Where did 240 come from?

re: Where did 240 come from?

BobR — Tue, 14 Feb 2006 23:17:02 GMT

Great article! Thanks for the thought process leading to this resolution.

Actually, while Palm has the advantage now, when displays grow it may switch over to your advantage as you hinted. (Depending on what ALP looks like.) It's a shame there aren't more VGA pdas yet also.

I've always said that the initial 240x320 was a great choice because it seems to give more info on the screen than even a 320x320 Palm screen, yet requires less resolution and scales naturally to VGA. It's very functional even if not as pretty as 320x320. But 240x320 does look a bit "old-fashioned" now, so I hope the better screens get cheap fast. It may do a lot for device adoption. Even with 240x240 in smartphones.

I'm assuming that 240x240 gives you the same resolution as 240x320, but just "cropped" off.

Thanks for the article.

re: Where did 240 come from?

Murad Kheraj — Tue, 14 Feb 2006 23:49:17 GMT

Excellent article. I know this is the wrong forum to bring this up but if Palm is able to do High Res 320x480, why can't the Windows Mobile OS? Is it a lot more coding?

re: Where did 240 come from?

Alex — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 00:52:36 GMT

Its not hard for CE. Windows Mobile can switch res's very easily. The issue is purely third-party app compatibility.

re: Where did 240 come from?

Mike — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 03:40:22 GMT

What's fascinating to me is that the new smartphones (like the T-Mobile SDA or the Cingular 2125) also have a 240x320 screen, but the interface seems to show so much LESS information on the screen than a 240x320 PPC. I know there are Homescreen tweaks (like Facade) that allow much more info on the home screen, but even a 240x240 Treo700 homescreen is so much more useful than a 240x320 Smartphone screen.

And to think...

Raphael Salgado — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 06:34:57 GMT

...that my old TRS-80 Model III had a graphic pixel resolution of 127x47. It's sad that I even remember that. Thank you, though, for a thorough explanation.

Where did 240 come from?

Jason Langridge's WebLog - MR Mobile! — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 06:39:01 GMT

240x240, 320x240, 640x480, QVGA, VGA - confused?
Well one of my colleagues Mike Calligaro has written...

re: Where did 240 come from?

Galt — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 06:41:37 GMT

That's an absolutely excellent explanation.

re: Where did 240 come from?

Galt — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 06:47:43 GMT

That's an absolutely excellent explanation.

Why 240 x 240 and not 320 x 320

shahine.com/omar/ — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 07:37:22 GMT

re: Where did 240 come from?

MikeCal — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 20:19:08 GMT

Bob, that's correct. 240x240 is the 240x320 resolution with the extra pixels "cropped off." (I wish I'd thought of that description. It's perfect!) So 240x240 and 240x320 devices use the same icons and bitmaps.

Murad, doing 320x320 would take a fair amount of coding, but the real issue is art generation (making icons and bitmaps for the 3rd resolution) as well as compatability with applications that weren't written to support that size. It's certainly possible for us to do it. But we'd need to weigh the tradeoffs first.

Mike, I was focused on the PocketPC in this, but you're right that there's a similar story for the Smartphone. The line between Smartphones and PocketPCs is really blurring, and it's getting getting hard to tell them apart. But, at moment, the belief is that the smartphone screen is physically small enough that if we showed as much information as we do on a QVGA PocketPC screen it would be too small for normal people to read. However, this explanation isn't going to hold water much longer as PocketPCs continue to get smaller and smaller and Smartphones start to take on PocketPC-like form factors.

Thanks everyone who enjoyed the entry.

Mike

Abdul Aziz’s Journal » Blog Archive » Where did the 240X240 Screen for Windows Mobile phones comes from?

Wed, 15 Feb 2006 21:33:19 GMT

PingBack from http://thinkabdul.com/2006/02/15/where-did-the-240x240-screen-for-windows-mobile-phones-comes-from/

re: Where did 240 come from?

Ronny Gydar — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 23:11:18 GMT

Great article as always from you guys!

Being a developer I too am used to running with small fonts and high resolution on my PC.

I agree that the text look much better on my 640x480 JasJar, and appreciate that when I read books on it.

