LG announces 5.5in 2560x1440 smartphone display

[jpeyton]

It's a damn dick waving contest, and that's it. People know what HD is and what megapixels are on their camera, so product designers are playing the "higher is better" card. It's the same stupidity that lead to the GHz race (and high frequency processors with low IPC) and other such metrics.

This isn't a computing resource that can be "grown into" like RAM. There's a very finite limit at which individuals can no longer resolve individual pixels. Exceeding that limit will not provide any kind of benefit, but it will require more powerful, more hungry GPUs and backlights to feed the beast. Actually improving things for consumers would be to provide a retina class display with an RGB stripe, 100% sRGB coverage, and factory calibrated to a reasonable dE variance.

If building 500ppi screens becomes trivial, how long before that manufacturing prowess trickles down into displays in other devices besides smartphones? You forget that the cutting edge displays of today are tomorrow's budget beaters.

What if the "retina" moniker faded away and 300ppi displays came standard on every laptop/tablet/phone on the market? We're quickly approaching that era, and it's in large part due to R&D dollars being spent on developing higher density displays and improving manufacturing processes.

I know it's a hard concept for some people to comprehend, but one major way we improve the quality of mass market products is to keep pushing the envelope on cutting-edge tech and letting economies of scale trickle it down.

 

[Brian Stirling]

I suspect that some/many people will be able to detect the improvement going from 1080 to 1440 but that few if any will see any improvement going from 1440 to 4K. If the device display was the only thing that mattered there would be little need to go beyond 1440 me thinks, but that isn't the only thing that matters.

There are people that already have 4K TV's and in a couple/few years many more will have them so it would be useful for the media devices that act as sources for those 4K TV's to have a native 4K capability. And, since smartphones are increasingly being used as media devices it stands to reason that they should adapt to the 4K standard. It wouldn't make a lot of sense to have the smartphone display limited to 1440 when it's trying to output video/content at 4K.

There may be no perceptible improvement going from 1440 to 4K but it won't be worse either. The one factor that does get raised is battery life, but remember, the higher resolution screen may have more pixels but they are smaller and the transistors that drive them get smaller each die shrink as well.

The next likely TV standard beyond 4K is 8K but I do think that's a good ten years out so no need to fret over that just now.


Brian

 

[Red Storm]

• Higher Resolution does not affect the battery directly,
• Higher Resolution means higher power draw for the screen,
• Thus with the same size battery means reduce battery life.

Less battery life is not okay

Show me where you're getting less battery life.

 

[ViRGE]

Show me where you're getting less battery life.

AT on pixel density and the impact on battery life (iPad 3 review):

The increase in number of pixels (and transistors powering the display—one for each RGB subpixel) comes with a corresponding increase in the percentage of light being blocked by the transistors and filaments. Thus, the percentage transparent area for each pixel is lower, necessitating a significantly stronger backlight when pixel density is increased. Between the more power-hungry backlight and the faster SoC, the power consumption of the iPad is significantly greater than it was previously. And so, the 25Wh battery was swapped out for a downright huge 42.5Wh Lithium-polymer pack.

 

[JAG87]

Yeah that is complete nonsense... It's extremely easy to tell the difference between a phone with 250dpi and 350dpi.

You think it is, but it's not. Not unless you hold your phone 6 inches away from your face. I use my phone around a foot away from my face, and at that distance there is NO telling above 250 dpi. I said and quoted 200 because most people have worse eyesight (and better tolerance) than me.

And many people doing side-by-side comparisons of smartphones with 250ish ppi versus the newer phones with 350+ ppi have no problem at all picking the higher res ones as their favorite. Apparently there is some brain washing taking place that gets these people to pick the higher res phones when, clearly, they can not detect a difference above 200ppi.

Try again...


Brian

The point is that this is not a 640K memory argument like another genius pointed out. Just because we can, doesn't mean we should. This is a serious misdirection in terms of development, we should instead be focusing on color accuracy and power consumption.

