Related
Just thought I'd post another preview of the Arc.
The only thing new that I saw in this review when compared to the others is the display and some camera info. (I'll try to keep my SE opinions out of this).
Specifically...
The 'Bravia Engine' pretty much looks like it's just an advanced driver. You know how nVidia has their Digital Vibrance option in their drivers? It adjusts the contrast and color so that they appear to 'pop' better. The Bravia Engine looks like it does it on the fly, that's it. Other than that and the 16m colors, it has the same deficiencies as the current X10 LCD panel. Same viewing angles, etc. I thought that they would at least have put in an S-IPS LCD or something.
I also thought the camera was going to be better than the X10's camera but it doesn't look it (at least in this stage). It's still good. The backlit sensor seems to improve night shots but there's still the chance of getting a yellowish picture (nowhere near as bad as the iphone). If you compare the standard shots at GSMarena, the X10 photos look better (way to sharp vs not sharp enough?). Colors are a little better but sometimes too much. It seems the biggest improvement is that video will do 30 fps.
I'm thinking about getting an Omnia 7 and I have a few questions about the device that I was hoping you could help me with:
(1) How is the call quality? I saw a review that made this out to be the biggest gripe with the phone.
(2) How good is the (A)GPS? I recall seeing complaints about it. It is pretty important for me that the GPS is fast and accurate. At least not worse than my current $100 nokia symbian s60v5 handset, which has in fact been very reliable.
(3) How annoying is the amoled screen? I know it looks great in terms of color, contrast and viewing angles, but I've seen some seriously angry threads elsewhere regarding the faux resolution issue with pentile matrix. 653x392 is it?
(4) Also, can you view the screen with polarized sunglasses in both portrait and landscape? I reckon it would go black at some angle, but is it a clever 45 degrees like the Iphone or 90 degrees like for instance the ipad? (youtube.com/watch?v=78GdcXCM9nk&feature=related)?
(5) I've seen a lot of 720p video recording samples and they all seem a bit jerky? From what I understand it is a CPU limitation? I also recall SonyEricsson had a similar problem with the same CPU on one of their handsets and they improved it slightly by tweaking the codec to dynamically lower recording quality? Anything like that happening on WP7 or Omnia 7? Any other fixes?
I'm thinking about getting an Omnia 7 and I have a few questions about the device that I was hoping you could help me with:
I think you should wait a little, to know when new devices will appear. (with Mango update comes new devices)
(1) How is the call quality? I saw a review that made this out to be the biggest gripe with the phone.
Phone call quality : quite good but not excellent, even with all firmware updates.
(2) How good is the (A)GPS? I recall seeing complaints about it. It is pretty important for me that the GPS is fast and accurate. At least not worse than my current $100 nokia symbian s60v5 handset, which has in fact been very reliable.
For me A-GPS is good, fast and accurate
(3) How annoying is the amoled screen? I know it looks great in terms of color, contrast and viewing angles, but I've seen some seriously angry threads elsewhere regarding the faux resolution issue with pentile matrix. 653x392 is it?
Wait for a Super AMOLED PLUS (the "plus" is the big difference : http://www.oled-info.com/super-amoled-plus-resolution-explained
(4) Also, can you view the screen with polarized sunglasses in both portrait and landscape? I reckon it would go black at some angle, but is it a clever 45 degrees like the Iphone or 90 degrees like for instance the ipad? (youtube.com/watch?v=78GdcXCM9nk&feature=related)?
I have polarized glasses : it's black about 45°.
(5) I've seen a lot of 720p video recording samples and they all seem a bit jerky? From what I understand it is a CPU limitation? I also recall SonyEricsson had a similar problem with the same CPU on one of their handsets and they improved it slightly by tweaking the codec to dynamically lower recording quality? Anything like that happening on WP7 or Omnia 7? Any other fixes?
720p is a litte laggy, new devices (with new processor like the MSM8255) will not have any problem
Thanks, I appreciate you taking the time to answer my questions. And yes, I am waiting for the specs (and prices) of the new phones before I act. But I doubt that any of the new phones, like the Sea Ray, will be anywhere near €200 like the Omnia 7 is now on Ebay. Hence my ambivalence.
Is it still wise to get the Omnia 7? Or just wait for the Mango devices?
