Sony's 4K Smartphone Is 100% Hype

Megalith

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I’m a staunch supporter of modest resolutions in smartphone displays because they allow for greater performance and battery life. Maybe phone manufacturers should actually stick to lower resolutions more often, as people can’t even tell the difference between 1080p and 4K in some cases.

…reporters playing around with the phones went right on yapping about the Z5's amazing 4K display and Sony's reps didn't feel the need to correct them. You don't need to understand German or French or Mandarin to be able to hear someone calling a phone's screen 4K when it's clearly not.
 
Isn't there some sort of electronic ink for monochrome displays that lasts months on a single charge? It seems like that sort of thing should be used more often. I don't need to watch movies on a five-inch screen.
 
I've got a QHD screen on my phone right now and I can't see any pixelation in the screen in anything I look at on it. I think having a 4K screen on a phone is as stupid as putting 4K video capabilities into one. You need crazy fast storage to record in 4K without dropping frames and even then because you don't have a great lens on the phone it's going to make your 4K footage look just like it would have if you'd shot it in 1080p (which is apparently being re-branded as "2K" now).
 
We should still be driving Model Ts. Technology advancements are bad.
 
I've got a QHD screen on my phone right now and I can't see any pixelation in the screen in anything I look at on it. I think having a 4K screen on a phone is as stupid as putting 4K video capabilities into one. You need crazy fast storage to record in 4K without dropping frames and even then because you don't have a great lens on the phone it's going to make your 4K footage look just like it would have if you'd shot it in 1080p (which is apparently being re-branded as "2K" now).

Not exactly re branded, just using one of its other designation for comparisons sake now that 4k is taking off.

1280×720 (HD, 720p)
1920×1080 (FHD, Full HD, 2K 1080p)
2560×1440 (QHD, WQHD, Quad HD, 1440p)
3840×2160 (UHD, Ultra HD, 4K, 2160p)
7680×4320 (FUHD, Full Ultra HD, 8K, 4320p)
 
Isn't there some sort of electronic ink for monochrome displays that lasts months on a single charge? It seems like that sort of thing should be used more often. I don't need to watch movies on a five-inch screen.

It wouldn't sell well. You may not want to watch movies, but most people look at pictures and youtube videos (at a minimum). I sometimes stream news to my phone while I'm on my computer (app looks better than flash).

Frankly, I don't think most people would like e-ink for browsing the web, unless they're on text sites. What would be nice is a hybrid display that defaults to e-ink. Aside from book devices like the Kindle, I don't think anyone is switching to a monochrome display anytime soon.
 
For a phone, it's ridiculous. But the only reason I applaud companies doing this type of thing is that it brings panel costs down. If they can cram 4k worth of pixels in a 6" screen reliability, then 30-40" PC monitor screens should be no issue (drop in price).
 
I've got a QHD screen on my phone right now and I can't see any pixelation in the screen in anything I look at on it. I think having a 4K screen on a phone is as stupid as putting 4K video capabilities into one. You need crazy fast storage to record in 4K without dropping frames and even then because you don't have a great lens on the phone it's going to make your 4K footage look just like it would have if you'd shot it in 1080p (which is apparently being re-branded as "2K" now).

I don't know. 4k is roughly an 8MP picture. Phones have had 8MP cameras for ages and the main issue isn't the lens, it's aggressive compression.

Doesn't mean that 4k video will look better than 2k, but I doubt the lens is the limiting factor. 4K just isn't that high a resolution.
 
For a phone, it's ridiculous. But the only reason I applaud companies doing this type of thing is that it brings panel costs down. If they can cram 4k worth of pixels in a 6" screen reliability, then 30-40" PC monitor screens should be no issue (drop in price).

I don't know. They've had insane resolutions on 15" displays, but we still don't have a 30" 5k display. My guess is that it's harder to make these in larger sizes (though I don't know why....someone here probably does).
 
I see a lot of you are falling into a common misconception of what makes a picture look nice. Having MORE pixels makes no difference unless you want the print to be bigger. Color depth and how it is compressed are vastly more important.
 
Hmm, I think I might prefer more pixels over better colors and compression, with respect to text.

I see a lot of you are falling into a common misconception of what makes a picture look nice. Having MORE pixels makes no difference unless you want the print to be bigger. Color depth and how it is compressed are vastly more important.
 
