qHD screens? 1440x2560. next years high end?

Roland00Address

Platinum Member
Dec 17, 2008
2,196
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I have no want or need for my phone to have equivalent resolution as my desktop monitor.

Give me desktop multi tasking, louder speakers, or longer battery life instead
 

gmaster456

Golden Member
Sep 7, 2011
1,877
0
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I'd rather have OEMS stick with 1080p and work on having more than 3 phones that can last more than a day and a half.
 

JAG87

Diamond Member
Jan 3, 2006
3,921
3
76
Yes 500+ ppi, that's what I need baby. That, a new pair of glasses, and a 10x loupe. Hopefully bundle both with the phone.
 

saratoga172

Golden Member
Nov 10, 2009
1,564
1
81
I'd much prefer they work on battery life first, then focus on making a desktop replacement phone. Something that can dock and become useful with a keyboard and mouse. High hopes that maybe a Windows phone can eventually become that, where as a phone it's running the phone OS, then docked it activated an RT version of the OS with desktop mode. Or heck, full out x86 architecture and desktop mode...

Back on topic I'm not too interested in it. I will admit the 1080p screens are sharp but then again 720 screens in a 4-4.3" phone look pretty good too. Not enough for me to warrant a new device. If I picked them up side by side probably wouldn't be able to tell which screen was which.
 

gorcorps

aka Brandon
Jul 18, 2004
30,739
454
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I'd rather have OEMS stick with 1080p and work on having more than 3 phones that can last more than a day and a half.

Agreed. I don't see a need to go beyond 1080p. Now's the time for a battery revolution. If not battery tech, then efficiency in power demand from everything on the phone. Even just simple optimization of parts that are already used. Why can some random dude in his basement create a kernal and get better battery life out of the same phone with the same parts with no affect on speed, or maybe even an improvement? I understand there's the desire for stability and undervolting clocks can be an issue, but it seems like things can be better.
 

Mopetar

Diamond Member
Jan 31, 2011
8,463
7,684
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Battery is a huge concern. Look at the MBA and how it lasts 12 hours versus 9 hours for a larger 13" MBP with 25% more battery.

While the screen is going to have some effect, I don't think it's the only difference. The Air has one of the ultra-lower power Haswell chips so it's using a lot less juice as well.

I think the bigger problem with such a screen is that it would take a fairly beefy chip to drive the graphics. Otherwise you get a nice screen, with crappy performance.

I think that we'll get their eventually, but it will probably be at least another few years before we see wide market adoption, but I think we'll see at least a few smaller tablets or phablets using it within the next year or so.
 
Mar 11, 2004
23,444
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Guys you're missing that this would enable them to run things at 1280x720 and then just factor it up to the native resolution so it could actually boost battery life as many applications (games especially) can run a lower resolution. Then for things that could benefit from the absolute pixel density (photos, text) they can run native resolution.

On top of that, I believe many of these higher resolution displays also feature other power saving tech and that coupled with smarter use of the displays (stuff like what LG did on the G2 but make it so widespread of hardware that the OS can then natively be tailored to make even better use of it) should make it a non-issue.

I have no want or need for my phone to have equivalent resolution as my desktop monitor.

Give me desktop multi tasking, louder speakers, or longer battery life instead

Why not all of that and the higher res display?

Battery is a huge concern. Look at the MBA and how it lasts 12 hours versus 9 hours for a larger 13" MBP with 25% more battery.

Do those even have comparable processors?
 
Mar 11, 2004
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5,851
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I really wish mobile OSes had taken the opportunity of the setback in computing (going back to simplicity) to do something like implement vector graphics so all this scaling stuff wouldn't be such an issue still.
 

jiffylube1024

Diamond Member
Feb 17, 2002
7,430
0
71
Guys you're missing that this would enable them to run things at 1280x720 and then just factor it up to the native resolution so it could actually boost battery life as many applications (games especially) can run a lower resolution. Then for things that could benefit from the absolute pixel density (photos, text) they can run native resolution.

