Screen size and resolution

[sd4f]

I joined the WP brigade with a lumia 920 at the start of last year, while i'm not keen on upgrading yet, as there's nothing wrong with my L920, and it's an awesome phone, with the impending release of WP8.1, I have thought of looking at what the new hardware is like.

Now seeing that the high end phone for the newer batch is the L930, it makes me wonder about the resolution. For those who are happy with how the L920/L925 phones are, with 1280x768 resolution, is there going to be a phone which essentially duplicates that form factor with the modern hardware. I'm not too keen on 1080p only because I view it as a missed opportunity in terms of throwing processing power and energy consumption, to do something which can't be seen anyway.

I'm curious as to other peoples opinions, do you demand 1080p screens?

I'm used to the L920, and while the L930 doesn't change much in the critical dimensions (width) I do like the resolution and display of the L920. My ideal phone would be remain a L920 form factor with the modern hardware only, and as always, improved battery life. Is it just a matter that the high end has to keep pushing the boundary so 1080p is now the norm?

 

[engineermoore]

I have a lumia 820 which has a 800x480 display and honestly, im perfectly happy with it. I have used both the lumia 920 and htc 8x which have higher resolution screens and while they do look sharper, to me the difference is not enough to justify the added cost. I feel like the jump to a full hd screen from a lumia 920 would be so small as to make no difference and I personally wouldn't say it is worth the extra power required. On the other hand, some people like boasting about specs so it would maybe be useful for that. The benchmark I would use is the iphone, its resolution hasn't increased in years and people are perfectly happy with it. Why increase it further?

 

[Athull]

I have a 480p display on 620 and I can hardly ever tell individual pixels apart. In fact my nexus 7 with abt the same resolution as a 920 and 7 inch screen looks perfectly okay to me.
1080p is good if ur getting a phone above 5inch and do a lot of reading but other than that I can't see the point, battery efficiency shld have been given top priority instead of resolution I hope OEMS realize that.
Today lg will announce its flagship lg g3 with 2K screen and I can only laugh at people claiming that as an improvement over 1080p screen and the next major resolution gain for phones.

 

[sd4f]

When I had a 800x480 phone, it had a pentile display, and i didn't like it much at all for text. Pictures looked fine, but on one edge of the phone, you could see a green line, and text was rough. With the L920, the display is perfect as far as I'm concerned. Images are really good.

I've read an article on ars technica about the LG G3, and even there they're saying that it's over the top in terms of resolution. I wonder why so many phone companies don't want to keep certain things as 'good enough' and try to improve battery life over the single day anymore.

 

[A895]

I actually don't care for 1080p screens.

Sent from my XT907 using Mobile Nations mobile app

 

[colinkiama]

After 1080p there is really no point anymore. I wish companies would just try to increase the battery life.

 

[engineermoore]

When I had a 800x480 phone, it had a pentile display, and i didn't like it much at all for text. Pictures looked fine, but on one edge of the phone, you could see a green line, and text was rough. With the L920, the display is perfect as far as I'm concerned. Images are really good.

I've read an article on ars technica about the LG G3, and even there they're saying that it's over the top in terms of resolution. I wonder why so many phone companies don't want to keep certain things as 'good enough' and try to improve battery life over the single day anymore.

I think a lot of it has to do with the specifications that can be advertised. a quad HD screen (or whatever they are calling it) sounds more impressive that HD and I am sure there are many people who will go in to a shop and buy "the best phone" i.e. the one with the specs that sound the most impressive. Again, coming back to the iPhone, its retina display is good enough, its 1gb of RAM is arguably enough and its dual core processor is still one of the most powerful on the market but they don't advertise these facts because comparing it to a galaxy s5 or a Lumia 930 it would look way underpowered.

Example -
iPhone 5s- 640 x 1136 Dual-core 1.3 GHz
LG G3 - 1440 x 2560 Quad-core 2.5 GHz
Lumia 930 - 1080 x 1920 Quad-core 2.2 GHz

if you walked in to a shop and knew nothing about phones which one would you be drawn to?

 

[sd4f]

if you walked in to a shop and knew nothing about phones which one would you be drawn to?

I get your point, I can't imagine as if i don't know anything though.

I suppose the aspect most annoying is, apple tries to remain consistent with their vision. They improve the hardware gradually, and don't go jumping at stupidity, although the publicity they got for the retina display is probably what provoked the whole resolution war.

Quad HD is also easy to confuse with 4k which has four times the pixels of full hd (ie 1080p). Bah, this is all getting stupid.

 

[Christian Holmstedt]

Full HD or higher on a device with 4" - 5" screens are not a huge selling point for me at least. AMOLED 800 x 480 on the Lumia 810 looks and works just fine even with the extra column of tiles under WP8.1.

For sure this all depends on the quality of the screen. I'd take longer battery life and features over a HD or higher screen any day of the week.

What are you guys using your phone for that requires full HD or even higher resolution? I mean, with my regular PC (Ultrabook) I use 2 x 1920 x 1080 monitors (23") + the build in 13" and that is perfectly fine.

A 5" @ 1920 x 1080..... why?

 

[MDMcAtee]

Full HD or higher on a device with 4" - 5" screens are not a huge selling point for me at least.

What are you guys using your phone for that requires full HD or even higher resolution?

A 5" @ 1920 x 1080..... why?

First..you speaking from a personal view, not in reality.

If implemented correctly, the higher the resolution,the greater the details can be shown. The higher the resolution the better everything video can look..

People say it's overkill but it's not,why,because we have our devices 12" and under to our eyes and it is a well known fact the lower the resolution the greater the eye strain,same for lower refresh rates associated with the lower resolution screens.

The issue is getting the developers to utilize the higher resolution for all the various screens.

The detail level on my 1520 screen compared to any 720p screen is night and day different,and that makes any HD movie Game or app that is optimized for this so much more immersive and once you know what you are looking at,you won't likely ever choose to use a lower resolution. Zoom in on a 720p as opposed to a well implemented 1080p display..if you can't see any difference,you really either have 2 bad displays or your in need of a eye exam..because it is that drastically different.

Personally I am hopeful that 2k and 4k displays make their way to our phones soon and the ability to show actual resolution out to larger displays (at least while docked) soon.

Mac

 

[Christian Holmstedt]

Sure it's a personal point of view, any opinion is.

There is no way I can use my phone at 12" or closer to my eyes. I'm not near or far sighted in any way. Usually keep it at a comfortable 20" or so.
Damn, closer than 12".... that just becomes physically painful.

 

[MDMcAtee]

Sure it's a personal point of view, any opinion is.

There is no way I can use my phone at 12" or closer to my eyes. I'm not near or far sighted in any way. Usually keep it at a comfortable 20" or so.
Damn, closer than 12".... that just becomes physically painful.

Yup,lots of folks have bad eyesight,myself included.

However even at 24" away on my 1520 there is a noticeable difference in detail that can be seen with it's 1080p display over less with corrected vision.
As long as you're happy with less..that's all that matters,but the real benefits are there for those who want the highest possible resolution too...

Mac