(1) In the UK on Three, the call quality is just fine, its better than my friends Blackberry Torch. Apparently there is a new Radio software that should improve it for everyone.
(2) The AGPS is ok I suppose, It works. GPS initially takes a minute or two (the VERY first time its used but afterwards, it gets a lock within 15 seconds) Accuracy is fine.
(3) The AMOLED screen has amazing quality but when looking at the screen VERY closely, the straight lines are very slightly jaggy. All AMOLED screens are arranged in the pentile pattern. The Super AMOLED Plus screens have the pixels arranged in a more traditional manner. However its not much of an issue for me, its probably wise to have a look at a Super AMOLED screen and judge for yourself!
(4) Not sure really, I can view the phone fine with 3D cinema glasses to pretty much most angles as without.
(5) I've shot a 720p video and it seemed fine to me! I doubt its a CPU limitation, its most likely the software which needs tweaking. Again, its probably wise to test one of these devices out to see how it performs. I think only one WP7 device has the MSM Snapdragon (which has an Adreno 205 GPU instead of our Adreno 200. Also its a die shrink which would use slightly less power)
Obviously, the ipad 3's new retina screen resolution can't be topped, whereas samsung's super amoled has better contrast ratios. Which screen will be more impressive in your opinion once the ipad 3 arrives in stores this friday?
I was kinda wondering this too. I watched a live feed about the reveal, and Im more than happy with my 7.7. Its still the best 7" tablet out there, and Ive never been an apple fan. And doubt I ever will be.
I have an iPad 3 on the way because I have more money than sense. If people are nice I will do a side by side screen comparison.
burhanistan said:
I have an iPad 3 on the way because I have more money than sense. If people are nice I will do a side by side screen comparison.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
rofl, I felt like I had more money than sense when I bought the 7.7 to replace my 8.9, but even though the iPad3 is probably going to look amazing, I can't stomach the Apple ecosystem. I got rid of my iPod, which was my first ever mp3 player, maybe six years ago after a four year run or so. I can only pray that some day, iTunes will rot in the special hell it deserves.
Whether people are nice enough for the comparison, thanks for a good laugh.
I love the 7.7 screen, I mostly use it for movie/tv watching, cant see myself ever going back to lcd panels. I had an ipad 2 and some archos devices before but they dont come close to the display quality of the 7.7.
And the 7.7 formfactor is perfect for me.
Look forward to seeing the ipad 3 screen in action
High resolution is nice, but almost all content will be blown up, not native. The dummied up examples that tech sites keep using are full of crap. Until 2048*1536 becomes default standard, i'll take amoled & native.
Wish I had more money than sense, LOL. I had to return my 7.0 plus, and a blackberry playbook to afford my 7.7. And it was worth every cent!
CBONE said:
High resolution is nice, but almost all content will be blown up, not native. The dummied up examples that tech sites keep using are full of crap. Until 2048*1536 becomes default standard, i'll take amoled & native.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
We shall see, but I think older apps will just display in their native resolution rather than be upscaled. Where the "Retina" display will shine will be with text and photos.
I won't have time to video a proper comparison until maybe the week after the new iPad comes in, but I will show them both with a PDF, the XDA website, a 1080p video, and maybe Osmos HD or something. Any requests?
burhanistan said:
We shall see, but I think older apps will just display in their native resolution rather than be upscaled. Where the "Retina" display will shine will be with text and photos.
I won't have time to video a proper comparison until maybe the week after the new iPad comes in, but I will show them both with a PDF, the XDA website, a 1080p video, and maybe Osmos HD or something. Any requests?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Maybe a side by side comparison under direct sunlight?
CBONE said:
High resolution is nice, but almost all content will be blown up, not native. The dummied up examples that tech sites keep using are full of crap. Until 2048*1536 becomes default standard, i'll take amoled & native.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What content are you talking about? Certainly games for iPad2 will not be rendered at the full resolution, and it will probably be a while before many games are actually written for 2048x1536. Still, images and video--whose most common resolution nowadays, 1280x720, is already larger than the iPad2, not to mention 1080p blu-ray-sourced video--will certainly be able to take advantage. That's not even to mention the massive readability benefit for small text on web pages and documents.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not going to buy an iPad3 and I am never going to give up my Super AMOLED+ on my 7.7 until there is a WUXGA or better 8-9" tablet, but downplaying the benefit of a high-res screen just strikes me as foolish.