If you blow up 1280x720 games then you'd have massive jaggies and require lots of AA. It's feasible, but why bother when you can just run natively at 1080p with similar performance and sharper graphics than up scaled 720p? Plus, a 1440p display still has more pixels and this requires a more powerful backlight to illuminate.
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IMO 1440p is unnecessary right now in 4- 5.5" phones. We don't need 500+ PPI. Let's take the power savings at 1080p plus 20nm and run with them instead!
 

s44

Diamond Member
Oct 13, 2006
9,427
16
81
Let's take the power savings at 1080p plus 20nm and run with them instead!
I bet/fear that VoLTE will eat all the battery savings of the next process shrink.

Not that I'll ever use VoLTE, since that would mean leaving unlimited.
 

dawheat

Diamond Member
Sep 14, 2000
3,132
93
91
Battery is a huge concern. Look at the MBA and how it lasts 12 hours versus 9 hours for a larger 13" MBP with 25% more battery.

Aside from possibly needing a more powerful GPU, I thought AMOLED screens don't require more power as resolution increases, and that actually it can save power. LED screens would require a stronger backlight.

Still pointless as 1080p looks great on my Note 3, though this higher resolution could have some benefit on the phablet size as ppi is in the high 300s.
 
Feb 19, 2001
20,155
23
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While the screen is going to have some effect, I don't think it's the only difference. The Air has one of the ultra-lower power Haswell chips so it's using a lot less juice as well.

I think the bigger problem with such a screen is that it would take a fairly beefy chip to drive the graphics. Otherwise you get a nice screen, with crappy performance.

I think that we'll get their eventually, but it will probably be at least another few years before we see wide market adoption, but I think we'll see at least a few smaller tablets or phablets using it within the next year or so.

So here's my question. I thought that UVing helps a lot in power dissipation, but the fact is in idle, most chips use very little in power, no? Maybe the ULT chips use even less, but I remember when the i5 series had like a 2400S or 2400T. I forget, but you could similarly buy a regular 2400 for cheaper and though it was higher clocked, just cap the clock speed. In idle, it's going to do damn well.

Here's the article http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1202-page3.html It's difficult because it's hard to characterize what standard usage is. It's a lot of idle and a bit of load distributed across time.

Yeah, anyway I'm not sure how much of it is due to the screen, but the iPad 2 to iPad 3 was a clear indication of how much battery mattered. They had to go to a thicker device. So I do believe screen resolution matters, and the MBA vs MBP was probably not the best example ;) Perhaps the MBP 15" versus classic MBP from 2012? The Retina had a larger battery, no?
 
Mar 11, 2004
23,444
5,851
146
If you blow up 1280x720 games then you'd have massive jaggies and require lots of AA. It's feasible, but why bother when you can just run natively at 1080p with similar performance and sharper graphics than up scaled 720p? Plus, a 1440p display still has more pixels and this requires a more powerful backlight to illuminate.
----

IMO 1440p is unnecessary right now in 4- 5.5" phones. We don't need 500+ PPI. Let's take the power savings at 1080p plus 20nm and run with them instead!

I don't think that'd be that big of a deal on a display that size (and if running 720p allows them to up the other eye candy or having more going on onscreen it'll more than offset the reduction in absolute clarity of 720p upscaled 4 factor on that display versus say native 1080p at the same size), and I don't think that's any different from how things are already (jaggies are an issue on plenty of 3D rendered mobile games from what I've seen) so I don't think it'll really upset the status quo for mobile games, only now the scaling will look better while they can offer better performance (which I think in turn will allow them to actually offer more eye candy). Plus, I believe they can use the newer efficient AA modes that are much more managable performance wise (and don't have the memory bandwidth needs of higher resolution). Plus if done right, anything that needed more crispness (say UI elements, text, etc) should be able to be rendered at higher resolution.

