Anyone tried downscaling the display to 1080p? - Nexus 6P Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Hi all,
I personally don't think there's much difference between 2.5K and 1080p on a ~5 inch display. Has anyone with root found a way to and tried down scaling the display output to 1080p?
If so do you notice any visible difference and has it noticeably improved battery life?
I'm not convinced how much difference it would make as the display itself would still be physically outputting 2.5K pixels but at least the processing side of things would only need to push 1080p.
Thanks!
Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

I searched for an answer to the same question. I doubt it's have much impact on battery life honestly. The gpu isn't working as hard, but that's not the biggest drain by far. The best reason to do this would be improved performance in gpu-intensive activities like gaming. However with this phone that hardly seems necessary.
(I suppose, theoretically, you might get better battery life during gaming)

1080p won't look nice on this screeeen

omnikai said:
I searched for an answer to the same question. I doubt it's have much impact on battery life honestly. The gpu isn't working as hard, but that's not the biggest drain by far. The best reason to do this would be improved performance in gpu-intensive activities like gaming. However with this phone that hardly seems necessary.
(I suppose, theoretically, you might get better battery life during gaming)
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My guess is the won't matter because the GPU will need to work just as hard. The number of pixels you push to the screen will always need to be converted to the number of pixels the screen is designed for. Pixels are more hardware related than software related.
A screen has several tiny LED's that illuminate to display the image on the screen. The 6p resolution is 2560x1440 which equates to roughly 3.7 million pixels. It has to display 3.7 million pixels. 1080 equates 2.1 million pixels but the 6p has to display 3.7 even if you only push 2.1 million pixels to it.
Depending on how well the Android OS is designed it wouldn't be out of the realm of reason to say that dropping the resolution to 1080 might reduce battery life instead of save it depending on how well the code is reused internally and where the interpretation of scaling happens in the chain.
I talk out my ass a lot so I am only guessing that the above is true.

Downscaling to 1080p won't do much for battery , the pixels still need to be lit, but the GPU will be less stressed, it doesn't have to render those extra pixels with new information, its just upscales

italia0101 said:
Downscaling to 1080p won't do much for battery , the pixels still need to be lit, but the GPU will be less stressed, it doesn't have to render those extra pixels with new information, its just upscales
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That's my understanding as well. It's still rendering at lower resolution, which requires less from the gpu, but then upscales to the native resolution. I'd still suspect this will improve battery while gaming, but not in general use. Entirely direction though.

It won´t look good on the screen, that´s for sure. Downscaling might only be needed if you want to play a heavy game which wouldn´t run fluid enough on the Nexus 6P, due to hardware limitations.

Related

More then 7h of video on 1 charge!

