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Sony Unveils Smartphone With 4K Screen

Posted by Soulskill on from the go-big-or-go-home dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Sony has taken the wraps off its new Xperia Z5 Premium smartphone, which has a 5.5" display that operates at 4k resolution. "The company acknowledged that there was still a limited amount of professional content available in 4K — which provides about four times the number of pixels as 1080p high definition video. But it said the Z5 Premium would upscale videos streamed from YouTube and Netflix to take advantage of the display." Sony's answer to the obvious battery concerns raised by such a pixel-dense (808 ppi) screen was to use a 3,430 mAh battery and memory-on-display technology. The video upscaling can also be turned off to decrease battery drain.

117 comments

  1. Does Sony also provide... by xenog · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...high-definition bionic eye implants to be able to see the difference?

    1. Re:Does Sony also provide... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I was more thinking Gear VR stile headset to take advantage of the higher resolution.

    2. Re:Does Sony also provide... by Carewolf · · Score: 1

      You can see over 600dpi at normal smartphone distances and the round number makes upscaling cheaper and more precise.

    3. Re:Does Sony also provide... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      ...high-definition bionic eye implants to be able to see the difference?

      The eye has higher effective resolution than Apple has led us to believe with their "retina" marketing. This article shows how human eye can see 530 ppi resolution in a 20 x 13.3-inch print viewed at 20 inches. http://clarkvision.com/imagedetail/eye-resolution.html
       

    4. Re:Does Sony also provide... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's a good thing. Maybe there's nothing to benefit from this technology in the short term or with current usage patterns but the ability to fling around 4K content will eventually become useful. At these DPIs we're starting to approach SOHO print quality so we can all rejoice at text aliasing being a thing-of-the-past. Anti-aliasing techniques also become moot at these densities so software complexity can actually go 'down'.

    5. Re:Does Sony also provide... by KatchooNJ · · Score: 0

      And does it use overpriced propriety Sony memory cards? Ah... I so love that with most of their devices.

      --
      "Never give up, for that is just the time and place when the tide will change." -Harriet Beecher Stowe ^_^
    6. Re:Does Sony also provide... by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      Earlier Xperias use bog standard flash.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    7. Re:Does Sony also provide... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They haven't released a phone with that since, what? 10 years?

    8. Re:Does Sony also provide... by KatchooNJ · · Score: 1

      I know... it was more of a stab at Sony for some of their other electronic items that do use proprietary memory.

      --
      "Never give up, for that is just the time and place when the tide will change." -Harriet Beecher Stowe ^_^
    9. Re:Does Sony also provide... by Rei · · Score: 5, Informative

      The maximum physically possible resolution for the human eye to see is 2190 dpi. But that's not an average eye, but rather a flawless eye limited only by the size of the pupil; and viewed from as close as an adult can focus, 4 inches.

      If we downgrade from a perfect eye to an average eye, the resolution drops down to 876 dpi... but still at 4 inches.

      At a more practical 12 inches, this drops to around 300 dpi. Which is why magazines are printed at 300 dpi - it's good enough for most practical circumstances.

      Also note some additional limitations:

        * These sort of resolution figures are based on the ability to distingish bright white lines from bright black lines without them blurring together into gray. The smaller the contrast and the dimmer the light, the less the eye can resolve.
        * The human eye also loses a great deal of ability to make out resolution when objects are moving.
        * Obviously the further away one is from the center of the field of view, the lower the resolution - with a rather fast dropoff.

      Yes, 808 dpi is complete and total overkill, unless you've got superb eyes and are in the habit of holding your phone as close to them as you can focus while looking at high contrast stationary images.

      --
      Stale pastry is hollow succor to one who is bereft of ostrich.
    10. Re:Does Sony also provide... by lgw · · Score: 1

      The eye has higher effective resolution than Apple has led us to believe with their "retina" marketing. This article shows how human eye can see 530 ppi resolution in a 20 x 13.3-inch print viewed at 20 inches. http://clarkvision.com/imagede...

      Which is hardly news in the print world. Most fonts are passable, but noticeably less than perfect at 600dpi. Some fonts still don't quite work right at 1200dpi. Of course, that's without anti-aliasing. Grayscale at 600 dpi can do a pretty good job of representing print if the anti-aliasing is well done.

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    11. Re:Does Sony also provide... by lexman098 · · Score: 3

      Yes, 808 dpi is complete and total overkill, unless you've got superb eyes and are in the habit of holding your phone as close to them as you can focus while looking at high contrast stationary images.

      You mean like when you've got the phone strapped to your head in VR mode?

    12. Re:Does Sony also provide... by Rei · · Score: 3, Informative

      20/20 vision is defined by the ability to resolve 1 arc minute. For example, the "E" on an eye doctor's chart on the 20/20 vision line is 5 arc minutes tall, as reading it takes the ability to break it down into five vertical glyphs and distingish between them. That page is based on the premise of a person being able to resolve 0,3 arc minutes.

      Problem.

      Also, see above. The human eye has a lot more limitations than just a simple single angular resolution figure can express. I even forgot to list one: time. Not only does motion greatly limit one's resolution ability, but even on a stationary image, the person has to be able to focus and take time in order to get even "normal" levels of visual acuity.

