Related
Ok I have seen a lot of confusion over the months regarding the LCD Panel fitted to the Kaiser, I will attempt to answer most of these issues here.
Hardware: The kaiser series is fitted with a 2.8 inch 240x320 TFT LCD panel, which means that it 240 pixels wide by 320 pixels deep, the optimum density of this LCD panel is 143 Pixels per Inch.
Resolution: This refers to the screen resolution that the Operating System will use to display on the LCD panel, the 3 most common being 240x320, 320x428 and 320x480, the reason this is possible is that the OS is capable of fooling the display into using the fixed 240x320 panel to display more pixels, ( it does not really have more pixels, it just looks like it).
DPI: DPI or Dots Per Inch, also known as Density, and correctly known as PPI or Pixels Per Inch, this refers to the number of pixels the screen displays in a One Inch Square on the screen. As I noted above, the actual PPI of the LCD panel is 143 PPI, this is fixed by the hardware, and cannot really be changed, however since the LCD is software driven, it can be persuaded to look as if it is displaying more or less pixels in that same area.
Panel Type: This refers to the actual LCD panel fitted to your device, there are 3 types fitted to the Kaiser series, one manufactured by Sony, the other two by Topoly. While the 3 different types of panel are functionally identical, they differ at the electronic level. On Windows Mobile this difference can be detected by the OS, however on Android this is not possible, so the panel type must be set in the parameters passed to the kernel at boot time, either in default.txt when booting from SD, or hardcoded in the NBH when booting from Nand. Also there is no easy way of telling which panel type is fitted to any given Kaiser, since the panel type was chosen by HTC depending on price and availability and stock at the time of manufacture, so any model of Kaiser can have any of these types fitted.
The main problems encountered with the display are usually solved by changing the Panel Type, either by editing default.txt, or reflashing the correct NBH, ( note that you can also edit the kernel parameters of an NBH using a Hex Editor, however this would be a relatively advanced method, since an error could cause major issues).
Changing screen resolution and density: As noted above there are 3 main resolutions used, 240x320, 320x428 and 320x480. These easy to change either by editing default.txt, or flashing an NBH, depending on how you run Android, resolution is usually a personal choice. Density is not as easy to change, although Rogue Tools by Myn, (available in Market, and discussed here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=667581), is excellent for this purpose, there are various common PPI settings, and again mostly personal choice, a little experimentation with resolution and density will allow you to find what you prefer.
Hope this helps clear things up a little
Thanks for this, it helps alot!
vertical lines issue
just to add to the above: the vertical lines issue some have is related to choosing the wrong panel type. Chosing the correct one will solve the problem.
Wrong panel make errors display, ok! But Can it lead to additional consumption of the battery?
Dark-Side said:
Wrong panel make errors display, ok! But Can it lead to additional consumption of the battery?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I suspect it may, since display errors such as vertical streaks, pixel errors, colour issues etc are actually caused by a mismatch between the OS drivers and the actual physical electronics, and it's possible that the panel may demand more power than it would normally, I'd have to bench test this to be sure, but it's probably easier just to use the correct panel type setting.
The correct panel type should lead to a 'normal' demand on the battery.
zenity said:
I suspect it may, since display errors such as vertical streaks, pixel errors, colour issues etc are actually caused by a mismatch between the OS drivers and the actual physical electronics, and it's possible that the panel may demand more power than it would normally, I'd have to bench test this to be sure, but it's probably easier just to use the correct panel type setting.
The correct panel type should lead to a 'normal' demand on the battery.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I use panel 2... I go to use panel 3 to test this. panel 1 make for me pixel errors. I'll report here.
Thank you
EDIT: no difference between panel 2 or 3 on my kais130
Thanks! That helps a lot.
I havd a thought, which is to change a physical LCD panel for my kaiser, HVGA or VGA... Is that possible? I would look into some electronic files later...
i guess that our chip has max resolution only 320x240 so no higher resolution
but as I look in the pdadb.net there are some devices with higher resolution and same chipset as ours so perhaps it is possible
It is unlikely to be possible to use another panel, since there are a lot of differences with the interface, it's not just the chipset, but how it's wired, plus higher resolution panels may need extra address lines which are not present in our kaisers.
