What are the pros of doing this vs what are the cons? One con would be that some apps are incompatible with this.
If your blind you can benefit by making it bigger. If you can see really well you can set a lower value for the density which gives you more real estate on the screen.
GNeX
AOKP
FRANCOS LATEST KERNEL
& WHATEVER [MOD AT THE TIME]
If you run at 240 their aren't really any cons as it is still a native Android density. Other densities will give you market compatibility issues. Apps will work at other densities but won't download from the market.
There are modded markets that will make the market think you are running another density then you are so apps will download.
The Pro's are everything looks crisper and better at lower densities and you can get much more information on the screen.
I run my phone in Tablet mode at a 160 density and it looks great!
Just remember when making the density lower you can enlarge the text by going into the settings menu then display.
Stick with 240 and you'll be fine. I run 240 with small text and everything looks tack sharp.
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.
One of the first things I have noticed with the Tab Pro 8.4 is a severe imbalance between the font sizes of Samsung UI elements and non-Samsung. For example in Play Store when I enter text in the search box it's crisp but quite small. Yet the text in the Settings menus is a very comfortable size compared to the Google font size. If I increase the font size system-wide then the Google font size becomes comfortable and the Samsung font size becomes cartoonishly big.
Has anyone else noticed this and/or come up with a reasonable solution?
Perhaps one culprit is the fact that the true DPI of this device is 359 and Samsung has programmed 320 into the build.prop. That means it's lying to the OS that the screen is 9.4" not 8.4". So apps are drawing text and graphics a bit too small, but Samsung decided to jack up their own font sizes to a comfortable range. If I were to edit the DPI to 320 that still wouldn't be likely to help as then Samsung would just remain cartoonishly big.
I agree 100% with this problem and have tried changing the DPI in the build.prop. Big mistake as it causes crashes everywhere in Sammy apps.
The only work-around I have found was to use the Xposed framework with the App Settings app. This way you can adjust each app individually.
Its not a perfect solution, but its the best I have found in the 5 days I've owned this tab.
cmstlist said:
One of the first things I have noticed with the Tab Pro 8.4 is a severe imbalance between the font sizes of Samsung UI elements and non-Samsung. For example in Play Store when I enter text in the search box it's crisp but quite small. Yet the text in the Settings menus is a very comfortable size compared to the Google font size. If I increase the font size system-wide then the Google font size becomes comfortable and the Samsung font size becomes cartoonishly big.
Has anyone else noticed this and/or come up with a reasonable solution?
Perhaps one culprit is the fact that the true DPI of this device is 359 and Samsung has programmed 320 into the build.prop. That means it's lying to the OS that the screen is 9.4" not 8.4". So apps are drawing text and graphics a bit too small, but Samsung decided to jack up their own font sizes to a comfortable range. If I were to edit the DPI to 320 that still wouldn't be likely to help as then Samsung would just remain cartoonishly big.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
tpowell.ca said:
I agree 100% with this problem and have tried changing the DPI in the build.prop. Big mistake as it causes crashes everywhere in Sammy apps.
The only work-around I have found was to use the Xposed framework with the App Settings app. This way you can adjust each app individually.
Its not a perfect solution, but its the best I have found in the 5 days I've owned this tab.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yep, I've used it before on other devices. I used the newly released FlashFire to take a backup of my system to external SD before installing Xposed. I currently have a dpi of 360 assigned to all of: Chrome, Dropbox, Gmail, gReader, Google Maps, Netflix, News & Weather, Nova Launcher, Plume, Root Explorer, Tapatalk, Titanium Backup, PressReader, and the App Settings app itself (as everything was a bit too small). That puts these apps in the same range of screen element size as on Nexus devices. Feel free to pick a bit higher for a bit bigger as we do tend to hold tablets further from our faces than phones.