I always set the size for the fonts to the smallest possible on the JasJar, and YES that gives us more info on the screen.

But are you guys planning on making more screen artifacts/elements scalable in the same way...so that for example the bar at top at bottom of the screen also scale too? When I know set the size to minimal, my JasJar still use approx 15-20 percent of the screen (is more prominent when I run in "horisontal mode", which is the one I use the most on the JasJar) for just the bars at top and bottom of the screen. There is also a lot of fonts (even in built in apps) that do not scale when I change the sizing.

Don't get me wrong, I have seen huge improvements in the OS during the years (since I started with my HP 320LX or what it was called...and HP 95LX before that...yes I aaam old:-). But do you have any plans/roadmaps on improving this area of the OS?

If more-or-less everything scaled (bars, menys, buttons and fonts) EVERYBODY would be happy, the ones with 20/20 eyesight, and the old-and-busted (where I am soon)! :-)

re: Where did 240 come from?

Russ — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 00:22:10 GMT

This was very good and very helpful. This is all I ask is to be informed like this and we can quit asking all these question of why someone was made this way or that way.

re: Where did 240 come from?

Ben — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 20:54:26 GMT

Thanks for the piece! I had been wondering.

Ben

re: Where did 240 come from?

MikeCal — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 21:27:15 GMT

Ronny, scaling text works because the text is defined as mathematical functions. Icons, however, are just an array of colored dots, and they don't scale very well at all. I saw this recently when I made my Nightly program run on PPC and SP. I had provided a 16x16 and a 32x32 icon, and it automatically scaled the 32 to 64 acceptably (for use on VGA PocketPCs). However, the scaler for HiDPI smartphones makes you need a 22x22 icon. The system automatically scaled it, but it looked terrible. Icons scale fine to linear amounts (2x, 4x) but do badly at other factors.

We're talking about various things we can do, but it's a really tough problem that I'm not convinced we're going to be able to solve adequately.

Mike

re: Where did 240 come from?

NLS — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 21:46:24 GMT

Well I get to be the "bad guy" ONCE more.

First of all thank you for the excelent explantation (although the smarter among us might have thought the same explanation already).

But that doesn't make it SO wise.

I agree, manufacturers play a major role here. Then again, the same manufacturers (panel vendors) DID produce 320x320 already and in fact for a smaller (and shrinking) market as Palm. So... this rules out the part talking about the manufacturers' role. If MS (and HP and FSC and HTC etc.) wanted, 320x320 would be out there for us to buy. You know it and you know it well.

Then about resizing...

(Part A) Well... 320x320 would be MUCH smarter because I am sure many many people (including myself) would easily leave their VGA at home for a 320x320 all-in-one even if NON 320x320 aware apps just used the 240x320 part (I mean DUH!) even with black stripes left and right (no problem by me, believe me). This would be much faster than the current pixel doubling with VGA devices too! No software vendor would be forced to recompile their apps for mere 57600 pixels that 240x240 is. They would eventually make it to 320x320 but without being forced. As SIMPLE as that.

(Part B) There is no "one and a half" pixel resizing needed as you mentioned in the article (because nobody would like the form streched ONLY one direction and not have square "virtual" pixels). But IF IT WAS NEEDED, don't tell us it cannot happen. Nydidot does it for YEARS. Again if it was needed (and it is not).

To me the problem comes from the big difference between the desktop and the PDA, where the second is restricted to a specific form size. I mean why? Why not the OS to take care of this things as all modern software in our desktops? Is there a 350x420 panel? Ok use this! (ok up to the minimum of 240x320... and not the newly introduced minimum of 240x240).

So since Mike is close the giant, whisper to his ears that MOST consumers DID think of 240x240 being a step backwards and many (against including me) stopped from BUYING a device exactly (and ONLY) because of this.

320x320 should come and come today. 480x480 will come (too late) when people will ask for 800x600 for their 4" panel PDA... If someone had a 480x640 PDA back in 2004 (wasn't back then the first introduced VGA PocketPC?) it will be hard to wait for 2007 (my estimation) for an expensive phone with LESS resolution (because 480x480 is still not VGA).

