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Displays

2.2 inch LCD Display featuring VGA Resolution 320

i4u writes "Casio announces a LCD display with the world's highest resolution. The 2.2 inch LCD display features VGA resolution. The Casio innovation has 368ppi (pixels per inch). The power consumption and size is the same as with current QVGA (320x240) displays. Meaning current mobile phone models could directly be upgraded with a VGA display. So we could very soon see Mobile phones with VGA resolution on 2.2 inch displays. Samsung had the World's highest resolution with 300ppi in early August. Casio took now the lead. More details in Casio Press-Release (Japanese)."
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2.2 inch LCD Display featuring VGA Resolution

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  • first post (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    so now we get resolution comparable to print
  • by PepsiProgrammer ( 545828 ) on Thursday September 23, 2004 @04:03PM (#10334092)
    I just got one of the new zaurus Sl-6000 pda's that does 640x480 on a quite large (for a pda) screen and the pixels are already small enough to be indistinguisable from eachother. Putting that res in a screen that small seems pretty pointless.
  • Scalable UI (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TimmyDee ( 713324 ) on Thursday September 23, 2004 @04:03PM (#10334094) Homepage Journal
    I can see this being beneficial for pictures, video, and the like, but not UI elements. Phone OSes are going to need to build in scalable UIs and offer tools for their developers to do the same or we won't be able to use the things.
    • On a related note, the game Half-Life recently got an upgrade that made the in-game text automatically scale to the resolution. When the game was originally released, not many people could do above 1024x768 at a playable speed...today I play at 1600x1200. Text was so small to the point that you needed to completely focus on it to read it (not good for a game).

      I think this is going to have to become a trend in a whole range of applications as resolution increases. Windows has an option that does something s
  • my new business card will have this, along with a super tight distro of linux mounted on a thin flash card. and it will have a 3d display and stuff and it will pwn all your paper business cards
  • Application? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jargoone ( 166102 ) * on Thursday September 23, 2004 @04:04PM (#10334113)
    Okay, the high pixel density is neat and all, but can anyone name an application that would need a small screen with such high resolution.

    If they "slightly" expanded it, though, you'd have a ~22 inch LCD with 6400x4800. Finally, a use for those high-end video cards with tons of memory!
    • low cost compact LCD projectors?

      Not sure if it would work, but it would rock if it could.
      • Re:Application? (Score:4, Informative)

        by Jeff DeMaagd ( 2015 ) on Thursday September 23, 2004 @04:18PM (#10334288) Homepage Journal
        I had forgotten, but LCD projectors actually use smaller panels.

        XGA panels can be had in the 0.7" to 1.3" range. I'd direct you to projectorcentral.com, but it seems to be down now.

        The problem here is that with a projector, each color has its own monochrome panel and is marged using a prism.
    • Re:Application? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by clevelandguru ( 612010 ) on Thursday September 23, 2004 @04:18PM (#10334284)
      Virtual Reality Head Mounted Displays.
    • How about HMD's? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by mhackarbie ( 593426 ) on Thursday September 23, 2004 @04:20PM (#10334312) Homepage Journal
      Sounds like this would be perfect for making Head Mounted Displays, so we can finally get some decent low cost Virtual Reality and/or 3D display hardware. Any reason why that wouldn't work?

      I know that the most sophisticated VR also requires complicated head position tracking hardware, which apparently is quite difficult to get right. Existing implementations often cause nausea and vertigo in some people.

      However, a nice, crisp 3D display with mouse-driven movement of the scene should be a perfectly acceptable low-cost alternative. You would have to strap it on your head and you would look like some kind of wired-up bug freak, but what's wrong with that?

      I sure as heck could use it in my molecular modelling work.

      mhack

      • Re:How about HMD's? (Score:3, Informative)

        by VitaminB52 ( 550802 )
        I know that the most sophisticated VR also requires complicated head position tracking hardware, which apparently is quite difficult to get right. Existing implementations often cause nausea and vertigo in some people.

        However, a nice, crisp 3D display with mouse-driven movement of the scene should be a perfectly acceptable low-cost alternative.

