Database Users

Color depth? 16bit or more?

I am trying to decide which phone to buy: Touch Pro , Touch HD, or others. I like the bigger screen on this one but I read somewhere that it is only 16bit color (65k colors). Is that true or was the review mistaken? It seems strange sicne that wouldn't be enough for good quality pictures and video.

rogerbacon50 said:
I am trying to decide which phone to buy: Touch Pro , Touch HD, or others. I like the bigger screen on this one but I read somewhere that it is only 16bit color (65k colors). Is that true or was the review mistaken? It seems strange sicne that wouldn't be enough for good quality pictures and video.
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More than enough for any human, 65k like any other good ppc.

I think I saw in the specs that it's an 18-bit screen.
I also read that WM only supports up to 16-bit colour.
16-bit isn't enough for all purposes, especially photos with smooth gradients such as blue skies. Of course 18-bit would still give some banding.

OK, I did some mroe reading and the screens are 18 bit (both Touch pro and Touch hd) but the software is set for 16 bit because its easier on the processor. The 65k colors will be enough. I had thought my iPAQ was more but its the same. I jsut wanted to make sure I could run my AnywhereMap software on the Touch HD.
I heard that the Touch HD can't do 3G on US networks. Is that true and, if so, is there a hack to get around it?

"I heard that the Touch HD can't do 3G on US networks. Is that true and, if so, is there a hack to get around it?"
no htc device ever supported a hack to change the hardware supported frequencies so
doubt blackstone will be different
about the colour nr
then i'd say on such a small screen
16bit should be enough very large screens
one can see the diff with large colour changes on surfaces
but small pda screens one would have to be close
to touching ones eye with the screen to see and then
be being blinded by the backlight would make it impossible anyway

Looks like it CAN do US 3G afterall.
http://www.intomobile.com/2008/12/19/htc-touch-hd-is-compatible-with-us-3g-frequencies-surprise.html

rogerbacon50 said:
Looks like it CAN do US 3G afterall.
http://www.intomobile.com/2008/12/19/htc-touch-hd-is-compatible-with-us-3g-frequencies-surprise.html
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Nope. It can't.
It's also pointed out in the fourth reader comment at that same URL. The author just missed a very crucial "or" in the specs. I would assume the service manual states what the hardware could be configured to do. It seems that the current hardware is set up for only the first half of that "or".
I'm using the Touch HD on AT&T in the US. No 3G.

[WIKI] Overview: Highlights, Downsides, Specifications

There was no thread associated to the Wiki page: HTC BlackStone Overview, now there is one .
Since it's important to have PROs 'n CONs, I added a "Downsides" section, with a few links to solve theses downsides.
In the specs, I'm not 100% sure for BlackStone's GPU

nice adds
i saw this:
Massive 3.8-inch wide, WVGA (480 X 800 pixel), 262K-color (limited to 65K-color by ?WiMo),
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is it possible to unlock the color-limitation? any addons to windows mobile or sth like that? imo it would be great to have 262k colors, since there's a large difference!

is it possible to unlock the color-limitation?
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According to that official article - Having More Colors Is A Good Thing, Isn't It? - using 262K colors instead of 65K means, more memory needed to store the data necessary to display a full screen (ie bigger framebuffer), more processing needed to fill-up that bigger memory (ie faster GPU), and more energy needed to do that processing (ie more battery). On a mobile device we are limited in memory, limited in processing power, and limited in battery life.
So if we want to use all the color that the screen can render, and assuming we have enough VRAM, then the trade-off is a slowdown of the user experience, and a reduced battery life. Now I don't know how much better can the Blackstone do compared to other WiMo devices, but I know it as a bigger screen, and that actually doesn't help in that matter.
This official article as been written in September 2005, so yea it's kinda old, but well windows mobile is getting old too...
So now we have to look into How to improve graphics performance on Blackstone or replace WiMo with Android

No D-Pad, No hardware keyboard
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Is this really a downside? If you are going to buy a HD you probably know this, don't you?