      --
      Stale pastry is hollow succor to one who is bereft of ostrich.
    13. Re:Does Sony also provide... by jeffmflanagan · · Score: 1

      >I was more thinking Gear VR style headset to take advantage of the higher resolution.

      That does seem to be the main application of a phone screen that dense. I had hoped the Note 5 would have a 4K screen for Gear VR, but that didn't work out. Gear VR with the S6 is fun, but the pixels are huge.

    14. Re:Does Sony also provide... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, but it's not compatible with human eyesocket, you must have propietary HyperEyeSocket.

    15. Re: Does Sony also provide... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      With Google cardboard, the screen is even closer to your eyes than this, but focus is still fine because of the lenses. So there definitely are uses for the pixel density.

      The EVF on my NEX-7 must be somewhere around 2000 DPI and that's a few years old now (again though it's lensed so it appears much bigger than its real 0.5" size), so it's not like it's even that hard to hit 800 DPI.

      So why not :)

    16. Re: Does Sony also provide... by asc99c · · Score: 2

      The 20/20 vision line is a few from the bottom on the eye chart, it's just the 'normal' vision line. It's been a few years since I've done an eye test but last time I could fairly easily read every line on the chart, which is substantially better than 20/20 vision. Even so, I remember my vision being significantly more acute when I was younger! I can definitely imagine plenty of people being able to see and use this higher resolution.

    17. Re:Does Sony also provide... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not to mention that there's no such thing as a stationary image to your eye. Your eyes constantly scan across things to detect contrast edges without refocusing and to avoid "holes" in what you see due to the blind spot on the retina. And because it's all moving, all the time, everything is in motion and has a "framerate" of approximately 13 FPS (per contrast-detected object, asynchronously, making the whole process about infinity-hojillion times more complex).

    18. Re: Does Sony also provide... by funwithBSD · · Score: 1

      Yep, until I hit 40, I was rated at 12/20 vision. I could see at 20 feet what most people needed to be at 12 feet to see.

      Now I have to wear glasses if I want my better than 20/20 vision back.

      --
      Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
    19. Re: Does Sony also provide... by chuckugly · · Score: 1

      12/20 is worse than average. Either your eyes are great and your memory isn't, or the other way around?

    20. Re:Does Sony also provide... by SQL+Error · · Score: 1

      Magazines print photos at an effective 300 dpi. Text is printed at a much higher resolution - 1200 dpi or more - because text at 300 dpi looks lousy.

      So this phone is complete overkill for photos, but about right for text. At this resolution we might finally do away with font hinting and anti-aliasing.

    21. Re:Does Sony also provide... by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 1

      UNPOSSIBLE! Apple told us all that 300 dpi was retina display and you couldn't see smaller pixels than that!

      --
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    22. Re: Does Sony also provide... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, I was talking two phones strapped to your head and no vr gear.

    23. Re:Does Sony also provide... by FlyHelicopters · · Score: 1

      Every time something like this comes out, someone like you posts what you did.

      I am 40 years old, my eyes aren't special in any way.

      I sit 3 feet from a trio of Dell 30" monitors at 2560x1600 and I can see the pixels. Playing games, you have to turn on the AA or the jaggies are crazy.

      I sit 10 feet from a Sony 70" 1080p TV, and I can see the pixels. Doesn't matter the content, they are there. Of course, when relaxing and watching a movie, you just ignore them after awhile, but they are there.

      At 10 feet, a 70" 4k screen is just about perfect. I can kinda, sorta, almost see the pixels, just... as I age, I'm sure I won't be able to.

      I haven't upgraded to a 4k screen because there is nothing to watch at that resolution, and it appears that will be the case for some time.

      I do plan to upgrade my EyeFinity setup on my desk to a trio of 32" 4K IPS displays sometime soon, but that also will probably be all I need since my eyes will get worse over time.

      I can see the value in 8k screens for some applications, but I suspect we're largely done at that point for anything within reason.

    24. Re: Does Sony also provide... by funwithBSD · · Score: 1

      Probably my memory. I am not an eye doctor.

      --
      Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
    25. Re:Does Sony also provide... by SQL+Error · · Score: 1

      But a person with either good vision or properly corrected vision has significantly better than 20/20 acuity.

      What's more, we're sensitive to certain visual artifacts below the nominal limit of acuity, in some cases significantly below: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

      There's certainly a point of diminishing returns, but there's no hard line beyond which no improvements matter. (Or rather, there is, but it's far beyond the "retina" limit defined by Apple's marketing or 19th century opthalmologists.)

    26. Re: Does Sony also provide... by asc99c · · Score: 1

      LOL I was going to put 20/10 vision as what I got in the test but couldn't remember which way the numbers went and knew I'd get pulled up on it :)

    27. Re:Does Sony also provide... by smallfries · · Score: 1

      Yeah. Seconded.

      I'm currently about 60cm from a 28" 4k screen and it also needs AA to hide the pixels when gaming. Text (the stationary high-contrast case) looks beautiful - but the level of custom AA on text rendering is staggering.

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    28. Re:Does Sony also provide... by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      At a more practical 12 inches, this drops to around 300 dpi. Which is why magazines are printed at 300 dpi - it's good enough for most practical circumstances.

