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Hi all, please see the below thread. Only sharing the info as this was posted on the Verizon N4 forum.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/note-4-verizon/general/root-want-to-modify-dpi-t2960644
Hope this helps...
As indicated below some touchwiz native apps are affected.
List of known affected applications by changing DPI settings:
S-View (for S-View covers -- slightly misaligned but functional)
Touchwiz Stock Dialer (slightly misaligned but functional -- other non-stock options exist such as Hangouts or ExDialer)
Fingerprint lockscreen (arrow pointing to finger print scanner off center)
Exchange email (stock Samsung Email)
Stock Camera App
Just FYI to get some easy download links:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/note-4-verizon/general/root-want-to-modify-dpi-t2960644
Enable USB debugging on yer phone
-> http://www.mediafire.com/download/a4hd8y0c1iakysk/Samsung-Usb-Driver-v1.5.49.0.exe
Samsung USB drivers you'll need installed
-> http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=48915118#post48915118
ADB / Fastboot installer
navigate to C:\adb\ and then run the command they give in the thread
adb shell wm density 540
(not confirmation will be sent but your phone should prompt you to 'allow' your computer to send adb commands to it.).
Restart phone
DPI settings are now at 540. original DPI settings are 640 BTW
imnoob55 said:
Hi all, please see the below thread. Only sharing the info as this was posted on the Verizon N4 forum.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/note-4-verizon/general/root-want-to-modify-dpi-t2960644
Hope this helps...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I came across that thread a few hours ago. It's pretty neat to be able to drop the density and make more use of display space (could even drop it down to 384 and make it look more like a tablet), but it has its problems. Samsung apps (Dialer, camera, S Note, S-View, etc) will lose their screen alignment and/or only cover a portion of the screen when altering the density. Finding an alternate dialer was easy enough, but I'm having trouble finding a camera app similar to stock in quality, and was unsuccessful at replacing the S-View...
redphazon said:
I came across that thread a few hours ago. It's pretty neat to be able to drop the density and make more use of display space (could even drop it down to 384 and make it look more like a tablet), but it has its problems. Samsung apps (Dialer, camera, S Note, S-View, etc) will lose their screen alignment and/or only cover a portion of the screen when altering the density. Finding an alternate dialer was easy enough, but I'm having trouble finding a camera app similar to stock in quality, and was unsuccessful at replacing the S-View...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yup unfortunately that is a side-effect of doing this. Only way to do it that I am aware of conventionally would be via xposed or loading in custom TW apps, both not possible. Hangout dialer works well, for this. TW stock browser is not affected. My S-Note is not affected either, too. Dialer and S-View are (not unusable, they just are not center-aligned any longer as their height/width are set on static widths rather than proportional % when Samsung set up the layout.) Maybe they'll change that in L.
BTW I use Nova for launcher and Hangouts as my dialer. I do use an s-view case, though, which is of course impacted.
imnoob55 said:
Yup unfortunately that is a side-effect of doing this. Only way to do it that I am aware of conventionally would be via xposed or loading in custom TW apps, both not possible. Hangout dialer works well, for this. TW stock browser is not affected. My S-Note is not affected either, too. Dialer and S-View are (not unusable, they just are not center-aligned any longer as their height/width are set on static widths rather than proportional % when Samsung set up the layout.) Maybe they'll change that in L.
BTW I use Nova for launcher and Hangouts as my dialer. I do use an s-view case, though, which is of course impacted.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm also using Nova Launcher. I did download ExDialer at first, but I went to Hangouts Dialer instead since ExDialer has a trial period and costs money.
S Note is largely unaffected yes, but when you open the camera for copying documents, the square used for aligning the camera with the document is off-center. It doesn't seem to hurt functionality in any way, though. Oddly enough, the camera when used in S Note is fullscreen...
As far as S-View goes, I'm thinking about removing the flip cover. S-View is nice, but I'm always trying to not get smudges on the cover screen on top of the phone display, so the cover is a little bit cumbersome to me when holding it. Seeing how much better the phone looks at a lower density makes me lean even closer to just getting rid of it. That leaves me with just the camera replacement...
Exchange email is also broken... when you reply to an email, the screen font is set to eleventybillion.