Holy S-AMOLED!
http://blog.gsmarena.com/samsung-i9...ours-of-video-playback-puts-critics-to-shame/
and EIGHT days standby time!
http://www.scribblelive.com/Event/Samsung_Galaxy_S_Launch?Page=0
Also read that this morning, extremely impressive. With the sceren set at 50% its probably still as bright as most others set much higher too...
I'd love to know what other processes were running in the background as well.
Just imagine how long this phone will last with no heavy video load running......
isn't anybody questioning the credibility of this?
like how is that even possible with the specs the Galaxy S has. the processor and the Super AMOLED alone would automatically drain tons
its only got 100mAh more than the Desire stock battery. and the Desire from most accounts wont be able to do nearly that much without killing its 1400mAh battery
Ziostilon said:
isn't anybody questioning the credibility of this?
like how is that even possible with the specs the Galaxy S has. the processor and the Super AMOLED alone would automatically drain tons
its only got 100mAh more than the Desire stock battery. and the Desire from most accounts wont be able to do nearly that much without killing its 1400mAh battery
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Actually that is the opposite.
By changing the processor to a 45nm as opposed to the 65nm which other phones use makes this on it's own a huge energy saver.
Next, the screen is Super AMOLED. SA uses only a fraction of the energy found on AMOLED screens. The proof in this is you can turn the screen brilliance down to only 50% and still have a very clear and accurate appearance.
So with those two and the extra 100mAh you start to see why it will last considerably longer.
I read somewhere that the hummingbird does 300mW while the Snapdragon does 500mW at full load. Dat shure must account or a great deal batteryperformance,
Beards said:
Actually that is the opposite.
By changing the processor to a 45nm as opposed to the 65nm which other phones use makes this on it's own a huge energy saver.
Next, the screen is Super AMOLED. SA uses only a fraction of the energy found on AMOLED screens. The proof in this is you can turn the screen brilliance down to only 50% and still have a very clear and accurate appearance.
So with those two and the extra 100mAh you start to see why it will last considerably longer.
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thanks for the tidbits!!!
btw. how reliable are these Super AMOLED screens.
Ziostilon said:
thanks for the tidbits!!!
btw. how reliable are these Super AMOLED screens.
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Without question, Super AMOLED is the future and as far as reliability is concerned it is far better than TFT and much better than AMOLED which uses an additional glass to trap the AMOLED screen ~ hence why the i9000 is manufactured very thin.... it does not need this extra glass which in turn provides
a 20% brighter screen.
80% less sunlight reflection.
20% reduced power consumption.
other possible factors:
- Divx/Xvid decoding requires less CPU
- Hummingbird GPU supports hardware decoding with very low power requirements
and EIGHT days of standby time!
(link added in first post)
They are indeed brighter... but are 20% brighter than the other AMOLED screens... Capacitive TFTs however are 50% more brighter than the AMOLEDS...
Also, the galaxy has a very low screen ppi (pixels per inch) - somewhere around 233 ppi compared to iPhone 4's 326 and the droid's 260 (approx) hence it appears pixellated ....
What makes the S-AMOLED screen a winner here is the awesome contrast ratio which puts all other phones to bitter shame.. hence the vibrance in video quality and a much better viewing experience compared to other smartphones..
WTF, I have only 12-15 hours of battery endurance with little WiFi surfing and thats it ! I even use Juice Defender so my data and WiFi are always OFF when the screen is OFF. I really dont know how to get at least 24 hours like Ive had on my Xperia X10 Maybe ADW is draining or what ?
EDIT: Nvm noticed this was a necro.
richiebm said:
Also, the galaxy has a very low screen ppi (pixels per inch) - somewhere around 233 ppi compared to iPhone 4's 326 and the droid's 260 (approx) hence it appears pixellated ....
