5 ms·

LG develops first 5" 1080p panel for smartphones

18 points by fuzzythinker 14y ago

waivej 14y ago
This reminds me of the BadAstronomy writeup about Jobs and the resolution of the iPhone 4: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/06/10/resolving-the-iphone-resolution/ http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/06/10/re...
- CoolGuySteve 14y ago
  Ya, I was thinking the same thing. At 440ppi, this seems like overkill, considering someone with 20/20 vision only needs around 300ppi for things to be acceptable. I was hoping with the retina marketing blitz, Apple would put the density comparisons to bed and we could start thinking about displays with wider colour gamuts, wider viewing angles, better outdoors performance, 3D, mini projectors, etc. I understand hard numbers like ppi are easier to compare between and display in huge letters in a BestBuy flyer, we called them 'checkbox features' at a place I used to work at, but at some point they distort the overall quality of the product. For example, the Pentium 4's clockrate and megapixel ratings on cameras are cases of a checkbox feature actually decreasing the quality of most products in the market.
  - bane 14y ago
    Interestingly, in high-end printing, 300 dpi is considered unacceptably poor, most print shops will simply refuse to print artwork at 300 dpi. 600 dpi is usually what's considered minimally acceptable for artwork and around 1200 dpi for lots of text.
    - CoolGuySteve 14y ago
      DPI is very different though, a screen sub pixel can vary in luminescence (typically index in most displays with 6bits of accuracy, minus crappy colour gamut on the display) whereas a printed dot is limited to the ink colours used. Some printers overlap dots, print thicker dots, and have other tricks to work around this aspect. I don't know as much about this area, I've worked mostly in graphics, but my understanding is that because the colour gamut for each printed 'pixel' is less expressive, you need more dots in the same area to get a similar result. Furthermore, dpi expresses printed 'dots' whereas a pixel on most displays can be considered three fixed 'dots', one for each display channel. Although lately, some LCD substrates are cheating a little and displaying only 2 subchannels per pixel. Anyways, that's everything I know about dpi, as I said, I'm more versed in video rather than printing. So take this with a grain of salt: I think you need to multiply PPI by 3 to get DPI, ignoring cleverness on the part of either display or printer manufacturers.
      - bane 14y ago
        That's basically right in some cases. For example in full-color (4 color) printing you essentially need 4 dots (halftones) to make any color. However, they aren't all necessarily lined up in a grid like pixels (it's an analogue medium). But simply dividing 1200 dpi by 4 doesn't really provide a correct calculation for the resolution at the end. http://blog.savvydog.com/?p=106 http://blog.savvydog.com/?p=106 And then you actually get into measuring with LPI (lines per inch) which can easily go above 300 for things like good magazines (though around 130-150 is more typical). 130-150 is actually around the retina display's 300dpi (a good conversion estimate is that 1LPI=2DPI but some will go as high as 3DPI). Black and white (non-process) printing can be very different and uses solid colors. Higher quality artwork is necessary for this. That's where the 1200dpi comes into play. Fine books, black and white artwork, etc. need artwork at 1200dpi and the LPI can easily go above 500.
martythemaniak 14y ago
Now that we have gorgeous displays, I'd like to see manufacturers compete over a new metric: Smallest Total Bezel Area. The bezels on all phones today are just too damn big. The top bezel should not be taller than ~6mm (enough for speaker, camera and sensors) and the bottom should not be more than 4mm (enough to round the phone) and the side bezels should basically not exist at all.
- baddox 14y ago
  There is a concern about unwanted touches being registered if the bezel is too small, but the interface and screen controller could probably be adapted to minimize this.
- lucianm 14y ago
  That would affect the user experience of the device. How would you hold the device? How would you play games? HTC Sensation is an whole-screen device, but the user experience is really bad. I prefer iPhone 4/4S design any other day.
  - acgourley 14y ago
    The bevel could be virtual - painted on by the OS or application but not accepting touch inputs. Perhaps even custom to the user preferences. It could go away for certain uses cases, like full screen video. It could even have function buttons rendered on it that are context dependent.
    - lucianm 14y ago
      Sure, this might work. But the extra pixels needed for the bezel will consume battery with current technology. Also, a new kind of proximity sensor have to be developed for these use cases. It will be really annoying to set the virtual bezel manually all the time.
      - esolyt 14y ago
        Not on AMOLED. Remember that AMOLED does not use any power to display blacks.
cma 14y ago
Should kick ass for use in this puppy: https://twitter.com/#!/ID_AA_Carmack/status/203135890690805762/photo/1 https://twitter.com/#!/ID_AA_Carmack/status/2031358906908057... http://www.mtbs3d.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=120&t=14967 http://www.mtbs3d.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=120&t=14967
Munksgaard 14y ago
So why is it that we're still stuck with 1920x1080 on our desktop displays? And don't even get me started on laptops!
- fuzzythinker 14y ago
  Maybe you haven't been looking hard enough? I've been using HP's 27"2560x1440 for months hooking up to my lowly macbook air 11. Cost ~$660, worth every cent (for comparison, brought the first Dell 24"1920 display when it first came out for ~$1k). For laptops, the (pretty strong) rumor is that new macbook pros coming out in summer will be much higher res, potentially up to double current resolutions. For current laptops, the macbook airs and similar PCs currently have the highest "usable" resolutions. The sony vaio z and p has the highest resolutions.
  - mortenjorck 14y ago
    Unfortunately, you have to look pretty hard. The HP, a Dell, and Apple's Thunderbolt Display are the only three proper 27" displays on the market apart from some significantly higher-priced options. Nearly everything else from every manufacturer is one-size-fits-all 1080p, your only choice being how big the pixels are.
    - throwitall2 14y ago
      Interestingly, there were some cheap Korean 27" 2560x1440 displays that came to prominence recently, mainly because they were originally selling for ~$370. The panels themselves are the same as those in the 27" Apple and Dell displays, just ones that didn't meet Apple and Dell's requirements. You can search for "Yamasaki Catleap", if you're curious about it.
      - silverlake 14y ago
        spelling: Yamakasi
        14y ago
cocoflunchy 14y ago
How about making batteries that can make your phone run for more that 8 hours straight now? I'd buy the phone that would give me a week of uptime (and that is not a 3310).
- myko 14y ago
  The Razr Maxx has incredible battery life, not quite a week of uptime but a good 3 days of normal use.
duaneb 14y ago
Surely we've got to be hitting the limits on what the eye can perceive. Why don't we focus on color/contrast?