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Sent with my Galaxy Note 4
Can anyone confirm if this impacts the play store? Typically changing the dpi on the whole device would prevent the play store from downloading some apps.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N910A using XDA Free mobile app
jfenton78 said:
Can anyone confirm if this impacts the play store? Typically changing the dpi on the whole device would prevent the play store from downloading some apps.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N910A using XDA Free mobile app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I haven't seen any problems with the Play Store yet, though I haven't been installing much of anything, either. The few apps I've installed so far gave me no trouble.
Also, just found out that the stock camera has no problems with accurate button detection when the phone is turned sideways for landscape rotation, though it's still not fullscreen. You have to guess where the buttons are on the screen in portrait when the density is changed.
Couple of tips:
if you get an error about the device being offline make sure you've got the current ADB installed. The link provided for the adb and fastboot didn't work for me because the file didn't install. The program is just an auto run zip file. you can open with 7-zip and just extract the adb files.
also if you get an error about the device being unauthorized you must select no action on the windows pop up and always perform this action. the phone should then get a pop up with the RSA key number and ask you to authorize. hope this helps.
540 DPI is pretty nice.
I was okay with the dialer and lockscreen, but the camera made me go back to 640. In vertical shooting mode, the touch points for all the icons, including the shutter button, is misaligned and is very annoying. What a shame as 540 looked AWESOME.
cj00ta said:
Exchange email is also broken... when you reply to an email, the screen font is set to eleventybillion.
-----
Sent with my Galaxy Note 4
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks! Just added to the top thread under impacted apps
Does this effectively change the resolution? I'm curious if lowering the DPI would give positive improvement to high-end game performance. Can anyone shed some light here?
Conkrete said:
Does this effectively change the resolution? I'm curious if lowering the DPI would give positive improvement to high-end game performance. Can anyone shed some light here?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It doesn't change the resolution. What it changes is the drawing size of on-screen content which is directly from the 'dpi setting' of the phone.
It's a little complicated to explain but this is how it works;
The phone's default screen density (DPI) setting 640, this is done because that's how many dots per inch of the physical screen there is (a phone of similar screen size would have a similar dpi). This value is stored in your phone's build.prop and is read by numerous applications, it might not match exactly the 'real' dpi of the screen but its normally very close to it.
By changing it lower in dpi you're instructing to applications you actually have a smaller screen size, thus to fit content (i.e words not being HUGE on a small screen) content is drawn to that dpi setting you're providing in build.prop.
Now to go into why we have certain issues when changing the dpi.
This is basically due to how the app did its layout sizing (do I base content on "actual size" of the screen-size or do I base it on "actual density" of the screen density in build.prop? Most apps, since they're targeting to be used with dozens of devices of all sorts of different sizes, will be designed where the layout of content is dependent upon dpi. A layout would be I want a rectangular box on the bottom that has height 10px and width 100%, so that effectively means the width is based on the proportion of the screen size (the OS controls this, its just a matter of scaling). This is why you once had 5 items to show now has 8 items to show in a listbox. The size of the listbox in this case would be based on actual density while the content (text etc.) inside would be based on actual size (scaling I would think is limited to a min/max actual size for text).
Samsung can get away with this on their stock apps because in their mind when they build their roms they are only going to be used on that specific device. They're starting to go away from this, however, and are starting to make their layouts more typical that of a normal application. You have somewhat less control of the layout going from actual size to actual density.
*keep in mind you can actually set parameters for both. Such as if I wanted something to be 10% in width but only up to 2.5 inches in actual size this effectively means that it will scale until it reaches 2.5" and then scale no longer.
I hope that makes sense. Resolution really doesn't have a role at all in this, you're always at the same resolution (4K) and this is handled by the lower-level kernel and GPU firmware. I don't think there's a way to change this at the app layer but than again I have really no background in android development.
*please if anything comes off as inaccurate please point out, I am from a XAML/.NET development background and linux/unix embedded systems and really I focused on back-end/databases/services and not really front-endy stuff. This is how it is handled in XAML though and I have seen android uses the same principals.
imnoob55 said:
It doesn't change the resolution. What it changes is the drawing size of on-screen content which is directly from the 'dpi setting' of the phone.