I hope I am getting though, I am not talking only for myself (although I will not theorize on how many people I "represent").

re: Where did 240 come from?

NLS — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 21:55:41 GMT

wrote too fast and is full of errors (like "against" instead of "again" in "giant" paragraph and "though" instead of "through" in the last paragraph) ...but you get the message

re: Where did 240 come from?

badbob001 — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 01:32:23 GMT

I'm surprised no one has mentioned it. This is all about the TREO. If there was never a 320x320 TREO, this whole debate would be moot. If Palm wanted one 320x320 hardware platform for both PalmOS and WMOS, is Microsoft going to say, "Sorry, we don't need the extra work and the market share, so release your device PalmOS only while we wait for the 480x480 screens?"

re: Where did 240 come from?

gibson042 — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 01:39:14 GMT

No, this is all about the move from 240x320 to 240x240 being a backwards step that results in a loss of versatility. And I don't see how it would have been any more work to add 80 horizontal pixels and letterbox older apps vs. removing 80 vertical pixels and overflowing/scrolling older apps.

re: Where did 240 come from?

Sergio — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 02:53:36 GMT

I totally agree with NLS... Even with the typos!!! ;)

240x240 alone, kept me from downgrading (oops!) to the Treo 700W...

Way to go NLS!!!

re: Where did 240 come from?

MikeCal — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 04:17:03 GMT

NLS, let's call your idea of having black stripes on the left and right "pillarboxing" since that's what the TV people call it.

The reason we chose not to do 320x320 pillarboxed goes back to that decision we made to show things at roughly the same size on all screens. (Hey, I DID call it "controversial" and here's the controversy. :-)

What you're REALLY saying is, "why don't you take what you showed in 3 vertical inches and show it in 2 instead?"

The answer to that is, "Because everything would be too small." Now, you can say, "But my eyes are good enough that it would be big enough." (Hey, that's what _I_ said...) But, in the end, we decided that making everything considerably smaller for the off resolution screens was the wrong choice.

As for one and a half pixel doubling, you're absolutely right that it can be done. I just feel that it can't be done acceptably well. My team has done some pretty crazy things. To enable testing VGA before we had any VGA devices, we made a QVGA device report itself as VGA and then do pixel quartering in the driver to downsample back to QVGA. I let us test what we needed to test, and it didn't look THAT bad. It was the kind of thing we could use internally but that we'd never impose on end users. The same is true of pixel one and a halfed stuff. Yeah, it certainly can be done, but some one pixel lines would be one pixel wide and some would be two pixels wide. And that would look unacceptably bad for a released product. If you want to load a third party product on your device (like the True VGA stuff some people are doing for VGA devices), that's cool. Some of us use them too. But we can't ship things that look that bad to the general population.

As for potential 4 inch 800x600 screens. You're right that our current product is not well positioned to take advantage of them.

Mike

re: Where did 240 come from?

gibson042 — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 04:53:07 GMT

That's a lot more clarifying; the root conern for you is the real size on the display and not the virtual size in pixels. Still, it seems like it could have been—and still could be—solved by allowing the end user to scale the entire interface, including the title bar and soft keys in addition to the text size control we currently have. So please consider this my "second!" of Ronny's suggestion.

re: Where did 240 come from?

Aaron — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 12:07:44 GMT

I see where you're going... the difference is negligable when you're looking at text, but the difference is disturbing when looking at .jpg images or the like. We're talking night and day...

re: Where did 240 come from?

NLS — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 16:33:32 GMT

Mike your explanation is fine, but I don't buy.

I have had quite a few PocketPC from the early years to my current LOOX 720 (still waiting to see something to totaly kill it without missing anything). This is the first time I don't feel ANY ...urge to "upgrade" and I can never say "upgrade" without the quotes when I talk about the new devices.

My opinion is that your team needs to go out of Redmond much much more and feel the beat of the real market (not only what the -sorry used as an example- "enterprise-friendly" HP has to say - after all the company I chose as an example is NOT exactly a vehicle for real market feelings ...I won't get started on that).

Most PocketPC enthousiasts (INCLUDING enterprise users... for some reason you think that enterprise users are NOT normal people), want "better in any and all ways" devices and no backward step of any kind with any excuse (even "valid" excuses).

