QVGA V/s VGA for GTA03 (was something about yummy CPU-GPU combos!)

Ken Young rtm at cfa.harvard.edu
Fri Jun 6 19:56:39 CEST 2008


 Carsten Haitzler <raster at openmoko.org> writes:

> but as i said - i'm just looking to see what people think. and why.
> i'm very interested in "why". why is a vga screen so important? can
> you REALLY see all the pixels? can you REALLY read an 8-point font on
> that screen at that size? (be honest!). from what i notice of people
> such a font is just a blurry mess
> to them and they are always increasing font sizes to be able to read
> anything, thus why spend so many pixels on it? but if you really can see
> that well - it does make sense. at least if u are always looking at
> static content. i content moves/animates, it's useless again.

Personally, I could care less if the OM phones never have the capability
to play video at all.   I must use my smart phone to provide remote
assistance for an astronomical observatory after normal working hours.
I need to be able to run applications that show 80 column text displays.
Believe it or not, pssh on a Treo with a 320x320 display can actually
display 80 columns of text without scrolling, but the font is challenging
to read, to say the least.   What I can't do on my Treo is display the
output of our spectrometer.   There just aren't enough pixels.   But it is
possible to observe the spectrometer output on the neo1973.   It's
extremely cool - the neo1973 is all you need to successfully control and
monitor a 360 ton telescope thousands of miles away.

My ancient eyes barely have the ability to focus at all, but my eyesight
is nearly perfect for an object 15 cm in front of my face.   I can
definitely see a big difference in image quality between photos
displayed on my 320x320 pixel Treo, and the neo1973.   The neo's display
is far superior.   I can see pixelation on my Treo very clearly, but
not on the neo.   I really, honest-to-god, can see the difference
when I put them down in front of me, side by side.   I'd be happy to pay
$300 more for a phone just to have VGA instead of QVGA.

If QVGA is to be offered on a low-end OM phone, that's great, as long as
OM still offers higher resolution on their more expensive products.   But
I'd be very sad to see OM's flagship phone, which already has some
pretty outdated features such as USB 1.1 and a rather old ARM core, drop
its resolution below that found on many (most?) modern smart phones.
I'm happy to trade off some degree of hardware obsolescence for openness,
but surely the hardware platform shouldn't be moving *backwards*.
Otherwise, why not just restart the production line for the Greenphone?

Ken Young





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