It's a little complicated to explain but this is how it works;
The phone's default screen density (DPI) setting 640, this is done because that's how many dots per inch of the physical screen there is (a phone of similar screen size would have a similar dpi). This value is stored in your phone's build.prop and is read by numerous applications, it might not match exactly the 'real' dpi of the screen but its normally very close to it.
By changing it lower in dpi you're instructing to applications you actually have a smaller screen size, thus to fit content (i.e words not being HUGE on a small screen) content is drawn to that dpi setting you're providing in build.prop.
Now to go into why we have certain issues when changing the dpi.
This is basically due to how the app did its layout sizing (do I base content on "actual size" of the screen-size or do I base it on "actual density" of the screen density in build.prop? Most apps, since they're targeting to be used with dozens of devices of all sorts of different sizes, will be designed where the layout of content is dependent upon dpi. A layout would be I want a rectangular box on the bottom that has height 10px and width 100%, so that effectively means the width is based on the proportion of the screen size (the OS controls this, its just a matter of scaling). This is why you once had 5 items to show now has 8 items to show in a listbox. The size of the listbox in this case would be based on actual density while the content (text etc.) inside would be based on actual size (scaling I would think is limited to a min/max actual size for text).
Samsung can get away with this on their stock apps because in their mind when they build their roms they are only going to be used on that specific device. They're starting to go away from this, however, and are starting to make their layouts more typical that of a normal application. You have somewhat less control of the layout going from actual size to actual density.
*keep in mind you can actually set parameters for both. Such as if I wanted something to be 10% in width but only up to 2.5 inches in actual size this effectively means that it will scale until it reaches 2.5" and then scale no longer.
I hope that makes sense. Resolution really doesn't have a role at all in this, you're always at the same resolution (4K) and this is handled by the lower-level kernel and GPU firmware. I don't think there's a way to change this at the app layer but than again I have really no background in android development.
*please if anything comes off as inaccurate please point out, I am from a XAML/.NET development background and linux/unix embedded systems and really I focused on back-end/databases/services and not really front-endy stuff. This is how it is handled in XAML though and I have seen android uses the same principals.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Extremely helpful and great info. Possibly the best response I've received from XDA. Thank you for the info. I have found a couple root apps that claim to change resolution but I've been hoping to find a non-root alternative.
I have a Galaxy Tab 3 7" with Android 5.0.2. Quite often on the bottom right hand corner of the screen, generally when in a web page, a red lined square appears. Nothing in the square, other than the underlying page, and if I leave it it shrinks the page. If I get it quick enough with the cursor and move the top line of the square upwards it turns blue and the page stays full size. My guess is that it is something to do with multiple screens, but I have not located anything to tell me how to switch it off or to use the function. Pls help, and please excuse my lack of appropriate terminology, so I hope you can understand the issue.
Hi,
can somebody please tell me how to add the 3rd row of quick setting toggles in the Oreo update like it was with Nougat?
I've tried Oreo for the third time now but several things simply don't work anymore or got worse in comparison with Nougat.
I could live with a few of those but only having two rows of quick setting toggles is definatily not one of them.
I tried gravitybox (it's missing the option to manage the vibration strength of the virtual buttons and the battery tile now has additional text which takes up all the space so the temperature part isn't visible anymore.)
Furthermore I had to buy a substratum theme to not vomit from the white quick settings panel. With the march security update the installation is now as tedious as with Nougat due to the forced reboot.
The Xposed module HowGiveLolli doesn't work anymore and the centered normal letters instead of all upper case was a real nice feature.
Why are the points in the settings app regrouped so it's harder to find specific settings?
There are simply so many bad design choices in my eyes I can't bring myself to live with Oreo due to not finding substitute functions for the missing ones.
Kind regards
I know you posted this last month so you hopefully figured it out, but either way I thought I'd share the answer since someone else might want to know in the future.
It has to do with the display scaling in Settings\Display\Advanced\Display Size. If set to default or large, you only get two rows of quick settings. If you set to small, the UI shrinks and as a side effect you get three rows of quick settings tiles. You can always increase the font size afterward if it's too small, but reducing the display scaling is the only way to have enough room to display three rows.
ABQNM said:
I know you posted this last month so you hopefully figured it out, but either way I thought I'd share the answer since someone else might want to know in the future.
