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

[Ben Burdette]

My personal use cases for higher resolution:

- programming on the freerunner.  I've been learning Haskell, I want to 
get ghci or hugs on there and hack around with that.  Also I'm thinking 
about running the glade editor on there, if that's possible.

- using the freerunner as a remote control for amarok.  I want to be 
able to see more than just a couple of songs of my collection.  
Hopefully the web-based amarok control is usable on 640x480.

- GPS mapping.  The more map, the better this is. 

- Calendar.  I've used the palm calendar for a long time, and its just 
not that useful for seeing what's coming up at a high level.  You end up 
having to step through one day at a time to see what events are on there.

- Photo viewer.  Hook up the freerunner to a digital camera and use it 
to view the photos at a higher resolution than the camera screen.  By 
definition pointless unless you have higher resolution than the camera 
viewfinder.

Most of these are not impossible with lower resolution - I used to do 
programming on my palm III which is only 160x160 I think.  However, its 
much nicer on something with more real estate.  Also, having more 
resolution allows us to use more programs that were not designed for 
openmoko without excessive scrolling, like the glade editor.  To me 
these are real reasons to have more resolution, its not just eye candy 
and pointless feature-itis.

Not that QVGA is a bad idea though - I'd like to see a low cost openmoko 
phone at some point, something directed at the low end cellphone market 
perhaps.  If that was the only open phone around, I might even buy one.  
Given the choice though, I'll definitely spring for the high res option.