2.2 inch LCD Display featuring VGA Resolution

i4u writes "Casio announces a LCD display with the world's highest resolution. The 2.2 inch LCD display features VGA resolution. The Casio innovation has 368ppi (pixels per inch). The power consumption and size is the same as with current QVGA (320x240) displays. Meaning current mobile phone models could directly be upgraded with a VGA display. So we could very soon see Mobile phones with VGA resolution on 2.2 inch displays. Samsung had the World's highest resolution with 300ppi in early August. Casio took now the lead. More details in Casio Press-Release (Japanese)."

Comments

first post

[Anonymous Coward]

so now we get resolution comparable to print

This just sounds a bit excessive

[PepsiProgrammer]

I just got one of the new zaurus Sl-6000 pda's that does 640x480 on a quite large (for a pda) screen and the pixels are already small enough to be indistinguisable from eachother. Putting that res in a screen that small seems pretty pointless.

Re:This just sounds a bit excessive

[GlassHeart]

Putting that res in a screen that small seems pretty pointless.

You have something against sharper text and graphics? We're talking about a 300 ppi display, which matches the resolution of first-generation laser printers. Text will be readable at as little as 6 points (nearly 25 pixels!), and a web page just might be displayed decently.

What's the downside?

Re:This just sounds a bit excessive

[Carnildo]

What's the downside?

You'll need a magnifying glass to read it?

Re:This just sounds a bit excessive

[yo303]

640 pixels ought to be enough for everybody.

Re:This just sounds a bit excessive

[Jeffrey Baker]

One last time you innumerate morons: resolution improved quality and does not affect size. Try printing the same page at 300, 600, and 1200dpi. Does it come out 4 times smaller on the 1200? Does it look better?

Re:This just sounds a bit excessive

[VitaminB52]

You'll need a magnifying glass to read it?

New LCD's like this one are the reason why icons should be implemented as a vector graphic (e.g. SVG), not as a bitmap.

Re:This just sounds a bit excessive

[DAldredge]

Give up, it just ain't worth it. ;->

Re:This just sounds a bit excessive

[GlassHeart]

You'll need a magnifying glass to read it?

A point is generally defined as 1/72 of an inch, and does not vary with display resolution. Thus, on a 96 dpi screen, 6 pt text is defined by about 8 pixels. On a 300 dpi screen, the same text can use about 25 pixels to define the glyph. The text itself stays the same size.

As for icons and graphics, they can be redrawn to better suit the display size. Compared to the other expenses involved in building a cell phone, redrawing 100 icons is not really a very big one.

Re:This just sounds a bit excessive

[EnsilZah]

How about using it for Heads Up Displays and such?

Re:This just sounds a bit excessive

[realdpk]

Yeah, but it'd sure be sweet for LCD glasses.

Re:This just sounds a bit excessive

[poot_rootbeer]

You'll need a magnifying glass to read it?

Only if the UI designers measure typefaces in pixels, rather than something sane and device-independent like points or centimeters...

Re:This just sounds a bit excessive

[Anonymous Coward]

Glassheart: Text will be readable at as little as 6 points

Carnildo: You'll need a magnifying glass to read it?

You: One last time you innumerate morons: resolution improved quality and does not affect size.

Me: he was obviously referring to the "6 points" bit, which is a precise physical size, so quit calling him a moron.

Re:This just sounds a bit excessive

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you say to that, Cardildo?

Re:This just sounds a bit excessive

[Anonymous Coward]

Resolution *does* affect size on the screen though. Open up a 640x480 bitmap. If your resolution is set to 640x480 it'll fill your whole screen. If you'r resolution is set to 1280x960, the image will now be 1/4 the size.

Re:This just sounds a bit excessive

[Jeffrey Baker]

I just grabbed a copy of the New York Times and there's plenty of 6pt type on it (photographers' credits and other places). At high resolution 6pt is readable.

Re:This just sounds a bit excessive

[Anonymous Coward]

Resolution *does* affect size on the screen though. Open up a 640x480 bitmap. If your resolution is set to 640x480 it'll fill your whole screen. If you'r resolution is set to 1280x960, the image will now be 1/4 the size.

So scale it up (by the dummest-possible quadruple-every-pixel algorithm if you insist), and enjoy it in the same coarsely pixelated glory you seem so fixated on! Jeez, what is it about high resolutions that turns people into such gibbering fools?

Re:This just sounds a bit excessive

[Anonymous Coward]

Anonymous Cowards rule!

*gibbering*

Re:This just sounds a bit excessive

[Anonymous Coward]

Christ you're anal.

Ok... let's try this again.

If you have a raster image, the resolution you use will affect the size since each pixel in the image takes up a single pixel on the display.

Therefore, if your display is set to 144 dpi the image will be 1/4 the size that it would be at 72 dpi.

Does this qualify as a point?

Re:This just sounds a bit excessive

[pjwhite]

Just remember your page (in this case) is 2.2 inches measured diagonally. That's pretty small.
Taka page from a book or newspaper and cut out a rectangular piece 1.3 inches by 1.8 inches. That's about what you'll be able to see on the LCD.

Another way to think about it is to put your computer into 640x480 video mode and look at it from several feet away.

Re:This just sounds a bit excessive

[Electrum]

New LCD's like this one are the reason why icons should be implemented as a vector graphic (e.g. SVG), not as a bitmap.

You mean like on Mac OS X?

Re:This just sounds a bit excessive

[Jeffrey Baker]

Sure, it's a point, and it's a good reason to never use bitmaps in a UI. But the software or even the hardware could still be smart enough to scale the bitmap to the display size. In your trivial example the 1:2 scaling would be indistinguishable from the original.

The concept of a pixel shouldn't exist outside of the actual graphics hardware and its drivers, because a "pixel" is a completely vague unit of measure. Nobody knows what actual area it represents.

Re:This just sounds a bit excessive

[Anonymous Coward]

so, youre saying that the text on my monitor is the exact same size at 640x480 as it is at 1268x1024?

My monitor disagrees, which is the only reason i never use the super-high resolutions.

Re:This just sounds a bit excessive

[Jeffrey Baker]

Sounds like a software error.

Re:This just sounds a bit excessive

[jsoderba]

No, Mac OS X does not have scalable icons. The icons are bitmaps that are designed to look good when resampled. This comes up in every damn graphics thread.

Re:This just sounds a bit excessive

[sokoban]

I think though that a small magnifying lens that can be attached a fixed distance from the screen may be a good idea though. If you had a 2.2 inch diagonal LCD and could use something like was popular for the early gameboys to make it seem like a 4.4 inch screen that would make it a lot more usable. You could use such a thing for making a cell phone that is a usable web browsing tool.

Re:This just sounds a bit excessive

[GoRK]

BZZZT wrong.

Icon services in Mac OS/X up to 10.3 (Panther) support icons up to 128x128 pixels in size. The scaling algorithms are fast and dynamic, scaling between the large size icon and the smaller size icons as needed (this is why very small icon sizes still look good in OS X.

OS X 10.4 (Tiger) is supposed to include very robust support for DPI-independent rendering, greatly increasing the usability of high-resolution, high-ppi displays on the platform. As a result, the 128x128 icon limit seemed kind of small, so Tiger increases it to 256x256 pixels; however they are still raster images.

There are indeed advantages to using either approach for icons. Any robust vector format pretty much has to support embedded raster images anyway, thus a robust raster scaling algorithm in the renderer is necessary anyway. Leaving out all the vector stuff makes the code simpler, faster, and smaller with the only major disadvantage being that scaling icons beyond the 128x128 (256x256) is not going to result in really nice and crisp icons. The only time OS X overscales the icons is double clicking a launchable item, but the blurring effect is unnoticeable due to the alpha fade and quick animation.

Re:This just sounds a bit excessive

[Anonymous Coward]

Text will be readable at as little as 6 points (nearly 25 pixels!), and a web page just might be displayed decently.

Ah, no. Either the text is scaled to approximately the right size and the web page doesn't fit on the screen, or the page fits and the fonts are scaled down to 1 pt = 1 px. You can't have it both ways.

Re:This just sounds a bit excessive

[Anonymous Coward]

This could significantly advance VR goggles and head mounted displays. It's only small if you think of the screen feet away from your eyes, instead of inches.

Re:This just sounds a bit excessive

[GlassHeart]

Ah, no. Either the text is scaled to approximately the right size and the web page doesn't fit on the screen, or the page fits and the fonts are scaled down to 1 pt = 1 px. You can't have it both ways.

What I listed were two separate uses of a small high resolution display. That is, the usual phone text (menu, messages, etc) are unlikely to become much smaller, but can be shown in higher quality. Additionally, the mobile browser on the phone has a better chance of displaying a web page properly, even if it means smaller text. You can have both, just not simultaneously.

Re:This just sounds a bit excessive

[timeOday]

We're talking about a 300 ppi display, which matches the resolution of first-generation laser printers.

Even better in fact, as those laser printers were 1 bit 300 DPI - each point either present, or not. The LCD is 368ppi with probably 16 bit color. Should be pretty lifelike!

Re:This just sounds a bit excessive

[Anonymous Coward]

At high resolution 6pt is readable.

Firstly, that is your opinion and it doesn't hold true for everyone. Secondly, it doesn't excuse you from calling him a moron for confusing resolution with size when he was, in fact, talking about size.

Re:This just sounds a bit excessive

[aggiefalcon01]

Correct, but saying a web page could be rendered on it is silly, because that implies some serious shrinking so that you would need a magnifying glass to read it, if you're over 30.

Re:This just sounds a bit excessive

[Pieroxy]

resolution improved quality and does not affect size

This is just plain not true. The proper sentence should either be:
1. resolution improved quality and does not necessarily affect size
or:
2. resolution improved quality and does not affect size with the proper software

In all OSes I know now, it does affect size: X-Window and Windows (all of them) do not scale up in resolution nicely. For sure, you can use "large fonts" or other crap, but most software won't and as a result, "the higher the resolution" translates almost on par with "the smaller the characters and graphics"

My $.02

Quit calling people moron, especially when they have a valid point.

Re:This just sounds a bit excessive

[loraksus]

One last time you innumerate morons: resolution improved quality and does not affect size. Try printing the same page at 300, 600, and 1200dpi. Does it come out 4 times smaller on the 1200? Does it look better?

Sigh.
I used to work laserjet support - at least once a week someone would call complaining that their new laserjet 4100 (1200dpi printer) / whatever had crappier quality than their laserjet 4. Apparantly many of the "older generation" prefer the 300 dpi resolution of the older printers (probably because their eyes are going out).

I couldn't make this up if I wanted to.

/granted, this was mainly for text printouts, but. . .

Re:This just sounds a bit excessive

[FlopEJoe]

"What's the downside?"