For those of you experimenting with LCD Density settings. You may wish to try the following density settings.
100
121
144
169
196
Remember, pixels are square, so the density settings should reflect this, also the extreme ends of this table are just that, extreme
zenity said:
For those of you experimenting with LCD Density settings. You may wish to try the following density settings.
100
121
144
169
196
Remember, pixels are square, so the density settings should reflect this, also the extreme ends of this table are just that, extreme
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
density 106 works very well with 240x320 if the build is designed for 320x480. I'm using that on the CyanogenMod port. Haven't tried it with other builds though. I did try 107 once with another build but that did not turn out very well.
106? that should really look a little blurry, but I think it depends on the resolution that the build was designed for, however I think I'd find it a little small personally, have you tried 100? it should look clearer than 106, although I have noticed that some people just prefer a certain density regardless of the actual mathematically 'correct' one.
zenity said:
...
Panel Type:....
.... On Windows Mobile this difference can be detected by the OS, however on Android this is not possible, ...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So how do I detect which panel in winmo?
I don't like the idea of just stabbing blindly in the dark and hoping I get it right.
Basically? Stab in the dark, there is no way in wm or android to know which type is fitted, type 2 seems most common, and is usually a 'safe' default, if the graphics/colours are wrong, you probably have type 1, if you have issues waking from sleep then you probably have type 3. So try panel 2 first.
Sent from my HTC Dream using Tapatalk
I'm running Android on my HTC Tilt and am using panel 2. I tried panel 1 and the colors were off so Panel 2 seems good.
But the problem I am having is that when I open up the dialer, it doesn't fit correctly on the screen, the bar which shows which numbers you have entered covers up the numbers 1,2,3 and the sides are cropped.
Everything else seems to be fine why is the dialer messed up?
Should I try changing density its at default right now.
I personally like to use 110, but every time I open detail application on Market, it gave me force close. Facebook for Android does that too (I mean FC) whenever I open detail message or upload picture from gallery.. I've tried 106, 104 and 100 and still having the same problem.. it's not happening when I use 120 for density, everything seems work properly normal.. is that common or I have to do something to fix that problem?
Thats not normal behaviour for market, although it has been known to be a little flakey on some builds, however this is unlikely to be related to lcd density, since density only affects the visual appearance of the screen, not the OS itself.
Which Panel?2 or 3?
Am using HTC Tytn II and recently i tried almost all Android builds(donut,eclair,froyo) on my device.panel 1 shows some pixel errors and panel 2 and 3 makes no big difference for me, both settings showing a white flash screen on wake up!
and panel 3 i feel little smudge,not sure.panel 2 wake up with white flash screen and follows by grains(just like noisy TV screen).All these for two seconds.after that TYTN II behave normally.Any body can help me please?
stajan said:
Am using HTC Tytn II and recently i tried almost all Android builds(donut,eclair,froyo) on my device.panel 1 shows some pixel errors and panel 2 and 3 makes no big difference for me, both settings showing a white flash screen on wake up!
and panel 3 i feel little smudge,not sure.panel 2 wake up with white flash screen and follows by grains(just like noisy TV screen).All these for two seconds.after that TYTN II behave normally.Any body can help me please?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As previously stated, panel 2 is the most common of all.
As for the white flash and grainy display, this is due to the fact that we have to "fake v-sync" in order to display anything on our screens. Remember, Android was not designed for our Kaisers, but developers got it to run, piece by little piece, really well on our devices. There will always be drawbacks to this as the hardware doesn't really meet the requirements of what Android was developed for.
If you want to see whats going on when you have a white screen or snow, slide the keyboard open and press "Fn-left softkey". this brings up a screen that shows you what Android is doing.
To return to the main screen, press "Fn-right softkey".
Hope this helps...
I am developing an application that contains stock wallpapers of almost all Android smartphones brands.