In fact the Nexus 5 itself (which is my daily phone) has a build.prop that is too large for the real screen size, 480 instead of 445 (factor of 7.8%). But it does make the UI a bit more comfortable without sacrificing too much screen space. So theory if you want any apps on the Tab Pro to display their UI elements at least as large as they physically appear on a Nexus 5, you'd assign a DPI in the 380-385 range to those apps.
tpowell.ca said:
I agree 100% with this problem and have tried changing the DPI in the build.prop. Big mistake as it causes crashes everywhere in Sammy apps.
The only work-around I have found was to use the Xposed framework with the App Settings app. This way you can adjust each app individually.
Its not a perfect solution, but its the best I have found in the 5 days I've owned this tab.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Old thread but thanks! My GF has the 8.4" model and in the latest Facebook app the font is like 1/32" and she cannot read it
I read here and there the forum, rooted the tablet, installed xposed, installed AppSettings and changed the DPI, it worked! :good::good::good:
Hello guys,
I bought a new Wileyfox Swift and I'm really curious what dpi setting setting is the natural/standard one for a 5 " Display , especially for the wileyfox swift. It is said that the display has a natural of 296 ppi. which DPI Setting should I use in Cyanogen OS ? The standard of 320 DPI or a value near the natural ppi of the display? 300 DPI or less? I just want a setting the fit's the standard.
Does this value or setting has impact on other things or only the scale of things on screen?
Again, should the cyanogen os standard value of DPI be set near the standard PPI value of the smartphone display`?
thanks in advance for all helpful answers.
That is a neat little option.
Usually it affects the size of items which can be displayed. Depending on the apps you use, you'll find that their appearance and subtle part of functionality on the UX side will change a bit. Some layouts are available only for certain DPI settings. Play around with it and choose your favourite. With lower DPI you can get a bit more screen estate for content- text, icons, etc.
The difference between 300 vs 320 DPI is mostly unnoticeable. As you are looking for the natural look, you can leave it as either of the two. You can try with lower values as well. It is possible to have some problems here and there if you use DPI that is largely different than on the device (something like 240).
Pak0St said:
That is a neat little option.
Usually it affects the size of items which can be displayed. Depending on the apps you use, you'll find that their appearance and subtle part of functionality on the UX side will change a bit. Some layouts are available only for certain DPI settings. Play around with it and choose your favourite. With lower DPI you can get a bit more screen estate for content- text, icons, etc.
The difference between 300 vs 320 DPI is mostly unnoticeable. As you are looking for the natural look, you can leave it as either of the two. You can try with lower values as well. It is possible to have some problems here and there if you use DPI that is largely different than on the device (something like 240).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you very much I guess I should consider a mental doctor because I'm switching from 300 to 320 and back several times a day lol. Some applications looking better with 300 but 320 looks more clear?!?
Anyway, appreciate you took your time to answer and I guess I'll keep the 300..... Or?.... Wow... Hard decision lol.
Take a look in this thread:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/xpo...2014-05-14-t2437377/post63835421#post63835421
I haven't tried this Xposed module to change the DPI on per-app basis. If you are on CyanogenMod instead of CyanogenOS, it is definitely worth a look.
Best case scenario- you won't change the DPI for the entire system and restart each time
Hi!
Just changing from my good old Note to a G3. With the immensly increased pixels I thought I'd get an even better usability - but so far it is much worse!
Many apps are so ugly as I have seen it only on smaller phones. For example in Hangouts or other such apps I have way less entries on the screen than on my old Note with 1280x800 and 240dpi setting. I can decrease the text size, but the overall extreme height of an entry, a menu line and even in the android system settings remains unchanged. Decreasing the dpi to below 530 has my phone almost stuck since "com.android.phone" keeps crashing and the dialog keeps popping ifinitely. But even with a dpi of 450 things aren't sweet as text goes really small but whitespace is still huge.
So, how come my old phone works so well and shows much more info with 240dpi? Are there other settings I can play with? Those "line heights" are just outrageous. Most apps are in direct comparison to my old Note way better on that one and show more info.
Any links to how android treats these graphic settings and which there are? Does it depend on the version? I use 6 on G3 vs 4.4 on the Note.
Thanks a lot!