Battery life. It's time to stop the madness. I'm not pulling the misquoted "640k should be enough for everyone" but 320x320 is serving me well. I would much prefer the current resolutions and better battery life than 300ppi, better camera, etc. Everything should have it's purpose and and a PDA is not a computer. If you can't have a portable (read small and better that 3 hours run time) PDA, then it has no use in my pocket.

Re:This just sounds a bit excessive

[Firethorn]

Common, I know slashdotters don't read the articles, but it was right in the post!

The power consumption and size is the same as with current QVGA (320x240) displays.

As for the better runtime, I'd love to have fewer "features" on my phone in exchange for a longer runtime.

Re:This just sounds a bit excessive

[rdc_uk]

No, dumbass.

Print your page at 150 and at 300 dpi (older and this newe ppi approximations)

Now use 2.2 inch diagonal paper to print those pages.

They will BOTH be unusable, due to being TINY.
resolution does NOT directly equate to legibility.

RTFA; in the image of their screen; do you recon you could actually READ that url in the browser??

Re:This just sounds a bit excessive

[Anonymous Coward]

Look, uh, I don't care if the quality of image on my cell phone goes up. 'oh look! Bill is calling, and the font looks so much nicer!' Viewing a web page? That actually will be smaller, b/c it isn't set in inches but in pixels. If we made web pages suddenly in inches then we're back to not being able to see it on the cell phone.

Not quality, but quantity of info is what I wish was better on the cell screen. But then issues of information density on a 2 in. screen come up.

No, super high pixels / in. is most useful for things that DO have a magnifying glass built in: Head Mounted Displays.

Re:This just sounds a bit excessive

[FlopEJoe]

ach... my bad. I was replying in general terms against all the wizz-bang crap being added but I shoulda caught the power claim.

Re:This just sounds a bit excessive

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, it's a point, and it's a good reason to never use bitmaps in a UI.

I'm not trying to say that it's a good idea. I'm just saying that this DOES happen in the real world.

In your trivial example the 1:2 scaling would be indistinguishable from the original.

Oh wow... really? I wasn't able to figure that out on my own. kthx nfo. I'm sorry if my example was too trivial for you. It was just meant to be a simple example to show you that your statement wasn't entirely accurate. You, of course, chose to pick it apart in a condascending manner based on semantics. It's people like you that give slashdotters a bad name.

The concept of a pixel shouldn't exist outside of the actual graphics hardware and its drivers

There are a lot of things that *should* or *shouldn't* exist, but they do. Learn to cope.

Re:This just sounds a bit excessive

[Anonymous Coward]

>One last time you innumerate morons: resolution improved quality and does not affect size.

It does if they keep decreasing screen size while increasing resolution.

>Does it come out 4 times smaller on the 1200?

Would you read 2.1x2.75" pages?

Re:This just sounds a bit excessive

[Anonymous Coward]

>640 pixels ought to be enough for everybody.

Don't you mean 307200 pixels?

(now THAT would've been *really* funny since you'd have to calculate where the 307200 figure came from... I thought this was slashdot! Shame on you! )

And before you try and correct me, I did say 307200 *pixels* I'm not talking about required RAM depending on the color depth. ;-)

Re:This just sounds a bit excessive

[Equinox]

First thing I thought about were projectors. Smaller projectors seem like a good idea, but I could be wrong...

Re:This just sounds a bit excessive

[fikx]

So you are going to argue that because it works that way on a computer, the parent is mistaken? This is for an embedded app you know. Yes, some devices probably do use windows or X-windows, but not that dang many, and embedded screens use custom graphics setups 99.9% of the time.
Your point would have been more meaningful if you'd at least menioned some examples that related to this article.

Re:This just sounds a bit excessive

[Pieroxy]

embedded screens use custom graphics setups 99.9% of the time

Agreed. The point is that most custom graphics work at the pixel level, and do not take into account the pixel density. This is true for various reasons:
- It is much more simple.
- There is no real drawback, given the speed at which these densities evolve.
- On such small screens, a 'smooth' scaling without dithering can prove to be ugly and/or tricky.

Scalable UI

[TimmyDee]

I can see this being beneficial for pictures, video, and the like, but not UI elements. Phone OSes are going to need to build in scalable UIs and offer tools for their developers to do the same or we won't be able to use the things.

Re:Scalable UI

[getnate]

Phones OS are already made with scalable UI, large and small on my samsung s105.

Re:Scalable UI

[NotAnotherReboot]

On a related note, the game Half-Life recently got an upgrade that made the in-game text automatically scale to the resolution. When the game was originally released, not many people could do above 1024x768 at a playable speed...today I play at 1600x1200. Text was so small to the point that you needed to completely focus on it to read it (not good for a game).

I think this is going to have to become a trend in a whole range of applications as resolution increases. Windows has an option that does something similar, but it seems to be rather half-assed (I can't stand the look of it)...but I don't know what the solution is.

Re:Scalable UI

[Anonymous Coward]

You'll change your opinion after you see one in real life, I have and it's actually quite usuable. If your near sight vision is fine of course, some of the older people that were looking at it weren't impressed until they put on their reading glasses (those that did).

Re:Scalable UI

[Anonymous Coward]

'Phone OSes are going to need to build in scalable UIs'

SVG to the rescue!

Re:Schweet!

[AKAImBatman]

Quick, someone say something funny!

Does it come with a magnifying glass?

my business card

[scaaven]

my new business card will have this, along with a super tight distro of linux mounted on a thin flash card. and it will have a 3d display and stuff and it will pwn all your paper business cards

Re:my business card

[Royoken]

so.... can i tie your business cards together and make a card house Beowulf cluster?

Re:my business card

[scaaven]

yes.

p.s. i hate the 20 second post delay

Re:my business card

[stratjakt]

Then, all you'll need is a job!

Re:Schweet!

[athakur999]

I for one welcome our 2.2 inch LCD Display featuring VGA Resolution toting overlords?

Application?

[jargoone]

Okay, the high pixel density is neat and all, but can anyone name an application that would need a small screen with such high resolution.

If they "slightly" expanded it, though, you'd have a ~22 inch LCD with 6400x4800. Finally, a use for those high-end video cards with tons of memory!

Re:Application?

[norkakn]

low cost compact LCD projectors?

Not sure if it would work, but it would rock if it could.

Re:Application?

[clevelandguru]

Virtual Reality Head Mounted Displays.

Re:Application?

[Jeff DeMaagd]

I had forgotten, but LCD projectors actually use smaller panels.

XGA panels can be had in the 0.7" to 1.3" range. I'd direct you to projectorcentral.com, but it seems to be down now.

The problem here is that with a projector, each color has its own monochrome panel and is marged using a prism.

Re:Application?

[Short Circuit]

Translucent LCD glasses? Helmet HUDs?

Re:Application?

[halo1982]

Take a look at the Toshiba VM4050 from Sprint. It has a fucking gorgeous screen, and it's a 2.2" QVGA. I would love to have a VGA screen in this size...it would look amazing. Why not? It's cool, thats the main reason for this!

Re:Application?

[VitaminB52]

Virtual Reality Head Mounted Displays.

Dear Santa, I've been a really nice kid this year, so ..... :)

Re:Application?

[tgibbs]

Okay, the high pixel density is neat and all, but can anyone name an application that would need a small screen with such high resolution.

A light head mounted display that projects a magnified screen image in the user's field of view.

Re:Application?

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, the high pixel density is neat and all, but can anyone name an application that would need a small screen with such high resolution.

putty on a wristwatch?

Re:Application?

[mr i want to go home]

Video iPod (or equivalent).

In this case it isn't the dpi that's important, but rather that you get a reasonable resolution in such a small space.

Re:Application?

[VitaminB52]

Okay, the high pixel density is neat and all, but can anyone name an application that would need a small screen with such high resolution.

What about a wristwatch, PDA or cellphone with build-in color TV with acceptable image quality ? Or a GPS devices, with maps that show some real detail ?

I.m.h.o. the question isn't which applications need such a LCD, but whether or not the LCD will be cheap enough to make that application affordable for Joe Average.

Re:Application?

[sparcnut]

putty on a wristwatch?

The geek is strong in this one...

Add 802.11b support and an ARM CPU (pun intended) and now you're talkin.

Re:Application?

[JungleBoy]

If they "slightly" expanded it, though, you'd have a ~22 inch LCD with 6400x4800. Finally, a use for those high-end video cards with tons of memory!

Well, this isn't that good. But a 9 Megapixel LCD (3840x2400) would still be nice. I'd love to get two of these and run Xinerama. The problem is that each takes 2 DVI connections. So you'll need two dual DVI video cards. I'll probably have to rob a bank and wait for an Nvidia 6800 SLI system to be released.

-JungleBoy

Re:Application?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, speaking of that -- the MicroOptical SV-6 has VGA resolution, and it's much less than 2.2 inches diagonal (despite looking bigger, since it's right next to your eye). It would have a higher DPI than this screen...

Re:Application?

[Eriky]

This reminds me of someone who once said something like.. 'who needs more than 640K of memory?'

Re:Application?

[drinkypoo]

Let's not forget that those are also reflective LCDs, not transmissive. The technology is more or less the same, but it's not identical.

Re:Application?

[bfields]

Okay, the high pixel density is neat and all, but can anyone name an application that would need a small screen with such high resolution.

Surely almost any cell-phone application would benefit from more readable text?

I mean, there's a *reason* why books aren't printed at 100dpi.

--Bruce Fields

Re:Application?

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem here is that with a projector, each color has its own monochrome panel and is marged using a prism.

Marged??! How the hell does that work?

Re:Application?

[joh]

Digital camera displays could make some good use of that. Manual focus is almost impossible with most displays (you just see no difference), so you can't have a resolution good enough for that.

In cell phones this surely will lead to nothing else than anti-aliased text, more detailed icons and other useless stuff (I've got the impression for some years now that with every new generation of phones the usability gets degraded by adding more and more useless decoration).

Re:Application?

[Anonymous Coward]

A pair of only slightly larger panels at this ppi would make goggles almost practical at 1024x768. I remember my first time playing wipeout through a set of cheesy 320x240 res goggles, I have been addicted to goggle displays ever since. And no I didn't lose my lunch but I had a few close calls.

Re:Application?

[plastik55]

GPS + Mapping. You can never get too much detail on a map.

Re:Application?

[jargoone]

This reminds me of someone who once said something like.. 'who needs more than 640K of memory?'

By "remind" you, do you mean it makes you think of something that's a wives tale and never happened?

http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,1484,00.htm l

Re:Application?

[afidel]

With current hardware that display would only need a dual headed card with two dual-link DVI interfaces. I believe the G5 has one as an option to support the big apple Cinema display =)

Re:Application?

[Thagg]

Viewfinders in digital cameras, both still and motion picture.

Current non-reflex digital cameras have terribly lo-res displays, that don't give you nearly enough sharpness to focus the lens. Shooting sports, say, with a non-reflex camera is next to impossible.