If you can only drive at 60 MPH, would you rather develop a car that can do 300 MPH at 1 MPG, or 60 MPH at 100 MPG?

Take your pick.

 

[Brian Stirling]

AT on pixel density and the impact on battery life (iPad 3 review):

And we've seen the resolution for smartphones go from less than half a MP to over 2MP with no corresponding increase in battery requirements -- if they required bigger batteries on the scale you imply with this post then to get any reasonable life from a 1080 screen smartphone we'd be looking at batteries in the 10,000mahr range.

Are the transistors for LCD displays vastly larger than other electronics? Something isn't adding up with the AT analysis...

Even at 4K resolution on a 5" smartphone the pixel spacing is about 25um and current transistor size is about 0.3um on a side -- how much of the pixel is that blocking?


Brian

 

[Red Storm]

AT on pixel density and the impact on battery life (iPad 3 review):

I know that a higher resolution display uses more power (excluding any potential advancements in power saving and whatnot), but I'm asking for some phone examples that show this. Phone usage hovers around a day of typical use, or they do better like the Note or Maxx line. These new 1080P phones we have are not any worse than the previous gen phones at battery life.

 

[zerogear]

Rather than pixel density, I really wish they would make more head way into battery technology. IIRC lead-acid at this point is still the most efficient, and this was created over 200 years ago.

 

[poofyhairguy]

I am more honestly interested in what Moto is doing at this point. While driving I would love to just talk to my phone and get it to do what I want it to do without touching it.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Rather than pixel density, I really wish they would make more head way into battery technology. IIRC lead-acid at this point is still the most efficient, and this was created over 200 years ago.

We keep talking about batteries but its not like we're going to get some major breakthroughs that will revolutionize batteries. I've been hearing the same talk about how some lab created this 10 years ago. I worked on supercapacitors research for 2 years with nanomaterials and while that stuff could help, we're years away from commercialization.

In the meantime, I think its imperative that software be tweaked to handle battery better. I've been critical about how laptop batteries have not really grown much, and yet Apple's touting 12 hours of battery for a Macbook Air! They're obviously doing something right on the software front. There's countless things in Android that can probably be optimized for better battery. I'm glad that Motorola's really pushing that, and I wish AOSP Android could make that push too.

 

[Brian Stirling]

You think it is, but it's not. Not unless you hold your phone 6 inches away from your face. I use my phone around a foot away from my face, and at that distance there is NO telling above 250 dpi. I said and quoted 200 because most people have worse eyesight (and better tolerance) than me.





The point is that this is not a 640K memory argument like another genius pointed out. Just because we can, doesn't mean we should. This is a serious misdirection in terms of development, we should instead be focusing on color accuracy and power consumption.

If you can only drive at 60 MPH, would you rather develop a car that can do 300 MPH at 1 MPG, or 60 MPH at 100 MPG?

Take your pick.

300mph at 1mpg -- hyperbole much?

At 200 or even your now upped value of 250 (are we talking ppi or dpi BTW) a 5" phone would be at about 1000x600 resolution and you think that's all there needs to be? No problem, you keep using 2008 tech and I'll gladly move on.

And yes, this is very much like the 640KB we'll never need to exceed, the same folks that said that nonsense are whining about display tech progressing -- it never ends with you guys...

As I said in a prior, the one area where phone makers have definitely gone beyond the need is in the cameras. When you put 41 million pixels on a smartphone image chip the pixel pitch is deep within the diffraction range of even a wide open lens so you aint getting 41 million pixels of real data, just a bigger file size of blurred out pixels.


Brian

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

And yes, this is very much like the 640KB we'll never need to exceed, the same folks that said that nonsense are whining about display tech progressing -- it never ends with you guys...

As I said in a prior, the one area where phone makers have definitely gone beyond the need is in the cameras. When you put 41 million pixels on a smartphone image chip the pixel pitch is deep within the diffraction range of even a wide open lens so you aint getting 41 million pixels of real data, just a bigger file size of blurred out pixels.

