Originally Posted by
xsacha Ok guys.
1080p is entirely unwarranted. Almost no one can tell the difference between 720p and 1080p in a phone. First off, you'd need better than 20/20 vision and you'd need to be closer than 30cm to it. Blackberry themselves have already done these tests but have decided to make a 1080p phone anyway (AQ series) simply to compete on 'specs' (as in the display).
Secondly, when doubling the amount of pixels you need to render to screen, you are also doubling work load. The UI uses more power simply from requiring more processing. The AMOLED uses more power simply from having more dots light up. Games are slowed down significantly due to having to process twice as much.
This is why a Z30 will outscore almost every phone in benchmarks (but get same as Moto X which also uses 720p) despite having a much older CPU/GPU.
Thirdly, Samsung phones use Pentile displays. So they only have 2 subpixels per pixel. Their effective resolution is more like 2/3rds and the display can't properly reproduce whites. They use this to pretend they have 1080p on note and galaxy.
This is why, despite having a higher resolution, the screen doesn't even look as nice as the iPhone.
Fourth: yes, those phones with 1080p screens have much lower battery life. They tend to put gigantic batteries in there too but it doesn't help. iPhone does fine with its 640p screen, getting 10 hours browsing and videos on a battery less than half the size simply because Apple know they have a resolution which meets the human vision already and aren't threatened by spec wars.
In summary, it's quite sad we will have a generation of devices with pixels needlessly so close together that the battery life, heat and frame rate becomes much worse. For no reason other than to cheat the buyer in to thinking they are getting a better screen.
Real things you should look for in a screen: ~260-320 dpi and no more, 500-600 nits brightness and no more, AMOLED, low reflectance, low latency, non-pentile.
If anyone is wondering, the closest phone to this right now is: Lumia 925/1020 (but it's Pentile) and iPhone 5/5s (but it's LCD and has bad reflectance).