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233ppi is not anywhere close to being very low ppi by any sane persons standards, in fact it is a very high ppi compared to many devices (both mobile and full sized).What makes it appear pixellated is more likely the Pentile subpixel matrix.
7 hrs it totally realistic. I tested playing a 720p mkv of Avatar for 1 hour and it only used 15% battery. so 90% would be 6hrs and a HD 720p video would be much more intense than a divx video.
Wow! That's actually very impressive... I doubt seeing battery life that good myself though...
TNStrangelove said:
233ppi is not anywhere close to being very low ppi by any sane persons standards, in fact it is a very high ppi compared to many devices (both mobile and full sized).What makes it appear pixellated is more likely the Pentile subpixel matrix.
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The human eye is not insensitive to a resolution of 233 ppi. We can clearly perceive pixel densities less than 572 ppi, beyond which it becomes impossible to differentiate each pixel. (source : displaymate)
The point is, when compared to other smartphone displays in the market, galaxy has the lowest...
Also, the galaxy has a high power consumption for white color...
Here is an in depth article on the head and tail of Smartphone displays right from TFTs to OLEDs..
bit.ly/aE8wFP - (courtesy Displaymate)
damirbusic said:
WTF, I have only 12-15 hours of battery endurance with little WiFi surfing and thats it ! I even use Juice Defender so my data and WiFi are always OFF when the screen is OFF. I really dont know how to get at least 24 hours like Ive had on my Xperia X10 Maybe ADW is draining or what ?
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There must be some app that's running in the background. With little to no surfing, you should at least get 2 days out of it.
Maybe try to flash again (with complete wipe and everything) without installing any app. Then check whether the issue is still there. If yes, then there's a problem with your battery.
richiebm said:
The human eye is not insensitive to a resolution of 233 ppi. We can clearly perceive pixel densities less than 572 ppi, beyond which it becomes impossible to differentiate each pixel. (source : displaymate)
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I'm aware that you can see pixels in a 800 by 480 4 inch screen however to call it pixelated is false it has a higher DPI than my computer monitor which I never notice as being pixelated. By a display being pixelated I mean that it is regularly noticeable without trying. In this sense the hd2 is not pixelated but the galaxy s is despite the Hd2 having a LOWER ppi than the galaxy s. This is due to the pentile matrix.
richiebm said:
The point is, when compared to other smartphone displays in the market, galaxy has the lowest...
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This is patently false I can name 3 high end smartphones off the top of my head with lower ppi than the galaxy s (evo, desire hd, Hd2) the point is having a screen which you can see pixels if you try does not make it "very low dpi".
richiebm said:
Also, the galaxy has a high power consumption for white color.
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This however is correct, three times the power for white. No power for black.
TNStrangelove said:
This is patently false I can name 3 high end smartphones off the top of my head with lower ppi than the galaxy s (evo, desire hd, Hd2) the point is having a screen which you can see pixels if you try does not make it "very low dpi".
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You are right.. Perhaps I should have said.. it is lower compared to a few other smartphones.
Also, the viewing distance being around 20 cms should make little or no difference whether its the retina display or the S-AMOLED....
I did a bit of research on the pentile matrix and I think the noticeable pixels are infact due to that only. A proprietary technology from Samsung, it is solely responsible for the very high contrast ratio between black and white colors; and for the low power consumption. It uses sub - pixel rendering and human eye limitations to achieve those features, but compromising on the pixel density.
Yet, most of my battery usage is due to the display and my phone can survive without a recharge for only around 40-50 hours... Maybe its a bit less but better than most of the other phones out there!

