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65K vs. 16m colour screens - is there a significant difference?

As per the title - in your opinion, based on you eyes, is there a difference on large touchscreens?
(in terms of spec, this is something the HTC Desire has over SE X10)
I've read of people saying it's indistinguishable in most cases (most people) but some say it's noticeable.
Different platforms, screen sizes etc. can't help, I suppose.
Personally, I'm not sure - the WM phones I've had have obviously been 65k, but touchscreen also, so maybe it's not fair to compare it a K850i or E61 + they have smaller screens.
Any views are helpful, I think, hopefully to more than just me.

i have seen a topic about the nexus one screen being awful and i suspect desire will have to same..
and isnt android 1.6 limited to 56k? because in the future x10 will support 16m

x10 is android

Rudegar said:
x10 is android
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yes and for now its still 1.6 so when the 2.0 update comes it will support 16m

Personally I'm not that fussed by the 65k colour limit on my HD2. I would be if it applied to viewing photos and videos; but anything using DirectDraw overlays in WinMo can work around the limit. The Sense weather animations would be a lot prettier in full colour, but otherwise I don't really notice it.

The HD2 will dither bitmaps automatically, e.g. the orange WM bootscreen actually has pretty serious banding if you view it on a cooked ROM which doesn't dither.

In most cases, it's indistinguishable. Sometimes, you can see it, but most of the time, you won't notice it.
Resolution and contrast make a far greater difference. Those things are much more important.
Yes, there is a difference, but this shouldn't affect your decision - you should rather think about the different software, the dimensions of the phone, the size of the screen etc.

C:Sharp! said:
Yes, there is a difference, but this shouldn't affect your decision - you should rather think about the different software, the dimensions of the phone, the size of the screen etc.
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Wise choice my young padawan.

Well, the human eye can distinguish and see about 10 million different colors, but on a 4.3" screen it's so much difficult to see 10 million colors
So..65k colors are really a lot

Even dated a while ago, does this answer the technical question?
http://blogs.msdn.com/windowsmobile/archive/2005/09/07/462187.aspx

How Apple tricks you.

http://gawker.com/5558442/how-apple-tricks-you
Read the pile of BS Steve has been heaping on the world. Time to send in the Androids.

This is worth reading. This is the CRAP people believe. Got to love the Fanboys

I don't get the conspiracy about the screen... the resolution has been doubled horizontally and doubled vertically. That means that where there was previously one pixel, there are now four. Am I missing something?

HONESTLY, I will tell you I am not particularly fond of Apple. I prefer actual use to "gagets". However, there is no conspiracy here as uansari1 mentioned. They have done quite a nice job as always.
The iPad among other devices is quite impressive too, but quite useless. Still, it has had very impressive sales numbers.
Hey, you don't need the geeks' approval to sell your product . You are marketing to the masses...
Okay who am I kidding I HATE APPLE LOL.

Nope. You're pretty much right. Retina display did just that. 4 pixels squeezed to one spot as opposed to 1 pixels squeezed in 3gs/3g per spot. Theoretically, it'll look better.. but is it any better than Super AMOLED or let's just compare it with AMOLED.. better or not noticeable?

arctu said:
Nope. You're pretty much right. Retina display did just that. 4 pixels squeezed to one spot as opposed to 1 pixels squeezed in 3gs/3g per spot. Theoretically, it'll look better.. but is it any better than Super AMOLED or let's just compare it with AMOLED.. better or not noticeable?
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Its all about fidelity. I think that AMOLED on our Nexus still has a noticeable advantage. Why would anyone want such a high-res 3.5 inch display? I was hoping 4.0 inch, it seems optimal.

wesbalmer said:
Its all about fidelity. I think that AMOLED on our Nexus still has a noticeable advantage. Why would anyone want such a high-res 3.5 inch display? I was hoping 4.0 inch, it seems optimal.
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Like, how the hell would Steve know that it even has 300+ ppi or ****? Lol, his eye can only see up to 300. =P Unless he's some Jobsbot or ****. ROFL.
Dumb Apple. It's not only the res that bothers me, it's also how close to fraud they are on their ads.