It has to do with the display scaling in Settings\Display\Advanced\Display Size. If set to default or large, you only get two rows of quick settings. If you set to small, the UI shrinks and as a side effect you get three rows of quick settings tiles. You can always increase the font size afterward if it's too small, but reducing the display scaling is the only way to have enough room to display three rows.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for posting the solution. I simply restored my Nougat backup as I never upgraded my bootloader for that matter. I don't think I'll be using Oreo until I get a new phone which possibly can't be a Moto Z3 because I'm not really convinced they will release anything more than the Z3 play.
ABQNM said:
I know you posted this last month so you hopefully figured it out, but either way I thought I'd share the answer since someone else might want to know in the future.
It has to do with the display scaling in Settings\Display\Advanced\Display Size. If set to default or large, you only get two rows of quick settings. If you set to small, the UI shrinks and as a side effect you get three rows of quick settings tiles. You can always increase the font size afterward if it's too small, but reducing the display scaling is the only way to have enough room to display three rows.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi and thanks for this trick : as a matter of fact I was always on "small" in Nougat and it worked nice with 3 rows, but with Oreo I needed to switch to "smaller" to switch from 2 to 3 rows :silly:
Curious if there's a way to have different screen zoom and text sizes per screen. On the front.. obviously like it a little bigger. Opened, I like the screen zoom to small with a slightly smaller text size. Also the screen zoom changes some apps to tablet mode, not ideal for the small screen. Any ideas?
Wondering about this as well. I've yet to find anyway of doing this. At the moment, 'Medium' Zoom looks better for the outside screen but too big for the Inner. I've just set it to 'Small' as the best you can get for now. Any change in developer setting (to make even smaller) makes the outside screen practically unusable due to its tiny size.
yeah from what i understand, the text size setting is completely global which is unfortunate.
with their expensive team of "experts", you would wonder why this was such an oversight.
Iv noticed on small screen you can pinch to zoom which iv used a lot
Someone suggested on Reddit that you can use Tasker to create two different profile for open and closed state with separate dp… The downside is, it will have maybe half a sec delay when you open or close due to switching res...
Is image persistence normal for S20's screen or OLED screens in general?
For example, playing a bright video game with black aspect ratio bars, leaves a lasting persistent image, where on dark pastel backgrounds you can clearly see where bars and game were.
Or writing a long article, leaves remnants of Android's nav. buttons, Chrome's address bar, and even keyboard visible, when tested on dark pastel backgrounds.
These persistent images gradually disappear, but it takes a long time to disappear completely. Do you experience something similar to this?
Thanks.
Scroll down for testing methods, post #5. Start by opening dark gray image, view full image, zoom in, do you see discoloration?
Image retention (persistence) is a somewhat common issue with all OLED. That said you shouldn't be experiencing it unless your constantly rocking your screen at 100% brightness, or near there, for hours on end.
I found this cNet article which explains it really well.
https://www.cnet.com/how-to/oled-screen-burn-in-what-you-need-to-know-now/
scaredy-cat said:
Is image persistence normal for S20's screen or OLED screens in general?
For example, playing a bright video game with black aspect ratio bars, leaves a lasting persistent image, where on dark pastel backgrounds you can clearly see where bars and game were.
Or writing a long article, leaves remnants of Android's nav. buttons, Chrome's address bar, and even keyboard visible, when tested on dark pastel backgrounds.
These persistent images gradually disappear, but it takes a long time to disappear completely. Do you experience something similar to this?
Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The Galaxy S7 and S8 had issues with Screen Burn which Samsung improved going forward from the S9. If the ghost images gradually disappear it isn't Screen Burn which causes permanent discoloration. If under warranty you may wish to get the device replaced, it doesn't seem the problem will correct itself over time. The other options I would consider are uninstalling apps which you enabled just before the problem appeared or performing a Factory Reset.
if you're playing games and the background is constantly moving, then there should be little, or no image retention. However, if you are using Google Maps and high brightness and stationary for a long period of time (eg stuck in traffic) then I would consider some image retention could be present.
Thank you for your answers. Bold text for topics. Testing methods at the end of this reply.
Was not aware OLED screens' image retention is such a common issue, but I knew OLED screens are prone to burn-in, read about it online, and saw it on my relatives' older devices, so out of the box I turned on the dark mode and changed wallpaper to black.