      They use 300dpi because it is cheap and because with cheap ink and cheap paper it doesn't matter. Higher quality publications use 600dpi or more.

      Also, print is not the same as an LCD screen. Ink on paper does not form perfect little square pixels with extremely sharp edges.

      My eyesight isn't great, I wear glassed, but I can see the difference between a 300dpi screen and a 500dpi screen. Text looks a lot better at 500dpi to me. As well as being a little sharper and clearer, it allows the device to use fonts where strokes have shapes and are not perfectly horizontal/vertical. The lower the DPI the more you have to stick to the pixel grid to look good.

      Even phones with 300dpi screens use sub-pixel rendering and look better with it. That effectively increases them to 900dpi horizontal resolution.

      --
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    29. Re:Does Sony also provide... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So because you can see the jaggies on a 30" screen at 2560x1600, you think you could see the individual pixels on a 5.5" screen at 3840x2160? Yeah, maybe under a loupe.

    30. Re:Does Sony also provide... by Rei · · Score: 1

      Yes, there is. Even a flawless human eye couldn't resolve better than about 0,4 arcminutes.

      --
      Stale pastry is hollow succor to one who is bereft of ostrich.
    31. Re:Does Sony also provide... by magnusk · · Score: 1

      That's ignoring Vernier Acuity, which is a very important effect on displays where the pixels form parallel lines, i.e. pretty much every modern electronic display. It gets down to 0.13 arc minutes, which is why there are several replies pointing out that your theory doesn't match reality, even for people with worse than average vision.

      And this figure of 2190dpi? That's 3 significant figures, computed from something that was given to only one significant figure (0.4 arc minutes). You can't do that, and it should be a huge red flag that the source article should not be taken seriously.

      --
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  2. Good work, SONY by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Fix bugs? Address users' complaints? Release updates within the schedule *you* announce? Maybe add basic functionality to your 'premium' music playing software, functionality that media players have had for well over a decade now?

    Naaaah, fuck that, let's put a 4k screen on a 5.5" phone! Yeah!

  3. One problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The phone is going to turn the users hand into charcoal when they try to stream 4K to the device.

    1. Re:One problem by bob_super · · Score: 1

      No risk in the US. Their data plan will have cut them off after about 3 to 5 seconds.

    2. Re:One problem by jtownatpunk.net · · Score: 1

      Not me. I'm still grandfathered on a plan Verizon isn't allowed to throttle. :D

      Of course, this phone probably won't be available on Verizon's network. :(

  4. Blinded By Science? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    No. By marketing.

  5. 3D... by MadCow42 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    That type of resolution lends itself very well to doing things like lenticular 3-D. I know people often don't like lenticular, but that's usually because it's done so poorly so often. Well-done lenticular is amazing to see and is not a strain on the eyes. If glass lenticules were built into the display itself, and were appropriately sized and spaced, it could be impressive.

    There are other interesting technologies too that could be done, such as barrier-screen - that could be implemented by LCD over top of the display - which would be less intrusive and could be turned on/off.

    I write software for these applications - I would drool over a screen that had 808ppi!

    --
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    1. Re:3D... by MadCow42 · · Score: 1

      Just noodling on this - a fixed LCD barrier screen, combined with the selfie-camera could automatically adjust the underlying image to calibrate automatically for the inter-ocular distance of the user, no matter how close/far from their eyes they're holding the screen. 808ppi with a 80-100lpi barrier screen would give you tons of resolution to play with in this respect. It would be awesome. :)

      --
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    2. Re:3D... by ItsJustAPseudonym · · Score: 1

      I would drool over a screen that had 808ppi!

      I believe you would be using it incorrectly.

    3. Re:3D... by bdares · · Score: 1

      Would like to see how well a pairing of this and Google Cardboard works. I think that would beat all other current VR offerings in terms of display resolution, at least.

    4. Re:3D... by MadCow42 · · Score: 1

      Yes, it would be cool. The failing of many VR systems is field of view. With more resolution, you can increase the FOV while still having enough detail to look decent. I think Occulus Rift is one of the few doing it "well", but even they have a bit of tunnel-vision in their system.

      I can't wait until there are VR systems that have FULL field of view, so even your peripheral view is addressed.

      --
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    5. Re:3D... by TeknoHog · · Score: 1

      I would drool over a screen that had 808ppi!

      I believe you would be using it incorrectly.

      I'm sure he's drooling in a well-defined pattern to make an array of small droplets on the screen. And that's why people don't like lenticular 3D.

      --
      Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
    6. Re:3D... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ... - I would drool over a screen that had 808ppi!

      You're holding it wrong.

    7. Re:3D... by DrXym · · Score: 1
      A high res is probably most useful for VR. I have a fairly high DPI OnePlus phone and when I plop it in a cardboard headset I not only see the pixels, I can see between the pixels. 4K means 2K to each eye and is probably dense enough to overcome the effect in VR. I wouldn't be surprised if Sony has other plans for the disply than just a phone. Maybe it'll end up in VR headsets.

      In every day use in a phone however it's a waste of time and probably just taxes the phone far more than necessary for minimal difference to the end user experience.

    8. Re:3D... by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      I'm sure he's drooling in a well-defined pattern to make an array of small droplets on the screen. And that's why people don't like lenticular 3D.

