>>> How is the iPhone doing it? It has Half-VGA resolution and "feels"
quoted text
>> very smooth.
>
> it has a hardware-accelerated 3d chipset with full opengl drivers.  
> and a very
> good chipset at that. that is why. as for half-vga. that's still  
> HALF the
> pixels the freerunner/neo1973 have. *IF* we shipped the same screen  
> - we'd have

quoted text
> better performance. i find it interesting how so many peole rave  
> about how
> great the iphone screen is - but its tech specs are not so hot. it's  
> dpi is

I would also like to have a better screen on the iPhone! If you open a  
web page
you have always to zoom in the first step.

quoted text
> pretty bad compared to the standard these days. but that sure as  
> hell has not


It would still be approx. 30% better than a QVGA 2'8...

quoted text
> stopped it selling. :) this is why i ask - actual products and  
> reality seem to
> show that dpi is not a major factor. at least as best i can tell.

I have now thought a lot about why they have chossen 320x480.

Most probably, they have spent a lot of money and useability research  
to find the
**best compromise** between number of pixels, dpi, speed, readibility,  
information
density and cost.

Conclusion:

* QVGA is worse (!) than the best compromise (as benchmarked by the  
iPhone)
* VGA is better to use - which has its price.

So how should one decide between two contradicting requirements?

In the view of openness and unknown future applications, I would pay  
the price
to go beyond the best compromise. Even if it needs a more expensive  
processor
to get the speed.

Nikolaus


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