        IIRC, the nausea and vertigo were caused by the time lag between head movement and the corresponding changes in the displayed images, not by the image not being '

        • Re:How about HMD's? (Score:3, Interesting)

          by fwitness ( 195565 )

          No, not 'cheap' as in value menu, 'cheap' as getting a new car for $10k would be. Nice cellphones go for about $130 these days. If these prices remain similar with the new resolution, let's say a VGA phone is like $200. Even if the screen is the most expensive, it can be reliably said that you could do a dual LCD HMD [everything2.com] w/o headtracking for around $600. This is 'cheap' for an HMD that would seem to you to be >50" screen.

          I have been thinking this would be perfect for laptops. I would much rather have

      • Pretty soon, VR equipment is going to be small enough to cram into a pair of slightly oversize (and overweight) wraparound sunglasses. Picard to la Forge...
      • Realtime overlay (Score:3, Interesting)

        by phorm ( 591458 )
        To heck with the VR gear, how about something to interact with reality? One concept would be some form of vision enhancement, perhaps in the form of an eyepath with a realtime display. Hook up a camera or something similar and display an enhanced or altered visual - would be great for nightvision type devices.

        Even better would be if the display is partially transparent, you could use it as an overlay, where you can see what's around you but with added visual elements (motion trackers, edge enhancers, heat
    • Take a look at the Toshiba VM4050 from Sprint. It has a fucking gorgeous screen, and it's a 2.2" QVGA. I would love to have a VGA screen in this size...it would look amazing. Why not? It's cool, thats the main reason for this!
    • Okay, the high pixel density is neat and all, but can anyone name an application that would need a small screen with such high resolution.

      A light head mounted display that projects a magnified screen image in the user's field of view.
    • Video iPod (or equivalent).

      In this case it isn't the dpi that's important, but rather that you get a reasonable resolution in such a small space.

    • If they "slightly" expanded it, though, you'd have a ~22 inch LCD with 6400x4800. Finally, a use for those high-end video cards with tons of memory!

      Well, this [ibm.com] isn't that good. But a 9 Megapixel LCD (3840x2400) would still be nice. I'd love to get two of these and run Xinerama. The problem is that each takes 2 DVI connections. So you'll need two dual DVI video cards. I'll probably have to rob a bank and wait for an Nvidia 6800 SLI system to be released.

      -JungleBoy

    • How about something similar to a sheet of paper, with a small microcontroller and flash-card slot.

      Store your documents on the flash-card in a compatible format, pop the card into the device, and presto you've got documentation.

      Now for those that prefer paper docs I'd agree that quite often it's nicer to have real pages handy... but for things like large manuals printed off the net etc etc this would save tons (both in time, toner, and paper) on printing stuff out, be more lightweight than a large volume,
    • Re:Application? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by plastik55 ( 218435 )
      GPS + Mapping. You can never get too much detail on a map.
  • by stratjakt ( 596332 ) on Thursday September 23, 2004 @04:05PM (#10334117) Journal
    That is, when does the average human eye stop distinguishing them as seperate points?

    I can tell 300 DPI from 600 DPI on a printout, but above that it looks about the same to me.
    • Ideally, I think you want it to be at least a bit beyond a human's ability to distinguish points.

      I'd be happy to get a 20" 300dpi screen, although none exist yet, and good software support might not exist yet, although maybe KDE or Gnome might benefit a lot.

      Computer operating systems need to be able to support vector objects or have better scaling to cope with multiple DPIs. Windows seems to do OK, except for certain design elements that assume a fixed dpi, so larger fonts just run under the edge of a wi
    • by eander315 ( 448340 ) on Thursday September 23, 2004 @04:26PM (#10334378)
      This is a common mistake when considering the DPI of printers and monitors. They are not measured in the same way. I would try to explain it here, but the wikipedia entry [wikipedia.org] does a better job than I could.
      • The DPI of a monochrome laser printer does indeed mean the same thing as the DPI/PPI (pixels per inch) of a monitor.
        They can not be directly compared when it comes to color printers and their need to mix multiple ink dots to represent most colors.

    • I can tell 300 DPI from 600 DPI on a printout, but above that it looks about the same to me.

      For monchrome text, you would have to have very good vision indeed to be able to tell the difference.