[Q] Downscale screen resolution for more battery conserving

1080p contend is supported more often from apps because of the amount of supported devices, I wondered if downscaling the tablet's screen resolution to 1080p is supported by any rom and if it would save a few hours of extra usage to the tablet?
vodred said:
1080p contend is supported more often from apps because of the amount of supported devices, I wondered if downscaling the tablet's screen resolution to 1080p is supported by any rom and if it would save a few hours of extra usage to the tablet?
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I am no expert but I know that when you give the command to change the resolution it doesn't actually change it, it's more of a virtual/spoofing, to make the system think it's changed. So all the pixels will still be there. But when watching videos in 1080p the "upscaling" won't take much of your battery, if any at all. You won't notice it.
A digital screen only has 1 resolution. To use any alternate resolution it must be scaled to the screens native resolution so if you were to somehow force a resolution other then the native it would have to re-scale it to the native in order to display it which would require additional processing...
You could get better performance, in 3D applications for example but not better battery life.
I am asking for the SoC power consumption,logic says less effort saves more energy,current pixels to handle are about 4 million instead of the half that 1080p are
Though there might be needed optimizations as a modded kernel with different clock speeds
vodred said:
I am asking for the SoC power consumption,logic says less effort saves more energy,current pixels to handle are about 4 million instead of the half that 1080p are
Though there might be needed optimizations as a modded kernel with different clock speeds
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Click to collapse
"Logic" that's ill-informed can be just as fallacious as a random guess. Your particular brand is working off of some very silly assumptions, and your second sentence really just highlights that. A modded kernel with different clock speeds? Please.
When you downscale an image, you have less pixels to handle only in the sense that the image becomes smaller. The actual display still requires that all of the physical pixels be addressed before it can display anything. The only reason that you see graphical performance improve in say, a computer video game when you're playing on a lower resolution is when the bottleneck is the graphics card rendering an image. If your computer is struggling with the output, then you have a different set of problems.
On a tablet, a game that's not built to the screen resolution (let's say it's designed for a 720p panel for the sake of argument) will keep load fairly light on the GPU for rendering, but the same amount of work as normal to display (although this is a simplification, it'll work for these purposes). That's because whether the content is 720p or 1080p doesn't matter-- the GPU still needs to figure out how to stretch it to the dimensions of the physical screen.
Bottom line, you're not going to save "a few hours" of usage. All the work you'd need to do normally will still be there, plus the chicanery of trying to transform all video output to 1080p again only for the physical screen to demand its normal resolution.
How do you explain the 3rd ipad (that your sighn shows you have) overheat from the SoC?The amount of retina display pixels caused it and overheat means power loss as far as I know.Anyway your ironic first setence made me loose any interest for rest of your post.
brees75 said:
You could get better performance, in 3D applications for example but not better battery life.
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This! I know I was playing Dead trigger and you can enable the advanced graphics for tegra gpus, and it was laggy, but after reducing the resolution (the game doesn't allow this, or didn't the last time I played it) the game was buttery smooth.
And no, video decoding doesn't care what resolution your screen is. It still has to decode the whole video and display all the pixels, weather they are upscaled or not. your battery won't be affected by that. Apps on the other hand, like games, are another story.
vodred said:
How do you explain the 3rd ipad (that your sighn shows you have) overheat from the SoC?The amount of retina display pixels caused it and overheat means power loss as far as I know.Anyway your ironic first setence made me loose any interest for rest of your post.
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Not sure what's worse, clueless people on a site called XDA-Developers or clueless people who refuse to listen to advice.
Whether the iPad has some kind of overheating issue is a completely different matter and can be caused by a number of things. The fact is that changing your screen's render resolution has almost no impact on your battery life. The GPU still has to upscale whatever is rendered to the Nexus 10's native resolution. The biggest drain on the battery is the display itself; it takes a lot of energy to light up a display with such a high pixel density and still be bright enough to see.
Irony is the worst of all,at least some people know what a question is as this thread is
When you ask a question you need to be able to accept an answer that isn't on your liking. You've had 5 people telling you in different ways that it won't help, if you don't want to believe us, then here you go this doesn't work on 4.3, just 4.2 and maybe earlier. You can change it and use it for a week and see for yourself. Just make sure you don't let autosuggestion cloud your judgement.
It's not the answer but some persons that give them that's not my liking
vodred said:
It's not the answer but some persons that give them that's not my liking
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Ahaha, says the new member who has demonstrated 1) that they don't know what irony is, and 2) that they have no idea how to ask for help. Hint: it's not "please validate my preconceptions." The only irony here is your reactions to the thread that you spawned.
My iPad has never overheated, or even come close, really. It's the same crowd of people who will complain any device "overheats" when they're doing something that is going to create thermal load. Newsflash: that will be just about any game or long-term video ever. The 1080p Nexus 7 gets warm under use as well-- oh wait, 1080p is some magical resolution that will fix all your woes, right?
Protip: overheating doesn't mean power loss unless your circuitry gets pushed outside of standard operating conditions and loses conductivity due to thermal deformation. On a desktop PC, it might mean power loss from running the fans up, but as mobile SoCs use passive dissipation, this is a non-starter. Heat buildup is a byproduct of using a processor to do things.

