back to article LG G3 fights off screen-res war rival Samsung with quad-HD cutie: In pictures

In London on Tuesday, LG took the wraps off its new G3 Android smartphone. Just like waiting for buses, LG put all its bullet points in threes, kicking off with the display, camera and design as a trio of core features. LG G3 Android smartphone James Marshall, Head of Product Marketing LG Europe highlights that size matters …

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  1. Snivelling Wretch

    That porthole would lend itself perfectly to a circular telephone dial.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Yeah, but who remembers numbers nowadays?

  2. Semtex451

    Selfie Mode Picture

    Bob short for Roberta?

    1. Jedit Silver badge

      Re: Selfie Mode Picture

      That depends. Does Roberta have two left hands? Because if not, the person holding the phone is not the person in the selfie.

      1. Gary Riches

        Re: Selfie Mode Picture

        The image would be mirrored and therefore be showing the person holding up their right hand.

  3. frank ly

    The 'porthole' front cover

    I hope that could be removed because that does not go well with how I like to hold a phone, or cameraphone, or anything.

  4. NumptyScrub
    Facepalm

    2560 x 1440 on a 5.5" phone

    but 1080p is considered perfectly adequate for a 17" high-end laptop or 20+" desktop monitor. There would appear to be a cognitive disconnect here somewhere... :'(

    1. EddieD

      Re: 2560 x 1440 on a 5.5" phone

      Viewing distance.

      My 24" 1980x1200 monitor is about 1m from my face.

      I'd estimate I use my phone/tablet about 30cm from my face. Maybe 50cm, now my eyesight is going.

      1. DN4

        Re: 2560 x 1440 on a 5.5" phone

        > I'd estimate I use my phone/tablet about 30cm from my face.

        You are holding it wrong.

    2. dogged

      Re: 2560 x 1440 on a 5.5" phone

      It's probably a cost thing. Okay, your 5" screen has a resolution of 2560x1440 but that's a 5" screen, with 12 square inches of space and even then, it's probably the single most expensive bit of the phone. Now scale up that expense to a 17" diagonal where you're looking at (d^2/2) 144.5 square inches...

      Whole different kettle of mackerel, ain't it?

      1. dogged

        Re: 2560 x 1440 on a 5.5" phone

        3 thumbs down because you want it to be true so hard.....

        Grin-worthy.

    3. Greg D

      Re: 2560 x 1440 on a 5.5" phone

      Yup, it makes absolutely no sense.

      Whoever said viewing distance - thats bollocks. I can see pixels on my 1920x1200 24" desktop monitor from 1m away and it annoys me. If my desktop screen res was the same as this phone, I'd be a lot happier. Higher would be better, but there simply isnt a desktop screen on the market that goes any higher within a reasonable budget.

    4. Mage Silver badge

      Re: 2560 x 1440 on a 5.5" phone

      No, we had better than 1080 lines in 2002, actually 1600 x 1200 on 15", which is 1920 x 1200 @ 16:10 and about 2134 x 1200 for a 16:9 screen.

      If you read review of HP Mobile Workstation, you'll find that people are scathing of "only" 1920 x 1080" on a Laptop.

      It's about aliasing and readability. if an image is high contrast, sharp edges or there is small text you'll find that "normal" resolutions are too low. At 2560 x 1440 it's not about seeing pixels. Ideally you want a screen resolution twice as many pixels in each direction as you can see finest detail. Then there is no anti-aliasing required and you can show detail as fine as the eye can see without it having to match pixel layout exactly (which is obviously impossible except for local text and vector graphics).

      So it makes sense.

      I can't see the dots on my Laptop normally (133dpi) or Kindle (about 200dpi but only limited shades) but real printed text (say even 600dpi laser) that I can read easily is very tiring to unreadable at same size if it's a small or complex font.

      At 2560 x 1440 on 5.5" you can use ANY font, you don't need PC optimised ones or even hinting.

      Once your pixels are 1/2 the width and height you can resolve, then there is no advantage to more resolution unless the pixels are limited in shades. (for example you can have 5 or 6 times as many shades / hues simplistically with a 2 x 2 cell. In practice you can do better with more complex dithers over a 3 x 3 cell). The claims of contrast and colour for LCD are hyped. For AMOLED, the contrast is good, but colour rendition can still be improved as it often doesn't use true R & G & B like real LED can use.

      1. Badvok

        Re: 2560 x 1440 on a 5.5" phone

        @mage: I was about to upvote your excellent post but then I got to the last paragraph.

        If you look at the aliasing needed to represent a straight line at 30º incline to the horizontal you really need pixels much smaller than 1/2 the resolvable limit to do it without aliasing and to achieve pin sharp clarity.

        Also, there is no such thing as 'real LED', there are organics and semi-conductors. Neither produce colours that perfectly match our human cones and hence neither can accurately reproduce the entire range of colours we can experience.

