Pocket PC Screens falling behind ?

[Shaun Stuart]

One of the main reasons I use a Pocket PC phone edition is that I like the idea of a large clear screen on the smallest usable device. The screens on PPCs use to stand out from similar devices.

I just compared my 02 atom and HTC Wizard to a Nokia N80 (Symbian Smartphone) and was staggered at the difference in screen quality.

The nokia has a smaller screen (2.4" vs 2.7") but the resolution is 352x416, and the device displays up to 262,144 colors - it made the 240x320 and 64k colours on my new pocket pcs look 5 years old.

I know I could use a vga device like my MDA PRO but this isnt practical for every day use for me.

Are we expecting to see any improvements in this area for Pocket PCs - All the new and upcoming devices have the same old screens or worse (240x240) does the OS even support 262k colours ?

[Sven Johannsen]

- it made the 240x320 and 64k colours on my new pocket pcs look 5 years old.240x320 and 64k colours is 5 years old. You know you can do better with VGA, but both resolution & color depth add cost with maybe limited real utility. Sure the screens look better when set side by side, but the 320x240 of today looks better than the first 320x240 screens too. Not sure you can get much use out of a screen better than 640x480 at PDA sizes. I can't read them at native resolution (true VGA). Fonts get pretty small.

[Nurhisham Hussein]

does the OS even support 262k colours ?

You might want to read through this:

http://blogs.msdn.com/windowsmobile/archive/2005/09/07/462187.aspx

[Menneisyys]

One of the main reasons I use a Pocket PC phone edition is that I like the idea of a large clear screen on the smallest usable device. The screens on PPCs use to stand out from similar devices.

I just compared my 02 atom and HTC Wizard to a Nokia N80 (Symbian Smartphone) and was staggered at the difference in screen quality.

Yup, it's indeed a big problem PPC manufacturers seem to be going in the wrong direction, which is, of course, makes alternate operating system devices much more appealing because they use hardware getting steadily better and better. Nokia's latest offerings, hardware-wise, are VERY appealing and easily surpass most WM PPC's (except for the Fujitsu-Siemens N560). If only they didn't run Symbian but WM...