      The prime reason that printers need all that resolution is because they have VERY limited colors, so they have to dither. Dithering lowers the apparent resolution. If each pixel is already capable of the full color range, then 300DPI is enough for anybody.
      • by WillAdams ( 45638 ) on Thursday September 23, 2004 @04:51PM (#10334642) Homepage
        Actually, 300dpi is quite clunky for text, and a number of fonts _cannot_ be adequately represented by it (e.g., Optima or Eras --- Adobe even went to the effort of including two different outlines (one low-res, one high res) for early versions of these until hinting algorithms improved).

        ~360--400dpi is a watershed value and around there text, even with fairly subtle details starts to look right (Interestingly the NeXTLaserprinter could print in 300 or 400 dpi, and one can _really_ see the difference (says the guy who forgt to change the value once before running out resumes and had to reprint a set 'cause they looked bad).

        600dpi is ``good enough'' for most things (and is approaching the ability of office paper to hold a dot faithfully)

        At 1200 dpi, things are quite nice, but the human ability to create / render type actually approaches that of a 2540 dpi imagesetter --- see Fred Smeijers' book _Counterpunch_ for technical data and microphotography for details. F.W. Goudy often claimed to be able to distinguish by touch dimensions of ~one one-thousandth of an inch.

        William
    • That is, when does the average human eye stop distinguishing them as seperate points?

      In the advertising business we use 400 dpi as the standard. I can still see pixels but it takes a trained eye.
    • That is, when does the average human eye stop distinguishing them as seperate points?

      I can tell 300 DPI from 600 DPI on a printout, but above that it looks about the same to me.

      Whether or not you can distinguishing between indiviudal dots isn't directly related to DPI, but to angular resolution [wikipedia.org]. Read the Wikipedia article if you want to know more about angular reolution.
      Basically, whether or not you can distinguishing between indiviudal dots is related to the combination of DPI plus the distance be

    • A person can theoretically discriminate two points in an angle of ~1'=1/60degree. At a distance of 25cm, it means a distance of two point 73E-6m, so roughly 350dpi, if I'm not mistaken. I'm not so sure about the conversion to dpi.
    • by El ( 94934 ) on Thursday September 23, 2004 @05:25PM (#10334969)
      when does the average human eye stop distinguishing them as seperate points? It is not the size, it's the angle of view. 1 DPI is just fine if you are 100 yards away! My general rule of thumb is that point of diminishing returns far a display is around 4000x4000 pixels; at that point you cannot simultaneously see the whole screen and still make out individual pixels. Anything more than that only helps if you are only focusing on a small section of the screen. Needless to say, I'm still waiting for this to become economically feasible, but I think digital cameras and displays will eventually max out at 16 Megapixels for ordinary use.
  • by ARRRLovin ( 807926 ) on Thursday September 23, 2004 @04:05PM (#10334119)
    AWESOME SCREEN!
  • Yoda? (Score:4, Funny)

    by barcodez ( 580516 ) on Thursday September 23, 2004 @04:06PM (#10334132)
    Casio took now the lead.

    Yoda? Sentance, only you mangle such.
    • Re:Yoda? (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Sentence, only you could spell it not.
  • by kbahey ( 102895 ) on Thursday September 23, 2004 @04:06PM (#10334136) Homepage

    VGA resolution and unreadable to anyone above 40.

    Is it just me getting old, or are young people designing things for their age group only without considering those who are older?

    • by Anonymous Coward
      Yes, it's you getting old. Remember how your grandpa was always complaining about something ? Now it's your turn.
    • Why? If you keep the font size the same, sure.

      But you just crank that up. So instead of tiny little fonts that look nice, you get normal sized (or large sized) fonts that look FANTASTIC. As size goes up (and you use appropriate graphics, or vector graphics) everything looks smooth and nice. You can't see the aliasing on curves and such.

      I mean, you don't think people who run 1600x1200 on 17" monitors use standard fonts do you? You'd never be able to see anything. My laptop has about 100 DPI (as opposed to

    • VGA resolution and unreadable to anyone above 40.

      Nah, we'll just use those big magnifiers from Brazil [imdb.com] and we'll be all set!

      --
      Gmail invites for completed referrals [slashdot.org] It's working.
    • by tktk ( 540564 ) on Thursday September 23, 2004 @06:00PM (#10335301)
      Is it just me getting old, or are young people designing things for their age group only without considering those who are older?