Brian

No one's saying we don't need tech progression. You made an argument with cameraphones where we don't need that high resolution because you're not getting 41 million pixels of real data. Well beyond a certain point you're not going to see the individual pixels on a display. So in that respect display tech doesn't need to keep pushing for insane pixels.

Like others said there's tradeoffs. I'd like a 1080p screen, but is it a deal breaker right now for the Moto X? Probably not.

And seriously, no its not like the 640kb memory argument. No one's saying 720p is all we ever need for our whole lifetimes. The point is 300 mph is nice too, but it obviously gives you shitty mileage. So until you can improve engines to get us great mpg at 300mph or address other issues such as wind resistance, you can't just be talking nonstop about 300mph travel. I'd like battery issues to be ironed out first before we just keep pushing for display tech that doesn't make sense.

 

[jpeyton]

Rather than pixel density, I really wish they would make more head way into battery technology. IIRC lead-acid at this point is still the most efficient, and this was created over 200 years ago.

Believe it or not, display engineers probably don't moonlight as battery engineers.

 

[Brian Stirling]

No one's saying we don't need tech progression. You made an argument with cameraphones where we don't need that high resolution because you're not getting 41 million pixels of real data. Well beyond a certain point you're not going to see the individual pixels on a display. So in that respect display tech doesn't need to keep pushing for insane pixels.

Like others said there's tradeoffs. I'd like a 1080p screen, but is it a deal breaker right now for the Moto X? Probably not.

And seriously, no its not like the 640kb memory argument. No one's saying 720p is all we ever need for our whole lifetimes. The point is 300 mph is nice too, but it obviously gives you shitty mileage. So until you can improve engines to get us great mpg at 300mph or address other issues such as wind resistance, you can't just be talking nonstop about 300mph travel. I'd like battery issues to be ironed out first before we just keep pushing for display tech that doesn't make sense.

Actually, one of our members on this very thread indicated 200dpi then 250dpi is all we need and that works out to about 600p -- a lot less than 720p.

And, as I've said repeatedly, I don't see that we'll be able to perceive much difference between 1440 and 4K but so long as it doesn't introduce negatives like pushing the MP race with cameras do (noise and diffraction) what's the problem.

At this point in time a 4K phone would be stupid given the processing requirements to drive the display, but in a few years that will not be an issue just as driving a 1080 display would have been stupid a few years ago.

When you have a 4K TV in a few years will you sometimes source it from your smartphone? If so would it not be unreasonable if that smartphone had a native resolution of 4K?

I don't imagine there will be much difference between 1080 and 1440 or 4K but I don't care if my eyes aren't up to that. When I have my 4K TV I will want to source it from my smartphone sometimes so having a phone with a native 4K resolution will be a good thing even if I see no benefit on its display...


Brian

 

[poofyhairguy]

I can easily tell the difference between 720p and 1080p on a 5 inch phone.

 

[ViRGE]

And we've seen the resolution for smartphones go from less than half a MP to over 2MP with no corresponding increase in battery requirements -- if they required bigger batteries on the scale you imply with this post then to get any reasonable life from a 1080 screen smartphone we'd be looking at batteries in the 10,000mahr range.

But batteries have gotten bigger. Just compare the size of a phone like the original iPhone or Galaxy S to the size of the S4 and latest LG phone. Phones are getting bigger, in part to accommodate larger batteries.

 

[Wildman107]

.....When I have my 4K TV I will want to source it from my smartphone sometimes so having a phone with a native 4K resolution will be a good thing even if I see no benefit on its display...
Brian

Your phone doesn't need to have native 4k resolution to source 4k to your TV.

My Nexus 4 can source 1080p without a 1080p display.

 

[MrX8503]

When you have a 4K TV in a few years will you sometimes source it from your smartphone? If so would it not be unreasonable if that smartphone had a native resolution of 4K?