        Ah, what the hell, have an upvote anyway :)

        1. Mage Silver badge

          Re: 2560 x 1440 on a 5.5" phone

          I was giving a simplistic explanation. You are correct, there is advantage to smaller than 1/2 resolvable. I was trying to explain that "maximum" is 1/2 of resolvable. It's also complicated by sub pixel addressing and layout

          traditional sub pixels are same height and 1/3rd width

          RGBRGB

          RGBRGB

          RGBRGB

          RGBRGB

          RGBRGB

          Often now a basic colour cell is two rows (I think but may be wrong)

          RG BG

          GB GR

          A "real" Blue, Red or Green LED is near monochromatic direct light source. An AMOLED display is really a kind of Electroluminescent panel and uses a mixture of phosphors and dye filters to get the desired R G & B. The life of AMOLED is thus poor compared to CRT or LCD.. Sony apparently has a real LED TV. Most "real" LED displays are very very large as they are not integrated panels. So called LED TVs in the shops today are just LCD with LED lighting instead of CCFL. The LED can be edge, back and using "nearly white" (Actually violet LED with phosphors) or most expensive are R G & B LED back lights.

      2. RobHib

        Re: 2560 x 1440 on a 5.5" phone -- @Mage

        "Ideally you want a screen resolution twice as many pixels in each direction as you can see finest detail.

        You're right as it takes into account Nyquist's sampling requirements. Whilst agreeing with most of what you say, I'd suggest the limiting resolutions of the eye are even higher (see my post below). As I've said the matter of resolution is complex (and it's clearly misunderstood by some other posters to this page).

        As you say contrast is very important and edge resolution (B-to-W transition) is enhanced if the contrast is maintained across the transition (i.e.: with sufficient bandwidth ensures a sharp transient).

        BTW, edge transient sharpening has been known about for centuries, letterpress printers would allow the ink to puddle in the edges and serifs of the typeface (imprinted indents in the paper common in letterpress) thus increasing the density of the ink at the edges which gave the perception that the typefaces were actually sharper than they really were.

        Incidentally, the same technique is used in video and television, here cable equalisers etc. are invariably used to sharpen images. They reduce the spearing of the B-to-W transitions on images (caused by HF/bandwidth losses) by enhancing the transient (reducing the B-to-W transition time, and often the edge transient is driven into overshoot [exceeding the transient's 100% amplitude] to give an apparent increase in sharpness). Also, this is effectively the same process Photoshop's unsharp mask uses to sharpen images

    5. Paul Shirley

      Re: 2560 x 1440 on a 5.5" phone

      I'm sitting about 75cm from a 2560x1440 27" screen and while it squeezes a lot more text on screen it's not quite high enough res to completely hide pixelation. Better than 1080 but not by much.

      The real reason monitors are still stuck at 1920x1080 is price, 2560 doesn't give enough improvement for a 4x price hike. 4k monitors are probably where the quality starts looking sufficient but still priced out of reach for most users. High pixel density on a small screen is affordable where it isn't on large screens.

      When the panel factories gear up for the 4k TV market push prices will drop and we will all move to higher resolutions on the desktop, to match our phones. It will still look better on the phone ;)

  5. monkeyfish

    2560 x 1440 screen

    With a camera to match!

    So that would be 3.7Mp then?

  6. Ugotta B. Kiddingme

    worth watching

    I have thus far not felt the need for a "smart phone." A fairly simple device that actually performs well on voice calls and has a slide out keyboard for exchanging texts with my son at University is all I have needed. If the price isn't too ridiculous on this new LG, I may have to reconsider my options. I do like the porthole idea and see an extra hole at the top for the speaker but not one at the bottom for the microphone. Am I missing something?

    1. iRadiate

      Re: worth watching

      'A fairly simple device that actually performs well on voice calls and has a slide out keyboard for exchanging texts with my son at University is all I have needed.'

      Really, that's really all you've ever needed ?

      Never needed a camera/camcorder at a random moment ?

      Never wanted to connect to the internet at a random moment ?

      Never needed to find your way when you're lost at a random moment ?

      Never wanted to listen to music at a random moment ?

      Sure there are devices that allow you to do all of the above really well but surely the convenience of being able to do all of this without the extra weight of disparate devices and charging cables etc makes a smart phone the smart thing to carry around.

      As for the ridiculous price, lets add some rough numbers

      Camera £150

      MP3 player £20

      Sat Nav £200

      Phone £100

      Tablet/Laptop ????

      That's over £400 already which isn't too far off the price of some smart phones.

      'Am I missing something?'

      The 21st Century perhaps ?

  7. GregC
    Coat

    I really can't see a point...

    ..in these ultra high pixel density displays

    1. frank ly
      Coat

      Re: I really can't see a point...