      " Anyone else read that as "why people dont like tentacular 3D"

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    9. Re:3D... by sethstorm · · Score: 1

      " Anyone else read that as "why people dont like tentacular 3D"

      Sounds like it'd be popular in the Japanese home market.

      --
      Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
    10. Re:3D... by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      " Anyone else read that as "why people dont like tentacular 3D"

      Sounds like it'd be popular in the Japanese home market.

      My son, who was into anime some years ago, once showed me an artwork of that. Truly there are different srokes for different folks.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    11. Re:3D... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Just got a spam email telling me to buy such 3d phone, from one of those Chinese shops selling mobile gadgets. http://www.tinydeal.com/takee-1-55-fhd-octa-core-20mhz-holographic-air-touch-phone-p-155859.html

    12. Re:3D... by Dr_Barnowl · · Score: 1

      Yeah, the new models of 3DS already do this ; the face cam recognises your eye positions and adjusts the panel so you don't have to sit stock still to use it effectively. When you use it in the dark you can see the IR lamp it lights your face up with so it can still see your eyes as a dim red glow above the screen.

    13. Re:3D... by sethstorm · · Score: 1

      It would be one of the few good cases not to "release the Kraken".

      --
      Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
  6. If you hold it 1.3 mm in from of your face by NotDrWho · · Score: 1

    You can JUST tell the difference between the 4k and 1080p.

    --
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    1. Re:If you hold it 1.3 mm in from of your face by Minwee · · Score: 1

      You will also be able to see the battery-saving non-upscaled video described in the summary, which should be about 1" wide at its native resolution.

    2. Re:If you hold it 1.3 mm in from of your face by gstoddart · · Score: 2

      I'm waiting for the technology to completely fail, and then they'll announce the next thing.

      The people making it are all going "yarg, teh 4K". The average consumer doesn't give a crap.

      Having rode out the first decade of HD waiting until it stopped being a moving target on $10K TVs no sane person was going to buy ... seen the format wars to move on from DVD ... and having see a couple of early adopters discover their TV could no longer display HD because of the copy protection stuff ... I can tell you the average consumer doesn't care about this and doesn't wish to get sucked into another format war.

      The people who care about this would buy anything if you claimed it was new and better.

      The industry is drooling at selling us new TVs, and DVD players, and amps, and monitors, and phones every few years because they've got the new hotness.

      But people didn't care about 3D for the most part, and still don't care about 4K displays. Consumer demand isn't driving this, marketing is.

      My 55" HDTV (without 3D and with no internet connection) is all I want for now. My BluRay player is fine. My amp does what I need it to. The 2x24" 1080p screens on my desk are just fine thanks.

      If someone thinks I'm going to splash out on this stuff every few years because they've started selling it ... they're morons. I mean, come on, 4K on a phone? And this would exhaust your data plan in, what, 30 minutes?

      I have no doubt people will buy this stuff. But I also know they'll likely be wasting their money for little added benefit or to have bragging rights. Pretty much everybody else will view this with complete indifference.

      --
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    3. Re:If you hold it 1.3 mm in from of your face by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      For a while, I was fearing that Joe Sixpack would start to toss his TV every time something new came around, be it 3D TV back in 2010, or 4K pictures. If this gained momentum, I can see TVs not supporting HDCP-September-2015 DRM come 2016, where you have to upgrade your set to HDCP-May-2016 DRM or else the TV won't work with any cable channels or Blu-Ray players.

      TVs are a "good enough" technology as of now, because there is a lot more to 4K than just having more than four thousand glowy dots. Bandwidth comes to mind, so does CPU/GPU power, as well as I/O.

      CPU/GPU power is another thing. Phone makers tout consumer demand for making bigger and bigger devices, but in reality, they have to make larger devices for heat dissipation to handle the faster CPUs/GPUs that customers really want. Adding 4k only means that the 5 inch phone will only get bigger. Battery life is also affected as well.

      The only way I can see devices use 4K constantly is if they were on a relatively fast LAN, with a server able to stream the video using a high quality streaming protocol like ZPEG. For games, something like OnLive, except the render server being on the LAN with the device sending the OpenGL code to it and getting back a video stream. Even then, 4K is a lot of dots, and quality may not be doable even with the device not doing anything CPU related.

      4K is a nice selling point... but at this stage, it is more of a useless gimmick than something someone can use on a day to day basis, especially here in the US where bandwidth is constained. Korea with the ability to do cell phone TV? Different story.

    4. Re:If you hold it 1.3 mm in from of your face by rjstanford · · Score: 2

      The 2x24" 1080p screens on my desk are just fine thanks.

      In fairness, there's a pretty spectacular improvement in moving to a "retina" class display on your using-it-all-the-time monitor. I can see no rational reason for having a higher resolution on my phone than I do on my 27" computer monitor though, even if I do hold it half the distance away.

      --
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    5. Re: If you hold it 1.3 mm in from of your face by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 1

      The market rejected 3d. Maybe the market will jump on the 4k market eventually, in which case those whose eyes are crappy will be able to buy the last 100" TVs to replace our 50" TVs dirt cheap. The older you get, the more size matters more than pixel density.

