News - Sharp unveils a '4K' 4.1-inch 736ppi LCD smartphone display

[HEXUS]

This IZGO screen could hold great potential for virtual reality headsets.

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[Pleiades]

Sorry, bit slow here but how is this 4k?

[MrRockliffe]

I was thinking the same thing. It's 2560x1600, which is obviously not 4K.

[edzieba]

Yeah, don't know why you guys are calling it a 4k display when it is not in any way 4k. Sharp aren't. Even the linked ExtremeTech article doesn't.

[crossy]

Putting these screens into mobile devices might be seen as pretty pointless, with the naked human eye unable detect pixels/dots much above 300 pixels/dots per inch densities. Sticking a 4K screen on a smartphone could also lead to a serious drain on the battery and GPU power. Remember, smartphone makers such as Sony opted to skip 2K screens in favour of better battery life

LG didn't "opt to skip 2K screens" - the LG G3 supposedly has a "2K" screen, although LG refer to it as "QHD".

The dot density perception thing is a bit muddy - there's been a LOT of discussion on Android Central, TechRadar, etc whether 300dpi+ make a difference or not, with a lot of academic studies being quoted by both sides of the argument. Heck, I even came across a paper myself that said that even though you couldn't see those 400dpi+ dots, the fact they were there did improve the image perception, the same way that hi-fi nuts claim that inaudible frequencies actually effect the audible ones, so removing the inaudible component of music is actually changing it.

[cptwhite_uk]

I suspect 4k is being confused with 4 million pixels. Newbie error for a tech site though!

[kingpotnoodle]

I suspect 4k is being confused with 4 million pixels. Newbie error for a tech site though!

Yeah good spot, it's 4 "megapixels" but not camera ratio. It's nowhere near 4K resolution, which is 4096x2160 or 3840x2160 for 16:9 AFAIK? I guess one of the numbers was maybe 3/4 right...

Anyway 4.1" is a tad small for a high end phone display is it not?

[mtyson]

LG's slides refer to it as a 4K part. So I wrote '4K' in quotes and mentioned that it differed from the industry standard 4K definition.

[bobhope2005]

Lol - how long before this is true though. Would be completely pointless because the eye can't see that level of detail but I doubt it would stop the tech companies if they thought it might help them have a unique selling point.

[CustardInc]

LG didn't "opt to skip 2K screens" - the LG G3 supposedly has a "2K" screen, although LG refer to it as "QHD".

The article, and your quote, said Sony, not LG.

While we're on the subject, the 1920 from 1920x1080 is roughly equal to 2000, so isn't 1080p 2K in the same way 3840x2160 is 4K (although I believe that res is UHD, not technical 4K). 2560x1600 isn't 2K, as far as I can see. Does that make two resolution based mistakes?

[MrRockliffe]

The article, and your quote, said Sony, not LG.

While we're on the subject, the 1920 from 1920x1080 is roughly equal to 2000, so isn't 1080p 2K in the same way 3840x2160 is 4K (although I believe that res is UHD, not technical 4K). 2560x1600 isn't 2K, as far as I can see. Does that make two resolution based mistakes?

It's really annoying, because I agree, but for some reason lots of companies are calling WQHD 2K, and it's not. Far from it. Wikipedia explains the differences between them, and although it states that it's in the range of 2K, it clearly shouldn't be called that because it causes confusion. Twice the resolution of 2560x1440 gives you 5K, BUT HALF OF 5 IS NOT 2!! I've seen so much confusion about screen res because of this: it's silly.

[shaithis]

There seems to be very little in the way of standards so I can see the confusion. It was the same with HD....essentially anything with 720 lines or more was HD......regardless of horizontal resolution. Now it seems 2k/4k/5k is solely a horizontal resolution check and "in the range of".....So you could argue 1920x50 could be classed as 2k, which is ridiculous but if that's the way the industry classes it........

I can understand the 2560x1440 and 2560x1600 resolutions being called QHD. 2560x1440 is 4 times the resolution of 1280x720 (720p).