There's newer display tech that actually reduces the power used by the display (Sharp's IGZO for instance, there's a few others as well I believe) so that becomes less of an issue. They're already doing the developmental effort for this stuff, there's no reason for them to not push resolution higher still at the same time (since they're also doing the development of that). I actually think this makes it better for the manufacturers as well as they can reap the economies of scale for fewer production lines, which is why they're pushing it.

I do think this would be a good point to level off (and 4K for tablets so that they can fall back to 1080p rendering with 4 factor scaling). If you want the high resolution crispness/clarity/detail its there, but if you need performance and good enough you can do factor scaling (which is better than doing say 720p to 1080p scaling). 720p upscaled 4 factor should still be plenty fine (considering we have 720p displays at these sizes that people say are fine, for instance the Moto X display looks pretty good to me), and will net the same performance ability. Then let a few years for the hardware to get to where it does the native resolution as well as it was doing the 1/4 resolution and upscaling.

In short, I don't think most people would tell a huge difference (and if the software is done right, it can actually help improve things), it gives more flexibility. I see people who say 1080p is actually too small/fine at these sizes so this would offer easy scaling for people and could help make things more legible, while others could get even more crispness/clarity.
 

Dari

Lifer
Oct 25, 2002
17,133
38
91
Aside from possibly needing a more powerful GPU, I thought AMOLED screens don't require more power as resolution increases, and that actually it can save power. LED screens would require a stronger backlight.

Still pointless as 1080p looks great on my Note 3, though this higher resolution could have some benefit on the phablet size as ppi is in the high 300s.

That doesn't make any sense from a numbers POV. More resolution means more pixels which means more power consumption. Why would they not need more power?
 

Zink

Senior member
Sep 24, 2009
209
0
0
It makes lots of sense, there are more AMOLED pixels in the same area so the each pixel does not need to be as bright. Both an AMOLED and an LCD need to light up the same display area but the LCD must push the light through a grid of color filtering pixels while on an AMOLED the color pixels themselves generate light.
The theory would be that as resolution increases at the same screen size in an LCD panel, the ratio of usable pixel surface area to light blocking surface area decreases because the conductive wiring between pixels does not shrink while the pixels do. Since an AMOLED does not have this problem, in theory it should use the same amount of power regardless of resolution and be more efficient in comparison to LCD as resolution increases.

Not that I think this really matters, smartphone makers jumped on 1080p instead of sticking with 720p so the power consumption increase can't be that bad. AMOLED could also have some decrease in efficiency with smaller and smaller pixels that we aren't taking into account. Finally, there is also a power increase tied to high resolutions but separate from display technology which is the GPU and CPU power required to push those pixels and constantly be loading higher resolution content to display. This may be the dominant power increase with higher resolutions, for example iPad 2 vs iPad 3, and I have never seen a comparison where this was measured.
 
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dawheat

Diamond Member
Sep 14, 2000
3,132
93
91
That doesn't make any sense from a numbers POV. More resolution means more pixels which means more power consumption. Why would they not need more power?

I've read something along the lines of the above post as well. Since AMOLED pixels light up individually, making them smaller doesn't substantially change the power draw needed to display an image as each pixel draws less power. In some cases, it actually can be slightly more power efficient due to the smaller pixels and finer control.

LCDs require a stronger backlight to have similar brightness through a finer grid.
 

Mopetar

Diamond Member
Jan 31, 2011
8,463
7,684
136
Yeah, anyway I'm not sure how much of it is due to the screen, but the iPad 2 to iPad 3 was a clear indication of how much battery mattered. They had to go to a thicker device. So I do believe screen resolution matters, and the MBA vs MBP was probably not the best example ;) Perhaps the MBP 15" versus classic MBP from 2012? The Retina had a larger battery, no?