[Q] Downscale Resolution to 1080p to increase performance?

For me QHD displays are too much for a 5.7 inch phone. The exynos version looks pretty powerful, but I guess I`d rather have better performance than insane ppi.
Watching some on/off screen GPU benchmark reviews for the LG G3, Oppo Find 7 and S5 "Premium", the off screen (1080p) tests had an average of 51% higher scores than on screen (QHD) scores. I mean, WOW! That`s a lot! I can post the results here if you want to skip the trouble looking for it.
One guy on youtube changed his LG G3 resolution from QHD to Full HD using NOMone Resolution Changer and used Xposed to change DPI and font scale of native apps to make them work.
What do you think about this? This could possibly increase overall performance+battery life and definitely increase gaming performance.
The videos about resolution downscale on the G3:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATk2xCSgp70
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csBhVcIBV64
Sounds like you need to stay with your note 3
... and reduce resolution to 720p
and, no one cares about benchmarks..
and... lol reading above comments make me laugh
why you bought note 4 if you want to reduce it's resolution, there will be 1080p device later if you want SD805
Daaaaaamn, this a deal breaker... If I cannot reduce the resolution of the Note 4 to 4:3 CRT TV 480i letterbox... I will not buy it, what a piece of crap! I was hoping to get at least 6 months of battery life on each charge with CRT resolution... I reduced to 320i my note 3 and it lasts almost a year on a single charge. The only problem is that I am having issues watching YouTube in HD for some unknown reason.
funny stuff!
we ***** and moan that we want QHD/4K/ultra definition on our "5 inch video screens", then once we get it, we complain that it uses too much battery life, so we have to "downrez" it..
you just cant make some people happy...
I'm more curious of how the screen will look like if in 1080p, especially the pentile effect. We know that we still see the pentile effect somewhat on Note 3, not sure on Note 4's 1440p screen.
Don't really care about performance.
I can't see any difference, but I can't see any pentile on 1080p phones too so...
Sent from my SM-N910C using XDA Free mobile app
if you reduce resolution to 256 x 144 battery life will be improved by a factor of 10!
much better than 1080p! OMG!
Is there any sound reason for bashing the OP ?
Just because he thinks a little bit different than you, maybe a step ahead of you ?
His idea is no nonsense.
If it IS possible to boost perfomance by lowering the resolution to e. g. Full HD, that would be quite beneficial.
Practical example: Let's talk about a game, "World of Tanks - Blitz".
Great game on the PC, not so great game on Android. Reason: Graphics are not the best. At present, there's a kind of universal version out, all reduced graphics to make sure the game works with most Android devices, even the weaker ones. Game publisher said they're working on a version you can adapt to the performance of your system. Hope they won't lie.
2560 x 1440 pixels is quite a number.
Rendering that many pixels WILL take a lot of processing power, WILL be quite a burden on the CPU and the battery.
So the results are likely to be: Great graphics but bad performance - or bad graphics because the game recognizes the overall performance as being too low for high details AND fluid gameplay.
Plus: You can watch your battery going down in no time, as rendering that mass of pixels will take a lot of power.
Let's say we've got a resolution of 853 x 480. SOUNDS like subzero quality, but don't forget the tiny screen (compared with a large PC monitor).
If it's possible to display 853 x 480 using the highest details setting, the result will look classes better than 2560 x 1440 with low details. You won't be able to spot single pixels, just a wealth of fine graphics.
So a reduced resolution and highest details will look MUCH better than highest resolution and low details. That's benefit one.
Second, gameplay will be vastly improved by a higher framerate and more CPU power for handling all the netcode and stuff.
Third, our battery will last far longer because of the lower battery drain.
Result would be a great looking, blazing fast game which won't suck your battery dry in no time,
And that's a reason to laugh at the OP, for bashing him ?
I do NOT know if reducing the resolution AND saving ressources is possible.
But IF it's possible, it would be a great step forward.
You will NOT able to see the difference between full resolution and reduced resolution on the tiny Note 4's display.
Only differences will be graphics and details quality - and higher speed, better framerates, more fluid gameplay.
And there will be always some room for compromises like slightly higher resolution and the like.
Now bash on if you still feel like.
Just a bunch of trolls. There are many people dowscaling resolution to play. I personally leave at 1080p all the time. Just restart and everything rescales to the right dpi.
Sent from my SM-N910C using XDA Free mobile app
I don't know of a way to reduce it to 1080p, but wouldn't it make more sense to buy an s5? Battery life was superb on my s5, still wouldn't swap it for my note 4 though, optimise your note 4, it holds its own in terms of battery life and performance.
All depends on why you got a note4, I love the s-pen, I like the added fingerprint reader and heart rate monitor, and like the better camera with OIS. I already can't see the pixels on my Note3 though, so why would I care if I downgraded my Note4 to "only" that same resolution? Having longer battery life and higher performance for all the bits that matter to you sounds like a much better plan than having more pixels than you can possibly see.
ve6rah said:
so why would I care if I downgraded my Note4 to "only" that same resolution?.
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You didn't get the idea at all. It's about making games run faster and with far better details. Same as with PC games.
Read my post!
Edit: It was me not reading the post correctly. Sorry !
I'd be interested in this also. I would love the ability to lower the resolution for a few apps I use on my note 4
I like this idea for performance in games and battery saving but you definitely can see the pixels on the Note3 and indeed any 1080p mobile right now. The extra resolution on the Note 4 really pays off for normal useage but games should be able to default to 1080p at the very least.
Phones should have a resolution change option like pc's these days anyway.
Chefproll said:
You didn't get the idea at all. It's about making games run faster and with far better details. Same as with PC games.
Read my post!
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Sorry, I think you misunderstood. I was agreeing with you. My point was that I don't really "lose" anything if I downgrade the resolution as on a screen this size I can't see individual pixels even at 1080 I was also countering those who said the OP should have stuck with a note 3 by saying that the note 4 has many other improvements as well, and that the resolution, though better on paper doesn't really matter.
ve6rah said:
Sorry, I think you misunderstood.
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Yes, I indeed did - I did not read carefully enough.
Just added a comment to my post regarding this.
Thank you for pointing this out !
NOMone resolution changer in the app store lets you bring it down to 1080P.