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    6. Re:If you hold it 1.3 mm in from of your face by Kjella · · Score: 1

      I doubt it will fail even if people don't care simply because once the early adopter premium is over the cost difference is not that huge and unlike 3D there's really no downsides. Checking my local price comparison site here now in Norway there's 84 TV models with 720p, 7 models with 1080i, 445 models with 1080p and 253 with Ultra HD. If I restrict it to 50"+ models UltraHD is already in a majority (188 vs 176). About 4 years ago I bought a 60" 1080p LCD, I see now you can get a 58" UHD LCD for 20% less. Am I going to run out and buy a new one? Hell no, but if it needs replacing they're already at the prices you paid for a 1080p screen five years ago. With UltraHD Blu-Ray launching before Christmas there'll actually be high bandwidth content too, not just Netflix stream. Though I'd rather wait a couple years more until I'm sure any TV I buy will be compatible with the new features like HDR and Rec. 2020. Then again, like computers there's always something better coming.

      --
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    7. Re:If you hold it 1.3 mm in from of your face by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You seem to be out of touch with reality. 4k isn't just a gimmick, and there are no opposing formats to 'go to war' with. There are already 55" TVs for ~$850 that do 4K. A 55" or higher screen is exactly the kind of screen where you're going to notice the difference between HD and UHD.

      Heck, the prices are more or less the same as plain old HD TVs, and 4K hasn't even been in production very long.

      Quick price comparison from newegg:

      Samsung 40" HD TV: $549.99; Samsung 40" UHD TV: $697.99 or Open Box for $528.99
      Samsung 55" HD TV: $721.99; Samsung 55" UHD TV: $997.99 or Refurb as low as $765.99

      I chose Samsung just so we're not comparing apples to oranges between manufacturers. There are cheaper manufacturers for 4K TV sets. But, in both cases with Samsung, you're looking at spending an extra $150 for 4K. In a year or two, I wouldn't be surprised if the HD TV-only models were more expensive or impossible to buy. I'm not saying $150 is trivial - it's basically 20-30% of the cost of the HD TVs being added on - but this is the early adoption period. Prices are expected to be higher, especially with the holiday season right around the corner where sellers can mark things down 10-20% or more for sales. For all practical purposes, this is 4K's 'debut' holiday season. We had 4K last year, and even the year before that, but this year it's financially feasible for a lot of people, and 4K offerings(through Netflix, BluRay, etc) are only increasing at this point.

      In a year or two, there will be no good reason not to buy 4K.

    8. Re: If you hold it 1.3 mm in from of your face by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If somehow the fact that ALL physical displays are inherently limited and the so-called market is just a scam. There is no amount of display that will EVER suffice. That is 4k in a box on sale now.

  7. Not impressive by Joosy · · Score: 1

    Yawn!

    Please wake me when they have a 16K screen.

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    1. Re:Not impressive by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Funny

      640k should be enough for everyone.

  8. Better screen for Project Morpheus by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    They say 8k is the ultimate target for a VR headset.

    1. Re: Better screen for Project Morpheus by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      8k is what is needed to achieve a pixel-per-degree approximately equal to what a typical 24" 1080p monitor has when viewed at a typical comfortable distance.

  9. bah by sociocapitalist · · Score: 1

    I'll wait for the 32k version

    Because we NEED that kind of resolution on a 5.5" screen...

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  10. For the love of christ wwhhyy?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    It's a tiny screen generally viewed from about a foot away. I'd imagine, taking perspective into account, it's around 1/4th of the size of a regular TV yet requires 4 times the pixels?
    Unless you press eyeball to the screen i'd be amazed if you could tell the difference between 1080p and 4k on something that size....but i'm absolutely sure you'll notice the difference in battery life between the resolutions.

  11. Better on a large tablet. by Dusthead+Jr. · · Score: 1

    4K on a phone, meh. 4K on a table with a Wacom stylus, sign me up. Especially if it's as big a Galaxy Note Tab screen.

  12. Does sit also come with a by future+assassin · · Score: 1, Informative

    high definition root kit?

    --
    by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
  13. Screen magnifiers by hawguy · · Score: 2

    Sounds like it's time to bring back the 1940's era TV screen magnifiers so users can take advantage of all of those pixels.

    1. Re:Screen magnifiers by AaronW · · Score: 1

      That reminds me of the fresnel lenses over the screens in the movie Brazil.

      --
      This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
  14. Absolutely ridiculous and unnecessary. by the_humeister · · Score: 1

    Our eyes can't even resolve that kind of resolution at that size. Not to mention more energy needed, which sucks down even more power. How about a 2k screen and a bigger battery instead? People would be happier with that instead of 4k screen.

    1. Re:Absolutely ridiculous and unnecessary. by Merk42 · · Score: 2

      Um excuse me, of course I can resolve that kind of resolution, because my sight is so much better than the ~average~ human. *Mashes phone against eye socket* See??

  15. Pixel Whores by Bugler412 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Same as the MHz wars of yore, or megapixel wars in digitial cameras. Meaningless (beyond a certain usability point) spec chasing by uninformed or hoodwinked general consumers. What possible function other than driving phone sales can 4k on a 5.5" screen have?!

    1. Re:Pixel Whores by fnj · · Score: 1

      Your false parallel is showing. You can always find something more compute-intensive, as much as necessary for any increase in compute-power to make a clear difference.