I know that I'm in an infinitesimal minority on this issue, but I believe that reflex cameras are a horrible kludge for digital photography. The mechanical movement of the mirror is an anachronism, albiet a pretty and nice-sounding one. Lens design is severly compromised in reflex cameras, because the lens must be so far from the film or chip.

Anyway, a digital camera with a beautiful high-res digital viewfinder could be a very nice thing indeed.

Thad

Re:Application?

[Anonymous Coward]

Cameras? Digicams and video cameras tend to need preview screens. Higher res = a good thing.

Re:Application?

[atomic noodle]

XGA panels can be had in the 0.7" to 1.3" range... The problem here is that with a projector, each color has its own monochrome panel and is marged using a prism.

One of the reasons LCD projector panels can be small and hi-res is BECAUSE they are monochrome. Ordinary color LCD panels simply put a layer of RGB filters on top of a monochrome panel, dividing the resolution by 3.

But this raises an interesting question. If you can get a 0.7-inch XGA panel, couldn't that technology, with added RGB filters, be made into an XGA panel SMALLER (3 x 0.7 = 2.1 inches) than the Casio VGA panel described in the story?

I must be missing something here...

Re:Application?

[Anonymous Writer]

Let's not forget that those are also reflective LCDs, not transmissive. The technology is more or less the same, but it's not identical.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought that the LCD projectors have transparent LCDs that the light passes through, and it is the DLP projectors that have a reflective chip. Wouldn't this LCD display count as a transparent one?

Re:Application?

[drinkypoo]

Low-brightness and -resolution projectors use a single transmissive LCD, but those things hardly exist any more. High-brightness projectors either use a DLP, or 3 reflective LCDs. See also this comment.

Re:Application?

[Anonymous Writer]

Okay, the high pixel density is neat and all, but can anyone name an application that would need a small screen with such high resolution.

This may sound ridiculous, but I think it would be a fun (albeit useless) novelty item to have a tiny little retro PC with a VGA display, running an operating system that could only be used on desktops back when VGA was the standard.

Re:Application?

[Anonymous Writer]

See also this comment.

I see that comment was also a reply to another post containing the phrase "Correct me if I'm wrong".

Re:Application?

[drinkypoo]

Yes. One thing to note is that the entire XGA-res element that the company in question designed was 19mm on a side because that was your maximum die size at the time.

Re:Application?

[WuphonsReach]

With high pixel densities, it will become much harder to see stuck pixels.

Which might result in lower prices for LCDs, since a few stuck pixels wouldn't be the huge flaw that they are on a 96ppi monitor.

And if you ever use a 127ppi LCD (14" 1400x1050) for an extended period of time, you'll get a feel for just how low-res 96ppi is. The more pixels you have, the crisper text gets, which makes it much easier to read.

(Wish I could afford a 200ppi display...)

At what point is DPI irrelevant

[stratjakt]

That is, when does the average human eye stop distinguishing them as seperate points?

I can tell 300 DPI from 600 DPI on a printout, but above that it looks about the same to me.

Re:At what point is DPI irrelevant

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Ideally, I think you want it to be at least a bit beyond a human's ability to distinguish points.

I'd be happy to get a 20" 300dpi screen, although none exist yet, and good software support might not exist yet, although maybe KDE or Gnome might benefit a lot.

Computer operating systems need to be able to support vector objects or have better scaling to cope with multiple DPIs. Windows seems to do OK, except for certain design elements that assume a fixed dpi, so larger fonts just run under the edge of a window or mucks other things up.

Re:At what point is DPI irrelevant

[paRcat]

Supposedly, the human eye can't technically see more than 200dpi unless it's an aliased edge... but i learned that a long time ago in a printing class, not sure how accurate it is.

Re:At what point is DPI irrelevant

[eander315]

This is a common mistake when considering the DPI of printers and monitors. They are not measured in the same way. I would try to explain it here, but the wikipedia entry does a better job than I could.

Re:At what point is DPI irrelevant

[harrkev]

I can tell 300 DPI from 600 DPI on a printout, but above that it looks about the same to me.

For monchrome text, you would have to have very good vision indeed to be able to tell the difference.

The prime reason that printers need all that resolution is because they have VERY limited colors, so they have to dither. Dithering lowers the apparent resolution. If each pixel is already capable of the full color range, then 300DPI is enough for anybody.

Re:At what point is DPI irrelevant

[maeka]

The DPI of a monochrome laser printer does indeed mean the same thing as the DPI/PPI (pixels per inch) of a monitor.
They can not be directly compared when it comes to color printers and their need to mix multiple ink dots to represent most colors.

Re:At what point is DPI irrelevant

[LoudMusic]

That is, when does the average human eye stop distinguishing them as seperate points?

In the advertising business we use 400 dpi as the standard. I can still see pixels but it takes a trained eye.

Re:At what point is DPI irrelevant

[WillAdams]

Actually, 300dpi is quite clunky for text, and a number of fonts _cannot_ be adequately represented by it (e.g., Optima or Eras --- Adobe even went to the effort of including two different outlines (one low-res, one high res) for early versions of these until hinting algorithms improved).

~360--400dpi is a watershed value and around there text, even with fairly subtle details starts to look right (Interestingly the NeXTLaserprinter could print in 300 or 400 dpi, and one can _really_ see the difference (says the guy who forgt to change the value once before running out resumes and had to reprint a set 'cause they looked bad).

600dpi is ``good enough'' for most things (and is approaching the ability of office paper to hold a dot faithfully)

At 1200 dpi, things are quite nice, but the human ability to create / render type actually approaches that of a 2540 dpi imagesetter --- see Fred Smeijers' book _Counterpunch_ for technical data and microphotography for details. F.W. Goudy often claimed to be able to distinguish by touch dimensions of ~one one-thousandth of an inch.

William

Re:At what point is DPI irrelevant

[VitaminB52]

That is, when does the average human eye stop distinguishing them as seperate points?

I can tell 300 DPI from 600 DPI on a printout, but above that it looks about the same to me.

Whether or not you can distinguishing between indiviudal dots isn't directly related to DPI, but to angular resolution. Read the Wikipedia article if you want to know more about angular reolution.
Basically, whether or not you can distinguishing between indiviudal dots is related to the combination of DPI plus the distance between image and your eye.

Re:At what point is DPI irrelevant

[Yokaze]

A person can theoretically discriminate two points in an angle of ~1'=1/60degree. At a distance of 25cm, it means a distance of two point 73E-6m, so roughly 350dpi, if I'm not mistaken. I'm not so sure about the conversion to dpi.

Re:At what point is DPI irrelevant

[El]

when does the average human eye stop distinguishing them as seperate points? It is not the size, it's the angle of view. 1 DPI is just fine if you are 100 yards away! My general rule of thumb is that point of diminishing returns far a display is around 4000x4000 pixels; at that point you cannot simultaneously see the whole screen and still make out individual pixels. Anything more than that only helps if you are only focusing on a small section of the screen. Needless to say, I'm still waiting for this to become economically feasible, but I think digital cameras and displays will eventually max out at 16 Megapixels for ordinary use.

Re:At what point is DPI irrelevant

[IronChef]

This debate bores me. I want to go back to talking about how many frames per second the human eye can resolve.

Re:At what point is DPI irrelevant

[Anonymous Coward]

I see numbers, but I can't figure out what they mean!

Re:At what point is DPI irrelevant

[AnotherBlackHat]

I can tell 300 DPI from 600 DPI on a printout, but above that it looks about the same to me.

At a normal "reading" distance, most people can distinguish between 600 and 1200 DPI when they have the two side by side.
(Look at the round parts of letters, or small 'o')

-- should you question authority?

Re:At what point is DPI irrelevant

[Anonymous Coward]

and about 10gb/sec to run 6666x5000@75hz
would probably have to be dvi

Re:At what point is DPI irrelevant

[Chazmati]

Are you still talking about black and white d's (pixels) per inch? As the parent poster was saying there's a big difference between 300 dpi black and white and 300 dpi in 256 levels of grey.

Re:At what point is DPI irrelevant

[Newskyarena]

16MP ought to be enough for anyone...

Re:At what point is DPI irrelevant

[El]

No, 16MP ought to be enough for anyone that doesn't want to zoom in on one section of the image or play simular games. In other words, good enough for "normal use". I'm sure there will always be professionals that want all the resolution they can get, and are willing to pay the exhorbitant prices to get it. For those people, there is no such thing as "enough".

Re:At what point is DPI irrelevant

[WillAdams]

Type, black and white, monochrome laser printers &c.

(There's only one thing like to a colour imagesetter, a _huge_ system which one feeds colour photo paper, which is then imaged and developed, allowing one to have full colour photographic prints ~39 x 54 inches or so)

For rendering type, 300 dpi monochrome is as clunky as a 14" 640 x 480 VGA screen is for a an 8 x 10 glossy colour photo.

William

Dons a jeweler's lupe.

[ARRRLovin]

AWESOME SCREEN!

Re:Dons a jeweler's lupe.

[utexaspunk]

a jeweler's lupe? is that like the mexican woman who works at the jeweler's store?

...oh, you mean a loupe... ...nevermind!

Yoda?

[barcodez]

Casio took now the lead.

Yoda? Sentance, only you mangle such.

Re:Yoda?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sentence, only you could spell it not.

Re:Yoda?

[Anonymous Coward]

Login, only you could do it not. Your mother fucked I did.

Re:Yoda?

[sleighb0y]

"I am puppet...Yesssss"

Thumbwars

Re:Yoda?

[ari_j]

Come now the plaintiff, Sir Grammar Nazi Supreme.
...
Come now the defendant, Slashdot Anonymous Coward.

LCD Display?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice, a Liquid Crystal Display display
I'll put it right next to my personal PIN number that I left by the automated ATM machine

Re:LCD Display?

[neoshroom]

Actually, LCD is one of those weird acronyms. It can either stand for:

Liquid Crystal Display
-or-
Liquiod Crystal Diode

Because of this "LCD Display" can actually be a valid usage.

Re:LCD Display?

[Anonymous Coward]

LCD == Liquid Crystal Display.
Liquid Crystal is never a diode, so #2 is incorrect.

LCD Display is -5 redundant.

Light Emmitting Diode (LED) display is valid

VGA resolution and unreadable

[kbahey]

VGA resolution and unreadable to anyone above 40.

Is it just me getting old, or are young people designing things for their age group only without considering those who are older?

Re:VGA resolution and unreadable

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it's you getting old. Remember how your grandpa was always complaining about something ? Now it's your turn.

Re:VGA resolution and unreadable

[Anonymous Coward]

Higher resolution will bring better readability at the same dimensions, not just a smaller picture.

Re:VGA resolution and unreadable

[MBCook]

Why? If you keep the font size the same, sure.