Quote:
No D-Pad, No hardware keyboard
Is this really a downside? If you are going to buy a HD you probably know this, don't you?
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imo it isn't a downside at all.
I bought the touch hd, coz i don't wanted to have a keyboard, therefor the big display and qwertz-keyboard on it r made for. And i guess most ppl think so too...

Having to use ur finger nail or finger tips alot to touch the right thing. That would be a downside. Lack of usa 3g bands would be another.

Turb0wned said:
Having to use ur finger nail or finger tips alot to touch the right thing. That would be a downside. Lack of usa 3g bands would be another.
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I added theses thanks.

johnpatcher said:
No D-Pad, No hardware keyboard
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Is this really a downside? If you are going to buy a HD you probably know this, don't you?
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It's not really a downside for me, but it seems it is one for quite some people. And since it's the Overview page, I thought that it would be useful to write it somewhere for the sake of mobile phone comparison.

16 Million colors on Blackstone possible?

i have searched this forum n didnt find the thing i was looking for thts why im starting a new thread....
all windows mobile devices have 65k colors n not 16 million. Is this a hardware related limitation or software (winmo) n driver related or both?
if its only software n driver related than why is microsoft not updating its drivers pack in winmo 6.5? or why is tht limitation not overcome in the neo graphics drivers pack.....
if any moderator decides to close this thread please do answer my query before closing. thanks...

It's related to the HTC hardware (chipset+screen)

kroukes2000 said:
It's related to the HTC hardware (chipset+screen)
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than why is htc still sticking to 65k screens while is competitors r using 16M colors... apple android n webos all have 16M colors while we r stuck on 65k screens

hispeedworm said:
than why is htc still sticking to 65k screens while is competitors r using 16M colors... apple android n webos all have 16M colors while we r stuck on 65k screens
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Erm lots of reasons:
1) Cost
2) Performance
3) Not needed
Cost is obvious, who knows what deal HTC have with the screen manufacturer.
Performance... why be shifting 24 bits of data around when you can make do with 16? this means having 24 bit images (IF you want to make the most of the capabilities) although resource files could stay at 16 bit, perfectly fine for buttons and icons etc (actually 8 bit enough for basic resources)
Not needed... this is like saying 12mp camera on a phone... so what? it's not like it's improving quality at all.
800x600 resolution cannot render 24 million colours in the first place, BUT it could manage 480K given this, 65K is probably fine. I'm not sure if the palette is 16bit or 24bit though (and this is important): if the palette is 24 bit, but the screen 16 bit, then it's not too bad at all. If the palette is just 16 bit then 95% of users could never tell the difference, but rare specific photos with a prevalence for smooth shading in one colour might show a slight difference.

It's winmo's limitation.

Sasimi said:
It's winmo's limitation.
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^ this.
WinMo 6.1 and 6.5 can handle a max of 65.000 colors.

[email protected] said:
^ this.
WinMo 6.1 and 6.5 can handle a max of 65.000 colors.
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This is just plain wrong... 6.5 has native 24 bit support, and even without it, it's still possible to use 24 bit screens AND render in 24bit (although not for the native components in 6.1 which are limited to 16bit)

Ok as far as I'm aware all Windows Mobile OS up to WM 6.1 is limited to 65k colour!
I'm not sure if WM 6.5 can display 24 bit colour but I do know that WM 7 will handle colour upto 24 bit!!
Also not sure if some of you are aware that most of the recent windows mobile devices from HTC,LG and Samsung actualy have display that are able to display colour from 256k to 16 million but they are locked down to 65k because the limitation of the OS!

ok, than why just 65k in win 6.5 than?

because WM 6.5 it can

its not about WM
there are samsungs running wm 6.1 with 256k...

MOD EDIT
Moved to general discussion as not related to rom development

I've read somewhere that 65k is a WM limitation (also mentioned above). As for our devices, I've read they have 262k displays but only function in 65k mode because of the OS limitation. Maybe that's the case with some competitor devices too, but they apply more aggressive marketing...