      But indulgent masturbating with insane excess visual resolution stops making any perceptible difference to anyone at some point well below 4K on a 5.5" display. Hell, for my vision, anything much over 800x480 doesn't give me any gain whatsoever.

    2. Re:Pixel Whores by TeknoHog · · Score: 2

      Your false parallel is showing. You can always find something more compute-intensive, as much as necessary for any increase in compute-power to make a clear difference.

      The gist of "MHz wars" was that smarter, lower-MHz CPUs were actually better at compute-intensive tasks, whereas something like Pentium 4 could only show higher numbers of MHz and watts.

      To me, the real issue is that some of the best technology ends up in dumb consumer devices like phones, while people who write code and perform heavy scientific computing make do with old-school hardware. For example, try finding a laptop with similar efficiency and density of computing power and memory as phones. I'm struggling to understand what people actually do with their 4..8 cores and gigs and gigs of RAM on phones where the OS/UI doesn't let you do any actual computing. It's just perls before hogs.

      --
      Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
    3. Re:Pixel Whores by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      What possible function other than driving phone sales can 4k on a 5.5" screen have?!

      Mounting it in a VR headset. Google cardboard is a fail on my books because of the "low res" screen of my current premium flagship phone.

  16. Upscaling is BS by Pro923 · · Score: 2

    Back in 2009 I bought a beautiful 50" Panasonic 1080p plasma. I (still to this day) absolutely love that TV and the images that it renders. When I used a BluRay for the first time (Actually the only way to fully use the 1080p, as Comcast isn't 1080p), I realized that by standing a couple feet away from the TV I could see things that I wouldn't be able to see at a normal distance. 4k must be amazing - it's like a microscope, as you can see detail that you wouldn't be able to see with the naked eye if you were standing where the camera was.

    About Upscaling - This is the biggest load of crap ever. You can NOT create detail beyond that which you started with. An upscaled picture, displayed at 4k, that was captured with a 1080p camera can't possibly be any more accurate than the same picture displayed on a 1080p TV. Of course, the masses don't understand this. This seems to be the "MO" of most technology these days, since non-tech-savvy people are using a lot of tech gadgets - you can say meaningless things that sound "good", and people will accept them as "good" since they don't know what the hell they've really got.

    1. Re:Upscaling is BS by danbob999 · · Score: 1

      I agree that upscaling is BS. Upscaling is also what a computer's LCD does when watching a 720x480 YouTube vido full screen. It still looks like crap.

    2. Re:Upscaling is BS by fnj · · Score: 2

      Actually, proper interpolative upscaling reduces spatial quantization "jaggies", which means you get a more accurate representation of the original real-world view. Yeah, bog-stupid upscaling by just duplicating every pixel 2 times horizontally and 2 times vertically does not do anything whatsoever for resolution.

    3. Re:Upscaling is BS by fnj · · Score: 1

      Hyperbole warning! 720p video at normal viewing distance is anything but crap. It's very slightly less perfect than 1080p.

    4. Re:Upscaling is BS by fnj · · Score: 4, Informative

      You do understand that 1080i has precisely the same spatial resolution as 1080p, right? There is no field fade (whatsoever) on an LCD, as there is on CRT. And the temporal resolution depends on the respective frame rates. 1080i is 60 fps in the US and other NTSC-legacy areas, and 50 in Europe and other PAL-legacy areas.

      1080p may be either 24, 30, or 60 fps in the US, and 25 or 50 in Europe. The lower figures are the norm for film-derived material, since film has 24 fps. The lower figures give you in fact a LOWER temporal resolution for 1080p than for 1080i. The higher figures give you the SAME temporal resolution for 1080p as for 1080i. The difference is that in 1080i, only 1/2 the 2,073,600 pixels change every 1/fps seconds, and in 1080p all of the 2,073,600 pixels change every 1/fps seconds.[*]

      In scenes with no motion, there is no difference in image quality whatsoever. None. 1080p and 1080i give identical images. Only in scenes with significantly rapid motion does 1080i introduce noticeable artifacts that aren't there with 1080p.

      [*] The actual situation is modified by various motion-smoothing video-processing algorithms employed in any good-quality interlaced display.

    5. Re:Upscaling is BS by Pro923 · · Score: 1

      Are you basically saying to make pixels by averaging the color of the adjacent ones?

      Granted, human eyes at normal distances can't use the kind of detail that these new TVs can deliver, but I just don't see how you could get a "more accurate representation of the original real-world view" by adding things that aren't really there. I mean, our eyes would do the same work at the TV screen the same way they would if we were positioned where the camera was. Wouldn't they? I could be missing something...

    6. Re:Upscaling is BS by Pro923 · · Score: 1

      I agree with this... But we were never arguing "i" versus "p"

    7. Re:Upscaling is BS by danbob999 · · Score: 1

      720x480 is 480p, not 720p. I don't know who invented the "p" denomination, but it was a stupid idea.

    8. Re:Upscaling is BS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't know who invented the "p" denomination, but it was a stupid idea.

      People in the television business, where progressive vs. interlaced is quite a big deal.

