On 03/10/2012 01:21 PM, scott wrote:
>> Now, imagine watching a movie on a screen that's so tiny that you have
>> to hold it a few inches in front of your face to even be able to /see/
>> it. I just have to ask: What the hell is the point? I mean, other than
>> the bragging rights for saying "I have an expensive piece of equipment".
>> It just seems pointless to me...
>
> Agreed, never watched a movie on my phone before, it would be horrible.
> A FullHD screen is not just for movies though, obviously everything else
> running on the phone can take advantage of it (photos, the GUI, YouTube
> videos, maps, ebooks, websites, etc.).

Being able to actually see photos slightly more clearly, or have more 
legible text, might actually be worth it. Being able to watch movies in 
FullHD? Not so much...

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Orchid Win7 v1 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:

>
> In the case of the phone thing above, it's simple: If the screen was any
> bigger, the device wouldn't fit in your pocket. It's that simple. Just
> some basic physics.
>

My Galaxy S2 is 4.9 X 2.6 X 0.33 inches it easily fits in any of my pockets
including shirt pockets. But as for watching a movie on it, there I agree with
you. I would need to be desperate to do that. Watching clips is okay but nothing
longer than 10 minutes IMO

Stephen

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Orchid Win7 v1 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> When you think about it for more than six consecutive seconds, the 
> purpose of watching a movie is total immersion. Even today, with the 
> rise of "home cinema systems" and so forth, people will still willingly 
> pay really quite large sums of money to go and watch movies in an 
> /actual/ cinema. Because no matter how big your plasma TV at home is, it 
> just doesn't compare to a cinema screen that's bigger than your entire 
> house. Plus, your neighbours wouldn't let you turn the sound up to the 
> point where the building physically shakes. But cinemas can do that.

There's more multimedia out there than just Lord of the Rings movies.
Things like TV series, documentaries, comedy routines and so on do not
require a movie theater sized screen. They can very well be enjoyed from
a 4-inch screen while sitting on a train.

> Now, imagine watching a movie on a screen that's so tiny that you have 
> to hold it a few inches in front of your face to even be able to /see/ 
> it.

And again with the exaggerations. Just stop it, please.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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> On 03/10/2012 01:21 PM, scott wrote:
>>> Now, imagine watching a movie on a screen that's so tiny that you have
>>> to hold it a few inches in front of your face to even be able to /see/
>>> it. I just have to ask: What the hell is the point? I mean, other than
>>> the bragging rights for saying "I have an expensive piece of equipment".
>>> It just seems pointless to me...
>>
>> Agreed, never watched a movie on my phone before, it would be horrible.
>> A FullHD screen is not just for movies though, obviously everything else
>> running on the phone can take advantage of it (photos, the GUI, YouTube
>> videos, maps, ebooks, websites, etc.).
>
> Being able to actually see photos slightly more clearly, or have more
> legible text, might actually be worth it. Being able to watch movies in
> FullHD? Not so much...

Agreed.  The problem with cell phones is that everyone has one, so the 
phone makers need to come up with new reasons for people to upgrade them 
or risk going out of business.  This week, it's fullHD screen and 
voice-activated cloud-based buzzword-compliant search functions (such as 
Siri on iThings).

I think the full HD screen is not necessarily to watch Avatar on your 
phone, but to be able to quickly review the movie you just filmed before 
uploading it to Youtube.

Coincidentally, I had a friend who used to say "I don't want a phone 
that takes pictures, I want a DLSR camera that receives calls"... Well 
guess what?  the newer DLSRs from Canon an Nikon have Wifi and 3G 
capabilities to be able to upload pictures and movies to the web 
immediately...
-- 
/*Francois Labreque*/#local a=x+y;#local b=x+a;#local c=a+b;#macro P(F//
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/*   gmail.com     */}camera{orthographic location<6,1.25,-6>look_at a }

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> Orchid Win7 v1 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>
>>
>> In the case of the phone thing above, it's simple: If the screen was any
>> bigger, the device wouldn't fit in your pocket. It's that simple. Just
>> some basic physics.
>>
>
> My Galaxy S2 is 4.9 X 2.6 X 0.33 inches it easily fits in any of my pockets
> including shirt pockets. But as for watching a movie on it, there I agree with
> you. I would need to be desperate to do that. Watching clips is okay but nothing
> longer than 10 minutes IMO
>

The rule of thumb for Internet browsing is:
3 minutes on a phone.
30 minutes on a tablet.
3 hrs on a computer.

I suspect it would be the same for watching movies.