Isn't there some sort of electronic ink for monochrome displays that lasts months on a single charge? It seems like that sort of thing should be used more often. I don't need to watch movies on a five-inch screen.

E-ink I think would have a target audience for those looking not to use the phone as a media device but as a communication tool. Battery usage is minimal as said and the display resolution and readability is excellent. If no fucks are given for navigating videos and scrolling rapidly then seems valuable.
 
Not sure why you would need a 4k resolution on such a small screen but ok....
 
We should still be driving Model Ts. Technology advancements are bad.

Technology advancement with no gain are bad.

Would it make sense to make a new car engine that is a v16, uses 4 times the gas of current but gives you the exact same top speed and horse power of a v6? All you have gained is being able to say that you have a v16 instead of a v6 and at worse performance.

Same here, you are looking at the same picture quality on the small screen, but much worse battery life. Improve the battery life, improve the signal quality, improve anything else about the phone that will actually be noticed by customers. using 1 less screw to hold it together, moving a chip from the top of the phone to the bottom because it looks prettier, making the screen even higher resolution.... these things don't help consumers.
 
Putting a 4K display on a smart phone is kind of like giving a heart patient rhinoplasty.

We need more battery life, not less.

Smart phones are e-jewellery for the most part, so the priorities are more than a little messed up.
 
I’m a staunch supporter of modest resolutions in smartphone displays because they allow for greater performance and battery life. Maybe phone manufacturers should actually stick to lower resolutions more often, as people can’t even tell the difference between 1080p and 4K in some cases.

…reporters playing around with the phones went right on yapping about the Z5's amazing 4K display and Sony's reps didn't feel the need to correct them. You don't need to understand German or French or Mandarin to be able to hear someone calling a phone's screen 4K when it's clearly not.

People can't tell the differences between 720p and anything else on sub 7" screen a would be a more accurate statement. It's the mobile device version of dick waving at this point. I want a 2 day battery, not blu-ray on a screen the size of a postage stamp.
 
People can't tell the differences between 720p and anything else on sub 7" screen a would be a more accurate statement. It's the mobile device version of dick waving at this point. I want a 2 day battery, not blu-ray on a screen the size of a postage stamp.

This. Why can't we have phones that used to last forever on a single charge like we used to?
 
Not sure why you would need a 4k resolution on such a small screen but ok....

It isn't about need. We don't need any of the Smartphone features in most cases. They aren't usually key to survival. But technological improvements are a good thing. And if you can get reasonable battery life while doing it, why not?
 
Hmm, I think I might prefer more pixels over better colors and compression, with respect to text.

But do you need more pixels on a 5" display? Colors and compression matter, because in theory you're going to look at your pictures on something other than your phone.. If not, then you don't need any of this. We argue about the use of 4k on a 60" TV, but on a 5" monitor, I doubt it's that meaningful. Compression matters. Compare Blu Ray to a TV Broadcast in 1080p. I'm told there's no difference now, but 10 years ago, 1080p from an antenna was noticably better than 1080 off directtv (both recorded on the same HD Tivo.

OTA you could see every little string in a tennis net. DTV it was more like looking at a screen door from a distance.
 
People can't tell the differences between 720p and anything else on sub 7" screen a would be a more accurate statement. It's the mobile device version of dick waving at this point. I want a 2 day battery, not blu-ray on a screen the size of a postage stamp.

I mostly agree, but there is a difference in acuity, which, as other's pointed out earlier, affects text. I'd also think you can get more text on the screen. As I age, this is less of an issue, because my eyes aren't as good as they were 5 years ago, but I can remember people saying 1600x1200 wasn't usable on anything under 21", and i ran a 17" monitor with it all the time.

I'm not convinced by this tech, but I think we need to wait until it's out...and then have people with 20/20 (and not by way of a laser) post reviews.

FYI, as an iPhone user, I couldn't care less what anyone thinks of my phone. I was an Android user for years and switched to see what all the fuss was about. I like it, but I'm sure an s6 is excellent too and for tinkerers, it's probably a better device.
 
This. Why can't we have phones that used to last forever on a single charge like we used to?