    9. Re:Upscaling is BS by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 1

      >About Upscaling - This is the biggest load of crap ever. You can NOT create detail beyond that which you started with. An upscaled picture, displayed at 4k, that was captured with a 1080p camera can't possibly be any more accurate than the same picture displayed on a 1080p TV. Of course, the masses don't understand this. This seems to be the "MO" of most technology these days, since non-tech-savvy people are using a lot of tech gadgets - you can say meaningless things that sound "good", and people will accept them as "good" since they don't know what the hell they've really got.

      Interesting thing about visuals and upsampling/interpolation. You can actually end up with a BETTER image (visually smoother, cleaner) when you upsample and interpolate. In fact, that's the standard approach in ultrasound - capture the raw data, use it to create an upsampled/interpolated set of data, and then do all displays and calculations in the new data. The only reason you use the original data is to give you something to upsample. And empirical, double-blind tests in medical situations proves that ultrasound technicians regularly prefer the upsampled data as well as are able to better diagnose issues.

      Human perception is pretty interesting. Building in data between points (much like oversampling and interpolating DACs in audio) can have an actual measurable, repeatable improvement in the perceived results.

      --
      Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
    10. Re:Upscaling is BS by Rockoon · · Score: 1

      Are you basically saying to make pixels by averaging the color of the adjacent ones?

      No, he isn't.

      If its surprising to you that its possible to do better prediction of the missing information between the pixels of images than various kinds of interpolations (such as bilinear (aka "averaging" for 2x), bicubic, etc..), then its because you are wholly ignorant on the subject. Amazing that you jumped in to discuss a subject that you are wholly ignorant on.

      If it were purely random data then your from-ignorance consideration of the subject would have some weight, but it isn't arbitrary data. Nobody spends their time looking at images of random data. The images we capture with photographic equipment have high degrees of coherence between neighboring scales (because thats the way the universe is,) and that necessarily includes the scales just above the Nyquist frequency.

      Nobody is suggesting red dwarfs "enhance!" is possible, but a bit of upscaling can be done a lot better than simple interpolations.

      --
      "His name was James Damore."
    11. Re:Upscaling is BS by danbob999 · · Score: 1

      yeah, but the horizontal resolution is also a big deal and they forgot that information.

    12. Re:Upscaling is BS by adolf · · Score: 1

      Furthermore, there is zero (none) difference between 1080p and 1080i when watching 24 FPS film content, as displayed on an LCD -- whether there is motion or not. The same can also be said of 1080p30 and 1080i60 for content that is of 30 FPS.

      --
      Kid-proof tablet..
    13. Re:Upscaling is BS by dave420 · · Score: 1

      It's a big deal to you, I'm sure, but in broadcasting it's not as important as you seem to think. The fact there are 4:3 and 16:9 broadcasts means horizontal resolution is not something one can readily rely on.

    14. Re:Upscaling is BS by danbob999 · · Score: 1

      It's not because it varies that it is not important.

      A 100x720p movie would suck a lot more than a 1280x720i movie

    15. Re:Upscaling is BS by Pro923 · · Score: 1

      Ok. So, technobabble aside. I'd like to know HOW? for a simple example, suppose we have 3 pixels horizontally. Pixel 1 is blue (RGB(0,0,255)), pixel 3 is green (RGB(0,255,0)). Tell me what pixel 2 should be?

    16. Re:Upscaling is BS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A host file.

    17. Re:Upscaling is BS by Rockoon · · Score: 1

      its not technobabble, and your question is evidence that you dont understand even a tiny little bit of it.

      --
      "His name was James Damore."
  17. 8K/eye by LionKimbro · · Score: 2

    "To get to the point where you can't see pixels, I think some of the speculation is you need about 8K per eye in our current field of view [for the Rift]." -- Palmer Luckey, the founder and creator of the Oculus Rift

  18. Camera! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Check out the camera!!!
    And I do want to have a slide-on lenticular - that would be cool (so 1080p in 3d...).

  19. I got a 4K TV Yesterday by jeffmflanagan · · Score: 4, Informative

    I did some side-by-side comparisons between a year-old Samsung 1080p set, and a new Samsung 4K set.

    NetFlix 4K looks a lot better than their 1080p service, but just like the 1080p service, the video is over-compressed, so fine detail is missing. YouTube 4K videos look amazing.

    1. Re:I got a 4K TV Yesterday by Pro923 · · Score: 1

      What's the horizontal resolution on a 4k set?

      I'm curious as to what the bandwidth would be for uncompressed 4k video.

      Also, I'm clueless as I don't have anything 4k - what's the Blu-ray equivalent for 4k? I guess you'd need that to truly see how good your TV is... I can't imagine that youtube is streaming anything that doesn't have a lot of loss... (Again, I'm speculating here...)

    2. Re:I got a 4K TV Yesterday by wbo · · Score: 1

      4k video has a resolution of 4096x2160. Unfortunately true 4k TVs are very hard to find outside of professional monitors.

      Most TVs that I have been able to find are now 4k but rather UHD which has a resolution of 3840x2160 and usually crop the left and right sides of the image when displaying real DCI 4k content.

      I suspect the problem is only going to get worse over time because I doubt very many consumers understand the difference in aspect ratio between DCI 4k and UHD. A 4k display can display UHD content without any quality loss or cropping but the reverse is not true.

