Related
Update: I installed Spare Parts, as mentioned by appelflap later in this thread, disabled compatibility mode, then followed the directions in this post, and I have a working status bar, good resolution, and in a better place in most cases.
Update: Check out appelflap's APK that makes this whole process a lot easier. Note that some users are reporting a black screen after using the file, so be prepared in case you have to use adb shell to put your original build.prop file in place. If you do not want to risk it, Notepad++ makes for an easy edit once you pull the file to your PC. If you have fallen prey to the black screen problem, lpsi2000 found a solution that uses an update.zip approach.
In the /system/build.prop file, I changed this line:
ro.sf.lcd_density=240
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
to this:
ro.sf.lcd_density=160
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is a setting that Google normally recommends if you have a larger screen (like Dell's Streak), but the side effect of using it on the 800x480 screen of the captivate is that everything is smaller.
With this, menus have smaller text (more options on screen), in-app buttons are smaller, and it just has the same feeling of being on a PC and moving from a low resolution LCD monitor to a high resolution LCD monitor.
There are a couple of glitches so far. It appears that some apps want to render in the previous resolution. For example, Skyfire and Root Explorer would not render in full screen, Android Market renders full screen but the search is in the old resolution, and the status bar is slightly garbled but still usable. Also, the dial pad is smaller (as you would expect showing a picture made for a low res display on a high res display) but the rest of the phone app is fine. The camera app fills the screen just like it did before.
With this setting, I really feel like I'm getting some use out of the high resolution display on this phone.
The apps that are rending in the low res mode of the original setting seem to be pulling their setting from somewhere else. Does anybody have an idea where that setting may be? After trying this, I can't imagine going back to what almost seems like an "accessibility mode".
I've only used LauncherPro with this setting, so no idea how the Samsung launcher looks. I attached screenshots of what some things look like. I can put some game screenshots in another post if anybody is interested. 3D games look sharper to me in this mode, but I have no scientific way of testing if it is because it is rendering in higher res or if my own excitement is clouding my vision.
Update: I suspect the missing setting is found in the /system.prop file. It has the ro.sf.lcd_density=240 setting. I tried changing it to 160, but it keeps going back to 240 after a reboot of the phone. Any ideas how to make this stick?
Warning:: TWLauncher does not play well with these changes. Make sure to have LauncherPro set up as your default launcher before trying this.
So you're pulling it off the cappy then editing putting back....do you need to change permissions?
The way that I pulled it out to edit on my PC was with this:
adb pull /system/build.prop
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You will need root access in order to put the changed file back. What I did was
adb push build.prop /sdcard
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I then used Root Explorer to copy the build.prop from /sdcard to /system. I didn't change any permissions other than just copying the file and rebooting.
Wow man that's pretty cool, it's got a few little glitches but nothing serious. One of the things I wish I could so though is make my Beautiful widgets clock go all the way across the top. I'm not sure if this is a placebo effect (I donno if that's possible since this should have nothing to do with it) but it seems like my soft buttons respond more often....I'm prolly nuts but it doesn't seem like I need to push....push...%$^&*^ PUSH.....and back to home.
I'm hoping someone will have a great idea on how to keep the /system.prop file from updating itself on boot. I'm thinking that if we can get the ro.sf.lcd_density=240 setting to stick to 160 after a reboot, that might fix the few instances where an app won't render full screen.
I've tried chmod 666 system.prop and chown root.root system.prop but it still gets returned to normal after rebooting.
Wow I'm excited to test this out. Couldn't we get someone to code this into the startup script theoretically?
Edit: Tried it out. Really really nice. If only we could get the rest of the apps to work the right way... right res.
One thing also that's cool is in launcherpro you can add more columns to the drawer so you can fit an insane amount of apps on screen.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using Tapatalk
Also out of curiosity, have you tried any other DPI like 200? Our does it need to be either or to keep it proportional?
Sent from my GT-I9000 using Tapatalk
Lower resolution works as well. Here are some comparisons. 160, 240, 320. 200, since someone asked.
wow, this could REALLY be nice.. Just need to fix everything, but like others have said no HUGE things that cause it to be unusable, but I would love to see everything correct.
