Are you ready for a smartphone display with 806 pixels per inch? Rumor has it that ZTE is.

The Chinese phone maker is said to be working on a new phone with a 5.5 inch, 3840 x 2160 pixel display.

zte star 3

MyDrivers reports the ZTE Star 3 could be one of the first phones to feature a 4K display… or at least a screen with a resolution close to 4K (which some purists will tell you is actually 4096 x 2160 pixels).

Remember when folks were wondering if 1080p screens on smartphones were overkill? And then we were wondering the same thing about 1440p screens…

Sharp recently unveiled a 5.5 inch, 3840 x 2160 display panel, and there are rumors that Samsung’s next Galaxy Note smartphone could have a slightly larger screen with the same display resolution.

Whether ZTE is the first company to release a 4K phone or not, it’s just a matter of time until somebody does it.

I’m still not convinced most people can tell the difference between a phone with 400 pixels per inch and one with 800 PPI when held a foot and a half from your eyes. But these days there are reasons to hold some phones a lot closer to your face… which may mean that there’s no such thing as too many pixels.

via GizmoChina

 

 

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24 replies on “Report: ZTE Star 3 smartphone to sport a 4K display”

  1. Okay,okay the Chinese are out of this world what all these crazy specs phones!!

  2. My next phone will be 4K. I love Google Cardboard. YouTube app recently got Cardboard button for 360° videos. Google is working with GoPro on VR cameras. Imagine watching 360° 3D 4K concerts on YouTube using VR headset! It is almost like being there! Future is exciting!

  3. If the industry is going to have a dick measuring contest, why can’t it be over color gamut? How about a 100% AdobeRGB screen?

    1. atleast the same color balance. but a wider gamut here and there is welcome if you ask me.
      And monitors without locked settings in various presets. Is it so much to ask to get to calibrate the monitor properly? even cheaper ones?

      1. I’m pretty impressed by the Note 4’s screen. Very accurate colours for any of my pics done in SRGB profile.

        1. i got the S4+ pretty good screen there too. The two downsides to it is the blur when you scroll and at higher brightness, white tends to get a slight hint of yellow.

  4. There’s lots of things phone (and laptop, tablet, PC) makers could do to improve image quality without upping the resolution.

    Oversampling, for example, can significantly remove the perception of pixels in an image. This has been done for years with text, and we’re starting to see full screen oversampling in video games now using nVidia’s DSR in their latest cards – They internally render a 4K scenes then down-sample it to 1080p. It looks great.

    And ensure decent bit-rates and HEVC codecs are used for video would also mean better looking images, even at 1080p.

    I guess my point is, that if you have a device with the horsepower to drive a 4K screen, then you might as well use that horsepower to do a better job of driving a 1080p screen, while saving us money and increasing battery life with a lower spec screen.

  5. 1080 is all we need for phones, 4k on pc monitors, 8k in the cinemas.
    And for the love of god, Less visible pixel grids!!!

    1. no reason to hate on it, at least we have choice…. better than stagnation and just now getting 720p.

      1. 720p is where it should have stayed. Just because the screen resolution isn’t changing doesn’t mean they can’t innovate. Apple was honestly right, there isn’t a whole lot to notice at over 300ppi. It’s just a number that is getting thrown out like when they just kept upping the megapixel every year (though that was at least more useful than screen resolution.)

        1. Good thing you can buy a 720p device and have what you want, others might like something else. I won’t even consider a 720p device especially over 5″screen.

          1. 720p is becoming more and more rare. You’re kidding yourself (which is what they want) if you think you can see a difference. But honestly it’s not that I think 720p is better quality or anything, it’s just that higher resolution only really serves to hurt battery life, which is something I think important to most people.

          2. Well, considering I have a 4.7″ 720p device and a 5.5″ 1080p and can tell the difference easily as can anyone who’s looked at them next to each other. Heck, I can clearly see the difference between 1080p 5.5″ lg and the lg 3/4 screens.

            And my eyes aren’t perfect.

            Not saying the higher res is necessary but it is visible, unless you bought into Steve Job’s BS about screen res and eye sight, cause it’s actually more like 900 ppi for a phone before the human eye can’t see the difference.

            And screen on time, battery life, for devices hasn’t changed much — charge nightly as it was pre 720p.

          3. I don’t think seeing the difference is what matfers. I have a One Max – 5.9inch 1080p and pixels are not noticeable to me with normal use. Do others notice them? Maybe. It’s just preference I guess.

            But. I do think that for performance, if there were 720p 4 inch screens, that’s a pretty decent pixel density and depending on the chipset, the phone could perform exceptionally. I’m surprised some cheap phone manufacturers out of China didn’t target iPhone clones with smaller screens and higher resolutions by now.

            Even if Apple decided to make a 6c with 1334×750 resolution at 4 inches, that would still be 383ppi. Which a lot of people would accept regardless of only being able to display 720p content at around its native resolution. Display quality and performance is more important to me than resolution.

          4. I agree, and other reasons for it being bs is that the distance from eye to screen is not a constant (especially over different kinds of devices).

        2. Apple were the ones to start hyping over resolution with all their “retina” nonsense – and when they did that, they were significantly less than 720p. There is no right resolution, it depends on a lot of factors.

          1. yea it was less than 720p on a 4 inch phone. The original idea behind it was over 300ppi, not a certain resolution.

    2. If not for this we’d have great quality phones for around $20 retail by now. So screw that jeweler’s loupe into your eye so you can appreciate carrying a giant slabphone in your purse after forking out an absurd amount of money. Ronald Reagan is laughing in his grave at the success of his policies promoting conspicuous consumption as a means of wealth transfer to the rich.

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