    3. Re:I got a 4K TV Yesterday by Pro923 · · Score: 2

      Sounds like how they took the computer monitor screens and used "1080p" hype to reduce the average resolution of a screen from 1600x1200 to 1600x1080. Whenever I go looking for a monitor now, I spend lots of time to find the ones with 1200 vertical pixels versus 1080.

    4. Re:I got a 4K TV Yesterday by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      An article about 4K on a phone and you're still butthurt over 1200 vertical pixels?

      Update your rant to make it a bit current at least, grandpa.

    5. Re:I got a 4K TV Yesterday by Pro923 · · Score: 1

      yea... I'm all about real estate when it comes to my monitors. For real... I'm dying to get a new big monitor with something_x2160 pixels, but don't have the cash to fork over for it. As a software developer, resolution means a lot when using an IDE like visual studio - I like to have all my debugging side windows open.

      Even for browsing the web, I like to have a lot of vertical resolution to be able to see full pictures, and not have to scroll a lot. Real estate baby, real estate..

  20. 4K is stupid by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    comparing 4K and 1080p is stupid. 1080p is the vertical pixels, and the Horizontal pixels differ because of different aspect ratios. Now 4K is the Horizontal pixels, and unless the new standard has all the same aspect ratios. It does not make any sense because with different aspect ratios with 4K, the vertical pixels would be different. People are already dumbing down in American society. This will just be more confusing for the stupid people.

  21. Optional accessory... by erp_consultant · · Score: 3, Insightful

    To go along with the 4K display Sony will be offering an optional 30lb. battery (with an available backpack). A Sony spokesperson, when asked to comment on this, confirmed that the optional battery should allow users an entire day of phone use without the need for a recharge.

    "These things are flying off the shelf" according to I.P. Nightly of Sony. "Our customers are demanding 4K screens for their phones and, by gosh, we have delivered in a big, big way!" claims Nightly.

    Stay tuned for more news as it develops....

    1. Re:Optional accessory... by tglx · · Score: 1

      "These things are flying off the shelf" according to I.P. Nightly of Sony.

      "4K replay is causing the 4 fans to run full speed. The ventilation slots are at the bottom of the device so it starts to take off the shelf like a copter" Nightly explained.

  22. Wrong aspect ratio... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Not that it has stopped some, but a 16:9 display in a phone is not optimal for VR. It is difficult to drive such a display while doing something interesting, and a phone just doesn't have the CPU to do it locally, or the bandwidth to do it remotely.

    An wired 8:3 would display would be a much better fit, as it matches the human visual field more closely, and wouldn't require batteries or other useless hardware.

    1. Re:Wrong aspect ratio... by gl4ss · · Score: 1

      you use the lenses in vr displays to stretch the 16:9 to fill the fov.

      like, this screen in a rift v1 would make it usable for almost anything.

      but this screen on a friggin phone? fairly useless. the 1600 x 2560 pixels on the note4/edge is enough to not see the pixels on the huge display 20 cm away..

      --
      world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
  23. How is that possible? by Overzeetop · · Score: 1

    Not the screen or the phone, but how is it possible to play games on a 4k phone at any reasonable speed. Are they 16x upscaling?

    I ask because we see how 4k multi-head (say 3x4k, or even 8k) gaming is nearly impossible without 1000W of parallel GPU horsepower and a shitload of GPU RAM, and even then it's not great. Yet you can fit 4K into a 5W thermal envelope in a phone?

    --
    Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
    1. Re:How is that possible? by Bob+the+Super+Hamste · · Score: 1

      The simple answer is people are stupid. Just like people who think that a higher megapixel count on a phone some how means that it will take better pictures, even though we are long past the diffraction limited point. Yes the screen is 4k but don't expect to render a AAA game at 4k on that hardware, 4k angry birds sure.

      --
      Time to offend someone
  24. That's great and all but does it have rootkit? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    4K resolution is great but I wouldn't buy if it doesn't come with rootkit preinstalled.

  25. This would actually be useful if... by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 1

    Does Android have some equivalent of Apple Airplay, so that you can beam the display of your phone over the local WiFi network to a bigscreen equipped with the appropriate streaming box?

  26. A step in the right direction by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm almost able to use my microscope to see the simulated paramecium, but they are still too grainy. It's a step in the right direction, but we can do better!

  27. Higher resolution than reality by iTrawl · · Score: 1

    Futurama

    --
    "Everybody's naked underneath" -- The Doctor
  28. Fuck this... we doing 7 blades! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Fuck this... we doing 7 blades!

  29. I can think of only one use for this by DrXym · · Score: 1
    4K might be useful if you were using Google Cardboard where pixels get magnified quite significantly. Maybe that's what Sony ultimately intend to use the screen for in their PS4 VR headset.

    Otherwise not so much. It just means the DPI goes into stupid territory and the phone OS ends up having to upscale apps to stop them looking like postage stamps.

  30. Sounds good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And good for that 1yr purchase, cause every Sony phone that was later updated to the next version of Android plainly sucked.

    Sony makes good phones that Android (and the carriers) brings down.

  31. VR by xettera · · Score: 1

    Almost perfect for Google Cardboard. Wake me up when they release 8k screens (4k x 4k for each eye)