On Fri, June 6, 2008 3:39 pm, Carsten Haitzler wrote: > we can just drive the vga screen at qvga. no need for scaling - just > change the > output at the lcd controller level. but it is a waste to pay for a vga > screen > when we won't use it. also it does look "blocky". it isn't about glamo or > not - > it's separate to glamo entirely. simply - how important is a vga screen... > really? how many people out there can really see the difference? be really > honest. stop thinking "my specs are bigger than your specs". scan u REALLY > see > all the pixels on a vga screen of that size. i bet to most people its all > a > blur - a qvga screen looks identical to them. only to a minority who have > very > good eyesight does it really make a difference, but this is just my "bet". > i'm > asking the question - and hoping for real honest answers.
Well, it's hard to know without having an actual device to look at, but I'll try.... My notebook has a 15 inch 1920x1200 monitor which comes to 147dpi. The Freerunner is 285dpi, the pixels are very close to half the width/ height of my pixels. So at first I thought "wow, that's tiny. I don't think I need them *that* small" - and I have better than average eye sight. Then I resized my browser to 640x480 and found I could read it quite well, though lots of web pages don't quite fit. I took a screenshot of the window and displayed it at 50% in the GIMP. So presumably that is how the image could look on the Freerunner. If I hold this image at the same distance from my eye that I usually use a notebook (say 55cm) the text looks like it would be too small to comfortably read, though the reduction of resolution has made it blurry and I cannot be sure. If I hold it at the distance that I would typically read a book, which is closer to 35cm, the text is still a bit small, but I think I would be quite happy reading it - except that the low resolution has made it quite blurry. If it were still 640x480, but the same size I think I could read it quite happily. So my conclusion is that for reading textual content, the higher resolution probably is worth it for me. I doubt it would be of much value for photo for videos. I just tried watching a video at [EMAIL PROTECTED], and it was quite acceptable for the physical size. The question then becomes - how often will I be reading pages of text on my Freerunner. I really don't know. However maps are very similar to textual content - sharp contrast and the potential for lots of information in a small space. I tried a similar experiment comparing a google-maps image 320x240*147dpi and simulated [EMAIL PROTECTED], and the 320x240 felt very constrained - not enough information on the display. The 640x480 felt more comfortable and - I think - would have been readable if I had the real resolution. Maybe you could ask again we have all had our Freerunners for a couple of months. What was the story with 320x240x25fps video again? Is it possible with the available memory bandwidth? NeilBrown _______________________________________________ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community