I'm not disputing that the screen doesn't matter as it obviously does. However, I don't think there's a good analog for Apple's SoC to Intel's difference between their regular chips and their ultra-low power chips.

It also really depends on the OS as well. I suspect that part of the reason that Apple generally gets better battery life is because there's less going on in the background so the chip can idle more often.

If you're just reading books or something simple like that, the battery life is going to be almost wholly dependent on the efficiency of the screen. If you're playing a game or using some other app that's computationally heavy, it's going to depend on the SoC more.
 

makken

Golden Member
Aug 28, 2004
1,476
0
76
So here's my question. I thought that UVing helps a lot in power dissipation, but the fact is in idle, most chips use very little in power, no? Maybe the ULT chips use even less, but I remember when the i5 series had like a 2400S or 2400T. I forget, but you could similarly buy a regular 2400 for cheaper and though it was higher clocked, just cap the clock speed. In idle, it's going to do damn well.

Here's the article http://www.silentpcreview.com/article1202-page3.html It's difficult because it's hard to characterize what standard usage is. It's a lot of idle and a bit of load distributed across time.

Yeah, anyway I'm not sure how much of it is due to the screen, but the iPad 2 to iPad 3 was a clear indication of how much battery mattered. They had to go to a thicker device. So I do believe screen resolution matters, and the MBA vs MBP was probably not the best example ;) Perhaps the MBP 15" versus classic MBP from 2012? The Retina had a larger battery, no?

My understanding is that Haswell has much better idle power than ivy bridge.

Also, it looks like we are getting improvements on screen power. I would like to see methodology for that test, especially what was displayed when he measured power consumption to see if it was biased towards AMOLED screens.
 

Dari

Lifer
Oct 25, 2002
17,133
38
91
It makes lots of sense, there are more AMOLED pixels in the same area so the each pixel does not need to be as bright. Both an AMOLED and an LCD need to light up the same display area but the LCD must push the light through a grid of color filtering pixels while on an AMOLED the color pixels themselves generate light.
The theory would be that as resolution increases at the same screen size in an LCD panel, the ratio of usable pixel surface area to light blocking surface area decreases because the conductive wiring between pixels does not shrink while the pixels do. Since an AMOLED does not have this problem, in theory it should use the same amount of power regardless of resolution and be more efficient in comparison to LCD as resolution increases.

Not that I think this really matters, smartphone makers jumped on 1080p instead of sticking with 720p so the power consumption increase can't be that bad. AMOLED could also have some decrease in efficiency with smaller and smaller pixels that we aren't taking into account. Finally, there is also a power increase tied to high resolutions but separate from display technology which is the GPU and CPU power required to push those pixels and constantly be loading higher resolution content to display. This may be the dominant power increase with higher resolutions, for example iPad 2 vs iPad 3, and I have never seen a comparison where this was measured.

I've read something along the lines of the above post as well. Since AMOLED pixels light up individually, making them smaller doesn't substantially change the power draw needed to display an image as each pixel draws less power. In some cases, it actually can be slightly more power efficient due to the smaller pixels and finer control.

LCDs require a stronger backlight to have similar brightness through a finer grid.

I see. However, the smaller the pixel the more intense it'll have to be to be noticed. It's not like there's a backlight helping things along. There's definitely some efficiency going on with AMOLEDs but once you start cranking up the brightness it all flies out the window.
 

dawheat

Diamond Member
Sep 14, 2000
3,132
93
91
I see. However, the smaller the pixel the more intense it'll have to be to be noticed. It's not like there's a backlight helping things along. There's definitely some efficiency going on with AMOLEDs but once you start cranking up the brightness it all flies out the window.

They're getting pretty good though - my Note 3 is my first AMOLED screen I can see fine in bright sunlight (all my phones use Lux Dash to control auto brightness). I was surprised how much better it was over the Note 2, which along with the glossy back were the biggest weakness of the phone.

The Note 3 is much better in both regards and I still get all day battery life.