uansari1 said:
I don't get the conspiracy about the screen... the resolution has been doubled horizontally and doubled vertically. That means that where there was previously one pixel, there are now four. Am I missing something?
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I don't know if I trust Apple's claim yet. You know how Google's kinda stretching the truth with the 800x480 claim for the resolution of the nexus one's screen? You know, because of the pentile sub-pixel layout, where the green sub-pixels are 800x480, but the red and blue sub-pixels are actually half that in a checkerboard layout? I can't help but wonder if Apple is doing something like this, too.
In Engadget's article on the Vietnamese iphone 4 leak where they look at the display under a microscope, http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/29/iphone-4g-put-under-a-microscope-960-x-640-looks-like-a-lock, the pixels seem to be layed out in a diagonal pattern, rather than the typical horizontal/vertical rows and columns. It looks very much like the checkerboard pattern of the blue and red sub-pixels in the nexus one's pentile display, except with green added. They may be counting their pixels the same way google counts the red and blue sub-pixels on the nexus one, in which case there's actually only half the pixels present as there should be for a typical display of the claimed resolution, and they're using shady wordplay and interpretation of the definition of resolution to achieve their claimed resolution. Basically, they'd be selling a display with 307,200 pixels in a different arrangement as a 960x640 display, even though a 960x640 display should actually have 960 x 640 = 614,400 physical pixels present.
So, it's quite possible Apple's trying to pull a fast one here and give their specs an artificial boost. I could be totally wrong, but I sure wouldn't be surprised.

chowlala said:
Like, how the hell would Steve know that it even has 300+ ppi or ****? Lol, his eye can only see up to 300. =P Unless he's some Jobsbot or ****. ROFL.
Dumb Apple. It's not only the res that bothers me, it's also how close to fraud they are on their ads.
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Actually, the reason is probably very clear. It wasn't done for looks, the goal was compatibility with older apps - clean and fast upscaling. When you double the resolution and have some way of distinguishing between "older" and "newer" apps, you can as simple as stretch each "old" pixel on 2x2 "new" pixels, without involving any math - and it makes fast and easy upscaling.
[edit] Moreover, it might even be the default way of app execution - unless the app triggers something that notifies the OS that it's capable of using the full resolution, and then it isn't upscaled.
[edit 2] If it indeed works that way - which I'm quite sure it does - then it's a real cause to be pissed at Apple for not telling that upscaled graphics on older apps will look just the same as they did on the older iPhone, until they're updated for compatibility.

Based on the PPI #'s, it is 2x better, not 4x better. Also, based on their PPI claim, it would have to be a a full on 960x640 display with no staggering of any of the pixels.

chowlala said:
Like, how the hell would Steve know that it even has 300+ ppi or ****? Lol, his eye can only see up to 300. =P Unless he's some Jobsbot or ****. ROFL.
Dumb Apple. It's not only the res that bothers me, it's also how close to fraud they are on their ads.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Because it's twice the old PPI Not hard to know that if you are selling the device for over 3 years with same PPI all the time

I still get a kick out of seeing 'Retina Display'. Rofl!

.... looking for how this affects Nexus One.... Not seeing it. Spam.

Fellas, the issue with the screen resolution claim is about the acutal image they displayed while talking about it.
What they showed as beingthe 4x iteration, wasn't actually a properly upsampled letter.
ZERO to do with the actual screen technology and 100% to do with whoever put the video demo together.