This year already, we SHOULD be able to see nice multimedia enabled PocketPC (really multimedia enabled) that will NOT have something less from the previous generation.

Embedding GSM/GPRS/UMTS (just 3 more wireless, which we all know is just an extra little IC) is no excuse to cut something else.

Anyway sorry for my various off-topic wanders, just found some space and excuse to put them in. :D

Lift limitations from the OS and let vendors (hopefuly pushed by the market) decide WHAT they want to build. I really don't get it if some brand wanted to make a 320x320 ...2" PocketPC made just for super-humans or for stupid buyers like myself. After all "hyper protecting" PocketPC "against (what you think as) wrong choices" didn't make it bullet-proof up to now after all (haven't you noticed?).

To get back to the topic, many many people believe the 240x240 choice (AND restriction) was wrong; ...and many find it is (among others) an artificial restriction to make the distinction with TabletPC more clear.

Hope WM5 R2 (or whatever) will lift the restriction (hint hint hint hint).

re: Where did 240 come from?

soop — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 20:00:34 GMT

Hey, good explanation, but I think that 240 x 240 has major limitations over QVGA - such as apps not resizing properly and multimedia content being in the wrong aspect ratio. But then again I realise that the 240 X 240 screens are really aimed at office users rather than me.

I'll put this up on my web log sometime tomorrow, and I think I'll bookmark this site.

re: Where did 240 come from?

MikeCal — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 20:18:41 GMT

NLS, I hear you. No decision we make is set in stone. While we obviously can't go back in time and release WM5 with 320x320 support, we have the ability to add it in the future.

Again, this post wasn't intended to try to convince anyone that 240 is better than 320. It's just to explain why we made the decisions we made. If we add 320x320 support in the future, you folks will be the first to know. (Okay, that's not true. Some marketer would announce it somewhere else first, but you know what I mean.)

Mike

re: Where did 240 come from?

MikeCal — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 20:31:52 GMT

There are really two discussions going on here. 1) Why not do 320x320 instead of 240x240? And 2) Why do 240x240 instead of 240x320?

We've talked quite a bit about 1. For 2, my answer is that devices with a 240x320 screen and a keyboard on the front are just too large. We're making tradeoffs between device size, screen size, and button placement. But we're giving you various choices on different sides of that tradeoff. If you don't like the Treo's 240x240 screen, take a look at the VX6700 (Apache). It's got a 240x320 screen and a keyboard that slides out. Maybe that suits your needs better. I'm a huge fan of both the Treo 700w and the VX6700. If I had to buy one myself, it would be a tough decision. Bigger screen and better keyboard that's not always available, or smaller screen and more accessible keyboard? I've used both a huge amount and currently carry a Treo, but there's no right answer there. It's all personal taste.

While we're talking about choices, if you find the VX6700 too thick because of the keyboard, there are non-keyboard devices that have 240x320 screens that are much thinner. And there are more coming. I personally am only interested in devices with keyboards, but everyone has different needs.

Our OEMs and we will keep pushing on these things. If none of our current offerings fit your needs, I hope some of our future ones do.

Mike

re: Where did 240 come from?

Steve Mueller — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 22:29:50 GMT

MikeCal wrote:

> NLS, let's call your idea of having black
> stripes on the left and right "pillarboxing"
> since that's what the TV people call it.
>
>The reason we chose not to do 320x320
> pillarboxed goes back to that decision we
> made to show things at roughly the same size
> on all screens. (Hey, I DID call it
> "controversial" and here's the controversy.
> :-)
>
> What you're REALLY saying is, "why don't you
> take what you showed in 3 vertical inches and
> show it in 2 instead?

Sorry, Mike, but your orientation and math are both wrong. Assuming that a 320x320 screen would fit in the same space as a 240x240 screen, you'd be losing 25% of the space, not 33% (240/320 = .75).

Also, you'd be losing it in the horizontal dimension, not the vertical.

As you mentioned, things certainly would be smaller, but what effect would that actually have? I can think of three areas -- text, images and controls. Let's address each of those:

* Text -- Fonts on 320x320 pillar-boxed screens would be smaller. However, besides supporting VGA and square screens, didn't Windows Mobile 2003 SE also add the ability to easily resize the system font (without requiring a registry hack)? If people found text too small to read, they could easily increase the font size.