      You're getting old. When was the last time you saw any consumer electronics with specific features for the older generations?

      There was a line in Dougals Adam's Salmon of Doubt that I'll have to paraphrase since I don't have the book with me. It was basically this...

      Anything invented while you're under 18 is taken from granted.

      Anything invented while you're between 18-30 is new and exciting.

      Anything invented while you're over 30 is scary and unnatural.

      I forgot my point...so I'll leave it to you to make the connection.

  • what i want... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by here4fun ( 813136 ) on Thursday September 23, 2004 @04:06PM (#10334141) Homepage Journal
    So we could very soon see 2.2 inch Mobile phones with VGA resolution. See the photo where a full Windows browser is shown on 2.2 inch.

    While this is nice, what I really want is a better battery, better camera (can we get 2mp on a cell phone?), and more storage memory (how about a card slot?). I doubt anyone will run windows or play doom on their cell phone. But people might want to play mp3's, take pictures, or browse the web and check email.

  • HDTV projected onto the HUD in my glasses (or better yet, right onto my retina), why bother with half measures?

    Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm still waiting on my flying car. Dammit.

  • by pangloss ( 25315 ) on Thursday September 23, 2004 @04:19PM (#10334299) Journal
    I would love a vga (or better!) capable screen that fits in a drive bay. If you've seen the lcd's for car stereos that slide out, you know what I mean. Or if you don't, imagine the rackmountable lcd displays that slide out and then go vertical but sized for a drive bay.

    Would be great for the htpc that's normally only used with a projector. You don't always want to turn on the beamer if you're just playing music, but you do need to be able to use some sort of screen.
  • Virtual Headsets? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Dante ( 3418 ) * on Thursday September 23, 2004 @04:20PM (#10334305) Journal
    I don't know about you, but the buga boo in the past with virtual headsets was
    not being able to do true 640x480.

    I'd love to see a head set doing true 640 x 480.
  • So, can we use this to FINALLY get a quasi-reasonable head-mounted displays?

    I've always thought that one of the two reasons that wearables haven't really hit the mainstream was that the HMD's seemed to come with some weirdass resolution like 312 x 214 or some such nonsense. Aside from the obvious input issues, wearables are stunted by the number of freaky custom parts. HMD's with 15pin cables, let's go!
  • If we used this in regular LCD screens (like for use with PCs), we'd be able to manage 1600x1200 resolution, at the very least. That does seem like it'd produce text that's quite small though.
  • At last... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Aardpig ( 622459 ) on Thursday September 23, 2004 @04:27PM (#10334391)

    ...wanking will make you go blind. That is, if you do it while surfing for pr0n on one of these displays.

  • by El ( 94934 )
    So we could very soon see Mobile phones with VGA resolution on 2.2 inch displays.

    Will these phones ship with a magnifying glass?

  • Don't LCD projectors have tiny high-res LCDs inside them that can do 1280x1024 or higher?

    And based on the size of today's LCD projectors, i'd say that they're smaller or equal to 2.2 inches diagonal.

    Could this be that it's just the first tiny display that's not ridiculously expensive and is durable enough for general use?

    Correct me if I'm wrong....
  • Yes, but... (Score:5, Funny)

    by haggar ( 72771 ) on Thursday September 23, 2004 @04:44PM (#10334577) Homepage Journal
    when will those graphing calculators be upgraded with displays capable of more than 86x48 resolution (B&W, at that)? I have the impression that HP, Casio and TI are stuck in a time-gap with their graphing calcs.
  • Mirrorshades (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Thursday September 23, 2004 @04:53PM (#10334661) Homepage Journal
    VGA stereo sunglasses!
  • Post is the article? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ShieldWolf ( 20476 ) <jeffrankine@nets[ ]e.net ['cap' in gap]> on Thursday September 23, 2004 @04:58PM (#10334704)
    WTF they are almost exactly the same:

    From the (tiny) article (which is really just a post from the submitter to some lame site):"The power consumption and size is the same as with current QVGA (320x240) displays. Meaning current mobile phone models could directly be upgraded with a VGA display. So we could very soon see 2.2 inch Mobile phones with VGA resolution.