IAmSmoke said:
I've read somewhere that 65k is a WM limitation (also mentioned above). As for our devices, I've read they have 262k displays but only function in 65k mode because of the OS limitation. Maybe that's the case with some competitor devices too, but they apply more aggressive marketing...
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I agree with above post 100%!!! HD has 256K screen but WM uses only 65K of it!! and the other devices which use Wm and say theyre 256K color -- theyre using only 65k of them
BTW - you cant actually tell a difference from a 65k or 16mil colr screen unless you put them side by side, but in everyday use my HD has a ideak screen with 65k, my nokia had 16mil but I mostly used black white and red on it!!!

Kristaps-K9-Lv said:
BTW - you cant actually tell a difference from a 65k or 16mil colr screen unless you put them side by side, but in everyday use my HD has a ideak screen with 65k, my nokia had 16mil but I mostly used black white and red on it!!!
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That's not true. Simply try a blackshaded background, like the original manilla 2,6 one. It's very easy to spot the pixels as it's something like: Grey, grey-black, black.
And not like on a 16mil screen, grey, grey-grey-greyish black etc. In other words, the ''steps'' taken are too large. A 16 million screen will definately look better.
The difference between a 262k and 16million screen however, is really difficult to discern

Sasimi said:
That's not true. Simply try a blackshaded background, like the original manilla 2,6 one. It's very easy to spot the pixels as it's something like: Grey, grey-black, black.
And not like on a 16mil screen, grey, grey-grey-greyish black etc. In other words, the ''steps'' taken are too large. A 16 million screen will definately look better.
The difference between a 262k and 16million screen however, is really difficult to discern
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I meant in everyday use -- could you spot those dots on Blackstones WVGA screen??
who cares as long as it works!!

You're all kinda wrong.
It is, in this case, WinMo that is the limiting factor but it is not a limitation of WinMo, it is a limitation of this particular implementation.
As detailed in this article, dating back slightly more than 4 years now, the OS itself would be capable of displaying more than 65k colours if MS's OEM partners wanted to implement it - but they don't.
Intially that was due to limited resources available on mobile devices but, nowadays, it's almost certainly due to the fact that the 256k screens that they use being cheaper than 16m ones.
In the case of the HD and other current HTC handsets, there'd be no point implementing 16m colour support given that the hardware is limited to 256k so to answer the OP's question both the OS and the hardware prevent the HD from supporting 16m colours but, as detailed above, technically it would be possible if only HTC were prepared to put any effort in.
Furthermore, some people claim that it is possible to display more than 65k colours whilst running WinMo (see here) but I cannot help feeling that this cannot be correct.

even most lcd for computers are not true 24bit screens

hd2 screen is not 65 k colors officially

look at tis link http://www.microsoft.com/windowsphone/en-us/buy/6/phones.aspx#detail=1366 it is microsoft site saying that hd2 screen is not 65k andit is softwere limitaton (that wll silent all people saying that it is hardware issue ) may be with good kernel we can enable them in android that is why i posted this in android section

Good news indeed

nice one ! finally a real word from microsoft !

So what that is saying is that because WinMo 6.5 only supports 64k colours, and as we all know Android automatically supports more, we automatically get full 16M colour support on Android?
I mean I'm not complaining either way, I've always thought Android looked great on my HD2

480x800 (Screen colors: HW LCD supports 262K, OS support 65 K)
Where does it say it would support 16M?

devhd2 said:
480x800 (Screen colors: HW LCD supports 262K, OS support 65 K)
Where does it say it would support 16M?
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but it does support 262k colors which is around thrice the current colors in winmo
265k = 265,000 colors (actual color the hardware (HD2) is capable of )
65k = 65,0000 colors (winmo limitation)
More than likely the better will be the 256k.

coolbeer1990 said:
but it does support 262k colors which is around thrice the current colors in winmo
265k = 265,000 colors (actual color the hardware (HD2) is capable of )
65k = 65,0000 colors (winmo limitation)
More than likely the better will be the 256k.
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Sorry im just curious where you found the extra 3,000 colours in the hardware spec and then lost another 9,000 colours somewhere at the end lol
Mark.