* Images -- Images on a pillar-boxed screen would also be harder to view. However, almost all image viewing programs allow zooming. Yes, it can make images blockier and require more scrolling, but that might be sufficient to view images that appear too small.

* Controls -- Control sizes (scroll bars, for example) would be 25% thinner, perhaps making them harder to use with a stylus. So do what should have been done years ago and provide a new Settings applet that allows controlling sizes (and colors and fonts) of screen elements. There are registry hacks that allow adjusting the thickness of scroll bars and system colors, and there are third-party applications that provide a Display applet similar to what has been in Windows 9x/XP for years.

I understand why you supported 240x240 and 480x480, but (at least for Pocket PC developers), pillar-boxed 320x320 wouldn't have required any recompilation to support square screens. From a programmer's viewpoint, at best, applications now require more scrolling; at worst, they have to be redesigned to support multiple layouts. (Of course, that may have been necessary to support landscaping, too, but that's another issue.)

From a Pocket PC OEM's viewpoint, they now have four choices:

1. Go with 240x320. That has the best application compatibility, but requires either making a larger device or a harder-to-read screen.

2. Go with 240x240. That makes the screen more readable, but has worse application compatibility, requires more scrolling and appears worse to users comparing them to 240x320 and 320x320 devices.

3. Go with 480x480. This sounds better to consumers and allows more detailed text and images, but costs more and probably still has the compatibility issues that 240x240 does.

4. Go with 480x640. This would make users happy (spec-wise), but would obviously cost the most.

I think pillar-boxed 320x320 would have been a happy medium. Vendors could claim better resolution, programmers would have better compatability and users would have workarounds if they found the smaller horizontal area too small.

I'm *very* near-sighted, and a quick look at the 240x320 Sprint PPC-6700 didn't make me think the screen was too small. 320x320 may have, but I think the solutions I mentioned above would have helped.

My philosophy is to put the user in control, and font and display controls do exactly that. If you have the former, why not add the latter? And while you're at it, maybe you could give us a good task manager, too. :-)

Steve
Silicon Valley Pocket PC
http://www.svpocketpc.com

re: Where did 240 come from?

badbob001 — Sat, 18 Feb 2006 01:04:59 GMT

Going 320x320 without scaling doesn't necessarily mean you must have the pillar-boxed effect. We can just tell legacy apps that the screen is 320x240 landscape. Would that be the widescreen effect instead?

With the introduction of WM2k3SE, Microsoft got over its fear of backward compatibility with the introduction of landscape mode. If we think of 320x320 as simply 320x240 landscape with extra room on the bottom, we should be at the same level of compatibility (maybe).

If the app is smart enough to query for the real screen size, then it'll see that it's really 320x320 and then take advantage of the extra 80 rows. If not, then the bottom will be for other apps, like the extra bottom 160 rows on 320x480 Palm devices. Also, Landscape mode on WM didn't make the interface smaller so things won't be smaller in this scenario.

Hint that 320x320 "landscape" may work? The new Samsung i320 has a 320x240 landscape screen.

re: Where did 240 come from?

badbob001 — Sat, 18 Feb 2006 01:09:58 GMT

Hmm, now that I think about it again, landscape would be a bit smaller on a 320x320 screen. Nevermind... WM needs the scalable interface of OSX.

re: Where did 240 come from?

NLS — Sat, 18 Feb 2006 01:16:43 GMT

well AS scalable as OSX (or it's copy Vista) would be rather heavy (except if we start getting PocketPC with GoForce 5500) - be we certainly would love some XP like scalability (much simpler)

anybody listening? (doubt it)

re: Where did 240 come from?

MikeCal — Sat, 18 Feb 2006 01:41:29 GMT

Steve, in the end, you're saying that doing 320 pixels in 2 inches wouldn't make images too small for the majority of users. I'm saying that it would. For one of us to come to the other's way of thinking, we'd really need to sit in on the usability study together and see what it turns up. I'm pretty sure we're not going to change each other's opinions with words. (But I'm happy to keep trying if you'd like. :-)

I will say that, if we were to ever support 320x320, we are WAY more likely to scale everything than we are to pillarbox. And I say that despite the fact that scaling everything is a ton of work for us and pillarboxing would work without any changes in our code.

