So, just to review some previous discussion here when the retina iPad came out, the retina iPad uses more power than the iPad 2 because its backlight needs to be brighter to counteract the light-blocking effect of all the extra transistors and wires in the LCD panel.
According to the OP, Sharp claims to have a retina display that blocks less light than Apple's retina displays, reducing the power needed by the backlight (to achieve the same display brightness).
An industry analyst quoted in the OP says that "screens are the biggest power drain on mobile devices".
I'd rather see these panels in the Oculus Rift than a 'Phablet'. As mentioned in the article, these screens can be held much closer to the eye, so why not put them as close as possible?
I just realized I'm very excited about a cheap VR headset. I don't even care about gaming, but I imagine it won't be terribly hard to get a window manager to display on it. I would be able to fill my field of vision with windows, switch any one by looking at it (while getting some neck exercise), put them nearer or farther, reducing eyesight strain, and not need a desk at all!
I could just have the keyboard on my lap while on my easy chair and stare at the ceiling, lie down, whatever. Why is this thing geared towards games? It sounds like a revolution.
So if the naked eye cannot perceive detail greater than the retina display why is this needed? The article does not talk about the power consumption of the screen, but outside of that is it worth increasing the resolution?
Yeah, I had that question too. ~300ppi I thought was "retina" for handheld devices held at normal distances. I could see marginally increasing it above that threshold so pixels remained indiscernible at almost all distances, but a 440ppi density is surely superfluous.
I can see the pixels on my ~300ppi phone at "normal" distance... and the very smallest fonts it uses (in mass dictionary lookups) are so small that there's still discernible shape distortion in complicated kanji. This only really affects usability in a few cases—distinguishing between very similar, extremely complicated, kanji, in an unusually small font used for a specialized application—but these cases do occur.
There's also some room for improvement in font-rendering of Japanese at the somewhat larger sizes used for displaying email or such, where they're still using hand-tuned fonts even on ~300ppi displays.
So at least in Japan, a 440ppi display could be put to good use.
[And really, even once pixels are truly not individually discernible, higher resolutions can still be useful. For instance, although text printed on a 600dpi laser printer is usually very readable, it doesn't look so good when compared to something typeset at 1200/2400/etc dpi...]
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 32.3 ms ] threadAccording to the OP, Sharp claims to have a retina display that blocks less light than Apple's retina displays, reducing the power needed by the backlight (to achieve the same display brightness).
An industry analyst quoted in the OP says that "screens are the biggest power drain on mobile devices".
I could just have the keyboard on my lap while on my easy chair and stare at the ceiling, lie down, whatever. Why is this thing geared towards games? It sounds like a revolution.
I can see the pixels on my ~300ppi phone at "normal" distance... and the very smallest fonts it uses (in mass dictionary lookups) are so small that there's still discernible shape distortion in complicated kanji. This only really affects usability in a few cases—distinguishing between very similar, extremely complicated, kanji, in an unusually small font used for a specialized application—but these cases do occur.
There's also some room for improvement in font-rendering of Japanese at the somewhat larger sizes used for displaying email or such, where they're still using hand-tuned fonts even on ~300ppi displays.
So at least in Japan, a 440ppi display could be put to good use.
[And really, even once pixels are truly not individually discernible, higher resolutions can still be useful. For instance, although text printed on a 600dpi laser printer is usually very readable, it doesn't look so good when compared to something typeset at 1200/2400/etc dpi...]