Nice to know, so is they a way of cracking the limitations, through a new Kernal or is it automatically done when you open certain applications?

265 K ? hmmmm ....
How the F*** do u compare 265 K only TO A FU**ING 16 MILLIONS ?
sorry i think i forgot to turn off the caps lock
(still quite better than 65k =L )

mskip said:
Sorry im just curious where you found the extra 3,000 colours in the hardware spec and then lost another 9,000 colours somewhere at the end lol
Mark.
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Haha
Sent from my HTC HD2 using XDA App

mskip said:
Sorry im just curious where you found the extra 3,000 colours in the hardware spec and then lost another 9,000 colours somewhere at the end lol
Mark.
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i think its my bad ! hahahahaah ! maybe i was drunk

Does the normal hd2 have screen with 262k color? Because on the microsoft web site it's the T mobile version.

mmm
when i see some of the wallpapers / widgets on my android. i see areas with less color than it should have.
so yeah i think its only 65k only.

radiance26 said:
Does the normal hd2 have screen with 262k color? Because on the microsoft web site it's the T mobile version.
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i emailed htc and they said that both normal and t mobile have same screen and 65 k is soft limitation , if you want proove contact me and i will send you the link to their reply as i can't publish my account online
ll_l_x_l_ll said:
mmm
when i see some of the wallpapers / widgets on my android. i see areas with less color than it should have.
so yeah i think its only 65k only.
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yes in android it is 65 k only as the kernel we use has this limitation , it has to be modified to view the full colors as well as activating 4 point multitouch it is als kernel limitation,

The developers ( it they whant it ) can try to make a new kernel to get all 265k and if posible the 720p recording.
A lot of people say no, but it's a big change, no? try to put your screen to 16 bits color but on 32 bits will be double better ( it's a bad comparison but you know what im saying )
on the HD2 it's the same...
64k or 265k ( its cuadruple better =P )
for now im OK with the android nand, on the future will be great to se 720p recording and better screen colors
Excuse my bad english
and thanks to all people supporting the developers and developers.
in a few years, i want to make roms and software to make better android phones =P

I think android will already be using the maximum colour as this is reliant on software, as long as you have got the correct software which is android, it should utilise the maximum number of colours already.

Its a WinMo thing!
From what i have read from another post (on here but cant remember where). I think Android is still limited to 65k due to WinMo initialising the screen hardware at 65k, then HeRET shutting down WinMo, but keeping the hardware initialised ergo 65k in WinMo and Android until NAND is sorted, or WinMo is patched / updated / hacked then we should be able to get better colour depths in Android

Can i just point something out... surely there cant be much difference between the two as no one is sure if it is already in use. So i dont see what the hype is... just my 2cents
Sent from my Nexus One using XDA App

ricey1986 said:
Can i just point something out... surely there cant be much difference between the two as no one is sure if it is already in use. So i dont see what the hype is... just my 2cents
Sent from my Nexus One using XDA App
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Well quite naturally if you can have the possibility of getting a wider colour depth on your phone then you are going to want it (if possible).
Myself I have come from a purely WinMo background (HTC Hermes, HTC Tytn, HTC HD2) which all worked on 64k colours so I wouldnt actually know what 262k depth looks like but I can only assume it would make pictures and video at least look better so why not want it?
It may not even be possible but then maybe it will only time will tell
Mark.

hoss_n2 said:
i emailed htc and they said that both normal and t mobile have same screen and 65 k is soft limitation , if you want proove contact me and i will send you the link to their reply as i can't publish my account online
yes in android it is 65 k only as the kernel we use has this limitation , it has to be modified to view the full colors as well as activating 4 point multitouch it is als kernel limitation,
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I'll be curious to see the mail that custormer service send to you.
Can you post it here ?