The other thing you're saying is that we should scale our icons better. There are oses that scale icons well (OSX comes to mind), but they've got quite a bit more storage space (they start with very large icons and scale down) and a ton more processing power than we have on our devices. We DO scale icons automatically, but the results aren't acceptable for a shipping device (they don't look very good). When it comes down to it, programattically scaling something that's 16x16 into something that's 21x21 (that's what's needed for 320x320) while making it continue to look good is really tough.

But, we'll continue to work on these things.

Mike

re: Where did 240 come from?

NLS — Sat, 18 Feb 2006 01:42:51 GMT

> * Images -- Images on a pillar-boxed screen
> would also be harder to view. However, almost
> all image viewing programs allow zooming. Yes,
> it can make images blockier and require more
> scrolling, but that might be sufficient to view
> images that appear too small.

Well in fact they wouldn't be harder to view except if you are talking about very little details... you see a higher DPI screen is in fact a BETTER screen not a worse screen (like HP 4700 owners wanted us to believe... that 4" VGA was better than 3.6" VGA... sorry no - and sorry for using HP name again).

I agree on the rest you say Steve.

A higher DPI screen (like a 2.4" 320x320 instead of a 2.4" 240x240) would in fact be a SHARPER screen with very small pixels (A Good Thing [tm]).

Thank you for listening (erm... reading).

I am sorry you get all those gunshots from us, I hope something gets out of all this.

re: Where did 240 come from?

MikeCal — Sat, 18 Feb 2006 01:57:26 GMT

NLS, if you don't mind, I'm personally interested in some feedback. In your most recent comment, you said, "anybody listening? (doubt it)"

Now, I've replied to this thread six times, twice specifically to you. Your comment suggests, though, that I'm not doing a good enough job. So, could you tell me how you'd like for me to improve my communications?

Alternately, could you explain what you mean by the comment? Are you saying that I'm ignoring what people here are saying (that I'm not listening)? Are you saying that I am listening, but that I don't count as "anybody"? Something else?

Work on this blog isn't part of my job. If I'm going to spend as much extra time doing this as I do, I'd like to do it well. So anything you can tell me to help me not deserve "anybody listening (doubt it)" would be appreciated.

Mike

re: Where did 240 come from?

NLS — Sat, 18 Feb 2006 02:02:39 GMT

> Steve, in the end, you're saying that doing 320
> pixels in 2 inches wouldn't make images too
> small for the majority of users. I'm saying
> that it would. For one of us to come to the
> other's way of thinking, we'd really need to
> sit in on the usability study together and see
> what it turns up.

Mike the thing is that maybe this decision should be left for the OEM. Why the OS to be the limit?

If HTC wanted to make a device that would have a 2.4" 320x320 only to be proven "too small for the majority of users" (how did you measure the "majority of users" after all?) then the market and the reviews would kill it (well I doubt but let's accept they would), wouldn't mean the market would kill your platform, since there would be other devices still using 240x320, 240x240 (if we HAD to have this too), expencive 480x480 etc. Then HTC (or whoever) would stop making a 320x320 device, but the market would have chosen that, not some internal Redmond study (and don't tell me you people haven't be proven wrong before).

We limit the OS "preassuming" the markets needs? (in a negative way)

OK I would love a device with GoForce 5500, internal 4GB flash, 600x800 very-high-DPI 3.8" screen, sliding keyboard, 800MHz CPU, retain SD and CF, scroll wheel, nice cursor pad, 2x900mAh batteries (and supply three of them in the package so you can have one charged all the time), USB2 host/client (and why not 1394 too), support for multi channel audio and the list goes on. But I am not a good sample. I am a geek (that I don't look like it in person is irrelevant, I still am one). But on the other hand, trying to say that the market will easily accept a 240x240 (more easily than a "small for the masses" 320x320) is a bit... far from the truth. Maybe the market is not only middle-aged managers with presbyopia. And even if they are, they would STILL buy the higher-speced machine believe me (give them the choice and you will see).

re: Where did 240 come from?