If you turn off data, your phone will last a very long time. If I only used mine for phone calls (as I did with my flip phone), my phone would last at least 2 or 3 days.
 
It isn't about need. We don't need any of the Smartphone features in most cases. They aren't usually key to survival. But technological improvements are a good thing. And if you can get reasonable battery life while doing it, why not?

Why not then upgrade to a phone that uses 128bit sound sampling or is capable of vibrating at 100,000 distinct levels of vibration? Why not have a screen that displays into ultra violet and infrared? If it's not possible to perceive the difference you're just paying for something you can't possibly use and that's stupid as hell. Add the increased power draw and it's doubly stupid.

I'm not even convinced that I need a 1080p phone at 5" held at arm's length (as you do normally). I went from a 480p phone to a 1080p phone and there was a noticeable difference, but it gets to the point where it's not possible to perceive a difference and it's better to put that cost into better colour balance, battery life or something else that you can actually perceive instead of an idiot spec-sheet feature that actively makes the phone worse.
 
I mostly agree, but there is a difference in acuity, which, as other's pointed out earlier, affects text. I'd also think you can get more text on the screen. As I age, this is less of an issue, because my eyes aren't as good as they were 5 years ago, but I can remember people saying 1600x1200 wasn't usable on anything under 21", and i ran a 17" monitor with it all the time.

I'm not convinced by this tech, but I think we need to wait until it's out...and then have people with 20/20 (and not by way of a laser) post reviews.

FYI, as an iPhone user, I couldn't care less what anyone thinks of my phone. I was an Android user for years and switched to see what all the fuss was about. I like it, but I'm sure an s6 is excellent too and for tinkerers, it's probably a better device.

To a degree yes acuity comes into play. However there is also a thing called diminishing returns. On tiny screens like this resolutions offer such small gains for the battery life it's really pathetic. I'm sorry but a 2 hour battery life in most phones using the screen is just a joke. I'm tired of my phone having a resolution that is unusable and having shit battery life and not to mention being hot to touch. Do yes I tend to get a bit miffed when I see companies continuing this pointless metric.

Things I would rather then fix.
Battery life as mentioned. And I'm talking with the screen on. I don't give a shit about standby.
Audio quality, my hearing is as good as ever but it has gotten progressively harder to understand people, especially on Bluetooth.

That's really about it. Fix the actual usability of the phone. Why is that so damn hard.
 
Having gone from a Nexus 4 to Nexus 5 to Samsung Galaxy S6 in recent years I think they just want higher numbers on paper because there is no real world benefit. A lower res screen uses less batery and can display more frames per second. Anything above 720p is fine for a phone. It is insane that my phone now have higher resolution on its 5 inch screen than my 24" monitor or 52" TV that both have 1080p.
 
Ok a few points to make from an opposing view point with a touch of background. I am all for sony throwing a 4k screen onto a phone. Good on them. They need something to make them stand out from a very very crowded smartphone market and this is getting them a lot of attention. They were the darlings of the IFA because of it. I believe that they firmly do not expect to sell a huge volume of these phone (especially with an estimated street price sitting in the $1000 range) but they are instead expecting the media attention to make people more brand aware and sell more of the regular and compact versions of the Z5.

As for the usefulness of a 4k screen on a smartphone, that is debateable to be sure. However it has been my experience with a very long list of smartphones that bumps in resolution can be an intriguing upgrade. I have personally upgraded multiple times solely for a higher resolution phone. I upgraded to the Galaxy Nexus because it was the first phone with a 720p screen. I am currently using a Note 5 and its 2k screen is phenomenal. It is not the first 2k screen phone I have owned since I also have a Note Edge, Note 4, and Nexus 6 in my collection (yes I have a lot of phones), but it most certainly is the best of the bunch. So I am certainly interested in this sony and look forward to seeing how its screen fares against Note 5.

Will battery life take a hit? Most certainly. However I do not believe it will be as doom and gloomy as people are making it out to be. With all the phones I have owned very few of them have either had such shitty battery life that it wouldn't last the day or had such great battery life that they would go 2 days or more without a charge. Habit now dictates that I plug in before bed. That is acceptable to me as long as I can make it through any type of day using my phone and it never quit on me.