-- 
/*Francois Labreque*/#local a=x+y;#local b=x+a;#local c=a+b;#macro P(F//
/*    flabreque    */L)polygon{5,F,F+z,L+z,L,F pigment{rgb 9}}#end union
/*        @        */{P(0,a)P(a,b)P(b,c)P(2*a,2*b)P(2*b,b+c)P(b+c,<2,3>)
/*   gmail.com     */}camera{orthographic location<6,1.25,-6>look_at a }

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>> Being able to actually see photos slightly more clearly, or have more
>> legible text, might actually be worth it. Being able to watch movies in
>> FullHD? Not so much...
>
> Agreed. The problem with cell phones is that everyone has one, so the
> phone makers need to come up with new reasons for people to upgrade them
> or risk going out of business. This week, it's fullHD screen and
> voice-activated cloud-based buzzword-compliant search functions (such as
> Siri on iThings).

Yeah, that sounds about right.

At least with cars, there are few enough of them that applying different 
body styling might actually make your new product stand out. That's 
really not going to work with a phone; there's millions of them!

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On 03/10/2012 01:59 PM, Warp wrote:
> There's more multimedia out there than just Lord of the Rings movies.
> Things like TV series, documentaries, comedy routines and so on do not
> require a movie theater sized screen. They can very well be enjoyed from
> a 4-inch screen while sitting on a train.

I was about to make some comment about how excruciatingly loud trains 
are - and then I remembered, that's only UK trains. Other parts of the 
world have a train system with actual /investment/...

>> Now, imagine watching a movie on a screen that's so tiny that you have
>> to hold it a few inches in front of your face to even be able to /see/
>> it.
>
> And again with the exaggerations. Just stop it, please.

What makes you think this is an exaggeration?

Just to make sure I'm not under-estimating or over-estimating how big an 
"inch" actually is, I just took a ruler to my phone. The screen is 1.5 
inches across by 2 inches tall. Now, I can see the menus on this thing 
without holding it to right up to my face. But that's because it only 
displays up to 4 options at once. If you were to take an image designed 
to be viewed on a TV-sized screen and shrink it down to this size... 
well, you wouldn't be able to see a hell of a lot, no matter how amazing 
the spatial resolution is.

I actually have memories of trying to operate a Sinclair ZX Spectrum on 
one of those old portable CRT things. Because it's CRT, the unit is 
huge, but only has a piffling 6-inch display at the end of it. It made 
the text nearly illegible. Now, admittedly a cheap CRT displaying an 
RT-modulated signal is not exactly the height of visual precision. But 
it would seem to me that you aren't going to see much with /any/ display 
technology at that size. (We've all seen inch-sized photographs on real 
photographic paper, right?)

I take your point; if you're only watching IQ, then mainly you're 
listening to the witty banter. Not being able to properly see the 
expressions on people's faces probably isn't /that/ critical. It just 
puzzles me that anybody would think that "full HD" on such a tiny 
surface would be worth the effort.

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Orchid Win7 v1 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> >> Now, imagine watching a movie on a screen that's so tiny that you have
> >> to hold it a few inches in front of your face to even be able to /see/
> >> it.
> >
> > And again with the exaggerations. Just stop it, please.

> What makes you think this is an exaggeration?

"A few inches" is something like 3 to 5 inches. That's like 10 cm.
Holding anything that close would make it hard to see anything. Nobody
does that, if for nothing else, then for that reason alone.

If you are watching something like a TV series or a music video, it's
perfectly comfortable wathing it like you would read a book. There's
nothing to it. You don't keep a book 10 cm from your face when you read,
do you?

So yes, "you have to hold it a few inches in front of your face" is a
huge exaggeration.

It seems to me that you have never actually *tried* using an iPhone,
you are just talking from your behind.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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> At least with cars, there are few enough of them that applying different
> body styling might actually make your new product stand out. That's
> really not going to work with a phone; there's millions of them!

The iPhone managed to somehow work very well out of nowhere when 
millions of other phones were available.

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scott <sco### [at] scottcom> wrote:
> The iPhone managed to somehow work very well out of nowhere when 
> millions of other phones were available.

It's curious how innovative Apple was with the iPhone, and how
successful those ideas were.

The iPhone might not have been the first portable device with a
touch-screen (usable with fingers rather than a stylus) in history,
but it was very certainly the first one produced for the masses.
When Apple announced this, many people doubted its usability, and many
even laughed at it (a common criticism being "it doesn't even have a
keyboard".)

But Apple did everything just right: Rather than going with a cheap,
low-resolution touch-screen on a device that can be used for 2 hours,
they really invested in it and put a really, really high-quality, accurate
and responsive touch screen with a very decent pixel resolution (at least
at that time) that keeps working properly no matter how dirty the screen
gets, and they put a lot of effort on the software side to make it as
usable as possible. And you can actually use the device for quite a long
time without recharging.

Before the iPhone many people laughed at the concept. After the iPhone
and its huge success, every single cellphone manufacturer has created
their own clone of it. Many of them of abysmal quality (really inaccurate
finger tracking, extremely prone to misbehave when the screen gets even
slightly dirty, and so on.)

Touchscreens are the new black.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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