DailyTech - Sharp Aims 5-Inch, 443 PPI 1920x1080 Pixel Displays at Smartphone Market

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Gadgets Sharp Aims 5-Inch, 443 PPI 1920x1080 Pixel Displays at Smartphone Market
Jason Mick (Blog) - October 1, 2012 11:14 AM

82 comment(s) - last by Yojimbo.. on Oct 2 at 7:28 PM

New display will vie with LG, Samsung, and others for dominance

While Samsung Electronics Comp., Ltd. (KSC:005930) currently dominates the thriving smartphone commodity display market, a number of Asian rivals are aiming to unseat the South Korean giant. Among them is Japan's Sharp Corp. (TYO:6753).

Sharp announced this week that it would be mass-producing a monstrous 443 ppi (pixels-per-inch) 1920x1080 pixel smartphone screen. The 5-inch screen could appear in devices as early as the holiday season, but will likely show up in greater quantities next year. The new display features a brand new pixel technology dubbed CG-Silicon, which Sharp promises brings smartphone displays in line with their full-size counterparts. Sharp's display likely makes use of the company's new "Igzo" power efficient thin-display tech, as well.

The release marks the latest round in a game of brinksmanship by Japan and South Korea's top display makers. Early this year South Korea's LG Electronics Inc. (KSC:066570) announced production of a similar 5-inch 440 ppi unit, which will likely launch in a similar window. LG calls its display technology "Retina" displays.

_{Sharp is thinking small with its latest 5-inch 1080 display. [Image Source: IntoMobile]}

Sharp is reportedly looking to displace LG in Apple, Inc.'s (AAPL) coveted iPhone, using a slightly smaller display unit. The company announced in August that it would be shipping displays for the iPhone 5 en masse. LG announced similar shipments, indicating that Apple would split its demand between the two manufacturers.

A third player is Japan's Toshiba Corp. (TYO:6502), which recently demoed a 498 ppi 6-inch display. Toshiba's display could be the most impressive of the bunch -- unfortunately it's not yet quite ready for the market.

Sources: Sharp, UnWired View

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RE: Pointless

By someguy123 on 10/1/2012 8:26:19 PM , Rating: 2

high PPI is not going to magically fix AA problems. that's essentially bruteforce supersampling. the whole reason the industry dropped FSAA in favor of multisampling is because it was incredibly resource heavy. If you are running a game at an obscene resolution you are also drastically increasing the computational complexity. Basically trading object, shading, physics and AI complexity for AA.

Text rendering already looks pretty good on cellphones. I've gone through the galaxy S to S3 and for text rendering the difference is hilariously marginal (400 to 720).

blu-ray and HDDVD introduced higher bitrate mpeg standards and h264 for long running video on top of increased resolution. You're also talking gigantic screens versus 3~5 inches of cellphone real estate. Even with all this it was a tough sell for years.

Increasing resolution is only the logical step forward when we have so much excess battery and computational power that it becomes relatively negligible. I don't see the point for years to come considering the size of these screens and general battery life.

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