But you just crank that up. So instead of tiny little fonts that look nice, you get normal sized (or large sized) fonts that look FANTASTIC. As size goes up (and you use appropriate graphics, or vector graphics) everything looks smooth and nice. You can't see the aliasing on curves and such.

I mean, you don't think people who run 1600x1200 on 17" monitors use standard fonts do you? You'd never be able to see anything. My laptop has about 100 DPI (as opposed to a more normal 72 or so), so it has "larger" fonts than a normal computer. But the text on it looks VERY good. Even teeny-tiny text is ledgeable because there are enough pixles to render it well (even if you have to squit to read it ;).

Having a higher resolution is good. It means cleaner fonts and better looking icons and such which should improve usability. If used right, this is great.

But if you just try to put Windows 95 or something like that on default settings on that screen, usability would be a joke.

Re:VGA resolution and unreadable

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just you. I'm above 40 and I have no trouble with my eyesight. I also have no trouble with most advances in technology.

BTW, your problem is not getting old. Your problem is the Slashdot syndrome where, at the first mention of a new technology, 75% of the visitors feel compelled to make some half-ass comment about why such technology is absolutely no good and will have no use whatsoever.

Re:VGA resolution and unreadable

[arodland]

Mmm hmm. I got a new laptop recently, and it's got a 1400x1050 LCD. Not quite a 30" Apple flatpanel, but still pretty smooth. It's actually more than 100ppi, but X seems to overcompensate, so I tell it I have 100. "Normal" sized fonts look better than ever, and because I do have pretty good eyesight (corrected), smaller fonts now have enough pixels in them to be readable.

On the other hand, I've noticed that some fonts are really pretty nice when they're small and hinted, but when they're displaying at a decent resolution, they start to look like crap.

Re:VGA resolution and unreadable

[mrgreen4242]

Yes, just die already.

Re:VGA resolution and unreadable

[VitaminB52]

Higher resolution will bring better readability at the same dimensions, not just a smaller picture.

That's true only for vector images, not for bitmaps.
E.g.: if you write HTML, and specify dimensions in pixels, then your HTML could become really unreadable at this LCD.

IMHO you will need DPI independent tools / applications to benefit from this LCD.

Re:VGA resolution and unreadable

[VitaminB52]

Why? If you keep the font size the same, sure.

If you specify the font size in an absolute way (e.g. 10 points font) this is true. If you specify the font size relative (e.g. 10 pixels high) then this is false.
There are some applications / compilers out there that make a long true and now invalid assumption about the screen resolution having some fixed number of DPI / pixel size.

But if you just try to put Windows 95 or something like that on default settings on that screen, usability would be a joke.

Exactly. One example of an application that made a now obsolete assumption about displays having a fixed number of DPI.

Re:VGA resolution and unreadable

[JUSTONEMORELATTE]

VGA resolution and unreadable to anyone above 40.

Nah, we'll just use those big magnifiers from Brazil and we'll be all set!

--
Gmail invites for completed referrals It's working.

Re:VGA resolution and unreadable

[Anonymous Coward]

lol!

Re:VGA resolution and unreadable

[MBCook]

That's true. But OS X and Longhorn (ha) are trying to be device and DPI independant. But this screen is for a cellphone where I would guess the majority of the software is rewritten anyways (because of constant differences in hardware, screen resolution, etc). This little screen isn't for applications where you are likely to see "legacy" content. And even if it was (like a PDA), you could easily make it simple double the size of all software that thinks the screen is only QVGA. Then it would look exactly as it would on a QVGA screen, while software that is aware of the resolution would look better. I don't think it would be that big of a problem.

Re:VGA resolution and unreadable

[Nurgled]

Windows 95 has an option to change the DPI setting, although it assumes square pixels. What goes wrong is that some applications ask Windows for font sizes in pixels either because they are trying to fit the font into a hole in a bitmap (ie most "skinned" applications) or the programmer just didn't understand the difference between pixels and points.

The solution here is to use modern applications designed with this in mind, of course. I think most common Windows applications in use today correctly use the increased font sizes on a high-DPI display. In fact, I used to live with a friend who used an unusual DPI setting on his monitor and he very infrequently encountered such problems, especially when sticking to "professional" applications.

One thing that does get harder is creating bitmapped graphics for more "normal" displays such as for web sites, but hopefully people will get over bitmaps soon and browsers will implement something like SVG. Windows IE already has that "Office Graphics in XML" thing -- VML, I think -- and it'd be a shame to see that fill the void because no-one bothered to exploit the open standard before the problem became critical.

Re:VGA resolution and unreadable

[MBCook]

That's exactly the resolution on my Dell Inspiron 8000 laptop. I've really come to love it. I can display WAY more text that other laptops all with a fine (and extremely readable) font size. And when I make the fonts bigger (for example, "fit to page" zoom level in MS Word) things can look beautiful. It will be nice when the average DPI moves up.

Re:VGA resolution and unreadable

[arodland]

I've got the Latitude D600, which is quite similar. It's newer, but OTOH it's from the cheaper Latitude line.

Re:VGA resolution and unreadable

[VitaminB52]

But this screen is for a cellphone

Yepp. It's intended for cellphone use, but it can also be used in other devices - PDAs, GPS units, whatever. It will end up in these devices, either when Casio sells LCDs to the device manufacturers, or when another company makes similiar LCDs and sells them.
I've seen special purpose computers using small LCD screens [and displaying MS-DOS applications :( ], I wouldn't be surprised if this new LCDs would be used in such a device to display legacy applications.

Re:VGA resolution and unreadable

[tktk]

Is it just me getting old, or are young people designing things for their age group only without considering those who are older?

You're getting old. When was the last time you saw any consumer electronics with specific features for the older generations?

There was a line in Dougals Adam's Salmon of Doubt that I'll have to paraphrase since I don't have the book with me. It was basically this...

Anything invented while you're under 18 is taken from granted.

Anything invented while you're between 18-30 is new and exciting.

Anything invented while you're over 30 is scary and unnatural.

I forgot my point...so I'll leave it to you to make the connection.

Re:VGA resolution and unreadable

[ifwm]

"Is it me just getting old..." You're just grumpy because you need to have your Depends changed. It happens to old farts like you. And yes, young people do disregard old people because they are irrelevant, but mostly because they smell like pee. The good news is that since you'll probalbly be suffering from dementia soon, you'll forget all about it.

Re:VGA resolution and unreadable

[MBCook]

Mine is over 3 years old now. It's been a nice warhorse. It was the first laptop with a GF2go.

I've looked into getting a new laptop but I think I'll just use this one (for what I do it still works quite well) untill I'm out of school and can buy a Mac (my school (a college) requires PCs and to use a Mac would be me doing everything, not worth it for now).

Best laptop I've ever owned though.

Re:VGA resolution and unreadable

[aggiefalcon01]

You're correct. My mother would not be able to use my cellphone, and my father wouldn't be able to use his own but for his bifocals.

Re:VGA resolution and unreadable

[arodland]

The main thing I hate about latitudes is the really lousy keyboards, but from using a friend's Inspiron it seems that they use better keyboards on those.

Re:VGA resolution and unreadable

[loraksus]

re:1600x1200 on a 17"
depends. On the quality of the monitor mainly, your eyes secondly.
I'm running at 2048x1536 on a 20" monitor.
Of course, the monitor doesn't suck (nice studio sony trinitron with 50 different settings that take a week to calibrate.)

Re:VGA resolution and unreadable

[WuphonsReach]

1400x1050 14" LCDs are around 127ppi (at least, the last time that I measured it to tell Firefox about it).

I've had my Toshiba for 2 or 3 years now and we refuse to buy the regular XGA displays.

Amazing how many websites still specify font sizes in pixels (6 pixels tall is *tiny* on a 127ppi display). Fortunately, Mozilla/Firefox allow me to specify a minimum font size (I think I use 14 or 18 pixels).

Re:Schweet!

[strictfoo]

If you consider 2.2in to be your "overlord" then you're really going to be in trouble with the ladies.

Re:Not VGA resolution

[be-fan]

Try re-reading the blurb. This device is definitely VGA.

what i want...

[here4fun]

So we could very soon see 2.2 inch Mobile phones with VGA resolution. See the photo where a full Windows browser is shown on 2.2 inch.

While this is nice, what I really want is a better battery, better camera (can we get 2mp on a cell phone?), and more storage memory (how about a card slot?). I doubt anyone will run windows or play doom on their cell phone. But people might want to play mp3's, take pictures, or browse the web and check email.

Re:what i want...

[Gossy]

All of these things will come eventually. Development has to be ongoing in all areas, otherwise you wont have a nice screen to view that 2MP photo you've just taken.

You might like the SE S700 that's coming out in a month or so (in the UK at least). It has a 1.3MP camera, 32mb memory with a memorystick duo slot (supporting up to 1GB of additional memory), plays mp3s and radio. Hopefully it's not going to be too expensive on contract when mine comes up for renewal!

Re:what i want...

[djeca]

Plenty of us already have mobiles that run Windows.

I just got a new Orange SPV e200 - 176x220 screen, 132 MHz, Bluetooth, 32MB onboard plus a SD card slot (with a free 32MB card (and I'm salivating over the SD GPS unit)), VGA camera, etc, packed into 130g of brick. But - hey - I got it free on a fairly cheap contract, so I'm not complaining.

Oh yeah, and it runs Doom.



Not Linux, though. But it's fairly open (Windows Smartphone is based on Pocket PC) so it shouldn't be too difficult to get a fair amount of OSS software working on it.

Re:what i want...

[Jeff DeMaagd]

If it really only takes the same amount of power as a panel with a quarter the resolution, battery life should be unaffected.

Don't expect 2MP on a cell phone. OK, you can expect it, but I'd expect it to be poor quality.

A good way to browse the web and check email is to have a good high resolution screen. Even if the text is just scaled up, I'd like to see smoother text before smaller text.

Re:what i want...

[afidel]

I've played a D&D top down game on my QVGA phone, pretty fun when sitting on the pot. Better battery would be nice since my phone only lasts a couple days if I do too much Java or other advanced stuff on it, better camera's are possible but only so far, how good of an image do you think you will get with a small fixed lense? Finally there are already several phones out there with MMC slots for storage.

Re:what i want...

[Anonymous Coward]

Samsung has some 2 Mpix models out in Korea and Japan, but they're not really that much better than 1 Mpix cameras (in some cases, they're even worse). Samsung is the Intel of cell phones: they up the numbers, but the actual quality/performance doesn't go up.

Flash storage is getting cheaper all the time, Nokia uses MMC at the time (120 euros for 1 GB) and will introduce models with SD slots next year (which is currently notably cheaper at 90 euros for 1 GB).

Re:what i want...

[geschild]

So many people, so many whishes.

I would love to be able to buy a phone without a camera, but with the longer battery life and the memorycard you want while having a high-definition screen and a workable keyboard, so that I can really use it as a poor-mans PC/terminal when on-the-road.