Is there a way to lower the screen resolution from 1080p to 720p?

I hear they lower the res from 1440 to 1080 in the G3 so is there a way to lower the screen resolution in the G2 from 1080p to 720p?
I couldn't find anything about it in search.
Screen resolution of an lCD is a physical attribute, it cannot be changed. You can change the software to renderer the image so you would get a lower resolution data to show, and since android source is available, it is technically possible. I doubt anybody tried, because our device has a adequite computing power to generate 1080p images. On the other hand, lg g3 has almost same power, but it displays almost double size image. For g2, it won't worth the lost of quality.
The issue is, since LCD will display it on its physical resolution(there is no other way), your image quality will be far worse than the down sampled version. For example, if you render the sceen at 720p, and show it on a 720p 5.2" display, you will lose ~%55 of your data, but since you render your source on this resolution, will be sharp, just won't have so much detail. If you display this 720p image in 1080p display however, screen resolution cannot be changed, so your screen will try to calculate the missing %55, and then show you the result. Since there is no original data, it assumes the missing pixels were like the ones around them, which means your result will be blurry.
As a side note, old tube displays does not have a resolution, they can support various resolutions. We used to set resolution to our taste between speed and detail back then.
enigmanp covered the technical aspect of it and I'll just follow up with my own personal experience.
I had a chinese android tablet running at 2048x1536 resolution, the same resolution commonly found in iPad tablets.
My Android tablet sometimes perform sluggish because of the high resolution. Even though the CPU was a quad core 1Ghz, it's still chinese and the GPU wasn't great either. So I lowered the resolution and everything was blurred and not sharp at all (due to the reasons enigmamp explained above). I DID notice an improvement in overall speed, but apps started misbehaving and it was all a huge mess.
Now the only reason I did that was because I found my tablet lacking smoothness/performance. I just don't quite see why you'd want to do that on the G2 since the CPU and GPU can clearly handle even the most intensive 3D games on high detail. Could you please explain?
vPro97 said:
Could you please explain?
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Mainly to save on battery.
enginmanap said:
Screen resolution of an lCD is a physical attribute, it cannot be changed. You can change the software to renderer the image so you would get a lower resolution data to show, and since android source is available, it is technically possible. I doubt anybody tried, because our device has a adequite computing power to generate 1080p images. On the other hand, lg g3 has almost same power, but it displays almost double size image. For g2, it won't worth the lost of quality.
The issue is, since LCD will display it on its physical resolution(there is no other way), your image quality will be far worse than the down sampled version. For example, if you render the sceen at 720p, and show it on a 720p 5.2" display, you will lose ~%55 of your data, but since you render your source on this resolution, will be sharp, just won't have so much detail. If you display this 720p image in 1080p display however, screen resolution cannot be changed, so your screen will try to calculate the missing %55, and then show you the result. Since there is no original data, it assumes the missing pixels were like the ones around them, which means your result will be blurry.
As a side note, old tube displays does not have a resolution, they can support various resolutions. We used to set resolution to our taste between speed and detail back then.
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So why it doesn't get blurry on the G3 then?
If it's to save battery, I doubt you'll see much of a change.
The GPU is working on a smaller load but most of the time it's running at 200 MHz anyway. But I'm no expert, I'm just telling what I know and what I've experienced. I'll head over to the g3 thread to read more!
Reducing the number of pixels would help you to save battery if you are using a phone with AMOLED screen, sadly it is not the case with LG G2. So even by turning the resolution down, you are using pretty much the same amount of battery as you would with full 1080p resolution.
If you want to go ahead with it anyway, there are plenty of apps on the play store which does this. Just search "resolution" in the play store and you'll find them. However I don't think this will help your battery life at all, nor do I recommend it.
Late addition
Well, when i found out this was an option i just had to tinker. I have a G2 that is my daily driver and a S6 for back up. I changed it to 900x1600 480dpi and it works just fine. The camera touch focus is a little off, but otherwise it is sooper smooth now. I also throttle the CPU down. So both together I get a good experience and decent battery life. I know this is a late response, but to anyone out there with root and some lackluster performance might want to give this a shot. I needed to reboot once to correct some keyboard skewing. I also adjusted the height of the keyboard to compensate for the change in real estate. Works like a champ, no real noticeable degradation in viewing pics or videos. I'm going to try this on my Nook Hd+. It needs a shot in the arm (no pun intended).
villain222 said:
Well, when i found out this was an option i just had to tinker. I have a G2 that is my daily driver and a S6 for back up. I changed it to 900x1600 480dpi and it works just fine. The camera touch focus is a little off, but otherwise it is sooper smooth now. I also throttle the CPU down. So both together I get a good experience and decent battery life. I know this is a late response, but to anyone out there with root and some lackluster performance might want to give this a shot. I needed to reboot once to correct some keyboard skewing. I also adjusted the height of the keyboard to compensate for the change in real estate. Works like a champ, no real noticeable degradation in viewing pics or videos. I'm going to try this on my Nook Hd+. It needs a shot in the arm (no pun intended).
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it would be nice if you share a "how to" as well
i tried lowering the resolution on my tablet and G2 with some apps from the playstore - but only thing i got was an unstable device(s)...
desertmod1 said:
I hear they lower the res from 1440 to 1080 in the G3 so is there a way to lower the screen resolution in the G2 from 1080p to 720p?
I couldn't find anything about it in search.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
download terminal
write in terminal :
su [ENTER]
wm size 720x1280 && wm density 220 [ENTER]
new density: new resolution * current dpi / old resolution ( for e.g. 720*1280*480/(1080*1920) = 213), altough i tested, and it seems that 240 is the best (for me), but it looks awful, for me, so i will go back to full hd + 410 dpi
ofc root required )
anyway, please share with us if it will be any battery life improvement
enginmanap said:
As a side note, old tube displays does not have a resolution, they can support various resolutions. We used to set resolution to our taste between speed and detail back then.
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Now I miss those glory days of correcting CRT display alignment and freedom to changes aspect ratio/resolution beyond the DAC supported rate at the expense of mild irreversible eye's retina damage. Lol. :laugh:

This seems a bit shady imo. Native Resolution @ only Full HD from the box.