I wonder if a 720p content would still look good on that really high resolution
Last few week I've almost sell-off my iPad2 for a Galaxy TAB 7.7.
Now I'm stucked and in the same situation like lots of other people.
If Samsung could replace all their Galaxy TAB 8.9 & 10.1 LCD screen with a Super AMOLED FHD screen, then I'll buy 1. Until then, I'm getting the new iPad this weekend.
NewForce said:
Last few week I've almost sell-off my iPad2 for a Galaxy TAB 7.7.
Now I'm stucked and in the same situation like lots of other people.
If Samsung could replace all their Galaxy TAB 8.9 & 10.1 LCD screen with a Super AMOLED FHD screen, then I'll buy 1. Until then, I'm getting the new iPad this weekend.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I can only imagine the possible technical difficulties when making 8.9 and 10.1 SuperAMOLED screens, they are even having issues with the 4.65 on the Nexus, 5.3 on the Note. All are quality related issues.
Although I really hate the closed system of iOS, but after using my friends ipad2 for a week, Im starting to like the tablet specific apps it has as compared to andriod.
At least with IPS, I only need to check for backlight bleeding, though Im worried what will happen to the 720p playback of my files since they are now going to be upscaled.
IMO, the New iPad's huge screen resolution is a cool idea and all, but for me, the 7.7's form factor and colour/contrast ratio are the biggest selling points (apart from NOT being Apple of course!).
I mean, if Apple is stating that a "Retina" display is determined by a ratio of viewing distance vs the ability to discern individual pixels, well then by that right (at least for me), the 7.7 already fit's that category under most viewing scenarios (again, for me).
In other words, under most circumstances, I already can't discern individual pixels on my 7.7 anyway, so just adding more of them isn't going to make a difference to me.
What does make a difference, is the superior contrast ratio of SAMOLED. Being that the New iPad's retina display is still an LCD, it is therefore very unlikely that it will be able to compete with SAMOLED in the contrast ratio department.
I suppose the ultimate display would be something of a hybrid of SAMOLED and IPS LCD, where you might have each individual pixel backlit by a single LED.
obviously it's going to be the new ipad there is no contest. I love android thats why i have a the 7.7 but i also love the ipad infact ill be getting my new ipad 64gb 3g at&t and a white 16gb wifi for my wife.
With that insane resolution and a quadcore gpu with buttery smooth OS i'll be a one happy camper.
Jade Eyed Wolf said:
IMO, the New iPad's huge screen resolution is a cool idea and all, but for me, the 7.7's form factor and colour/contrast ratio are the biggest selling points (apart from NOT being Apple of course!).
I mean, if Apple is stating that a "Retina" display is determined by a ratio of viewing distance vs the ability to discern individual pixels, well then by that right (at least for me), the 7.7 already fit's that category under most viewing scenarios (again, for me).
In other words, under most circumstances, I already can't discern individual pixels on my 7.7 anyway, so just adding more of them isn't going to make a difference to me.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
For you, maybe. The pixels and rasterized fonts are quite visible to me on the 7.7 from arm's length.
Mind you, I quite like the 7.7 and am not going to get rid of it (Heck, I'll probably keep my now "old" 10.1). But, there will be lots of areas where it simply won't hold a candle to the new screen on the iPad.
burhanistan said:
For you, maybe. The pixels and rasterized fonts are quite visible to me on the 7.7 from arm's length.
Mind you, I quite like the 7.7 and am not going to get rid of it (Heck, I'll probably keep my now "old" 10.1). But, there will be lots of areas where it simply won't hold a candle to the new screen on the iPad.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Fair enough. I guess my point was that contrast, colour, and brightness are more important factors to me than sheer resolution. In that sense, especially with contrast, the new iPad display can't hold a candle up to SAMOLED+. Each one has its advantages I suppose.
