About those HD screens...

[bobdonkey]

So, I am thinking I really want the HD screens, but actually, what difference does it make?

What I really want is more screen real estate in e.g the mail app. Currently, if you do a new email and rotate to landscape, go about 3 or 4 lines of text. Sometimes the screen res can make it very difficult to actually do things on the phone generally.

So obviously games etc will be the same res to start with (scaled I assume), but will the actual OS take advantage of the new screen real estate? Will you see more emails in the mail app and calls in the history etc?

Has anyone seen any videos which might confirm this? Because if everything is just scaled, I don't really see the point. I also wonder about the keyboard, they must have resized it so it still fills the width of the screen I suppose.

 

[SnailUK]

In one of the techincal WP8 links on here, it showed current apps scale beautifully to the 1280x768 resolution of the 920. They have a slightly elongated bottom on the 1280x720 resolution of the 8X. But all in all, the existing apps will scale fine.

Any future apps should be fine. I'd imagine first party will correctly work on whatever resolution you buy. 3rd parties should have APIs to get the screen resolution, and therefore write versions of their apps for each resolution.

 

[bobdonkey]

Thanks, I know apps will scale, but I want to know if there will be more usable screen real estate e.g. in the mail app etc.

 

[pjs37]

I don't know a lot of people said the same thing moving from the 3GS to the iPhone 4 but once you got one at least for me it was amazing and different everything looked so...sharp....though I have to say my Lumia 900 is still impressive

 

[Winterfang]

I don't think Microsoft is taking advantage of the extra space. But I'll gladly be wrong.

 

[AngryNil]

There's no "extra space" when you've got the same aspect ratio and same physical dimensions. You'll see more vertical content if you opt for a 720p device (16:9 versus 15:9), but you're not going to magically see more content just because the pixels are denser (current content, however, will be more crisp).

 

[Markyyy]

Isnt there going to be an option in settings to change the system's default font size? If so, I'd assume decreasing the font size would mean more email Subjects can be seen in the emails list. The higher resolution means the smaller fonted text would still be readable, as opposed to pixellated as it would be on a lower resolution display.

 

[Winterfang]

I'm talking about 720p yes. Like I wonder if you will see more contacts and more emails, text messages in that extra vertical space.

 

[bobdonkey]

I think I answered my original question, found a video of the Lumia 920 showing the email app - there is no more available space, which is a pity. I guess there would be on the 8x and Ativ due to the different screen ratio.

I put comparison screenshots below:
Windows Phone 8 HD resolution screens & useable space | msdonkey.com

 

[AngryNil]

I'm talking about 720p yes. Like I wonder if you will see more contacts and more emails, text messages in that extra vertical space.

No, it's going to be letterboxed.

Joking, this isn't Apple :] already can be seen on 8X demos, and it was a given from the get-go.