Samsung is advertising S8 and S8+ 2960 x 1440p the device defaults to Full HD+ and can be changed to Quad HD+ (WQHD+) in the settings. My concerns are why? Battery life? Better bragging rights concerning performance? I am going to play with one today and will report back on if it makes a difference switching but I wonder if reported battery life from Samsung is going off of Full HD or the full pixel count. It sucks to even have to question this.
Yup I've been posted about this for a few days now. They are being incredibly misleading and they are doing it on purpose to disguise the **** battery life. The Samsung battery life is using FHD I am pretty sure because on their spec sheet they say that the "default" resolution is FHD, which will then be what their rated battery life stats are based on. Of course they then have people comparing the S7 stats vs the S8 but the S7 ones were based on it running its native 1440p resolution because at the time of release, the ability to change resolutions did not exist, it came in Nougat. So effectively Samsung are being extremely sly. You have battery life stated on the S8 which is basically the same as the S7, and what they obviously don't want people to figure out is that the S7's was 1440p and the S8's was 1080.
How much difference that makes will be interesting. It will obviously make less difference on browsing and light use (but might still but noticaeble) and a lot more difference on video and games.
Of course the other issue is they keep touting how good this 1440p display is in all the advertising......but it doesn't run at 1440p by default does it? Noooooo, because the battery is ****!
Why use max hd it's only any use in vr
It uses FHD resolution by default
The Galaxy S8 and S8+ have QHD+ screens like its predecessors. Unlike its predecessors, however, Samsung is tuning down the screen resolution to 1080p by default. This is for power efficiency purposes, as it decreases the number of pixels that need you be rendered. This is the same optimization that Sony used on the Xperia Z5 Premium, but that had a 4K screen.
Of course, when the content calls for it, the Galaxy S8 switches to its native QHD resolution. And you can always set it to use QHD all the time. It’s just something you have to keep in mind if the user interface looks a tad too big for your eyes.
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https://www.slashgear.com/8-things-to-know-about-the-samsung-galaxy-s8-30480276/
I see nothing shady or misleading but that is me.
RMXO said:
https://www.slashgear.com/8-things-to-know-about-the-samsung-galaxy-s8-30480276/
I see nothing shady or misleading but that is me.
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What has an article written by slashgear got to do with Samsungs underhand tactics regarding battery life?
---------- Post added at 08:53 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:52 PM ----------
bayfisher1958 said:
stock in android 7....can be reset to qhd.
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huh?
I took a few pics and very closely eye balled the settings while going through them. I have a true dedicated theater room I spared no expense on and literally a HUGE freak when it comes to imperfections with any display. Options are HD+ 1480 x 720, FHD+ 2220 x 1080 (out of the box) and WQHD+ 2960 x 1440 and you can tell a difference but it didn't bother me. Obviously the higher resolution is sharp and starts to fall off from there. In a blind test you would be able to notice at regular viewing distance imo however its not at all distracting and my guess is no one will ever question the beauty of the screen at even 720 to hunt down settings outside of people like us. Having said that, when I locked the demo unit it reverted back to WQHD+ so I compared at the screen resolution option right there.
ewokuk said:
What has an article written by slashgear got to do with Samsungs underhand tactics regarding battery life?
---------- Post added at 08:53 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:52 PM ----------
huh?
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Its your opinion and others that Samsung is underhand tactics with battery life. not everyone feels the same as you.
RMXO said:
Its your opinion and others that Samsung is underhand tactics with battery life. not everyone feels the same as you.
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It's not opinion its fact. If they weren't trying to make it look better than it is, they would provide a like for like comparison with the S7 instead of conveniently showing battery life stats that are almost the same as the S7........and leaving out the key detail that they are completely different resolutions and not comparable at all. It was pretty clear something was up during the reveal event when they VERY quickly flashed up the mah of each battery and then quickly skipped past it without mentioning the battery life at all.
I still don't see what relevance an article by slashgear has to do with anything. It's an article written by slashgear, barely mentions battery at all and provides no comment on the battery stats vs the S7.
Your argument is like saying its our opinion that the earth is round but not everybody believes it.....doesn't matter what they believe, it's just a fact. If they wanted to be open about it, they would have provided battery life stats for the higher resolution so that it can be directly compared to the S7, instead they provide a 1440 screen, go on about thish high resolution screen in all the advertising, then set the default resolution to 1080 and quietly provide battery stats that are based on 1080, but don't actually ever tell you that the stats are based on this, because that would make it clear it isn't a fair comparison to the same stats they provided for the s7.
Umm sorry to break it to you but the Galaxy S7 with Nougat also defaulted to the lower resolution and it made ZERO difference to battery life. There is plenty of reviews and comments about this. Though it does make a difference in some apps and games where the scaling works better at 1080 resolution as higher than that and the assets are so small they are harder to use with a touch screen. So instead of stating facts with no actual facts why don't we wait till some real reviews come out and test the battery before we jump to conclusions.
ewokuk said:
It's not opinion its fact. If they weren't trying to make it look better than it is, they would provide a like for like comparison with the S7 instead of conveniently showing battery life stats that are almost the same as the S7........and leaving out the key detail that they are completely different resolutions and not comparable at all. It was pretty clear something was up during the reveal event when they VERY quickly flashed up the mah of each battery and then quickly skipped past it without mentioning the battery life at all.
I still don't see what relevance an article by slashgear has to do with anything. It's an article written by slashgear, barely mentions battery at all and provides no comment on the battery stats vs the S7.
Your argument is like saying its our opinion that the earth is round but not everybody believes it.....doesn't matter what they believe, it's just a fact. If they wanted to be open about it, they would have provided battery life stats for the higher resolution so that it can be directly compared to the S7, instead they provide a 1440 screen, go on about thish high resolution screen in all the advertising, then set the default resolution to 1080 and quietly provide battery stats that are based on 1080, but don't actually ever tell you that the stats are based on this, because that would make it clear it isn't a fair comparison to the same stats they provided for the s7.