The problem is that i can't deal with the resolution of images. Let's take an example: i have an image with dimensions 1920x1280
I know that the best image resolution for an Android home screen wallpaper is 2x of screen width (for example width of s2 is 480x2=960px) and exactly same height (for example s2 height is 800px) so the right wallpaper size for galaxy s2 (with screen resolution 480x800px) will be 960x800px. But on the market there are plenty of smartphones as well as different screen resolutions.
I am asking if is there any "universal" resolution (i know that this does not exist but at least approximately) for the wallpaper so that to fit on most of screen resolutions ? If there is not this means that i have to crop every wallpaper and resize to the right resolution for most of smart phones screen ?
Any suggest will help me, please give me something like referent, any other app, or any Java code so i can put into my app.
Thanks
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!
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!
Just out of curiosity what smallest width number are you guys running? I know you can make some adjustments to display size/font size in display settings but I'm talking about the number you set in developer options. I'm running 512 looks pretty good to me. The options in display settings didn't allow me to go as small as I wanted.
znel52 said:
Just out of curiosity what DPI are you guys running? I know you can make some adjustments to display size/font size in display settings but I'm talking about the number you set in developer options. I'm running 512 because that is the DPI listed on all the spec sheets for the screen. Looks pretty good to me.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Do you mean DPI or PPI?
If you are referring to PPI (jea 512 is the P6 Pro max) this does not change the actual PPI of the screen (obviously), only sets DPI scaling (ability to adjust the size of on-screen content).
Decreasing the value will give you larger icons and make text easier to read.
Increasing it will make on-screen elements smaller and fit more content on the screen.
You can also achieve that with the Pixel launcher built-in font & screen size options, so I don't really see the point here. (Settings -> Display -> Font size / Display size).
Morgrain said:
Do you mean DPI or PPI?
If you are referring to PPI (jea 512 is the P6 Pro max) this does not change the actual PPI of the screen (obviously), only sets DPI scaling (ability to adjust the size of on-screen content).
Decreasing the value will give you larger icons and make text easier to read.
Increasing it will make on-screen elements smaller and fit more content on the screen.
You can also achieve that with the Pixel launcher built-in font & screen size options, so I don't really see the point here. (Settings -> Display -> Font size / Display size).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The point is pretty simple, the adjustments in the display settings only go so far. I want on-screen elements smaller than those settings allow. Smallest options in settings gives you a minimum width of 484 and I wanted a higher number. Guess I should have just said the smallest width settings in developer options.
510 here and much preferring it!
Morgrain said:
Do you mean DPI or PPI?
If you are referring to PPI (jea 512 is the P6 Pro max) this does not change the actual PPI of the screen (obviously), only sets DPI scaling (ability to adjust the size of on-screen content).
Decreasing the value will give you larger icons and make text easier to read.
Increasing it will make on-screen elements smaller and fit more content on the screen.
You can also achieve that with the Pixel launcher built-in font & screen size options, so I don't really see the point here. (Settings -> Display -> Font size / Display size).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi! I'm sorry to bother you but I have a question, that is, you see my phone is oppo f9 and I have 432 dp and I'd like to change it to 700. Can I change it to that number? if yes, does it affects my phone performances? The "developer options" is quite new for me, so I'd like to ask before taking action
I have been running smallest width 720 for a few years now, which I think translates to something like 320dp. I ran the same on my previous Note phones. It takes me a minute to focus in the morning but I enjoy the extra space and viewing websites in full desktop mode instead of fisher price mobile versions.
It's really up to you to fiddle with the number until you find something that works for you, but I can verify 700+ works fine without breaking anything.
FWIW I ran it at 1024 for awhile too, that didnt break anything either but was too small for me. I don't know what the exact cutoff is but at a certain resolution you'll notice that Android and apps will flip over to a tablet experience. I prefer this, but it may influence your choice.
592 dpi also with 6 pro and 7 pro
anyone using Poco X3 NFC ? any suggestion on your smallest width ?
Only tried up to 800 so far. Maybe try 1024 once i very comfy w 800.