Sharp has announced its intention to manufacture the world's sharpest display, a 5.5" IGZO screen with a 4K/UHD 3840x2160 resolution (806 pixels per inch), for some 2016 smartphones. Is 806 PPI too much? Tom's Hardware notes the drawbacks while celebrating the new milestone:
Although devices that are 1440p or even 4K will look even more stunning, there are indeed diminishing returns benefits-wise as the cost, the power consumption, or the GPU resources required to handle such high resolutions are significantly higher than the previous generations.
That's not to say that a 4K display today will necessarily cost more than a 1440p display did last year, but it does cost significantly more than a 1440p display being sold this year. Although the price ratios for components may remain relatively the same for the new technologies inside a new smartphone, if the benefits are increasingly smaller, then there's an opportunity cost, as well.
For instance, the extra cost to get a 4K display over a 1440p display this year could be used instead towards improving the device's camera. (OEMs could use a sharper lens, a larger sensor, improved OIS, and so on.) This sort of balance should always be taken into consideration.
[...] That doesn't mean higher resolution displays in smartphones are not useful. However, they could be even more useful for other applications; for example, 4K displays are ideal for VR. In order to have a VR experience that makes you completely forget you have a screen in front of your eyes, you'll need at least a 4K resolution screen.
Higher-resolution displays will also help lower the cost of lower resolution panels.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Tuesday April 14 2015, @07:52PM
Better lenses have a serious problems compared to higher display resolutions: You cannot put a nice number on them.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by mtrycz on Tuesday April 14 2015, @09:19PM
Give me a 1.8f lens, and I'd be impressed.
I still woudln't buy it (like I'm not buying 4k), but I'd be impressed.
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(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday April 15 2015, @08:29AM
Were you perhaps thinking of an f/1.8 lens? You are aware that as the f-number increases, the aperture decreases, right? And in fact that the aperture is a ratio by division (hence the '/' sign, though historically also ':') of the focal length (hence the 'f')?
The funny thing is that the "fastest" lens ever created, was, quite literally, a nonsense entry into a dick-waving numbers contest in the 1960s. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose. (That "Super-Q Gigantar" never took any photos, it was not actually usable, so its f/0.33 shouldn't really count as a record.)
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