I don't imagine there will be much difference between 1080 and 1440 or 4K but I don't care if my eyes aren't up to that. When I have my 4K TV I will want to source it from my smartphone sometimes so having a phone with a native 4K resolution will be a good thing even if I see no benefit on its display...
Brian

How often do people hook up their phone to play on their TV? I'd imagine you could play 4K on a 4K TV even if the phone doesn't have a 4K screen.

 

[JAG87]

How often do people hook up their phone to play on their TV? I'd imagine you could play 4K on a 4K TV even if the phone doesn't have a 4K screen.

Exactly, and not only that, where the F are you going to put 4K material on your phone? On your 1TB SD card? Or are you just going to stream it off of LTE Super Advanced Plus BBQ and drain your batter in about 20 minutes?

Give me a break Brian Stirling. You need to recognize that there is a point of diminishing returns, and that point has been reached with smartphone display resolution.

 

[zerogear]

Believe it or not, display engineers probably don't moonlight as battery engineers.

Unfortunate 🙂

 

[Brian Stirling]

Exactly, and not only that, where the F are you going to put 4K material on your phone? On your 1TB SD card? Or are you just going to stream it off of LTE Super Advanced Plus BBQ and drain your batter in about 20 minutes?

Give me a break Brian Stirling. You need to recognize that there is a point of diminishing returns, and that point has been reached with smartphone display resolution.

No, I'm not going to give you a break -- you push out hyperbole and complain about me!

You and I do NOT need a 4K display as you and I will not likely be able to perceive any difference over 1440 and maybe even 1080. So the hell what! Having 4K native resolution will make sourcing 4K video easier as the frickin phone was designed to handle it every second of every day.

And Virge ... your earlier post suggested the need for a battery nearly double the previous one for the new iPad and then said that was due to transistor masking ... if that were true we wouldn't have seen batteries increase by 30-50% but more like 300% to account for the 4X increase in resolution smartphone have had in just the last two years. What kind of battery life did the original Galaxy S have, not very good was it, that phone needed a 75% bigger battery to have the kind of life that the S4 has now.

Two to three years ago I went through this exact same nonsense from the Luddites when I suggested we'd be seeing 1080 displays in a couple years -- I mean the exact same "there's no need" "you have no clue" "laughable" and on and on. Let's see where we are in 2-3 more years...


Brian

 

[StrangerGuy]

You are a luddite if you want really shitty battery life when you probably won't even notice that resolution being any different than 720p smartphones.

In case anyone is wondering my post was intended to be sarcastic.

 

[peacefulheart]

wow ,seems so shining and dazzling.so quick updating..

 

[ViRGE]

And Virge ... your earlier post suggested the need for a battery nearly double the previous one for the new iPad and then said that was due to transistor masking ... if that were true we wouldn't have seen batteries increase by 30-50% but more like 300% to account for the 4X increase in resolution smartphone have had in just the last two years. What kind of battery life did the original Galaxy S have, not very good was it, that phone needed a 75% bigger battery to have the kind of life that the S4 has now.

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply it would require a 2x larger battery. As AnandTech notes, the capacity increase is to cover the higher power needs of both the display and the SoC. The power increase from a higher density display is non-negligible, but it's not 2x.

On that note though, keep in mind that SoC's have continued to play the min-max game over the years. At least some of that display power increase has been funded through idle power gains on SoCs realized in the last couple of years (2010-2012 or so).

 

[Brian Stirling]

This discussion has drifted a little too far into contentious waters so I'll try to dial it back a little...

Let me leave it with this...

Battery size has increased about 30-50% over the last 3 years or so and some of that 'may' be due to increase in power demand from (SoC, LCD, LTE, etc) but much of it is due, in my view, the changing user expectations and usage. The capabilities have grown a lot in 3 years and the amount of time we use them in the course of a day has increased. I do not doubt that the new 1080 LCD's eat more power than the older displays but how much of that is driven by the fact that 1080 displays are just plain physically larger requiring more power from the backlight to provide a comparable NIT level?

All thing being equal a 5 inch display will require about 35% more power to provide the same brightness as a 4.3 inch display even before you talk about difference in resolution and it's effects on battery life.


Brian