
LG G3 review: A great phone with too many pixels  - sizzle
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/06/lg-g3-review-a-great-phone-with-way-too-many-pixels/
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pling
That's kind of crazy. The thing that gets me with all these things is the
energy density in your pocket. 3Ah is a lot of energy. When a LiPoly goes off,
it goes off in style. Even the 2Ah one in my Moto G is scary.

And in this 3Ah behemoth, the battery life sucks!?!?

~~~
Dylan16807
It's pretty scary what that amount of power can do when released quickly. On
the other hand realize that a watt hour is slightly less than a single food
calorie. That battery has 10 calories. A bar of chocolate has 150-250.

~~~
jacquesm
For that reason alone it's a small wonder that we haven't seen miniature fuel
cell technology take off in recent years. If only those membranes wouldn't
foul up.

It keeps getting close to being accepted and then vanishes again, for
instance:

[http://www.iec.ch/etech/2013/etech_0113/tech-1.htm](http://www.iec.ch/etech/2013/etech_0113/tech-1.htm)

~~~
AshleysBrain
Hopefully the fuel cells won't run on chocolate bars, I prefer to use them as
my own fuel :)

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neals
Running a game on this thing means that the gpu has to work that much harder
to render those extra pixels. I'd rather have a higher framerate than more
pixels.

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megablast
> Android OEMs have shown time and time again that they design, not for a
> great user experience, but for the showroom, spec sheet, and marketability.

You see this with a lot of their ardent fans, they talk up the specs, as if we
are back in the old days.

~~~
georgemcbay
> You see this with a lot of their ardent fans, they talk up the specs, as if
> we are back in the old days.

Depends upon which fans. Ardent Android fans are, well, fragmented into at
least two groups:

Those who are all about the specs of the latest flagship phone from the
various high-end phone manufacturers (Samsung, HTC, LG, etc) and those who
wouldn't touch a non-Nexus Android phone with a ten foot pole. The second
group generally doesn't care about specs as long as they are reasonably decent
for a modern phone.

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someperson
Very high resolution panels will be needed for Virtual Reality headsets to
reach human eye level fidelity. When looking at even this LCD panel from just
an inch away from your eyes and through lenses, it's actually quite a low
effective resolution per eye. We still have to go A LONG way to go with
respect to screen technology.

Also unfortunately this technology is LCD (not OLED), so not suitable for VR
applications due to lack of low-persistance.

~~~
wtallis
Can't any LCD be made into a low-persistence display just by pulsing the
backlight? I don't see how OLED is necessarily any better.

~~~
acous
The persistence is just 1 factor... LCD response time is very slow compared to
OLED (~5ms vs ~0.01ms). Every millisecond is important when it comes to VR.

~~~
wtallis
So, the persistence isn't really a factor at all, just the response time.

~~~
acous
Well persistence is a factor too. Say your display is updating at 120hz
without low persistence... the image stays on screen for 8ms, so you have,
say, 1ms of accurate image plus 7ms displaying an inaccurate image. For
whatever reason our brains prefer to have no image rather than an inaccurate
image, so it helps to turn off the display for that 7/8 of a frame.

While you can do that with LCD, you have to wait 5ms for the pixels to change
before you can strobe, so your frame is an extra 5ms out of date. That's my
understanding at least, I'm not an expert by any means.

~~~
wtallis
I wouldn't describe that as persistence being a problem, since obviously the
LCD can be illuminated for arbitrarily short periods of time. The response
time penalty applies regardless of whether you're trying to run the LCD in a
low-persistence mode. An OLED's response time advantage over LCDs is across-
the-board and completely orthogonal to persistence (where some kinds of
backlights could enable LCDs to strobe even faster than OLEDs), and the impact
of 5ms extra lag for VR applications will be about the same with or without
strobing.

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neverminder
My reasoning is this: if 4K is a new standard resolution for media (TVs,
desktop monitors, laptop screens), phones should not be excluded, so there
wouldn't have to be any upscaling/downscaling/converting which increases
energy consumption and results it lower quality. LG is taking the right path
and this screen should be just a test run for an upcoming 4K one.

~~~
pedrocr
Most "4K" is really 3840x2160 which is exactly twice 1920x1080. So scaling 4K
resolution to a 1080p screen is easy, just average every four pixels into one.
This screen though has 1/3 more pixels in both dimensions so scaling is
actually harder.

Since a Nexus 5 is already at 445PPI with a 1080p screen I don't see any
advantage of going 4K on this form factor. On a large tablet perhaps, but not
on a phone.

~~~
neverminder
Maybe I was just assuming a similar point of view and I realize this maybe far
fetched, but in my opinion and in very rough terms - the natural progression
of the screen concept should be to shrink the pixel to the size of a molecule
which would then produce an image indistinguishable from the real matter. Such
arguments as "human eye can't make a difference" don't really apply here,
wouldn't you agree?

~~~
pedrocr
>Such arguments as "human eye can't make a difference" don't really apply
here, wouldn't you agree?

"Can you see a difference?" is literally the only thing to care about in a
screen. If you can't see a difference it's useless to go any further.

~~~
kbutler
Generally, yes. But even just in resolution choice, you have mainstream vs
edge use cases that affect the "can you see it" test, and other technical
factors (e.g., try to find a panel with an odd-number width or height)

Then there are other factors like power consumption, durability, thickness,
weight, cost to manufacture, environmental impact of life cycle, cost of
supporting chipsets, ...

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mkhpalm
Looks cool except for the customized android part with a 1-2 year half-life.
I'm baffled at how companies can't figure out that less software customization
mixed with long-term OS upgrades is consistently more valuable to consumers.

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pervycreeper
He is criticizing the phone maker for making the wrong tradeoff, but really,
that's for the consumer to decide. Some people may value the (possibly)
marginal improvement in sharpness. Why resist technological improvements?

~~~
potatolicious
You realize this is a review right? He's not proposing we ban the phone, or
prevent its sale, or in any way interfere with the market. How is he resisting
technological improvements, and how is he preventing consumers from deciding?

He is _a_ consumer who has decided the tradeoff being made is wrong, and
expressed his opinion publicly.

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sillysaurus3
How long does the battery last on average for their typical usage?

I carry around an external battery in my pocket along with my phone. You can
buy one for pretty much any phone. Whenever I'm low on battery, I just plug in
the external and continue using it, even if I'm walking. It's really
convenient.

I think I'd prefer the big screen size even if the battery dies after only a
few hours.

~~~
imaginenore
7 hours 20 minutes browsing on Wifi.

Not bad at all.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
If the battery will last long enough for me to get from my 3 metre charge
cable in the kitchen to the charger in the car to the charger at work, it'll
do.

~~~
lozf
Meanwhile, those of us who _" get out more"_ would appreciate any improvements
that can be made.