      I think that's their point.

      1. A Twig
        Coat

        Re: I really can't see a point...

        That it's pointless?

    2. Robert E A Harvey

      Re: I really can't see a point...

      I understand what you are saying, but they are a really good way to confuse the salesdroids at PCwhirled, who will try and sell you a laptop with 768 pixels and a phone with 1200 all at the same time. It's worth doing, if only to see the existential angst on thier little faces.

  8. RobHib
    Thumb Up

    Bring on the higher resolutions, the higher the better.

    "While some may argue the eye can’t detect this level of detail, LG begs to differ, and gave high-resolution printing in coffee-table books as an example of demand for eye-popping images."

    It's good to see resolutions creeping up like this, ultimately the jaggies will be a thing of the past.

    For those who question the question the resolution as excessive, I too would bring in the wisdom of high resolution printing. Those in the printing trade have known for centuries that print starts looking really good at over 1000 dpi--and good letterpress printing can exceed 2000 dpi. When offset printing came in many old-time printers were horrified as they considered it low quality and out of focus (even good offset is usually below 1000 dpi).

    To put this into perspective, I suggest you consider an A4 or US Quarto sheet with printing on it with at 1000 dpi resolution. Let's calculate for A4 (210 x 297mm):

    1000dpi / 25.4 = 39.37 dots per mm **

    297 x 39.37 = 11692.89 dots per page (vertical)

    210 x 39.37 = 8267.7 (horiz)

    OK, so a traditionally printed A4 page at reasonable resolution printing has somewhere about: 11600 x 8200 discreet transitions from black to white, for a really high quality book that figure can be more than doubled. For other formats such as high quality maps etc. the specs are horrendous (but then, unlike an A4 or Quarto, page one doesn't take in all that detail at once).

    This brings in FOV (field of view), which is nominally taken as somewhere around 60° for the human eye. So, from centuries of experience, what is on a normal office sheet of paper (A4 etc.) is designed to approximately match the maxim amount the human eye can perceive at one time at a distance from the eye that matches a FOV corresponding to 60° (I'll let you calculate the distance).

    What's intriguing is that when you put sheets printed at 1000 dpi next to identical ones but printed at 2000 dpi, those with normal vision have little trouble picking the difference.

    Again, comparisons with existing monitors is pretty pointless really as one has to consider the FOV, which simply means that the distance between your eyes and the screen will be reduced or increased accordingly to account for the physical size of the screen (comfort and the limiting resolution of one's eye's taken into account of course).

    __________

    ** For the pernickety, I'm well aware things are more complicated than this: centre versus peripheral vision, spatial resolution, limiting resolution, modulation depth and that dpi aren't exactly pixels--Kell factor, effective resolution, squareness of pixels etc. What I attempted to show is that for printing a 1000dpi is not unusual and that represents a page [screen] size of about 11600 x 8200 B-to-W transitions on a page which is well above 2560 x 1440px (which incidentally is the resolution of my Dell 2711 monitor). It's also well above the new 4k standard not to mention the 8 and 10k standards. Remember those super hi-res standards wouldn't have been introduced or proposed unless the eye could make use of them).

  9. Longrod_von_Hugendong
    Facepalm

    Yay...

    I new myth has arrived - gone are MHz and Mega Pixels, hello to stupid pixel sizes. I for one welcome this change <facepalm>

  10. Outcast !!!

    Show the notification bar

    Any screenshot of the notification bar? I have seen my colleagues' LG phone notification bar is so cluttered out of the box that it reminds me of a toolbar ridden desktop web browser.

    1. Jordan Davenport

      Re: Show the notification bar

      I was wondering the same thing. I've had my hands on an elderly friend's LG G2 and someone else's LG G Pad 8.3; the notifications were almost hidden off the screen by the toggles and sliders available. It is possible to trim that up a bit after digging for a few hours through the settings though.

      What bugged me the most was the G2's inconsistent method of answering phone calls. If the screen was off, you had to drag the green accept button at the bottom left of the screen to the right to answer. If the screen was already on, you just push that button without dragging.

      This difference was a bit difficult to explain to an octogenarian who had never used a smart phone before. I honestly don't know if changing the dialer with something like ExDialer will change the method of answering a call or not, but at this point, now that she's finally learned it, changing it really isn't an option anymore.

  11. thomas k.

    Interesting difference in appearance

    The (white) L3 pictured in the Ars Technica review shows a black bezel on the top of the phone and a white one on the bottom. The result is so hideous, I didn't continue reading past the picture.

    The matching black bezels on your sample is much more asthetically pleasing.

    http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/05/hands-on-with-the-lg-g3-we-hope-you-like-pixels/

  12. Robert E A Harvey

    pull out antenna

    I want one, even if it doesn't do anything.

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