Soulaxe | # 1 | 2011-06-28, 10:01 | Report

Is it possible to lower the resolution of the N900? As the wonderful 800x480 eats much power, so would a resolution of half the size make the phone more responsive and push the battery performance?

dr_frost_dk | # 2 | 2011-06-28, 10:51 | Report

So you want 400x240?
We all want higher res, i sure do, would like a HD res at the normal 1280x720.

And if i may say that if our N900 had that low 400 res it would not appeal to many, that about the same as my N95 (320x240)

I could give a performance boost, but i have to say that i don't have any performance issues on mine, not surfing the web, using maps or just the "desktop"

And on battery performance, well there are ways around that
Also every smartphone suffers here, when newer battery's come out then this will be resolved, or if the screens are high efficiency AMOLED and the newer transistor material that is in "progress" will also cut down power usage.

But for now, want more battery usage, you have to have a bigger battery.

EDIT: better....

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Last edited by dr_frost_dk; 2011-06-28 at 20:58.

zlatokosi | # 3 | 2011-06-28, 11:25 | Report

I'm no expert and I might be wrong, but I doubt it would increase your battery performance (to the contrary, it might increase it...).

The reasoning behind that is that no matter what resolution you have, the phone's display still consists of 800x480 pixels (even at a lower display resolution, the screen hardware is the same). Also, when factoring the processing power needed to render the lower resolution (the phone will need to compute the native 800x480 pixels into 400x240 or whatever), you'd probably be worse off. Not to mention application incompatiblities...

Just my 2 cents. :-)

Soulaxe | # 4 | 2011-06-28, 13:30 | Report

No, I don't want a screen resolution of half the size, I merely asked if it were possible for our devices, and by your responses seems likely you two haven't a clue. Also, the screen technology is called "AMOLED".

The majority of battery performance is affected by CPU & GPU usage, downscaling the screen theoretically would affect the battery with a significantly positive outcome.

Point is; graphics intensive programs (Bounce Evolution tech demo) would show a noticeable difference in performance, and graphics wouldn't look much different. In other words developers like this guy could see an ideal speed boost in their applications they're developing.

ToJa92 | # 5 | 2011-06-28, 13:42 | Report

That would require the application to render in the lower resolution(otherwise I fail to see how it would require less CPU/GPU power). Technically it's possible(for example OpenTTD can run in lower resolutions IIRC), and it might use less battery. However, the application still *needs* to do all the calculations but either downscale it(as you proposed) or simply render it in a lower resolution. Or you can make the application less graphical intensive since you can't might not see everything if you lower the resolution.

My 0.02£.

Soulaxe | # 6 | 2011-06-28, 14:05 | Report

Thanks, I guess I needed to go into detail for everything I already know in application development, if I attempt to make statements like that at least.

zlatokosi | # 7 | 2011-06-28, 14:05 | Report

The N900 screen is not AMOLED, but TFT. I understood your question.

You are correct, and downscaling resolution means increased CPU usage (the CPU must compute the "downgrade" in resolution). So it might not increase battery performance. It might, however, increase game/app performance (then again, it might not - depends on implementation).

Soulaxe | # 8 | 2011-06-28, 16:47 | Report

I was referring to dr_frost's misspelling in his first post, as it can be confused with the Armor brand TVs.

I've been misunderstood through a careless choice of wording; downscaling will increase the gpu, but flashing the whole device's resolution to a lower ratio won't.

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Last edited by Soulaxe; 2011-06-28 at 17:36.

dr_frost_dk | # 9 | 2011-06-28, 20:57 | Report

Sorry.....

stlpaul | # 10 | 2011-06-28, 21:38 | Report

If you try some of the games are OpenGL and scaled from a lower resolution, they suck battery just as fast as the rest