The Nokia 6820 goes a long way but the keyboard needs a bit of touching up still and the screen needs to become an OLED screen of resolution comparable to this Casio Screen. Oh, and Nokia, if you're listening: make the damn MMC-card hot-swapable and accessible from the outside!

Re:what i want...

[Echnin]

There are quite a bit of 2 MP phones here in Japan. Many even have auto-focus instead of the crappy fixed focus that most phones have. Still, I got a digital camera, because those phone cameras still suck.

Re:what i want...

[rdc_uk]

"better camera (can we get 2mp on a cell phone?)"

The problem with the camera on your (and my) phone is NOT its resolution.

Its the shitty, shitty, shitty lens put on it. I look at my phone and I see a lens that, ooh, maybe 1mm diameter. You could put a professional level CCD, resolving 11Mp behind that, and it would still take pictures similar to a pinhole camera made from a cornflakes box, using a cat's teeth to make the pinhole!

Re:Schweet!

[jargoone]

How bout:

"Boy, those kernel oops messages sure will be hard to read on such a small screen!" ;-)

Re:Not VGA resolution

[Anonymous Coward]

no, it's VGA in the current QVGA form factor.

Mod parent down.

Re:Not VGA resolution

[Jeff DeMaagd]

No.

The device IS VGA if their size and dpi is correct.

368dpi on a 2.2" screen yields 640 pixels across, 480 pixels vertical.

Re:Schweet!

[TimmyDee]

Don't you mean "Aero Glass"?

Re:Schweet!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's 2.2in diagonal

Everyone knows it's the girth that matters!

Re:took now

[stoborrobots]

i4u runs the source page ...

and it seems, he simply babelfishes the japanese press releases directly into his articles...

Re:Not VGA resolution

[VoidWraith]

Are you able to tell this from the article, or an outside source? The article simply states that it is VGA resolution. It says it uses the same power as a QVGA device.

Re:Not VGA resolution

[strictfoo]

This is incorrect.

The power consumption and size is the same as with current QVGA (320x240) displays

The displays are currently QVGA. This new Casio display is fully VGA.

The 2.2 inch LCD display features VGA!! resolution.

"Casio took now the lead."

[zombiestomper]

Begun, this display war has. /Wow. Wierd grammar-- it just feels right imagining Yoda's voice reading that entire headline.

Re:"Casio took now the lead."

[zombiestomper]

Whoops.

"Weird"

Use i before e except after c or when sounded like a as in neighbor or weigh; and except seize and seizure and also leisure, weird, height, and either, forfeit, and neither.

I can *never* get that straight.

Re:"Casio took now the lead."

[Anonymous Coward]

I can *never* get that straight.

Here's a good way to remember.

Re:"Casio took now the lead."

[slcdb]

That's funny... you heard Yoda, but I heard a nerdy little Japanese guy.

Re:"Casio took now the lead."

[Anonymous Coward]

Gomen nasai--or to quote the yakuza from the Simspons:

"Forgiveness please!"

Re:Schweet!

[mblase]

I'm trying to think of something witty to say about running linux on such a device, but I'm actually lost for words. Quick, someone say something funny!

Now you can build a Beowulf cluster on the back of your CS textbook!

Until I can watch ...

[burgburgburg]

HDTV projected onto the HUD in my glasses (or better yet, right onto my retina), why bother with half measures?

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm still waiting on my flying car. Dammit.

Re:Until I can watch ...

[IMarvinTPA]

Retina, smetina. Wire the video straight into my brain! Now that's the way for me!

IMarv

Re:Until I can watch ...

[hunterx11]

I like Bedrich Smetana, but that's audio.

Yay!!!

[Trolling4Dollars]

First the Casio-tone portable beat box in the 80s and now this! Casio scores again!! ;P

Re:took now

[Anonymous Coward]

That's all we need is another blog running spammer. Roland Piquepaille is bad enough. Now everyone's trying to get into the act... The missing second step in the profit system:

1) Copy other people's articles and press releases
2) Get your blog posted to Slashdot
3) Profit!!!

Re:Not VGA resolution

[jepaton]

No, current devices are QVGA but this one is the same size but full VGA resolution (640x480).

According to the story submitter:

world's highest resolution... The power consumption and size is the same as with current QVGA (320x240) displays

Hence according to i4u the resolution must be greater than QVGA otherwise it wouldn't be newsworthy.

Mozilla ain't showing the character set for most of the press release (for me), but in there is "640H×RGB×480V".

Imagine the resolution

[Anonymous Coward]

...if you made a Jumbotron out of these things.

Of course, the Nvidia card needed to run it would probably feel like a blast furnace and have a fan that looks like a helicopter blade.

Re:first post

[sTalking_Goat]

Finally I can watch porn on my wristwatch. Could make using the two hand stroke a bit tricky though...

Re:Schweet!

[denlin]

a blue screen would still be obvious though. ;)

So can we get something like this in a drive bay ?

[pangloss]

I would love a vga (or better!) capable screen that fits in a drive bay. If you've seen the lcd's for car stereos that slide out, you know what I mean. Or if you don't, imagine the rackmountable lcd displays that slide out and then go vertical but sized for a drive bay.

Would be great for the htpc that's normally only used with a projector. You don't always want to turn on the beamer if you're just playing music, but you do need to be able to use some sort of screen.

did you read the article at all?

[MarcoAtWork]

it says it has the same current draw as QVGA but this one is full VGA.

You can also find out for yourself by doing some simple math: if this is approximately 2.2 inches with a 4:3 ratio it means it's going to be approx. 1.76in wide and 1.32in tall, which means that it has an area of around 2.3 square inches, which means that (at 368ppi, 135424 pixels per square inch) it would have 311475 pixels, which confirms full-VGA resolution (640x480 = 307200) due to probable slight measurement differences (I don't think it's going to be *exactly* 368ppi).

Virtual Headsets?

[Dante]

I don't know about you, but the buga boo in the past with virtual headsets was
not being able to do true 640x480.

I'd love to see a head set doing true 640 x 480.

Re:Virtual Headsets?

[Arkaein]

There are VR headsets that do 1280x1024 nowadays. I'm taking a Virtual Environments class at the University of Minnesota, and our lab has one with that resolution. The display is very nice.

Of course it could be better, and future HMDs with wider fields of view will require even greater resolution to keep the same simage quality, but things really are a lot better than they were in the initial VR push of the mid 90s.

How about HMD's?

[mhackarbie]

Sounds like this would be perfect for making Head Mounted Displays, so we can finally get some decent low cost Virtual Reality and/or 3D display hardware. Any reason why that wouldn't work?

I know that the most sophisticated VR also requires complicated head position tracking hardware, which apparently is quite difficult to get right. Existing implementations often cause nausea and vertigo in some people.

However, a nice, crisp 3D display with mouse-driven movement of the scene should be a perfectly acceptable low-cost alternative. You would have to strap it on your head and you would look like some kind of wired-up bug freak, but what's wrong with that?

I sure as heck could use it in my molecular modelling work.

mhack

Re:How about HMD's?

[scaaven]

I don't think it would be that hard. You just need electronic gyroscopes mounted in the headset to detect motion. Wired up right, it could actually be quite compact.

Re:How about HMD's?

[VitaminB52]

I know that the most sophisticated VR also requires complicated head position tracking hardware, which apparently is quite difficult to get right. Existing implementations often cause nausea and vertigo in some people.

However, a nice, crisp 3D display with mouse-driven movement of the scene should be a perfectly acceptable low-cost alternative.

IIRC, the nausea and vertigo were caused by the time lag between head movement and the corresponding changes in the displayed images, not by the image not being 'crisp'.

B.t.w., the LCD is one of the most expensive parts in modern cellular phones - I doubt if a headmounted gear with two LCD's would be 'cheap'.

Re:How about HMD's?

[div_B]

However, a nice, crisp 3D display with mouse-driven movement of the scene should be a perfectly acceptable low-cost alternative.

If your entire field of view is filled by the display, and moving your head has no effect on what you see, but moving your mouse does, wouldn't that make you sick as hell?

Re:How about HMD's?

[Clothist]

It might well be cheaper then the currently available ones, many of which use small but extremely high resolution CRTs.

Re:How about HMD's?

[fwitness]

No, not 'cheap' as in value menu, 'cheap' as getting a new car for $10k would be. Nice cellphones go for about $130 these days. If these prices remain similar with the new resolution, let's say a VGA phone is like $200. Even if the screen is the most expensive, it can be reliably said that you could do a dual LCD HMD w/o headtracking for around $600. This is 'cheap' for an HMD that would seem to you to be >50" screen.

I have been thinking this would be perfect for laptops. I would much rather have a nice set of glasses, however dorky, that I can use on a plane with my laptop. Complete privacy, and no loss (but a gain!) of screen real estate. How about a laptop that doesn't even have a screen? Extreme? Yes, but that would be fine for 90% of my on-the-go type of work.

I even met a dork wanna-be yesterday, so let's face it, with cellphones, pda's, gbas and the like becoming ever more popular, it's become chic to be dork. :)

Although there are some inexpensive HMDs available, it seems like driver support has been the hugest issue. I don't even *want* 3D stuff, like two independent displays, just make it so I can get rid of these LCDs.

Oh, and btw, can someone show me any HMDs on Linux? Any?

Re:How about HMD's?

[Have Blue]

Pretty soon, VR equipment is going to be small enough to cram into a pair of slightly oversize (and overweight) wraparound sunglasses. Picard to la Forge...

Re:How about HMD's?

[VitaminB52]

Oh, and btw, can someone show me any HMDs on Linux? Any?

If Casio would donate HMDs + technical documentation to Linus and some other kernel hackers, then support for these devices would show up in the kernel in no-time :) .

I think it would be cool to have such an HMD, not just for gaming, but also for 3D design work and scientific applications. Or for medical specialists, to look into 3D MRI scans.
Would love to buy one, if it were affordable ( < 500 Euro ) and supported by some nice applications.

Re:How about HMD's?

[TheAntiCrust]

*stumbles the rest of the way entirely out of breath from a flat out run*

Jurrasic...... park.......... reference *cough* *sputter* *die*

Re:How about HMD's?

[aggiefalcon01]

I know that the most sophisticated VR also requires complicated head position tracking hardware, which apparently is quite difficult to get right.

Here's an idea for head position tracking hardware: put a bunch of bright balls around the outside of a helmet, and have the person surrounded by a handful of cameras. Think of how they did CG in The Matrix, when it watched such things and was able to map that into the virtual world of the movie.

True, that wasn't real-time, but it seems possible with some serious processor firepower behind it.

Just a thought.

Re:How about HMD's?

[Anonymous Writer]

Here's an idea for head position tracking hardware: put a bunch of bright balls around the outside of a helmet, and have the person surrounded by a handful of cameras.