Just to be clear here. The discrepancy here is not due to the 2xPPI == 4x#pixels issue.
Apple is claiming that the new screen is double the "pixels per inch" in both dimensions which gives it 4 times the pixels. Ignoring whether they have some sort of non-standard pixel layout like the pen-tile AMOLED screens, nobody is debating that math.
But, the problem that was pointed out in that article is that in their marketing images they are showing an example of what a character looks like when rendered anywhere from 3x to 5x the number of "pixels per inch" which means they are showing what a character looks like on a screen with somewhere between 9x to 25x the number of "megapixels" or pixels per square inch.
In reality, what they are doing is just showing a pixelated character and then a character at full resolution on whatever medium they are describing the improvement without regard to whether the number of pixels is correct to match the specs. They are trying to show you what "type" of improvement you will see, not the exact "extent" of that improvement. In the case of the projection screens at the keynote, it is probably not likely that a difference of merely 2x2==4 would have been visible from the rear seats in the auditorium so they went up to 5x5==25 to get the point across. The image on their web site looks like it is closer to 3x3==9 which is much closer, but still an exaggeration.
In either case, the images should have been tagged with a disclaimer that the resolution difference was exaggerated to show the nature of the improvement.

On a related side note - I also get a kick out of the claims that 300 DPI is beyond the resolution of the human eye (paraphrasing).
Ummm... DPI is not related to the eye's ability to resolve details, unless it is combined with distance. You can have a 5 DPI display at a hundred feet or so and the eye might not be able to see the pixels. Or, you could put a 600 DPI display right in front of the eye and see all the pixels you want to see. Until you couple a DPI rating with a viewing distance it has no bearing on whether the eye can resolve the pixels.
This isn't so much a lie, though, as I'm sure they are referring to 300 DPI at the typical distance a phone is used from the eye, but that isn't universally true for eveyone's usage habits. But, I'm sure quite a few Apple ignorami will believe that Apple has somehow fundamentally irreversibly and magically exceeded a universal threshold that has taken their technology beyond the absolute limits of human perception. Umm, right.
And, on a practical note, I would care about this distinction since I do commonly use my phone to do a little light reading with Alkido before I go to sleep and when I do that I have my glasses off and the phone maybe 2 inches from my face (I have really bad myopia) and I can see all of the pixels on the N1 (which is not so far away from the 300 DPI limit that they claimed) in all of their pixelated glory. I'm sure I would see the pixels on the new iPhone when I did that as well... :-(
[Update - I never watched the original keynote and I have now seen a few sites that discuss the advances in the iPhone 4 display who have more completely quoted Steve Jobs as having said "at a distance of about a foot" or something along those lines. That makes the statement actually reasonably appropriate so my comments above are based on quotes that were incomplete. You can't equate DPI to the eye's ability to resolve details without mentioning a viewing distance and it appears that Jobs correctly included the distance...]

khaytsus said:
.... looking for how this affects Nexus One.... Not seeing it. Spam.
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Good Point...I'm not seeing it either.

[Q] Higher Resolution Android Phones

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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Click to collapse
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

Skyrocket DPI

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

[Q] What are the best practices for supporting multiple screen sizes for android game

I want to develop a text driven, mystery game for Android. The art will be in the style of a graphic novel. I'd like to be able to support as many devices as possible. I understand that Android can scale the graphics for different screen sizes, but an image produced in 480x800 would look like crap on tablet screen. What is the best way to deal with this problem? Is the solution simply to produce images for all screen sizes I want to support? This seems like the most effective way, but would make the app way too big. Can the image simply be produced at a very high resolution and shrunk down or does that cause problems? Thanks for your time.

In my opininion the best pictures will be HD or qHD.
This size is very good for big screen, and will be good resize for small screen.

m7s1994 said:
In my opininion the best pictures will be HD or qHD.
This size is very good for big screen, and will be good resize for small screen.
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What do you mean by HD or qHD? Can you be more specific? Do you mean 1920x1080 for HD and 960x540 for qHD? Will I be ok as long as I stick by the 16:9 ratio?

Yes it is this size : )
More phones have 16;9 screen, that I think it's the best way to good game graphic:good:

Is this something you've seen in your own tests or did you read it somewhere? I'd like more documentation on this before I start producing art.