teiglin said:
What content are you talking about? Certainly games for iPad2 will not be rendered at the full resolution, and it will probably be a while before many games are actually written for 2048x1536. Still, images and video--whose most common resolution nowadays, 1280x720, is already larger than the iPad2, not to mention 1080p blu-ray-sourced video--will certainly be able to take advantage. That's not even to mention the massive readability benefit for small text on web pages and documents.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Web pages and flowable documents should look great, as should images. Video will have to be scaled or be too small. The algorithm for stretching video won't be perfect. Same situation as SD video on an HDTV. They won't look the way they were meant to be viewed (inferior IMO) and will need adjustments. Games will need to have the increased resolution taken into account or look crap when they get stretched. Apps will be in the same situation.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not going to buy an iPad3 and I am never going to give up my Super AMOLED+ on my 7.7 until there is a WUXGA or better 8-9" tablet, but downplaying the benefit of a high-res screen just strikes me as foolish.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
High-res is great when everything takes it into account or content that isn't resolution dependent. There is this assumption with ipad3 that everything will just automagically look incredible.
Well, all of this is just speculation anyway. We shall see soon enough.
7.7 : Super AMOLED Plus
ipad3 : Retina Display (same as Iphone 4)
7.7 : 1280 x 800 pixels, 7.7 inches - (~ 196 ppi density)
ipad 3 : 1536 x 2048 pixels, 9.7 inches (~264 ppi density)
7.7 : Single Core GPU Mali-400
ipad 3 : Quad Core PowerVR SGX543MP4
i think we should say (even it's hard) apple bite Samsung now *sobbing
=============================================
but i'm still loyal with my GT-P6800
this is my first tablet and i love the size, the screen, the premium of silver metal back side
I hear they lower the res from 1440 to 1080 in the G3 so is there a way to lower the screen resolution in the G2 from 1080p to 720p?
I couldn't find anything about it in search.
Screen resolution of an lCD is a physical attribute, it cannot be changed. You can change the software to renderer the image so you would get a lower resolution data to show, and since android source is available, it is technically possible. I doubt anybody tried, because our device has a adequite computing power to generate 1080p images. On the other hand, lg g3 has almost same power, but it displays almost double size image. For g2, it won't worth the lost of quality.
The issue is, since LCD will display it on its physical resolution(there is no other way), your image quality will be far worse than the down sampled version. For example, if you render the sceen at 720p, and show it on a 720p 5.2" display, you will lose ~%55 of your data, but since you render your source on this resolution, will be sharp, just won't have so much detail. If you display this 720p image in 1080p display however, screen resolution cannot be changed, so your screen will try to calculate the missing %55, and then show you the result. Since there is no original data, it assumes the missing pixels were like the ones around them, which means your result will be blurry.
As a side note, old tube displays does not have a resolution, they can support various resolutions. We used to set resolution to our taste between speed and detail back then.
enigmanp covered the technical aspect of it and I'll just follow up with my own personal experience.
I had a chinese android tablet running at 2048x1536 resolution, the same resolution commonly found in iPad tablets.
My Android tablet sometimes perform sluggish because of the high resolution. Even though the CPU was a quad core 1Ghz, it's still chinese and the GPU wasn't great either. So I lowered the resolution and everything was blurred and not sharp at all (due to the reasons enigmamp explained above). I DID notice an improvement in overall speed, but apps started misbehaving and it was all a huge mess.
Now the only reason I did that was because I found my tablet lacking smoothness/performance. I just don't quite see why you'd want to do that on the G2 since the CPU and GPU can clearly handle even the most intensive 3D games on high detail. Could you please explain?
vPro97 said:
Could you please explain?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Mainly to save on battery.
enginmanap said:
Screen resolution of an lCD is a physical attribute, it cannot be changed. You can change the software to renderer the image so you would get a lower resolution data to show, and since android source is available, it is technically possible. I doubt anybody tried, because our device has a adequite computing power to generate 1080p images. On the other hand, lg g3 has almost same power, but it displays almost double size image. For g2, it won't worth the lost of quality.
The issue is, since LCD will display it on its physical resolution(there is no other way), your image quality will be far worse than the down sampled version. For example, if you render the sceen at 720p, and show it on a 720p 5.2" display, you will lose ~%55 of your data, but since you render your source on this resolution, will be sharp, just won't have so much detail. If you display this 720p image in 1080p display however, screen resolution cannot be changed, so your screen will try to calculate the missing %55, and then show you the result. Since there is no original data, it assumes the missing pixels were like the ones around them, which means your result will be blurry.