Driving technology is how I view this. A 4k screen will push limits. It will push the limits of the current crop of GPU's in the phones. Something I would think would be of interest to a community like this one. It will push battery life in ways that could see us with tech in the near future to get us to that one charge a week style of phone some people have been wishing for. Perhaps we won't see such slight incremental upgrades with upcoming mobile processors because the tech will demand more. More efficiency with more power.

I also do not believe that upping the resolution past a certain point is a complete waste. Yes past a certain point identifying individual pixels becomes futile, but that doesn't mean that your eyes cannot see a difference. The best I can describe it is a degree of sumptuousness to the image (yes I know that sounds wierd). The image just looks cleaner sharper and gets closer to more true to life as it were. The best way to experience this is to use a high resolution screen for a good while then go back to a lower one. At first glance, maybe even side by side, you might not be able to tell immediately, but go backwards from high to low and you can.

For a tech forum that hosts people who boast about their tri-sli titan x's and water cooled systems, I would think we would be more open minded about advances like these. For people who want 1080p screen phones there are likely a 100 or more choices you can make for such a device (including the OTHER Z5). For those who want better battery life there are dozens of choices there as well (a Lenovo phone was just unveiled with a 5000 mah battery). If those are what you want in a phone, this phone is not for you and thats ok. I for one will be waiting for reviews.
 
To a degree yes acuity comes into play. However there is also a thing called diminishing returns. On tiny screens like this resolutions offer such small gains for the battery life it's really pathetic. I'm sorry but a 2 hour battery life in most phones using the screen is just a joke. I'm tired of my phone having a resolution that is unusable and having shit battery life and not to mention being hot to touch. Do yes I tend to get a bit miffed when I see companies continuing this pointless metric.

Things I would rather then fix.
Battery life as mentioned. And I'm talking with the screen on. I don't give a shit about standby.
Audio quality, my hearing is as good as ever but it has gotten progressively harder to understand people, especially on Bluetooth.

That's really about it. Fix the actual usability of the phone. Why is that so damn hard.

I wouldn't mind longer battery life, but i've got an iPhone 6 and it's OK. Yes, I carry an extra battery around when I travel/go to festivals, but I'd have to go back to a flip phone or turn off data to change that. And honestly, the biggest power draw is your 3G/LTE data. If you turn off data, your phone will draw virtually nothing when idle, which dramatically increases the amount of time you can use the device. That was true even before Android/iOS.

For now, I think the resolution on my 6 is fine, but who knows what I'll think in a few years. I suspect that battery life for the 6s will be better.

Totally agree that Bluetooth earpieces sound crappy, but I think that's on the MFG of those devices. I've heard cheap BT receivers that play through a car stereo and the audio is fine, while every single BT headset I've is at best OK in a pinch (most just suck)
 
some of the comments sound like those that said we didn't need more than 128K of ram.

You wanna make 4k for phones... I say bring it.
But of course, please exponentially improve battery life too. We hardly have any phones that can last a day under normal usage.
 
To a degree yes acuity comes into play. However there is also a thing called diminishing returns. On tiny screens like this resolutions offer such small gains for the battery life it's really pathetic. I'm sorry but a 2 hour battery life in most phones using the screen is just a joke. I'm tired of my phone having a resolution that is unusable and having shit battery life and not to mention being hot to touch. Do yes I tend to get a bit miffed when I see companies continuing this pointless metric.

Things I would rather then fix.
Battery life as mentioned. And I'm talking with the screen on. I don't give a shit about standby.
Audio quality, my hearing is as good as ever but it has gotten progressively harder to understand people, especially on Bluetooth.

That's really about it. Fix the actual usability of the phone. Why is that so damn hard.

So I tested this today and I went from roughly 100% to roughly 35% over 3 hours of streaming video (iPhone 6). I used WiFi for the streaming, which I'm 99% sure uses less power, but if I'm at work/home I use WiFi for everything, including calls.

I wasn't trying to test this (just a happy coincidence that it was exactly 3 hours and tangentially related to your post :)).

Anyway, I think this shows what I was saying before that what kills your phone are the 3G/LTE radios, not the big screen.

Full disclosure, I'm almost certain that I wouldn't get anywhere close to 5 hours. IME, the last 1/2 of the battery doesn't last nearly as long as the first half, which is exactly how my gas tank works ;)
 
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