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.
-----
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.
Hi ! I attempted to use screen shift on ZF2 4GB on CM 13 to diminish screen resolution to HD, cuz i think it will help my phone battery to last the whole day. After setting 720x1280 and 320 dpi everything is ok, but then i noticed phisical navbar won't react. Someone help here.
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!
As mention in the title, I have been looking for a way to get apps to take advantage of the entire screen. Most games (Hearthstone, Cosmic Express, etc.) have a black bar at the bottom even when immersive mode is active. I have used apps such as Granular and Nav Bar Hidder to force immersive mode which does work for some apps but not for every app.
Other android phones such as the LG V30 and the Samsung S8/Note 8 have a feature where they force apps to run full screen with no black bar. I know custom ROMs could fix this problem by porting the feature and I have been looking around a ROM that has this feature, with no luck.
Does anyone know of a fix or a ROM that could help?
I think the apps need to be updated to take advantage of the 18:9 screen.
That's how it looks.
Atomregen said:
I measured it, the navigation bar hight is 168 pixels and the black area hight 202 pixels. So I would say on the unfilled area, the developers are to blame because they have not optimized the apps for 2:1 screens.
https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2017/12/tuning-your-apps-and-games-for-long.html?m=1
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using XDA Labs
Funny thing is that this phone doesnt auto centered the screen when using an app that havent optimised for 2:1 aspect ratio,
Example, game will use left area of the screen, leave a big black unused space on the right.
Sometimes the "stock" thing in pixel make the phone actually dumber,
My S8 do better handling this situation.
otonieru said:
Funny thing is that this phone doesnt auto centered the screen when using an app that havent optimised for 2:1 aspect ratio,
Example, game will use left area of the screen, leave a big black unused space on the right.
Sometimes the "stock" thing in pixel make the phone actually dumber,
My S8 do better handling this situation.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I agree samsung's solution is better for this issue, should have been common sense by google to do the same.
Honestly the aspect ratio is the only thing that really pisses me off about the screen. Colors, tint, blah blah blah...I don't care about. The fact that many app developers still haven't gotten off their asses to fix this aggravates me to no end. I'd much rather have the 5.5" screen of the Pixel XL in a supported format then a larger device with a 6" screen that triggers my OCD.
Hi Guys, so I've increased the dpi to custom under developer settings to 581. Everything seems to work great except for touch position on the dialer and it's pretty irritating. Anyone knows a solution to this or to selectively reduce the dpi on tbe dialer app? I'm not rooted. Look at the screenshot of the issue. Thanks!
I use 589, and no issues, but with 600, the notifications panel becomes very narrow, but no issues with anything else
i use 480 w lowered font size and "fineprint" font.... everything works perfect
winol said:
I use 589, and no issues, but with 600, the notifications panel becomes very narrow, but no issues with anything else
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Tried 589 and same issue. Can you confirm you don't have the issue on your dialer? Weird why this would be.
I just double checked, at 589, the dialer is normal, but, I have the screen resolution at wqhd+, fhd gives me some troubles in the zone of the nav bar, and I say zone because I hide the nav bar, gestures work ok, but, buttons appearing there become unresponsive, the same for the bottom row of the keyboard
winol said:
I just double checked, at 589, the dialer is normal, but, I have the screen resolution at wqhd+, fhd gives me some troubles in the zone of the nav bar, and I say zone because I hide the nav bar, gestures work ok, but, buttons appearing there become unresponsive, the same for the bottom row of the keyboard
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
For some reason I still have the issue in the OP screenshot. I've resorted to 520 now with QHD+, things are slightly better on the dialer but still largely the same.