As a side note, old tube displays does not have a resolution, they can support various resolutions. We used to set resolution to our taste between speed and detail back then.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So why it doesn't get blurry on the G3 then?
If it's to save battery, I doubt you'll see much of a change.
The GPU is working on a smaller load but most of the time it's running at 200 MHz anyway. But I'm no expert, I'm just telling what I know and what I've experienced. I'll head over to the g3 thread to read more!
Reducing the number of pixels would help you to save battery if you are using a phone with AMOLED screen, sadly it is not the case with LG G2. So even by turning the resolution down, you are using pretty much the same amount of battery as you would with full 1080p resolution.
If you want to go ahead with it anyway, there are plenty of apps on the play store which does this. Just search "resolution" in the play store and you'll find them. However I don't think this will help your battery life at all, nor do I recommend it.
Late addition
Well, when i found out this was an option i just had to tinker. I have a G2 that is my daily driver and a S6 for back up. I changed it to 900x1600 480dpi and it works just fine. The camera touch focus is a little off, but otherwise it is sooper smooth now. I also throttle the CPU down. So both together I get a good experience and decent battery life. I know this is a late response, but to anyone out there with root and some lackluster performance might want to give this a shot. I needed to reboot once to correct some keyboard skewing. I also adjusted the height of the keyboard to compensate for the change in real estate. Works like a champ, no real noticeable degradation in viewing pics or videos. I'm going to try this on my Nook Hd+. It needs a shot in the arm (no pun intended).
villain222 said:
Well, when i found out this was an option i just had to tinker. I have a G2 that is my daily driver and a S6 for back up. I changed it to 900x1600 480dpi and it works just fine. The camera touch focus is a little off, but otherwise it is sooper smooth now. I also throttle the CPU down. So both together I get a good experience and decent battery life. I know this is a late response, but to anyone out there with root and some lackluster performance might want to give this a shot. I needed to reboot once to correct some keyboard skewing. I also adjusted the height of the keyboard to compensate for the change in real estate. Works like a champ, no real noticeable degradation in viewing pics or videos. I'm going to try this on my Nook Hd+. It needs a shot in the arm (no pun intended).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
it would be nice if you share a "how to" as well
i tried lowering the resolution on my tablet and G2 with some apps from the playstore - but only thing i got was an unstable device(s)...
desertmod1 said:
I hear they lower the res from 1440 to 1080 in the G3 so is there a way to lower the screen resolution in the G2 from 1080p to 720p?
I couldn't find anything about it in search.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
download terminal
write in terminal :
su [ENTER]
wm size 720x1280 && wm density 220 [ENTER]
new density: new resolution * current dpi / old resolution ( for e.g. 720*1280*480/(1080*1920) = 213), altough i tested, and it seems that 240 is the best (for me), but it looks awful, for me, so i will go back to full hd + 410 dpi
ofc root required )
anyway, please share with us if it will be any battery life improvement
enginmanap said:
As a side note, old tube displays does not have a resolution, they can support various resolutions. We used to set resolution to our taste between speed and detail back then.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Now I miss those glory days of correcting CRT display alignment and freedom to changes aspect ratio/resolution beyond the DAC supported rate at the expense of mild irreversible eye's retina damage. Lol. :laugh:
https://www.xda-developers.com/google-youtube-hdr-support-pixel/
Seems that Google is making an HDR mode for the Pixel XL. The screen is exactly the same that we have, but the hardware is not (But not too far also). so, could this be somehow ported here? Sounds pretty nice tbh
Seems like there's a server side switch as the article implies, but all it'd take would be to change the phone's name on build.prop to that of the XL's name (marlin? idk). No idea about all the other stuff
If it's the exact same screen it's capable of HDR but the software would have to make use of it. What exactly that entails, I'm not sure.
It's not surprising though, pretty much every HDR standard is heavily about:
1 - Colour reproduction
2 - Contrast ratio and in turn maximum brightness
Being an AMOLED means it doesn't need to be as bright as an IPS to pull off HDR content due to the near true blacks. IPS displays typically have to reach near 1000 nits to achieve the contrast necessary to pass most standards.