The debate between FHD vs QHD has been strong within mobile enthusiast communities. While many people want to get their hands on the latest and greatest of display technology, others argue that QHD is simply not worth the downsides and that FHD is more than enough. So what should we look for in our phones? Let’s find out.
I’ve never seen a mobile QHD display before, so I have no idea if it makes any sense on a mobile device.
Fairly shortly we should be approaching the human limits for display, where improved resolution will not help. Going from an iPhone 1 to an iPhone 4 to an iPhone 6, I can see noticeable changes. However from the 4 to the 6 the difference seemed much less noticeable. My Guess resolution can quadruple one more time and that would be the limit (Yes that would be a 4k display on your smartphone). Which I would be happy with reaching that limit. This means the improvements will go towards better performance, improved battery etc… Then putting the power to remembering and rendering millions more pixels.
Actually no, they will find another marketable metric to game with. Their aim is not improving the devices, but having larger numbers than the competition in some metric.
The frequency race failed on phones for now, because of thermal constraints. I haven’t heard of anyone claiming they have more cores either, I guess for the same reason.
Maybe after they’re done with the pixel density wars they’ll get back to it?
The article points out under Retina and ideal viewing distance that we are no where near the human limits as defined by the Air Force Research Lab.
I dunno about what this or that lab defines as the human limit, but I certainly cannot see the difference between a fHD- and qHD- display at cell-phone sizes, I simply do not have the tendency to look at my phone from within 3 centimeters range.
I do actually, well 3 inches, not cm. I am very near sighted and without glasses or contact lenses then 3 inches is the distance where things are in focus.
Because the distance is so small the effect is that i can see quite tiny details. For me the change from low res to “retina” was great because things went from being heavily pixelated to very nice to look at.
For me now my galaxy s4 with FHD is just fine, i can see pixels kinda in the same way that i can when working on a 24″ FHD monitor. So they are there but are not annoying. I see them a bit clearer on phones with LCD though, probably because they are more square.
So long story short is that i would actually be able to tell FHD from 4K on a 5″ display, but i still don’t care and think it is silly wasting extra ram and gpu/cpu and storage to push 4 times the pixel count.
In the meantime, most manufacturers’ laptops will still be stuck on 1366*768.
Because most desktop (non-Metro) apps scale terribly, even if you change the DPI settings. Lots of distances expressed in absolute pixel values and lots of bitmaps that don’t scale (and would scale terribly).
Edited 2015-01-13 00:31 UTC
And yet my mid-range 12.1″ laptop from 2007 runs both Win XP and Windows 7 at a native resolution of 1400*1050 with absolutely no problem. You don’t have to jump straight from 1366*768 to Quad HD. There are a lot of intermediate resolutions that make much more sense, as laptop makers once used to understand.
All I care about is seeing this race push forward the available technology for devices like the Oculus Rift, so the more the better.
The Oculus Rift is quite a different beast. Have you actually considered how close the display-panels are to your eyes?
That is his point, he wants even higher res displays because they are so close and have to show details.
The higher res phone displays get, the easyier it gets to use the same displays for VR headsets.
Edited 2015-01-12 21:53 UTC
Smaller pixels are better.
At some point the law of diminishing returns will kick in, but until then, the OEMs should be encouraged.
Yes, they should be encouraged. Not because we need higher resolutions on smaller/little screens, but because often times when we figure out how to do one thing, there is unintended benefit in other completely unrelated areas. We should always strive for more/better/smaller/faster/lighter/etc. regardless of whether we `need` things to be that or not.
Could we please get back to striving for better f**n battery time? As sum1 else put it, this is all about marketing and sales departments’ pissing contests to please the excel monkeys to present better numbers to shareholders!
Nothing new here, just a huge bunch of retard reviewers and ‘serious’ mobile geeks buying into stupid marketing, instead of looking at WHAT EXACTLY constitutes a good mobile experience! NO, qHD is NOT the holy grail, you can read your mail and browse ‘comfortably’ on your mobile device already. But it is NOT comfortable when you have to sit close to the outlet all the time yanking the charger cable to enjoy your fanfk*ntastic qHD enabled device.
Sorry for the rant, i just get so tired sometimes..
There’s been several recent breakthroughs in battery technologies relating to greatly extending life, capacity, recharge times, etc. due multiple parallel efforts by several teams. Unfortunately I have a feeling these great new technologies aren’t going to find their way to the consumer market any time soon because smaller, longer lasting, higher capacity batteries don’t help companies sell us more batteries.
As it is with so many other things — what’s good for consumers & the environment is less important than what’s good for profits. So, profits come first and better technology is put on the shelf to collect dust until some time in the future when the current cow runs out of milk.
My only question would be WHAT THE **** ARE YOU DOING HOLDING IT SIX INCHES FROM YOUR FACE?!?
Sorry, pet peeve — I have the same reaction watching some people try to use higher resolution laptops and notebooks with their faces plastered right up against the screen and thinking “doesn’t that hurt your neck? your back? YOUR EYES?!?” More so with the nitwits who leave the OS and browsers at the default font sizes.
To be fair, I’m uncomfortable reading anything closer than a foot and a half away — something made all the more laughably by my being NEARSIGHTED. You’d think it would be the other way around.
I fail to see how this WASTE of technology improves usability; it starts to reek VERY badly of “technology for technology’s sake”.
Particularly when it pisses on battery life and strains the limits of the already pathetically weak GPU and painfully anemic amount of memory available in mobile devices.
Edited 2015-01-13 15:54 UTC