Also out of curiosity, have you tried any other DPI like 200? Our does it need to be either or to keep it proportional?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, the only reason I chose 160 was because it is listed as "MDPI" in the Android SDK. (We were using "HDPI" with 240.)
I only figured it was a "supported" number, so I started there, but most any number will do. You can see a chart where it recommends certain numbers based on resolution or screen size, but I think these recommendations are to cover everybody, which includes folks who can't (easily) see small text or icons.
The chart that shows Google's recommendations is here.
reading around, it seems that the files need to be put back to read only.
phlunkie said:
reading around, it seems that the files need to be put back to read only.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I thought so also, but you don't need to. All I'm doing is copying it with root explorer to sd, then using astro to edit the line and root explorer to put it back. Reboot and your GTG. Everything works fine.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using Tapatalk
So the settings are sticking after a reboot? I will have to try this when I get home.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App
phlunkie said:
So the settings are sticking after a reboot? I will have to try this when I get home.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
After I edited the build.prop and the build.prop.bak files in the /system directory it works fine after reboot. A problem that I have is that TouchWiz force closes after editing the files.
Using this on SGS made:
- notification bar unreadable (kindof text overlap@240160 setting).
- Launcher pro works.
- Market scales nice.
- big list's buttons are now nice
//edit: changed to 200 - seems to be great compromise.
@up
Bad practice. U shouldnt have edited ur build.prop.bak file, becouse it is actually a backup of original build.prop, made by RootExplorer (guess). In case u want to revert to original content, u just delete edited file and delete .bak from this one.
xan said:
Using this on SGS made:
- notification bar unreadable (kindof text [email protected] setting).
- Launcher pro works.
- Market scales nice.
- big list's buttons are now nice
//edit: changed to 200 - seems to be great compromise.
@up
Bad practice. U shouldnt have edited ur build.prop.bak file, becouse it is actually a backup of original build.prop, made by RootExplorer (guess). In case u want to revert to original content, u just delete edited file and delete .bak from this one.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Any pics? Love to see the difference.
Sent from my Nexus One using XDA App
Here they are.
I'm trying to figure out how to make those other applications also use the full screen when at a different resolution. I tried the method here
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=739647
to run a script that rewrites the /system.prop file, and it didn't fix anything, so either that is not where the applications are getting the property from, or we need to rewrite the file earlier in the boot process.
Are you sure those apps are graphically able to scale? Maybe touchwiz does not take scaling into account (at least with native apps) because the screens are all 4 inches.
I'm not entirely sure if someone has already said this or if anyone knows how to do it, but I have and its really useful !
Basically you can drop the Density of the screen and give it a larger appearance. Best way to do this in my opinion, is to grab yourself a copy of Droid Explorer, browse into the system folder in your root, save a copy of Build.prop to the desktop, open it with notepad, find LCD DENSITY=240 or whatever it is and change the value to 180, replace the build.prop in Droid explorer with the one from your desktop and reboot your device
If you don't like it you can always go back in and change it back ^^
Sorry for the noobish question. But I am not quite sure I understand what this does. Could you explain just a wee bit? Even better if you could post before and after screenshots.
Cheers....
Uhm, Nothing new I'm afraid. There are already some apps in the market that let you do just this.
xpstyle36 said:
I'm not entirely sure if someone has already said this or if anyone knows how to do it, but I have and its really useful !
Basically you can drop the Density of the screen and give it a larger appearance. Best way to do this in my opinion, is to grab yourself a copy of Droid Explorer, browse into the system folder in your root, save a copy of Build.prop to the desktop, open it with notepad, find LCD DENSITY=240 or whatever it is and change the value to 180, replace the build.prop in Droid explorer with the one from your desktop and reboot your device
If you don't like it you can always go back in and change it back ^^
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App
Its Changing the resolution of the screen so that everything is slightly bigger (or smaller) by editing the value.
Thank you for the info!
EDIT - Sorry I posted this too late! A mod can remove it if you want...
Oooooooh. Got it.
But IMHO I dont see why I (or anyone else for that matter) would personally want to do something like that. Unless, it just for kicks.
It's not changing the resolution. It's changing the dpi settings.
Why is this in the dev forum?
Rawat said:
Why is this in the dev forum?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
For the same reason Samsung went with Rfs : unknown
There is an app on the market. LCDDensity it is.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App
Is this still being applied after restarting your phone?