Better yet would be the use of tiny gyroscopes like this that provide 6DOF, although this one doesn't. No need for worn optical cues and cameras. There is also this product that has 3DOF, which claims to "have metallic interference virtually eliminated". I presume it is some kind of magnetic tracker that isn't as vulnerable to the weaknesses of normal magnetic motion tracking methods, which I think the grandparent poster is referring to.

The method you are mentioning using bright balls and cameras are optical motion trackers. Magnetic ones have advantages over optical ones. Optical ones have other disadvantages, and don't normally work in real-time, so they wouldn't be viable for head position tracking for virtual reality.

Head Mounted Displays

[adipocere]

So, can we use this to FINALLY get a quasi-reasonable head-mounted displays?

I've always thought that one of the two reasons that wearables haven't really hit the mainstream was that the HMD's seemed to come with some weirdass resolution like 312 x 214 or some such nonsense. Aside from the obvious input issues, wearables are stunted by the number of freaky custom parts. HMD's with 15pin cables, let's go!

Re:Head Mounted Displays

[Anonymous Coward]

They have that already! The only problem is price.

Mmmm.

[arodland]

Make me a 15.4" screen out of this stuff. 5200x4300, 20mpix display. Gotta be good for the video editing. Of course it would take some incredibly fast RAM just to drive the screen at 60Hz 2D, let alone allowing you to draw to it.

Re:Mmmm.

[arodland]

Oh, and something a lot fatter than DVI. To run that at 60Hz would take about 10x DVI's bandwidth, if I'm figuring it right.

Practical use

[gphinch]

Make an eye patch out of it that has video of an eye, programmed to follow the motions of your other eye.

Re:Practical use

[ultramk]

Make an eye patch out of it that has video of an eye, programmed to follow the motions of your other eye.

uh, yeah. cause that wouldn't be like, creepy or anything.

Yeah, i'm sure the one-eyed would get stared at a whole lot less if they had a CREEPY CYBER EYE PATCH looking around at things, moving just a bit slower than the other eye.

Good idea though.... (?!?)

m-

Re:Practical use

[stratjakt]

And that's practical...... how?

Until I hack your face and put goatse on there.

Re:Practical use

[JUSTONEMORELATTE]

I like the cut of your jib.

In addition to the cut of your jib, I likes the sound of the name of your slashdot account.... gPHINch.
--
Gmail invites for completed referrals It's working.

Re:Practical use

[BillX]

Nah, make 2 eyepatches, one for each eye. Instead of following your actual eyes, make them follow sound. Wear them to particularly long/boring office meetings, allowing you to use that time more ZzzZproductivelyZZzz.

Article by Yoda

[LoadWB]

"A camera, does this phone have? Yes! Movie messaging I can send to Jedi friends! Kick Dukoo's ass they can watch. Yes!"

...or easier

[exhilaration]

If the display is built into your glasses instead of your watch.

Can this technology be used in larger screens?

[mind21_98]

If we used this in regular LCD screens (like for use with PCs), we'd be able to manage 1600x1200 resolution, at the very least. That does seem like it'd produce text that's quite small though.

Re:Can this technology be used in larger screens?

[arodland]

This is talking about 300ppi technology. LCD displays for PCs (and laptops) already have the kind of resolution you're talking about, and it's only about 120ppi. If you scaled 300ppi technology up to 15" you'd be talking about 5000 pixel wide displays. At 21" it would be more like 7200x5400. But I get a sneaking suspicion that this technology doesn't scale to nearly that size, at least not for anything resembling a reasonable price. 39 million pixels is a lot. :)

Power consumption assumption, what's your function

[jbeaupre]

"The power consumption and size is the same as with current QVGA (320x240) displays" maybe true for the LCD itself, but not for the entire device. It takes processing power to calculate the placement of all those extra pixels.

So the assumption of consumption neglects those functions.

At last...

[Aardpig]

...wanking will make you go blind. That is, if you do it while surfing for pr0n on one of these displays.

Re:At last...

[wildsurf]

...wanking will make you go blind. That is, if you do it while surfing for pr0n on one of these displays.

At least, you'd need one with Steady Shot motion compensation to balance out the jiggling...

Re:Schweet!

[GreyPoopon]

a blue screen would still be obvious though. ;)

Which just goes to prove that Windows is better than Linux (at least for this device). ;)

High res screen, low quality pics.

[EvilGoodGuy]

Great now all of those crappy pictures everyone takes with their cell phones will show even more crappy detail. On a sweet note, cell phone porn is now even better. It's so nice when your bored in class. God bless Google Image Search.

Slashdot: Slack LCD TV Market Means Cheaper Phones

[Anonymous Coward]

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/09/22/144625 0

Slack LCD TV Market Means Cheaper Phones And Monitors

Posted by timothy on Wednesday September 22, @11:01AM

from the lcd-prices-still-high dept.

Shakrai writes "CNN and Business2 are running a story about the apparent failure of LCD TVs to make a major market impact and what it means for you. Specifically for us geeks it means cheaper cellular phones and laptops due to an oversupply of LCD manufacturing. Does this mean I can finally afford that 21" LCD monitor I've always wanted?"

Wrong!

[exhilaration]

I doubt anyone will run windows or play doom on their cell phone...

Doom for Symbian Phones - runs on most recent Nokia phones.

Re:Wrong!

[Gaima]

Aye, I used to spend many a train journey to and from work playing Doom on my 9210 :)

Now then, Doom3 on a mobile...

Eyepatch.

[goodster]

Yarr! That looks to be a good idea, matey! :)

Re:Eyepatch.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahoy! Talk like a pirate day was Sunday (Sept19).

Avast.

MOD PARENT UP

[Anonymous Coward]

Jeez,

Everyone is freaking out about needing a magnifying glass or something. People, 12 point text is still 12 point text regardless of what device renders it. It will simply have a smoother, print-like quality.

It isn't as if your going to boot Win95 on this thing, it will just have really well defined easy to read text. Don't believe me? Set the dpi of your monitor to 300dpi and look at how many pixels are in those 10 pt letters.

Come on ./ readers, if Microsoft can do display DPI right, the phone will not have a problem.

Why?

[El]

So we could very soon see Mobile phones with VGA resolution on 2.2 inch displays.

Will these phones ship with a magnifying glass?

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice one, you unoriginal bastard! Why don't you reveal your entire name: El Idiot

Re:Why?

[drinkypoo]

Yes, and tweezers. Hence, you should be all set when you surf for porn.

LCD projectors?

[moosesocks]

Don't LCD projectors have tiny high-res LCDs inside them that can do 1280x1024 or higher?

And based on the size of today's LCD projectors, i'd say that they're smaller or equal to 2.2 inches diagonal.

Could this be that it's just the first tiny display that's not ridiculously expensive and is durable enough for general use?

Correct me if I'm wrong....

Re:LCD projectors?

[drinkypoo]

The high-res LCDs in projectors (when I worked for silicon engineering ten years ago, they were just finishing up a design for a XGA-resolution LCD element for raytheon or raychem or someone like that, I forget) are reflective. Basically they're made to be shiny, and they consist of a controller and a bunch of open pads. The pads are painted with liquid crystal and covered with glass. In other words, they're highly reflective, monochromatic, and not at all durable. One of them is used per color.

Re:LCD projectors?

[changing]

http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/projection-tv 3.htm

Re:LCD projectors?

[drinkypoo]

The transmissive LCDs are not typically as dense as the reflective ones, which have to be small to keep die sizes down.

Yes, but...

[haggar]

when will those graphing calculators be upgraded with displays capable of more than 86x48 resolution (B&W, at that)? I have the impression that HP, Casio and TI are stuck in a time-gap with their graphing calcs.

Re:Yes, but...

[Electrum]

You are a bit off on your sizes:

TI-73/82/83/84: 96x64
TI-85/86: 128x64
TI-89: 160x100
TI-92: 240x128

Re:Yes, but...

[Johnboi Waltune]

Nah, they just need to be as cheap as possible (a large market is students, after all) and have the lowest possible battery consumption. You can bet HP and Casio have figured out what price the market will bear, and designed their calculators accordingly. Not that I wouldn't mind seeing a graphing calculator with one of these LCDs either. :)

Re:Yes, but...

[mschaef]

"have the impression that HP, Casio and TI are stuck in a time-gap with their graphing calcs. "

Part of it is cost. Most of the calculator market is in high-school level education, and there's no way that parents or schools are going to pay extra for a display that doesn't add any pedagoical value.

That said, HP sort of is in a time-gap. Back in the mid 80's, after the renowned HP41 series, HP launched an ambitions design effort to design a platform for their next generation calculators. This resulted in the RPL programming environment and the Saturn microprocessor family that underpinned pretty much everything HP did from the 28C onwards.

To give you an idea of what the Saturn chip is like, it's primarily a 4-bit chip: the ALU works with 4-bit quantities and the memory is 4-bit addressable with a 20-bit bus (512Kbytes of address space, in other words). It also has a few special features for the calcualtor market: the registers are 64-bits wide with pre-defined fields for parts of floating point numbers, and the chip can be placed in an optional BCD mode to optimize decimal calculations. The RPL programming environment, developed over 20 years is quite closely tied to this chip and mostly written in Saturn assembly code. Porting it would be a quite expensive undertaking, particularly to ensure the high numeric reliability standards HP calculators are known for.

So, keeping this in mind, it's understandable that HP's latest calculator, the 49G+ switched to an ARM microprocessor, but retained much of the existing firmware running under a Saturn emulator written for the ARM. While it's possible to call into ARM code from Saturn machine code, I don't know if they could easily extend the RPL environment to easily support things like higher resolution displays or color.

Re:Yes, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever played a GOOD TI game? Something called greyscale has been standard on those things by assembly programmers for some time.

Re:Yes, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Part of it is cost. Most of the calculator market is in high-school level education, and there's no way that parents or schools are going to pay extra for a display that doesn't add any pedagoical value.

So then why do they still pay ~$80-120 for graphing calculators based on tech from, what, almost a decade ago? (BTW, I'm talking about TI 82/83 and 85/86 calculators, which seemed to be standard in my recent high school days.) They were worth the money back then, but now it's a bit silly paying $80+ for something with a Z80 CPU and a display that's half the resolution of a low-end Palm. There's been slight memory increases and a switch to USB cables, but otherwise they haven't changed much. TI's margins must be sky high by now.

Re:Yes, but...

[mschaef]

"They were worth the money back then, but now it's a bit silly paying $80+ for something with a Z80 CPU and a display that's half the resolution of a low-end Palm."

The problem is this: most folks aren't paying for the CPU and the display, they're paying for a calculator.

"TI's margins must be sky high by now."

So what't the incentive for them to switch to a faster CPU? They'd either eat into their per-unit margins or have to raise the sale cost (which would lower overal revenue and profitability).