18 points by fuzzythinker 14y ago

This reminds me of the BadAstronomy writeup about Jobs and the resolution of the iPhone 4: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/06/10/resolving-the-iphone-resolution/ http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/06/10/re...

CoolGuySteve 14y ago
Ya, I was thinking the same thing. At 440ppi, this seems like overkill, considering someone with 20/20 vision only needs around 300ppi for things to be acceptable. I was hoping with the retina marketing blitz, Apple would put the density comparisons to bed and we could start thinking about displays with wider colour gamuts, wider viewing angles, better outdoors performance, 3D, mini projectors, etc. I understand hard numbers like ppi are easier to compare between and display in huge letters in a BestBuy flyer, we called them 'checkbox features' at a place I used to work at, but at some point they distort the overall quality of the product. For example, the Pentium 4's clockrate and megapixel ratings on cameras are cases of a checkbox feature actually decreasing the quality of most products in the market.
- bane 14y ago
  Interestingly, in high-end printing, 300 dpi is considered unacceptably poor, most print shops will simply refuse to print artwork at 300 dpi. 600 dpi is usually what's considered minimally acceptable for artwork and around 1200 dpi for lots of text.
  - CoolGuySteve 14y ago
    DPI is very different though, a screen sub pixel can vary in luminescence (typically index in most displays with 6bits of accuracy, minus crappy colour gamut on the display) whereas a printed dot is limited to the ink colours used. Some printers overlap dots, print thicker dots, and have other tricks to work around this aspect. I don't know as much about this area, I've worked mostly in graphics, but my understanding is that because the colour gamut for each printed 'pixel' is less expressive, you need more dots in the same area to get a similar result. Furthermore, dpi expresses printed 'dots' whereas a pixel on most displays can be considered three fixed 'dots', one for each display channel. Although lately, some LCD substrates are cheating a little and displaying only 2 subchannels per pixel. Anyways, that's everything I know about dpi, as I said, I'm more versed in video rather than printing. So take this with a grain of salt: I think you need to multiply PPI by 3 to get DPI, ignoring cleverness on the part of either display or printer manufacturers.
    - bane 14y ago
      That's basically right in some cases. For example in full-color (4 color) printing you essentially need 4 dots (halftones) to make any color. However, they aren't all necessarily lined up in a grid like pixels (it's an analogue medium). But simply dividing 1200 dpi by 4 doesn't really provide a correct calculation for the resolution at the end. http://blog.savvydog.com/?p=106 http://blog.savvydog.com/?p=106 And then you actually get into measuring with LPI (lines per inch) which can easily go above 300 for things like good magazines (though around 130-150 is more typical). 130-150 is actually around the retina display's 300dpi (a good conversion estimate is that 1LPI=2DPI but some will go as high as 3DPI). Black and white (non-process) printing can be very different and uses solid colors. Higher quality artwork is necessary for this. That's where the 1200dpi comes into play. Fine books, black and white artwork, etc. need artwork at 1200dpi and the LPI can easily go above 500.