The point of it is to have a larger viewing area, which is great for things like viewing webpages or documents but it can break games and certain designed UI's (like touchwiz)
Having ADW + Density change looks good though.
Pff. Changing this value kills too much apps (like LauncherPro, Simi Clock and others).
So, changing this value renders most of your apps unusable.
Not working for me anyhow.
ps. I do not like the changed settings either, the screen feels like having a blur on it. (tried 100 and 180 as values).
jbrugger said:
Pff. Changing this value kills too much apps (like LauncherPro, Simi Clock and others).
So, changing this value renders most of your apps unusable.
Not working for me anyhow.
ps. I do not like the changed settings either, the screen feels like having a blur on it. (tried 100 and 180 as values).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for all the feedback sorry i was un-aware that there was an app for this ^^ also if you go to the Android Market and grab "Spare Parts" and turn off Compatibility mode, 99% of apps will scale fine to the change
Seems not to be a good idea on my galaxy s. Everything resizes and loks cool except the build-in apps:agenda, calculator, dailer, mp3player cdmode. Those apps did not change resolution ;(
But still i have to admit: density of 200 looks much better than 240
Cool app, stupid samsung apps!
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App
I'm finding the standard LCD density too small and prefer a setting of at least 200 on my Streak. I also find that 3rd party widgets tend to look better on a setting of at least 200 and best on 240.
Only issue I have is various stock apps no longer look right at the higher setting e.g. the Gallery doesn't display the buttons at the top correctly, the dialer shortcut doesn't appear correctly in the Stage launcher, when receiving an incoming call in landscape mode the number is not fully visible, dialer looks weird and I'm sure I will find more things.
Basically, the two biggest annoyances for me are the dialer and the gallery. Can versions of these apps be baked into a rom that is designed to be used at the higher LCD dencity?
THANKS!!!
Krisbo
agreed the high density looks very sharp, I like it.
but trying to enter text in some fields, you cant even see the input field, Dialer incall buttons and contact names become b0rked, among other things,
Can anyone fix this so they dont get so blown out of proportion?
Thanks. The highest I went is 200, but back to 160 on djsteves 1.5.1 because of issues mentioned above.
I do believe you'd have to open up each apk and completely redo all the graphics so they don't look out of proportion blown up. I guess all you'd have to do is make them all smaller but it will probably be much more complicated than that!
So yes, it can be done. But i doubt anyone will do it.
Could you copy an apk from another phone with a higher pixel density? E.g. nexus one I think has 252ppi.
nexus by default is 240 yes, ill have a look at doing a 1.5.1 huge version wen i get a sec
You are awesome!
Could you possibly make it no baseband because I use a rebel sim?
Thanks
Before flashing the zip, unpack the whole thing and open system/build.prop with a text editor (like notepad or your favorite IDE). Then search for "ro.sf.lcd_density=160" and change it to a value you like. Save the file and repack it into the zip file (with WinRAR for example). Flash the ROM using StreakMod or ClockWorkMod and have fun with it!
Another option is to get Root Explorer - or a similar program - and go to system/build.prop. Set the permissions to r+w. Now you can edit this file using Root Explorer or copy it to your MicroSD and edit it like I said before. After the edit copy it back if you have too or save it. Then set the permissions back to r+o and reboot.
I have mine set to 220, which is a great size but I guess 200 is nice too!
alex3305 said:
Before flashing the zip, unpack the whole thing and open system/build.prop with a text editor (like notepad or your favorite IDE). Then search for "ro.sf.lcd_density=160" and change it to a value you like. Save the file and repack it into the zip file (with WinRAR for example). Flash the ROM using StreakMod or ClockWorkMod and have fun with it!
Another option is to get Root Explorer - or a similar program - and go to system/build.prop. Set the permissions to r+w. Now you can edit this file using Root Explorer or copy it to your MicroSD and edit it like I said before. After the edit copy it back if you have too or save it. Then set the permissions back to r+o and reboot.
I have mine set to 220, which is a great size but I guess 200 is nice too!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think we understand that, the issue we have is that anything higher than stock 160 and apps get blown out of proportion, escpecially phone app for me, 180 is the highest /usable/ for me. I would love to have to cranked to the max, after owning an iphone 4 for a while, sweet display; but software is too simple.
