, seem to be 5.5 and 5.7 inches.
I understand that the reported measurement of screen size is the diagonal measurement, from one corner diagonally across.
Well, there could be different combinations of height and width that would end up measuring 5.5 inches diagonally, for example.
So my first question is-- does a designated screen size of 5.5 inches refer to a specific screen height and width, or are there multiple different 5.5" screen sizes, that all end up being 5.5" diagonally? Or is it standardized?
I compared my S4 with a 5.5" screen phone in a store. The 5.5" phone was only slightly wider, but MUCH longer than my S4. (That description is holding the phone portrait, of course.) As the S4 is already standard widescreen aspect ratio, that would make the phone I saw much wider (if landscape) or longer (if portrait) than standard widescreen movies, TVs, laptops, Android tablets, etc. I can understand why they might not want to make the phone much wider, making it harder to hold. On the other hand, one wonders how valuable a larger screen is if the increase in size is mostly in one direction, and the aspect ratio of the screen becomes so skewed, so much longer and narrower (portrait) than other screens?
However, regarding my earlier question- if 5.5" screen size is not sometihng standardized, but could be different combinations of height and width to add up to 5.5" diagonally, then all 5.5" phones might not have that skewed extra long and narrow screen aspect ratio? Which is it? All 5.5" screens the same height and width (of screen, not phone), or do they differ?
If one goes larger than that, to 5.7 inch, might that more likely add width as well as length, to have a more normal aspect ratio? Or do those still keep a similar width (in portrait), while adding still more length, to create an even more skewed longer and narrow (portrait) aspect ratio?
I am eager to hear whatever info and insight you have on this issue. Thanks in advance for your input.
Although I have a new phone now, I am still curious about this question. For instance, whether a 5.5 inch screen, referring to the diagonal measurement, refers to a standardized screen height and width, or whether that might differ among phones, only that the diagonal measurement ends up at that number?
And other questions I asked in the OP.
Thank you.