martythemaniak 14y ago

Now that we have gorgeous displays, I'd like to see manufacturers compete over a new metric: Smallest Total Bezel Area. The bezels on all phones today are just too damn big. The top bezel should not be taller than ~6mm (enough for speaker, camera and sensors) and the bottom should not be more than 4mm (enough to round the phone) and the side bezels should basically not exist at all.

baddox 14y ago
There is a concern about unwanted touches being registered if the bezel is too small, but the interface and screen controller could probably be adapted to minimize this.
lucianm 14y ago
That would affect the user experience of the device. How would you hold the device? How would you play games? HTC Sensation is an whole-screen device, but the user experience is really bad. I prefer iPhone 4/4S design any other day.
- acgourley 14y ago
  The bevel could be virtual - painted on by the OS or application but not accepting touch inputs. Perhaps even custom to the user preferences. It could go away for certain uses cases, like full screen video. It could even have function buttons rendered on it that are context dependent.
  - lucianm 14y ago
    Sure, this might work. But the extra pixels needed for the bezel will consume battery with current technology. Also, a new kind of proximity sensor have to be developed for these use cases. It will be really annoying to set the virtual bezel manually all the time.
    - esolyt 14y ago
      Not on AMOLED. Remember that AMOLED does not use any power to display blacks.

cma 14y ago

Should kick ass for use in this puppy: https://twitter.com/#!/ID_AA_Carmack/status/203135890690805762/photo/1 https://twitter.com/#!/ID_AA_Carmack/status/2031358906908057... http://www.mtbs3d.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=120&t=14967 http://www.mtbs3d.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=120&t=14967

Munksgaard 14y ago

So why is it that we're still stuck with 1920x1080 on our desktop displays? And don't even get me started on laptops!

fuzzythinker 14y ago
Maybe you haven't been looking hard enough? I've been using HP's 27"2560x1440 for months hooking up to my lowly macbook air 11. Cost ~$660, worth every cent (for comparison, brought the first Dell 24"1920 display when it first came out for ~$1k). For laptops, the (pretty strong) rumor is that new macbook pros coming out in summer will be much higher res, potentially up to double current resolutions. For current laptops, the macbook airs and similar PCs currently have the highest "usable" resolutions. The sony vaio z and p has the highest resolutions.
- mortenjorck 14y ago
  Unfortunately, you have to look pretty hard. The HP, a Dell, and Apple's Thunderbolt Display are the only three proper 27" displays on the market apart from some significantly higher-priced options. Nearly everything else from every manufacturer is one-size-fits-all 1080p, your only choice being how big the pixels are.
  - throwitall2 14y ago
    Interestingly, there were some cheap Korean 27" 2560x1440 displays that came to prominence recently, mainly because they were originally selling for ~$370. The panels themselves are the same as those in the 27" Apple and Dell displays, just ones that didn't meet Apple and Dell's requirements. You can search for "Yamasaki Catleap", if you're curious about it.
    - silverlake 14y ago
      spelling: Yamakasi
      - 14y ago

cocoflunchy 14y ago

How about making batteries that can make your phone run for more that 8 hours straight now? I'd buy the phone that would give me a week of uptime (and that is not a 3310).

myko 14y ago
The Razr Maxx has incredible battery life, not quite a week of uptime but a good 3 days of normal use.

duaneb 14y ago

Surely we've got to be hitting the limits on what the eye can perceive. Why don't we focus on color/contrast?