Thanks DJ_Steve for looking into this,
please see if you can sort out the blurry contact pictures in-call, they look horrible even on stock 160, is it just me?
chrisrotolo said:
I think we understand that, the issue we have is that anything higher than stock 160 and apps get blown out of proportion, escpecially phone app for me, 180 is the highest /usable/ for me. I would love to have to cranked to the max, after owning an iphone 4 for a while, sweet display; but software is too simple.
Thanks DJ_Steve for looking into this,
please see if you can sort out the blurry contact pictures in-call, they look horrible even on stock 160, is it just me?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Exactly. I'm running mine at 220 but if the phone happens to put itself in landscape mode while it's ringing (happens sometimes) I can't see who is calling.
sorry i don't get it. how is the pixel density supposed to increase if the resolution of the LCD screen is fixed (480 by 800 pixels, not one more not one less)? to clarify, I am not denigrating, I just do not understand
Very frustrating. I dont have "ro.sf.lcd_density=160" in my build prop. Im on official ota update from a couple days ago
Hi Steve,
Any news on this?
Krisbo
carhigh said:
Very frustrating. I dont have "ro.sf.lcd_density=160" in my build prop. Im on official ota update from a couple days ago
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Me neither.
Sent from my Dell Streak using XDA App
deekdeek said:
Me neither.
Sent from my Dell Streak using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't think this line is in the stock build.prop. Just add it under #other edits. If that's not their either, look for either debug.sf.hw=1 or debug.sf.hw=0 and add it after that.
You can use Incoming Call Plus (beta) as a replacement for incoming calls. This works great and has no negative side-effects for me.
Krisbo said:
I don't think this line is in the stock build.prop. Just add it under #other edits. If that's not their either, look for either debug.sf.hw=1 or debug.sf.hw=0 and add it after that.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Adding it worked. Thanks, i can read more now
alex3305 said:
You can use Incoming Call Plus (beta) as a replacement for incoming calls. This works great and has no negative side-effects for me.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's not bad although the answer/reject buttons are UGLY!!! Does the job though and I can see who is calling
Any progress Steve?
I took this Gallery apk out from the Cyanogen Mod HTC Evo zip. It should scale properly when you change your DPI although stuff becomes real small when you go back to stock 160 DPI. It also fixes the "this is an audio file only" or whatever the hell that is if that wasn't already fixed.
It seems Dell changed the DPI of the dialer and gallery app to make use of the screen real estate while also using 160 dpi for the rest of the system.
Tried that apk n didn't do **** for me but I might have done it wrong...no biggy 1.5.3 looks like it might have this area sown up
Sent from xda app Dell streak dj 1.5.2
1190=1861qrdnt
For this LCD density issue with the new market, if you find that your apps are disappearing, switch back to 240 and reboot. All your apps should be there. Do your updates, and switch back to whatever density you were at. This has something to do with the Market thinking you're on a tablet rather than a phone, it's just a compatibility thing.
Maybe somebody will come up with a fix...
Actually, I thought that what my problem was. So I switched from Hyper Droid (167) to Typhoon (240) yet I can not see the apps. So I changed the density to "167" on Typhoon and uninstalled the new market .. All the apps are showing fine. Im not sure if it's an LCD Density issue.
Furthermore, on the new market I found some new apps, I have never been able to install on the older market. But as soon as I switched back, those apps disappeared and nothing showed them back.
New Market just doesn't work for me. Force quits after a little bit. Running AmeriCanDroid Nand.
Download the new market, replace it with the vending.apk in system/apps, then rename it vending.apk. From root explorer check all the permissions on the cache folder, reboot and enjoy (have been using the new market for a week now)
Are you able to update and download all apps? If so could you explain in more detail how you got new market to work. Explain as if you are talking to a child
Hey guys, I havent been on here for a while so this is going to be my first thread since 2009.
I was playing around with a Huawei S7 and I noticed a file under sys>cap_touchscreen that looked kind of suspicious.
I opened it using a txt editor and it had a value of 0.
I tried changing the value myself but it does not save so I cant be sure if this would do anything.
Just wanted to throw it out there for anyone who has a rooted S7 to try to change the value to 1 and see if that will enable capacitive.