The only reason they'd do this is if 1) thier sales are being eroded by some competitor getting traction in the market with a better hardware platform or 2) they thought they could offer some compelling new value with the new hardware that would convince customers the extra cost was worthwhile. Either of these cases goes to maintaining or eventually improving sales/revenue. Without that, there's just no reason for them to give away profit or sales.

Applications? GPS.

[Anonymous Coward]

GPS units be able to display more detailed maps.

You ask why? Two words...

[jayveekay]

Midget porn! :)

Mirrorshades

[Doc Ruby]

VGA stereo sunglasses!

Re:took now

[stoborrobots]

That's all we need is another blog running spammer.

well at least his rate is lower than Roland's... http://slashdot.org/search.pl?query=i4u shows only about 1 article per month...

Post is the article?

[ShieldWolf]

WTF they are almost exactly the same:

From the (tiny) article (which is really just a post from the submitter to some lame site):"The power consumption and size is the same as with current QVGA (320x240) displays. Meaning current mobile phone models could directly be upgraded with a VGA display. So we could very soon see 2.2 inch Mobile phones with VGA resolution.

Why even have a link?

Re:first post

[frisket]

The point is, WP and DTP systems can now claim to have WYSIRWYG (What You See Is Really What You Get), whereas up to now the average display resolution has been so crummy that WYSIWYG has been a bit of a joke. Although you'd need a full-page monitor to see it...

Legacy applications and application??

[tezza]

I wanted a C64 emulator for the Palm m505. However, the screen resolution was not enough to match that of the C64 [320*200 in MCI mode].

So there was no point in anyone trying, as to hack the screen drawing code is not viable, as so much depended on the syncing and timing in the C64 days.

So conceivably, that old DOS mode 'pokes and peeks the VGA buffer itself' type code could now hope to be ported to this sort of screen.

I'm struggling and struggling to think of one app that would not have been superceded by something superior. But should one exist, it could not without it's hardcoded minimum resolution.

Keep this going, I could run Lionheart under UAE on an NGage VII.

Re:Legacy applications and application??

[Tumbleweed]

I'm struggling and struggling to think of one app that would not have been superceded by something superior.

Mule?

Re:Legacy applications and application??

[hattig]

Lionheart was my fave game on the Amiga. Well, at least my fave platform game :)

Great

[fadethepolice]

Movie theaters for all those guys in gulliver's travels...

Stereo

[arsinmsn]

Mount two of these in glasses with appropriate optics. Split the image (could be 3-d, of course, but anti interlace the image if 3-d isn't needed). & Viola! 1280 x 960 for those with normal binocular vision; let the visual matrix re-merge them.

Re:Stereo

[bizard]

Better yet, mount two of these in glasses and even Elton John would think you looked like a geek.

Re:Stereo

[izakage]

Actually, think about it.

640x480=307,200 pixels.

1280x96 =1,228,800.

There are two displays. Thus the amount of pixels _should_ be multiplied by two. 307,200*2=614,400. You can only multiply the resolution of one axis by two, not the both of them.

Re: Sick as Hell

[mhackarbie]

I don't think so, but I'm no expert. Another poster mentioned that the problem is due to lag between motion input and the display, which apparently is a problem for head-trackers, but shouldn't be a problem for the mouse.

I don't think it would be much different from playing an FPS on a real big monitor with your face up close. The only reason that might make you sick as hell is the bloody giblets all over the floor.

Unless, of course, you are already sick as hell before you play, in which case that should make you feel better.

mhack

Is it just me. . .

[Bastian]

. . . or does anyone else get the feeling that the synopsis for this article was written by Mojo Jojo?

people who hate 368 ppi

[Anonymous Coward]

First, a story: i went to the store with a woman who hates high-res displays and was telling me that no one likes them. suddenly, she pulled off the road, complaining that the setting sun was in her eyes. i didn't say anything, but her windshield was so filthy that you could hardly see out of it anyway. the low-angle sun just made it slightly more opaque.

Next, my opinion: many of the posts in this thread seem to come from people like that---they apparently can't see shit, so they can't imagine why anyone else would. i would love to have a 2.2in vga display, not so much to run programs written for a desktop screen (doh) but more to make things look less blocky.

Finally, my prescription: try an experiment. hold a book up next to your computer screen, a book whose typefaces don't seem too small to you. Notice that when you compare them side by side, the book is likely to have smaller type than the computer screen. Since the characters are more sharply drawn (higher resolution) you can actually see them better even if they are smaller.

Re:people who hate 368 ppi

[canolecaptain]

A M E N !!!

It's about time somebody made sense on this thread. For crying out loud, are you geeks or devo? :-)

Higher resolution is always better up to over 600 dpi, especially when it comes to reading text. Personally, I think the EBooks are failing because of their low resolution displays. Until that 5" display is using 300+ dpi, most people won't touch them - inlcuding me.

It's about time.

Brazil

[cmacb]

Every time I see a story like this I think of the movie "Brazil" and the guy siting in front of a big magnifying glass with a tiny display behind it.

IE

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad its running IE. Soon it will be the smallest resolutioned LCD to get spywared.

Re:Schweet!

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice one, you unoriginal bastard! Maybe you should buy one just so you can use the magnifying glass to locate your penis, AKAImBatman AKA MicroPenis.

What would you use something this small for?

[mcrbids]

I mean, what could you watch on something that small?

Perhaps midget pr0n?

Re:Schweet! You've just gotten a -1 post!

[Anonymous Coward]

Haha numbnuts you fucked this one up! Who the hell cares about linux anyway, goddamn nerd asses.

Re:Schweet!

[AKAImBatman]

Dude, you've got serious issues. If you browse at -1 and pay attention to the time-stamps, you'll find that I was the first person to make the comment.

Electronic Paper

[phorm]

How about something similar to a sheet of paper, with a small microcontroller and flash-card slot.

Store your documents on the flash-card in a compatible format, pop the card into the device, and presto you've got documentation.

Now for those that prefer paper docs I'd agree that quite often it's nicer to have real pages handy... but for things like large manuals printed off the net etc etc this would save tons (both in time, toner, and paper) on printing stuff out, be more lightweight than a large volume, and have many other advantages.

Re:Electronic Paper

[arodland]

If the device is going to be "similar to a sheet of paper", then the only kind of flash card you're going to be inserting into it is a real flash-card. :)

Re:Electronic Paper

[megaversal]

Something like this maybe?

http://www.sony.jp/products/Consumer/LIBRIE/

I used it in Japan, it's abso-fucking-lutely amazing. Plus, the best part.. the battery lasts for "10,000 pages" -- the only power is used when altering content.

They run about $400 at the moment, but I'm sure prices will drop.

Re: Sick as Hell

[div_B]

I don't think it would be much different from playing an FPS on a real big monitor with your face up close.The only reason that might make you sick as hell is the bloody giblets all over the floor.

It should be noted however that FPSs on standard monitors DO make some people sick (due to the motion, not the content). Perhaps more people would suffer from this with HMDs?

Screen Fonts

[Nurgled]

Fonts like Verdana and the other Microsoft core web fonts were designed to work well at low resolution, so they start to look clunky at higher resolutions due to the design compromises such as where lines are made thicker and more even so that they don't get antialiased away at small pixel sizes. You can see this on normal monitors just by looking at 72pt Verdana: to most eyes, it starts to look "wrong".

Now that display resolutions are approaching print resolutions we can start using traditional fonts like Palatino and Frutiger for our web browsing and UI widgets.

Re:Not VGA resolution

[Lord Kano]

You lazy bastard, not only did you not RTFA, you didn't even read the fucking headline.

LK

Realtime overlay

[phorm]

To heck with the VR gear, how about something to interact with reality? One concept would be some form of vision enhancement, perhaps in the form of an eyepath with a realtime display. Hook up a camera or something similar and display an enhanced or altered visual - would be great for nightvision type devices.

Even better would be if the display is partially transparent, you could use it as an overlay, where you can see what's around you but with added visual elements (motion trackers, edge enhancers, heat-view, infrared... graphs, stats, you name it).

I could also see this being quite useful in cameras viewfinders, etc... although on my digital camera (Kodak DX6490) the viewfinder is electronic already and seems to be quite fine at whatever resolution it uses.

Re:Realtime overlay

[Anonymous Coward]

There is already a name for this... AR or Augmented Reality. and has been a growing field for some time now. a google link follows below. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=ar+% 22augmented+reality%22&btnG=Google+Search

Re:Realtime overlay

[Anonymous Writer]

Even better would be if the display is partially transparent, you could use it as an overlay, where you can see what's around you

Check out this bifocal display. The image is actually reflected on that tiny little bit on the eyeglass lens itself that looks like a bifocal, that you can hardly see. It's clearer in the PDF specification sheet.

A Better Camera Isn't Easy

[Nurgled]

There isn't enough room inside a phone for the lenses necessary to achieve a good picture. Increasing the resolution of the sensors can only do so much.

Re:Schweet!

[Anonymous Coward]

oops! SOrry about that I'll go mock the other ones.

Re:first post

[fatgav]

Not really comparable though. Print is usually based on 3-7 colours whereas these screens (I haven't looked in detail) are likely to have upwards of 1000's of colours. This will allow you to do things like antialiasing that improve the image on a like for like resolution.

Re:Schweet!

[AKAImBatman]

In the words of Neo: Whoa.

An AC apologizing? Now I've seen everything. :-)

Titles of the future

[DanielMarkham]

"Tiny demons invade a mars space station in 'DOOM Jr.'"
"Run the life of ant-people in 'SIMS, the phone version'"
"Guess at words in 'Optomotrist 1.0'"
"Curse at strangers when you play 'Tiny BSOD', comning to a phone near you!"
"Paint mustaches on your far away friends with 'Microphotoshop'"
"Yes, that was Pam Anderson, not a booger. Try 'Surfing For Little People', the game Michael Jackson started.

Needed in underfunded server rooms...

[pacov]

Battery powered handheld screens to hookup to the back of servers that weren't lucky enough to make it on the one and only KVM. I'd love to be able to bring a 3" screen to the back of some of our servers to watch the boot cycle without having to drag in a 15" monitor with a 15' electrical extension cord.

Maybe something like this is already available, but I haven't seen it, yet.

Finally

[Anonymous Coward]

Now I can finally put my mobile electron microscope to good use!

A display with 4x the resolution

[morcheeba]

Check out this display -- it's LCD, frag-friendly 360Hz refresh, 1/3 VGA, 24 bit color, and with a pixel size of 12 x 16.2um, it works out to 1500-2000 pixel/inch.

Of course, the trick is that this display is really small -- since it's built on a silicon wafer, expanding it to 2.2" would raise the price incredibly (defect rate isn't linear with size). So, it makes a wonderful camcorder/digital camera viewfinder, and its bigger cousins work in HD projectors, but not really practical for a phone display.

