Good God!! That's the same resolution as my 14.1" laptop screen!!! Once I realized that, I realized that this is serious overkill given that I can barely notice the individual pixels on my laptopReply
The battery life has got to be absolutely dismal on this device (standby might be ok, but any time you use the screen you're gonna be swilling the juice out of it).Reply
@zwer: I was always under the impression that a greater resolution would equate to a greater battery drain. If that's not true, then my original comment fails to hold water.Reply
@GrandPoobah: It is somewhat true - the greater the resolution, the greater the number of liquid crystal cells that need to be flipped, hence the more power consumption. However, in modern LCDs, only about 10%-30% is consumed by the screen itself - the rest of it goes on the backlight (if it's CCFL, LED backlight is considerably less power hungry, tho way more than the LCD matrix itself). So it doesn't really make a huge impact.Reply
@Ryan J Whiteman Nester: Well, not the size itself, not directly at least. However for the larger screen size you usually need a stronger backlight to lightup the whole screen, so yes - the power consumption grows in somewhat linear manner in relation to the screen size. Then again, the larger the screen is, the larger the device is, so you can fit a bigger battery to compensate... Either way, considering the article in question and the concern GrandPoobah expressed, no - the screen resolution won't affect the power consumption in such a way to make the battery life dismal.
But, and there always is one `but`, while the screen itself won't kill the battery with higher resolution, the CPU/GPU in the device might - all that hardware has to push all that `hi-def` graphics on the screen. So in the end it really is a cat and a mouse game.
However, bear in mind that this only relates to LCD screens, when you dive into OLED the things change fundamentally - OLED power consumption grows with both, the size and the resolution, which is why we see OLED screens only on small devices and occasionally small monitors. 27" HD OLED would eat power more than four such screens made with LCD technology in regular usage - Giz itself, with all this bright colors, would eat more power on an OLED screen than on a LCD of comparable sizes and with LED backlight.Reply
@ludwigk: That's actually over 400 pixels per inch assuming square pixels (not a safe assumption due to the aspect ratio of the screen). Android defines a "high-density" screen as 190-250ppi, so no, it's not a supported resolution.Reply
One thing that people need to consider before denouncing high-resolution screens like this for displaying things "too tiny" is that as a screen's resolution increases, so too should the underlying OS's. If you run Windows 7 at its default 96PPI on a screen that's 200PPI, things are going to look freaking tiny. Set Windows' PPI to match the screen's, and you'll find that not only are things bigger, they're much smoother as well.
Things have been gradually taking a turn towards resolution independence. If the mobile OS developers play their cards right, we could be in for a big treat with these high-resolution devices.Reply
That resolution is hard enough to see on a 9" netbook. I can only image that it is harder to see on a 4" phone. Apple made the right choice in that respect.Reply
@zwer: I'm just saying that the screen on this thing is only half an inch bigger than on the iPhone, and it would be better suited with the resolution of the Droid and not the resolution of a 4:3 monitor. Apple did a good job with the resolution on the iPhone, but I do expect to see it increased on the next update just so that it can compete with the Droid in that area. As far as the iPad is concerned I haven't used it, but most of the web is at 1024x768 and text has to be big enough to read, so I image that is why that resolution was chosen. I salute Qisda for trying to advance phone technology, but this is overkill for today's web on a phone.Reply
This reminds me of some of those HDTV ads that display the television and how beautiful its picture is, but the ad is still playing through my aging CRT display.Reply
@planetarian: 600 is like a high-quality printed page, no? If so, I vote this. I'm guessing the law of diminishing returns starts applying around 400-500, though.Reply
High resolution is nice, but it really depends on the OS and the apps that display things on it - if it has an uncommon resolution, then I suspect that the Android apps aren't going to be nicely scaled to that resolution. It's like buying a PS3 to play PS1 games.
I guess at least whatever videos you throw at it will look nice - but if I'm going to go out of my way to find something that plays videos nicely, it's going to be more than 4".Reply
Uh, I see that plenty of people will have troubles reading text on this thing (if additional measures are not implemented to auto-enlarge text on web pages). My N900 has 800x480 on 3.5" and while it's ok for me, plenty of people find the text too tiny, and I've read numerous complains from people all over the internet (especially owners of previous Nokia MIDs)...Reply
I'm never out of Verizon's service area and I have unlimited data as do all BB users. Who cares about Wi-Fi? Most Wi-Fi hotspots I find myself in want a credit card number.Reply
@ShyamaBigawoo: You have a 5 gig monthly limit on data and are charged $.25/meg after that. Verizon doesn't offer an unlimited data plan on any of their devices.Reply
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