I preferred regular Android's navigation buttons to gestures, because of ergonomics, due to phones center of mass (wish it was more bottom heavy), when using with one hand, balancing phone while performing gestures always feels like I'm about to drop the phone, I also find gestures to be slower, simple tap vs sliding your finger. And on top of that, I have carpal tunnel syndrome, so it's much easier to simply reach and tap. But now I started using gestures, as a burn-in preventative measure.
By the way, having Chrome open for around 20 minutes, and quickly switching to Display Tester's BurnIn detection, I can already distinguish Chrome's address bar section, and clearly see tab switcher button. This will gradually disappear, but the fact that afterimage appears so quickly and remains for so long is concerning, since I feel such image retention might indicate my display may be prone to burn-in, but of course, I don't know this for sure, just my uneducated guess.
Having dark mode keyboard open for around an hour, and I can see remnants of it even on grey backgrounds of folders.
Back to reply..
I never use my screen at full brightness, it's always set to somewhere around 50%, and as I said earlier, image retention starts to occurs in a matter of minutes. Images do gradually disappear, but it takes a long time, and when I use screen for hours with static elements, it felt like it took awfully long time to disappear, but to determine how long exactly it takes for them to appear and disappear, I need to do more thorough testing.
Yes, when playing games, indeed, a lot of things are moving, except for Heads-up Display, but I first noticed this image retention issue playing an older video game called "Super Cat Bros". That game is not optimized for such wide-screen phones as S20, so on each side you have a black bar, display is split into 3 sections - bar-game-bar. That game is very colorful and has lots of solid colors, so after I finished playing, in dark user interface backgrounds I noticed discoloration, later looking at solid color backgrounds l noticed clearly where each section was, so bar-game-bar. Because sides of a display were turned off, and all action happened in the middle, you can clearly see which part of the screen was the most active.
This is why I'm coming to conclusion, that dark mode alone is still only a small part in burn-in prevention, you should blackout everything, including websites (I remember firefox had plug-in like that, capable of replacing background and font colors), switch to a dim keyboard preferably without visible keys with orange-red colored font, download oled friendly icon packs, watch movies cropped in, so you're not left with permanent discoloration in place of "black bars", and play games full-screen, only then wear will be uniform. Seems like too much work. I wish micro-led displays would become widespread sooner.
I don't think factory reset or uninstalling apps will help, because it appears to be not software related.
At least not software user can update, such as display's firmware, but I don't know for sure just how independent display is from other phone's guts. Even then, I don't think firmware can fix this.
The phone is under warranty, since it's new, used for a few moths, and unmodified, but sadly is probably not an option, because in my country, gaslighting customers is fairly common. Service center will probably take it away for a few weeks, then return it scratched up, and say they didn't find any issue. So unless it's a serious burn-in, that's visible always and on every background, it'll be extremely difficult to make a return, and even then they'll probably tell it's normal wear, but then at least you can without explaining too much contact consumer protection and show them the problem.
Software used for discovery and testing:
• Super Cat Bros (video game)
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.FDGEntertainment.SuperCatBros.gp
Play it for an hour (or more) and then test on solid darker pastel colors, do you see discoloration? Report for how long you played and how long discoloration was visible. Do not reopen game when retesting discoloration, because it may appear permanent. I know some people are not good at seeing minute differences in shades, but at first it should be very obvious which parts were black bars and part where game ran.
• Display Tester (app)
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gombosdev.displaytester
Very good display tester, free, lots of features and tests, and works on wide-screen displays, enable "use immersive mode if possible" in the settings. I think default color in BurnIn tester is very good at revealing discoloration, but you can play with sliders, just remember position which reveals discoloration the best.
• I'll also attach solid color image, which works for revealing discoloration.
And another dark gray image, which also helps reveal discoloration, use in dark room at around 50% screen brightness (play around), no matter how much you zoom in or out, it appears like screen has gradient, notifications bar icons are also visible, not sure if it's temporary or a permanent discoloration. I recommend opening these images with a gallery app, set to full screen, or simply pinch to zoom, and tap screen one time to hide gallery's UI elements. Tilt phone left and right, move towards and away from yourself, do you see discoloration?
You can also open them up with browser, and examine your screen, but I found you can't hide all UI elements, so better use gallery or other image viewer.