What is the basic feature that is highlighted when selling a phone ? Of course we could talk about processor or even RAM ... However, this is indeed the screen that acts as an intermediary between man and machine. Y-he has a real interest in building smartphones in high resolution ?
Therefore, manufacturers are pushing the vice to increase each day a little resolution of this intermediate. From device to device, we finally arrived at incredible resolution of no less than 1080p ... But very objectively, is this really necessary on a 5 "display? The race for high definition is a necessity or just another sales pitch without any tangible benefit to the user?
1080p seems huge and because it is huge. To take an example that speaks to everyone, when cases with a Retina display appeared on the market, we are amazed at a resolution of 960 x 640 pixels is only 326 pixels per inch.
As as the screen size is set to grow, the resolution did the same. IPhone 4'' has been supporting a resolution of 1136 × 640, still corresponding to 326ppi (pixels per inch).
This is the first observation is telling. Indeed, so-called normal range (hold a smartphone, for example), the human eye can not discern real difference when it exceeds 300 ppi.
The paradox makes sense if you go back on our smartphones 1080p ... Simply summarized, phone 5 "of this ilk has an impressive resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels is a huge density of 440 ppi. And believe that this quality is reflected in the price of these toys.
To avoid alienating fanboys of the Apple brand, pick up the phone that we consider to be the best time of Android, the HTC One. Also great and swift as it is, the screen 4.7 "reached 468 ppi. It's great! Whatsoever. But this resolution and detail it provides about 50% is often too high for us to enjoy fully.
So, unless you approach the phone to the point of almost squint, this is unnecessary in everyday use, at a reasonable distance. The next question becomes all the more legitimate: we have an interest in choosing phones that have a resolution higher than 300 ppi?
The resolution will be because of your battery
For phones currently autonomy. Indeed, to have real small computers in our pockets, powerful processors and screens are increasingly larger because of the autonomy of smartphones. There was something for nothing. And believe well as share your own horn, high resolution will do nothing to preserve your battery.
Why? It's very simple, you can add as many pixels as you like, but each will need juice to run. It's pure logic. Or, 'juice' is obviously supplied by the battery. It depends on the type of screen, that's for sure, we understand why some brands opt for the AMOLED, this is only for the abyssal deep blacks, but some technologies of this kind illuminate the pixels if and only if it is necessary.
Moreover, notorious trick, if your phone has an AMOLED, SuperAMOLED (as the latest Samsung), choosing a dark theme, you save the battery. Non-trivial and often overlooked detail.
However, today one of the most used in our mobile technology is the LCD, which in this case turn all pixels of smartphones, whatever the requirement. All those pixels need energy to function ... In this context, even the processor will have to work harder to exploit them all, if the CPU is running like hell, it will only become more energy. At this stage, your independence took a big hit.
You think this phenomenon is harmless? When Apple released the third generation ofiPad with a Retina display offering of 264 ppi, they implanted them a 11,666 mAh battery, which is 70% stronger than the previous generation. As for the difference of autonomy between the two generations? Absolutely no, the two devices are blocked 10h autonomy, for the reasons stated above. 132 ppi for iPad 2, 264 ppi Retina its big brother. If this observation is also due to improved hardward, increased mAh is perfectly correlated with the increase of the definition.
This finding is not exclusive to Apple, of course. We easily tend to believe that the toughest phones will be those with a strong electrical charge resulting in milliampere-hour (mAh), a unit corresponding to the amount of electricity passing through a section of a conductor. This is heresy, often used to sell smartphones.
Understand, if a seller convinces you by explaining that the LG G2 is stronger because it has the 3000 mAh, compared to a Moto X displaying a 2200 mAh, this is not necessarily true. In this case, the G2 can actually run longer, but both phones will run all day, because the resolution and screen Moto X less energy. Everything is a matter of comparison in terms of hardware.
A quad core seems more impressive than a dualcore, yet if the RAM, speed and the partition does not follow, the dual may indeed be more efficient. It is the same for batteries and displays, larger batteries do not necessarily mean more efficient phones. So beware, Android phones vary greatly in terms of size of the battery, but they are certainly not all equal regardless of their number of mAh.
A high-resolution display will require more processing power
As we said, a smartphone, like a computer, is a whole, an entity that can not function without all the cogs and gears are compatible. Also, by turning all pixels, we found a direct effect on battery life, only the GPU will also take a hit. Admittedly, this is difficult to quantify the views of the many factors that influence the performance and efficiency of the operating system. However, what we can say is that an increasing number of pixels will necessarily affect the GPU.
For all applications, including games (lots of pictures, quick movements, color changes ...), each pixel will be treated independently. The more pixels there will need more work and therefore power. However, a high resolution (still invisible to the naked eye) induces more pixels, so a heavier treatment, which will saturate your CPU, RAM and overload your pump until the last drop of battery. So we still love its beautiful screen 468 ppi?
Because the human eye is unable to distinguish the subtle differences (there only to see the size of a pixel ...), this extra processing required to run these pixels is often wasted.Ironically, a higher display resolution may result in degraded graphics simply because the GPU is going to waste time on the rendering of Pixels Gross (that made you still probably can not see), instead of allowing developers to use these resources to add more elements or details like textures or shadows.
The resolution has a visible advantage, but not for us
Indeed, Chinese, Japanese or Korean may wish to have high resolution. What we are reassured they do not have a vision of Super-Heroes, however they use the so-called CJK characters. Unlike the basic Latin alphabet that consists of a small collection of letters and symbols, our Asian friends are expressed verbally and in writing by creating words based on combinations.
The question of whether or not high definition helps to read these subtleties is fairly subjective, but we must recognize that the text is one of the first things to become unreadable in low resolution.
Concretely
A unit exceeding 300 ppi offers quality superfluous definition for a smartphone with a small screen, again, it depends heavily on the quality of your vision is the distance at which you use it. LG, for example, recently unveiled a 5.5'' with a resolution of 538 ppi ...
Objectively, as a consumer, you worry over the life and performance of your battery or visual details that your eyes are unable to see?
