The term "color depth" is WAY overused.... - Page 2

borderwave2 · #16 05-31-2009, 11:22 AM

Dave, would you not agree that even 16 bit color is unacceptable on a "top of the line smartphone"? As I said, my lg from 6 years ago supported as many colors.

For reference Apple managed to get the iphone to support 256k colors without taking too much of a performance hit. Not saying the storm is an iphone, but just referencing one of its competitors.

DeaconBlue · #17 05-31-2009, 11:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dave12308

Deacon, over on Berryreview, they posted a link to a site to generate an "unlock code" for a hidden engineering screen:

Advanced Users: BlackBerry Engineering Screen Unlock Code Generator | BerryReview.com »

As for the use of the term "dithering", you'll have to forgive me. I am a PC hardware guy and it is very common for the term "dithering" to be used to describe the color banding that occurs on lower quality LCD displays. FWIW, "dithering"; if done with a poor algorithm, can cause the same effect. I will admit, however, that the proper term would probably be "reduction in homescreen colors"

However, the gist of my post was that "color depth" is an overused term, NOT "color banding" - 2 totally different things. As for the wallpaper, I can honestly say mine (a fighter jet firing rockets) doesn't exhibit ANY color banding at all, unless it's behind an icon tile. The wallpaper thing must be a YMMV thing.

I think we're basically saying the same thing here. The color depth of the screen is 16bit, 64K color. The engineering screen your referring to shows the capability of the screen and is correct. And the OS uses 16-bit color in the media apps, so videos and pictures are displayed in high color there.

The GUI elements on the home screen, however are being displayed at a reduced color depth. When you reduce the color depth of an image with gradients, it produces color banding. A technique for reducing that banding effect is dithering, but it's not being used here.

So "reduced color depth" is a correct term, just not in reference to the phone's display. It is in reference to the display of the on screen elements by the OS.

If you have a 32-bit capable monitor, but you configure windows to display at 16-bit color, would you not say you are reducing the color depth?

I also work in PC support, and have been since 1997. I've also been a computer hobbiest since the early 80's. I've heard the term dithering many times over those years, as it was common practice in early Windows days and before the broadband era. But I've never heard it used the way you are using it in your post here.

DeaconBlue · #18 05-31-2009, 12:02 PM

OK, correcting myself here. As you say, some cheaper LCDs use a form of dithering, quoting below from Wikipedia:

"Some cheaper LCD displays use dithered 18-bit color (64 × 64 × 64 = 262,144 combinations) to achieve faster transition times, without sacrificing truecolor display levels entirely."

But this is hardly what is happening on the Storm. First of all, the Storm is not capable of producing True color. Second, it is not the display that is running at a reduced color depth, as you have stated. Only certain elements as they are rendered by the operating system are being displayed with a reduced color depth.