One of the coolest things about this is that it is a black and white display lit sequentially with red, gren, and blue leds. The display sets switches each pixel to the appropriate brightness of whatever color is lighting it. This means no "screen door" effect -- see an example here, so the display is much clearer.

Switching time is about 150 microseconds - good large-size monitors are still in the range of 20000 microseconds!

details and a question

[belmolis]

For those who don't read Japanese, here are specs from the press release:

resolution: 640 x 480
dot pitch: 0.023 (h) x 0.069 (v)
contrast: 450
viewing angle: vertical 160 deg., horizontal 150 deg.
colors: 260,000
signal inpu: digital RGB 6 bits each

Does anybody know what the measure of contrast is? That's 450 what?

Re:details and a question

[lnxpilot]

The number for contrast has no dimension.
It is the light intensity ratio between the brightest white and the darkest black the display can reproduce.
It should have been be written as 450:1

Must upgrade...

[Gilmoure]

EYES!

Re:first post

[Alex Brasetvik]

As opposed to WYSIWYS -- what you see is what you see. :-)

Doesn't seem so new

[lnxpilot]

I used to do VR research at SEGA in 1995 and we had a head-mount display with a pair of 640x480 color LCDs about the same size.
It probably cost a fortune back then, but it was available.

Re:first post

[TCM]

So we finally moved away from that pesky RGB scheme and now have more colors than print with its CMYK?

Oops!

[Anonymous Coward]

Highest resolution? I don't think so. My coworker has an old Sun monitor which does 1024x768.

Maybe you were referring to highest dot density, as in highest dpi?

Check out this paper from IBM's Journal of R&D

[Crazy Eight]

You'll find an interesting chart in this article. If I'm reading it correctly this display is just beyond the resolving power of the eye at 18".

No....

[Anonymous Coward]

368dpi? Not for reading text. Come on, it's a bunch of smart engineers at Samsung & Casio, trying to figure out what joe-average wants. I'm pretty sure 400dpi and up is around the corner.

Why would anyone want 300+dpi on a 2" screen? It's simple. p0rn.

Why this dissapoints me...

[comrade009]

This higher resolution is going to lead to more complicated and advanced functions for cell phones. Advanced is something I like in a computer, but NOT in my phone. Nobody who gets a landline phone has to read a manual to know how to use it; it should be the same as cellphones. The second issue is cost. I know that some people can't help if they are clumsy, but you have to account for the possibility of stolen phones. My phone was stolen; it wasn't even my real phone, it was a loaner that I received while my phone was being repaired. It cost me $100 bucks to replace (expensive for a Junior in high school). And what will happen to the cost of the phones as more fancy gadgets and such become standard? Sure, the price of technology is supposed to go down, but these new features help keep the prices at the same level. I guess I'm just a complainer, but here's all I need in a phone: 1) Buttons, which can be used to dial phone numbers. 2) A ringtone, which can be used when someone is calling me. 3) Maybe, just maybe, a phonebook, so I can use it to store some frequently called numbers.

my 1/4 inch 640x480 kopin lcd

[paronomasia5]

wtf are they talking about -- i have a 1/4" 640x480 kopin lcd in my eyeglasses -- they have them up to 1280x1024 if you have the cash. that puts it at a dpi of around 4000. check http://www.microopticalcorp.com/Products/ for deets

World’s highest resolution?

[Pan T. Hose]

"Casio announces a LCD display with the world's highest resolution. The 2.2 inch LCD display features VGA resolution."

Personally I have seen resolutions substantially higher than VGA... Or does "VGA" stand for something other than Video Graphical Array these days and I have just made an idiot out of myself? Unlikely.

QVGA VGA !! Must be cellphone sized.

[billstewart]

I can't read the real press release, which is in Japanese, but this says that it's not VGA resolution, it's 320x240 QVGA, which I guess is subtly different from CGA (presumably including lots more colors.) So if it's 368dpi, then it's less than an inch wide, roughly right for a cell phone display.

So...what your saying is it's a VGA display?

[Necromancyr]

...LCD display features VGA resolution...directly be upgraded with a VGA display....soon see Mobile phones with VGA resolution on 2.2 inch displays...

So, what your trying to say is it's a VGA display?

Re:first post

[tAnkEmspAnkEm]

Great, now the anecdote about going blind comes through. Thanks a lot technology! Next Palm will announce a new line of hairy palms.

Re:first post

[glitch23]

amateur

Re:Not VGA resolution

[fyngyrz]

368 x 2.2 = 809.6

LCD Display is Redundant

[stuffman64]

Not to be too picky, but the phrase "LCD display" is redundant. As we are all aware of, the 'D' in LCD already means display, so there is no need to specify that it is a display. This is something which has bothered my for years, but I digress.

My Sharp Zaurus SL-C860 features a 3.7" VGA display. The text is amazingly sharp- though it might be hard to read because everything is so small (I believe the pixel density is around 216 pixel/inch). This new screen is nearly one-third the area of the Zaurus', yet features the same resolution. Just a few years back, we were all drooling over this IBM Roentgen display, with its 200ppi (in this article). Can't wait to see one in my next cell phone, complete with a fresnel lens so I can read the text!

Re:LCD Display is Redundant

[Alioth]

Don't forget the days that people used to call DOS (including MS themselves) 'The Microsoft MS-DOS Operating System' which of course expanded to 'The Microsoft Microsoft Disk Operating System Operating System'...

On an X window system it sure does.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

One last time you innumerate morons: resolution improved quality and does not affect size.

Unfortunately, on the X window system it DOES affect size, since the display is specified in pixels rather than screen area. Finer pixel spacing means a smaller image and attempting to tweak that is not pretty.

That was the most significant advantage of NeWS over X.

Re:On an X window system it sure does.

[ElvenMonkey]

Unfortunately, on the X window system it DOES affect size, since the display is specified in pixels rather than screen area. Finer pixel spacing means a smaller image and attempting to tweak that is not pretty. That was the most significant advantage of NeWS over X.

Most CRT monitors have a physical resolution of 72 or 96dpi, depending on how modern they are. 72dpi is the same as on a TV set. Thats fixed. When you choose a different resolution to the stated optimum for your screen, it has to adjust the image to fit into the viewable area, so its automagically scaled. Changing the resolution doesn't change your displays DPI, it can't. Windows has a DPI setting, buried amongst its settings (Display properties > Settings > Advanced > General) If you change that resolution, to say 120dpi, because your screen is only 96dpi, what would normally take up one inch of your screen would now take up 1 1/4 inches of space to display.

Increasing the DPI of a display allows more detail to be displayed in that inch, allowing better resolution fonts, images, more definition. Take this last jump, 368 up from 300dpi. Over a 2.2" screen thats up from 225,000 pixels to display something to 270,848; an increase of just over 20%.
It doesn't mean the existing fonts get shrunk, the fonts can get more detailed. What muppet is honestly going to design a display for practical commercial use that you need a magnifying glass for?!

Re:first post

[Breakfast Pants]

You don't get it. The resoultion of print means you can get this many dots per inch. For text it is equivilant to the resolution. For images, you have to mix your distribution of colored dots accross a larger area than one dot occupies to simulate the various colors. Look at a dithered gif and then a non dithered png image to see the difference (though gif has 256 colors available, much more than print).

Volksbeamer

[edooper]

This is great news for the Volksbeamer, a DIY beamer.

Re:first post

[Golias]

Sounds spiffy.

Now, how much for a phone that's just a reliable phone?

I look around, and nobody seems to want to sell me one. They all have entry level pieces of shit, but if you want something that is smaller than a brick and gets a signal indoors, you gotta buy their $1350 "camera/talk-along/MP3/IM/GPS/vital signs monitor/car diagnostics/marital aid/electric toothbrush/GameBoy/television/PDA" phones.

I've gone through four mobile phones in six years, and I've yet to be happy with a single one of them.

For pity's sake, just sell me a phone that fits in my jeans pocket, costs less than a car payment, gets a descent signal in metro areas, and last for more than a year or two. That's all I ask!

Why wait?

[Walkiry]

> Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm still waiting on my flying car. Dammit.

M400 Skycar.

Last Word

[Spark'n Bart Funny P]

Put your index finger and thumb 2.2 inches appart, then look though this gap at your monitor. You will have to bring 'em very close to have the same field. Unless you are near sighted this is just to small to have an advantage.

But that would mean...

[beanlover]

...everyone has to learn to type without looking at their hands!

Re:But that would mean...

[fwitness]

Well, I think most of the population can type at least one handed, so we're halfway there.

angular resolution of one arc minute

[peter303]

This works out to a little less than 4000 pixels on a standard screen at two feet away. Asuuming optimum contrast.

Some VR displays get away with far less by tracking at the eye is looking at and only drawing that region at maximum resolution.

dSLR's

[Civil_Disobedient]

Digital Cameras would really benefit from this technology. Particularly high-end digital SLR's. If you're trying to check focus on a sports shot, it'd be nice to actually see right away whether or not you got it sharp instead of thinking you got a sharp shot and checking it off your list... only to discover later on the big 21" screen that it's trash.

Re:first post

[ebh]

For pity's sake, just sell me a phone that fits in my jeans pocket, costs less than a car payment, gets a descent signal in metro areas, and last for more than a year or two.

This one fits in my jeans pocket, cost me next to nothing, and gets a decent signal everywhere except in the bowels of office buildings. I've used it for almost three years, so it may be discontinued.

Re:first post

[Anonymous Coward]

I had a Nokia 8260 also. It was a great phone, however my transmitter broke.

I replaced it with a Motorola flip-phone. While the new phone has lots more features, it is much harder to use than the old Nokia.

Casio took now the lead

[cardshark2001]

Was this article translated the babelfish?

Re:first post

[circusboy]

I hate to bust your bubble, but gif and all the other R G B formats have exactly three colors and shades thereof... print has a base of four, and tints there of. (plus the occasional spot color if your feeling exact...)

Would be great for future subnotebook PC

[Krellan]

This would be great for a subnotebook PC, like the Toshiba Libretto.

It's good progress, but still not what I ideally want: a device that is completely a standard PC, but in the form factor of a Gameboy Advance SP! The GBA SP is an ideal design: it is small, and has a flip-up screen that is sturdy and locks into a convenient position. If small buttons were used to form a fully-functional keyboard, as on the BlackBerry, and a small touchpad nearby for the mouse, this would be wonderful to have! The PC would have decent 3D graphics for games compatibility, a micro hard drive similar to the iPod, and of course Wi-Fi and GPRS wireless data support.

Does any company want to merge this pocketful of present-day devices into a future dream machine that could do it all?

Re:first post

[Breakfast Pants]

Hate to burst your bubble but when talking about the resolution in print you talk about how many dots per inch it can do. These "dots" can't vary in strength. The "dots" on a monitor can. It takes a lot higher resolution in print to meet the quality provided by the equivilant resolution on a monitor. Clear enough?

Re:first post

[circusboy]

but they can vary in size...