    Why even have a link?

  • by tezza ( 539307 ) on Thursday September 23, 2004 @05:01PM (#10334740)
    I wanted a C64 emulator for the Palm m505. However, the screen resolution was not enough to match that of the C64 [320*200 in MCI mode].

    So there was no point in anyone trying, as to hack the screen drawing code is not viable, as so much depended on the syncing and timing in the C64 days.

    So conceivably, that old DOS mode 'pokes and peeks the VGA buffer itself' type code could now hope to be ported to this sort of screen.

    I'm struggling and struggling to think of one app that would not have been superceded by something superior. But should one exist, it could not without it's hardcoded minimum resolution.

    Keep this going, I could run Lionheart [cus.org.uk]under UAE [linux.de] on an NGage VII.

  • by Bastian ( 66383 ) on Thursday September 23, 2004 @05:17PM (#10334889)
    . . . or does anyone else get the feeling that the synopsis for this article was written by Mojo Jojo?
  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 23, 2004 @05:19PM (#10334906)
    First, a story: i went to the store with a woman who hates high-res displays and was telling me that no one likes them. suddenly, she pulled off the road, complaining that the setting sun was in her eyes. i didn't say anything, but her windshield was so filthy that you could hardly see out of it anyway. the low-angle sun just made it slightly more opaque.

    Next, my opinion: many of the posts in this thread seem to come from people like that---they apparently can't see shit, so they can't imagine why anyone else would. i would love to have a 2.2in vga display, not so much to run programs written for a desktop screen (doh) but more to make things look less blocky.

    Finally, my prescription: try an experiment. hold a book up next to your computer screen, a book whose typefaces don't seem too small to you. Notice that when you compare them side by side, the book is likely to have smaller type than the computer screen. Since the characters are more sharply drawn (higher resolution) you can actually see them better even if they are smaller.
  • Brazil (Score:3, Funny)

    by cmacb ( 547347 ) on Thursday September 23, 2004 @05:20PM (#10334909) Homepage Journal
    Every time I see a story like this I think of the movie "Brazil" and the guy siting in front of a big magnifying glass with a tiny display behind it.
  • I mean, what could you watch on something that small?

    Perhaps midget pr0n?

  • by morcheeba ( 260908 ) * on Thursday September 23, 2004 @06:27PM (#10335525) Journal
    Check out this display [displaytech.com] -- it's LCD, frag-friendly 360Hz refresh, 1/3 VGA, 24 bit color, and with a pixel size of 12 x 16.2um, it works out to 1500-2000 pixel/inch.

    Of course, the trick is that this display is really small -- since it's built on a silicon wafer, expanding it to 2.2" would raise the price incredibly (defect rate isn't linear with size). So, it makes a wonderful camcorder/digital camera viewfinder, and its bigger cousins work in HD projectors, but not really practical for a phone display.

    One of the coolest things about this is that it is a black and white display lit sequentially with red, gren, and blue leds. The display sets switches each pixel to the appropriate brightness of whatever color is lighting it. This means no "screen door" effect -- see an example here [displaytech.com], so the display is much clearer.

    Switching time is about 150 microseconds - good large-size monitors are still in the range of 20000 microseconds!
  • by Gilmoure ( 18428 ) on Thursday September 23, 2004 @06:39PM (#10335633) Journal
    EYES!
  • by stuffman64 ( 208233 ) <stuffmanNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Thursday September 23, 2004 @09:35PM (#10336782)
    Not to be too picky, but the phrase "LCD display" is redundant. As we are all aware of, the 'D' in LCD already means display, so there is no need to specify that it is a display. This is something which has bothered my for years, but I digress.

    My Sharp Zaurus SL-C860 [dylanpowell.net] features a 3.7" VGA display. The text is amazingly sharp- though it might be hard to read because everything is so small (I believe the pixel density is around 216 pixel/inch). This new screen is nearly one-third the area of the Zaurus', yet features the same resolution. Just a few years back, we were all drooling over this IBM Roentgen [ibm.com] display, with its 200ppi (in this article [slashdot.org]). Can't wait to see one in my next cell phone, complete with a fresnel lens so I can read the text!

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. -- Arthur C. Clarke

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