[Q] True Color on HD2

Is the HD2's LCD capable of displaying true color/16 mil. colors like the HTC HD7 does when running wp7?
Thanks in advance

ingrdgrbl said:
Is the HD2's LCD capable of displaying true color/16 mil. colors like the HTC HD7 does when running wp7?
Thanks in advance
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I noticed the poor colors with wp7 too... Not even 16m colors, a lot of dithering, gradients are so ugly.
HD2 Can do far better, Windows mobile and Android are able to display in 32bits.
Maybe Just a driver issue, that Can be fixed, I hope^^

I like to know this too
cz Android suckz with 65k colors and if its not a hardware issue i might look into the android display driver to fix the issue

It is hardware limitation.

Its not a hardware limitation, luckily for us. If we look at WM 6.5 the OS doesnt natively support more than 65k colors, I think it was, which isnt a lot, but on HD2, HTC made the gallery support far more colors (I think it was 16 million) So basicly yes, the hardware should suffice, its just a matter of getting it to work.

Win6.5 has a software limitation of 65k colors, based on some MS website HD has a hardware limitation of 256k colors, not sure if WP7/Android use 65k or 256k, but anyway it's far less then 16m(32bit).
If you check Android you would also see ugly gradients and it was already discussed a lot, use search. And a little of IMO, even though 64k/256k is much less then 16m, I don't think you should worry about it a lot, only some gradient looks bad and it you don't know, you might not even notice, especially with WP7 which doesn't use gradients/round corners etc.

SPL limited the screen to be 65k color
and its too dangerous to do changes with spl i think

tiratira said:
SPL limited the screen to be 65k color
and its too dangerous to do changes with spl i think
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But how can limit SPL ?

The HD2 has hardware limitation of 65k colors. You will never get more on HD2. Cotulla has confirmed the 65k color limitation on HD2 screen... and he would know since he wrote the drivers for android ts.

zarathustrax said:
The HD2 has hardware limitation of 65k colors. You will never get more on HD2. Cotulla has confirmed the 65k color limitation on HD2 screen... and he would know since he wrote the drivers for android ts.
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The HD2 has a hardware limit of 256k colours
google it and you will find it, including official MS documentation, whether thats true or not is anyones guess so i think the honest answer is no one has the first clue what the actual hardware limit is.
However, its all academic, because without any driver support we will only be able to use 65k, and to be clear, there will not be driver support, the closest phone to ours with a higher bit depth is the HD7, which has a differen panel.....now to make this a bit more intresting, changing the panel to an HD7 panel, obviously there would be significant hardware differences here but i wonder how much of it is changeable and how much is IC

dazza9075 said:
The HD2 has a hardware limit of 256k colours
google it and you will find it, including official MS documentation, whether thats true or not is anyones guess so i think the honest answer is no one has the first clue what the actual hardware limit is.
However, its all academic, because without any driver support we will only be able to use 65k, and to be clear, there will not be driver support, the closest phone to ours with a higher bit depth is the HD7, which has a differen panel.....now to make this a bit more intresting, changing the panel to an HD7 panel, obviously there would be significant hardware differences here but i wonder how much of it is changeable and how much is IC
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Yes, I know about the one microsoft spec sheet that says 256k colors, but recently cotulla stated that the LCD only is capable of 56k, and that's all it will output. Cotulla does the work with all the drivers and hardware, and he has evidence by what the hardware actually outputs, so I'm going to believe what he says over what a single spec sheet that could easily be a misprint. But even if the screen is somehow capable of displaying 256k colors by using some special driver or something, if cotulla can't even figure it out or see that it's capable of that, I don't think anyone else is going to.

zarathustrax said:
Yes, I know about the one microsoft spec sheet that says 256k colors, but recently cotulla stated that the LCD only is capable of 56k, and that's all it will output. Cotulla does the work with all the drivers and hardware, and he has evidence by what the hardware actually outputs, so I'm going to believe what he says over what a single spec sheet that could easily be a misprint. But even if the screen is somehow capable of displaying 256k colors by using some special driver or something, if cotulla can't even figure it out or see that it's capable of that, I don't think anyone else is going to.
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that was kind of my point, even with the best of knowledge on the matter its still only an educated guess, and as you said if cotulla couldnt do it that its unlikely anyone else can, ill go a step further and say IF it is capable there isnt a single person on this planet that will do it short of HTC / panel maker giving us everything we would need.