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posted by cmn32480 on Tuesday April 14 2015, @07:25PM   Printer-friendly
from the how-clear-can-it-be dept.

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.

 
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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Tuesday April 14 2015, @07:57PM

    by maxwell demon (1608) on Tuesday April 14 2015, @07:57PM (#170518) Journal

    Displays that produce their own light are never suitable for viewing in full sunlight. Even a light bulb looks dim under those conditions. What would be needed is reflective displays like e-ink, but fast enough to work as screen.

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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Tuesday April 14 2015, @08:22PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday April 14 2015, @08:22PM (#170528)

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transflective_liquid-crystal_display [wikipedia.org]

    I have a roughly decade old Garmin 76cs GPS that I used for hiking and geocaching, still use sometimes. Its battery life is about 5 or 6 complete cellphone charges and it "charges" in about 15 seconds by replacing two AA batteries. The battery life is good enough that on a short camping trip you can just leave it on, it draws practically nothing when the backlight is off.

    Also unlike using a phone, from memory its completely waterproof when properly assembled (battery door clamped tightly closed) and it floats in water. I don't think you can buy a phone like that. Its also pretty much indestructible, although I've seen pix online of people breaking them I have no idea how the heck they did that.

    Its like a LCD that uses the sun as its backlight (kinda hard to explain). The brighter the sun the brighter the image.

    I guess that tech isn't going anywhere, something to do with resolution, I think. I would estimate about 40 DPI. Not a typo, forty not 400 or something.

    Paying for map updates kinda sucks. Using my phone, I don't miss that aspect at all. Also the geocaching app is more convenient on the phone than manual loading the GPS.

    The thing I mostly use it for now, comically, is a spedometer/odometer on my bicycle. Its the nicest bike odometer ever made.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 16 2015, @12:06PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 16 2015, @12:06PM (#171539)

      The Nokia N900 had a 800*640 3.5" transreflective display, made by Sony. So long as the image on the screen had good contrast it was quite readable in direct sunlight, but the colour was washed out and you still needed to angle it just so to avoid reflections. I liked it at the time, but these days the screen on my Nexus 5 is good enough in sunlight and looks a hell of a lot better the rest of the time. I think the problem with transreflective displays is that they don't do either job as well as a display that sticks to being purely transmissive or purely reflective.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 14 2015, @08:50PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 14 2015, @08:50PM (#170541)

    There's dim and then there's unreadable.
    Just because perfection is impossible doesn't mean there is not room for improvement.