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i never said anything is facts, i said i don't believe what you're saying. You are coming out like its facts, so show me the facts! While I do understand your concerns but you're making it out to be facts when there isn't any yet.
bnathan said:
Umm sorry to break it to you but the Galaxy S7 with Nougat also defaulted to the lower resolution and it made ZERO difference to battery life. There is plenty of reviews and comments about this. Though it does make a difference in some apps and games where the scaling works better at 1080 resolution as higher than that and the assets are so small they are harder to use with a touch screen. So instead of stating facts with no actual facts why don't we wait till some real reviews come out and test the battery before we jump to conclusions.
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BIngo!
The one thing people seem to overlook with lowering the resolution is the positive effect it has on the processor. Samsung may very well have it set at FHD out of the box for better performance power for the general user. Obviously, they also say it very slightly improves battery life - but by all accounts - and even my own experience with my S7 - it's pretty negligible.
If you don't mind, I would love some clarification on the S7's ability to change the resolution:
First: doesn't the display draw power because it needs to produce light? Don't 2 pixels at half brightness create the same amount of light as 1 pixel at full brightness (since this is an OLED screen) or is that single pixel more power efficient because power draw isn't linear?
Second: does it physically turn off pixels or does it just change the DPI because turning off anything but 1/2 looks incredibly bad so I'm assuming it just changes the DPI. If it does just change the DPI than the power draw from the display should not change much but the GPU usage should fall.
Isn't the resolution also a function of the power savings plan settings which was new in the S7? The power savings plan also throttles the SoC and limits data speeds.
my 2 cents
When switching resolutions on my S7 Edge I haven't noticed any battery increase or decrease. So I just keep it at QHD
zathus said:
When switching resolutions on my S7 Edge I haven't noticed any battery increase or decrease. So I just keep it at QHD
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I think it's more about gaining performance, especially in games where you wouldn't really notice the lower resolution anyway. It's also easier on the eyes for some people in certain applications as the UI elements don't shrink so much.
It's nice to have the choice. When I swap between QHD and FHD phones the difference is negligible, certainly you can see a slight sharpness decrease if you look hard enough. Just not enough to warrant the loss in performance for many people.
There is a reason Apple haven't increased their screen resolutions yet. The need just isn't there for the average user. VR is the biggest reason for a higher res, that's something that definitely benefits from it. Again, not everybody has that need.
Personally, I like choice. I'll be switching between both depending on what I am doing.
Highspeed123 said:
I think it's more about gaining performance, especially in games where you wouldn't really notice the lower resolution anyway. It's also easier on the eyes for some people in certain applications as the UI elements don't shrink so much.
...
Personally, I like choice. I'll be switching between both depending on what I am doing.
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I really disagree on most points.
First, the myth that people won't notice the difference, they will. In the near future when screens keep improving, you will notice how bad a low res screen looks so having QHD is nice in future proofing.
The UI elements can be changed by changing the DPI which Samsung did from the Note 4 to the Note 5 (Note 5's UI has smaller elements, they are both 1440p) so there are obviously people at Samsung working to make the UI visible and accessible and the resolution isn't a problem for them.
The performance hit isn't that big to be honest, it comes down to hardware and software optimization, a slight change in DPI will not make much of a difference.
And one last point, it's nice for phones to have great displays because it puts focus on display technology and increases research on those areas.
aalxx said:
I really disagree on most points.
First, the myth that people won't notice the difference, they will. In the near future when screens keep improving, you will notice how bad a low res screen looks so having QHD is nice in future proofing.
The UI elements can be changed by changing the DPI which Samsung did from the Note 4 to the Note 5 (Note 5's UI has smaller elements, they are both 1440p) so there are obviously people at Samsung working to make the UI visible and accessible and the resolution isn't a problem for them.
The performance hit isn't that big to be honest, it comes down to hardware and software optimization, a slight change in DPI will not make much of a difference.
And one last point, it's nice for phones to have great displays because it puts focus on display technology and increases research on those areas.
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I agree, I wasn't saying that phones shouldn't have a QHD screen. I was merely suggesting that it's nice to have a choice and Samsung has provided it. There is of course a slight difference between the two but because of the smaller screens phones have, there comes a point where the resolution doesn't make a difference anymore. 1080p to 4k on a TV is nice but even that isn't a huge leap, even on my 75 Sony.
The real difference comes from other areas such as colour and HDR. QHD is pretty much the max you'll ever need unless it's for VR.
I have had many phones and there is only a small difference between QHD and FHD but it is there. I will be using QHD for browsing the Internet and photo viewing etc and I will drop to FHD for gaming. Options are a good thing.
The difference in battery use between FHD and QHD is so small it's not really noticed. The reason FHD is default is because a lot of apps look sbetter in FHD.
ewokuk said:
but it doesn't run at 1440p by default does it? Noooooo, because the battery is ****!
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Is that statement backed up by real world testing of S8 battery life or are just guessing?
dezborders said:
Is that statement backed up by real world testing of S8 battery life or are just guessing?
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Very educated guessing for 2 reasons.
First: small battery/screen size ratio. Compared to the 3600mAh for 5.5in on the S7 Edge, the S8's 3000mAh for 5.8in is ridiculous.
Second: the new design. This happened the last time Samsung changed the design with the S6, the battery life was horrid on that. Plus this design seems to rely a lot on looking a thin and slick phone from the future and that has probably compromised the battery life.
Edit: and also the 10nm process isn't enough to make a difference, you could remove the processor from the S7 Edge entirely and there wouldn't be a difference comparable to 600mAh because the main power draw on any phone is the display.

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