NLS — Sat, 18 Feb 2006 02:05:46 GMT

No the "anybody listening" comment wasn't going to you - sorry if you took it like that. English is not my native language after all (and it shows).

I was talking about the big companies (MS included) that seem to know our needs better than us. Well they don't and they'd better start listening to the concumers (esp. those with some background in the field the company is interested to sell something).

You do a good job and (please) keep doing it.

re: Where did 240 come from?

MikeCal — Sat, 18 Feb 2006 02:50:46 GMT

Please don't interpret this as "we're right, go away." I'm happy to keep discussing this. But the Treo 700w is one of the best selling PocketPCs ever. The market most certainly DID accept a 240x240 screen device. This doesn't invalidate anything anyone said here. Most of the suggestions people have made are perfectly reasonable. And it's possible that we'd sell even more if we had 320x320. But any dire predictions that 240x240 is going to ruin us just aren't likely to come true.

Mike

re: Where did 240 come from?

MikeCal — Sat, 18 Feb 2006 03:52:18 GMT

Regarding MS being a big company that doesn't listen to its users. I can't speak for other big companies, but MS isn't like that at all. It's full of people like me. We care, a LOT. And we're definitely listening.

I've been here for over 12 years now, and the vast majority of people I've met don't fit the description you gave. If anything, we go too far the other way. We do most everything based on customer feedback and usability studies. And, no, we don't use MS employees for our studies. We go into the field and talk to real users of our devices. We literally have anthropologists that we send out to observe users in their native habitats.

The difficulty is that almost every decision has multiple conflicting user types pushing in different directions. One group wants small text with more screen real estate while the other literally can't use the device with the text that small. One group wants the speed of ram based storage while the other wants the safety of persistent storage. One group wants the battery life of a 32M device while the other plugs in frequently so wants more RAM.

It bothers us that we can't please everyone. It's common for us to not be able to sleep at night because we were forced to make a decision that will help the greatest number of our users but is going to really annoy a subset of them. And that caring isn't just developers and first line managers. Ballmer cares at least as much about our products as I do. And a ton of the people between him and I do as well.

I understand how difficult it is to come down on the wrong side of these decisions. As a hard core user, a lot of these decisions go against what I want as well. But at least I have visibility into why they're made. It helps sometimes. I write these blogs in an attempt to give you folks the same visibility.

Mike

re: Where did 240 come from?

NLS — Sun, 19 Feb 2006 02:02:41 GMT

Fair enough.

An OS to be "more open" for the OEM to make decisions must be a "universaly accepted" request though (or something close to it)...

So allow for 320x320 (and larger too)and let the OEM decide if the device comes with too small text or not nice looking icons or if it messes with the battery life or whatever and if those things are going to kill that device.

Off topic: Still most people think that 64MB is not enough and ROM storage is slow. :P

I hope, since there are so many people in MS looking for our real needs, some of them also visit real on-line fora and read what people say.

Treo 700 sells well (and will keep doing so), since it sells as a PHONE primarily and because of the Treo-brand momentum (that was already there). Any other 240x240 that sells well OUTSIDE the enterprise? (HP for example) I don't know - you know.

There are people that want a complete (and even multimedia enabled) PDA that is also a phone. Think of them too.

I am happy we discuss those things and I have a tiny little subconcious belief that some of my arguments are actually taken as valid (and may be regarded for the future). Then again maybe not, but the feeling is enough. I give you that. :D

Utilizing the VGA resolution / scalability

Ronny Gydar — Sun, 19 Feb 2006 21:06:04 GMT

Hi Mike,

My optimal solution would be that Windows Mobile would scale "everything" up or down, when I chose "Smallest", "Smaller", Medium", so forth.

But what I personally is looking for is actually something that is possible today with some "hacks/tricks" from people at XDA-Developers.com, something like this; http://forum.xda-developers.com/viewtopic.php?t=32217&highlight=vga+hack

When I have showed this to some other friends who have same device as me, at least half of them really like what they saw.

I would think making such a mode would be interesting for some of you customers (a lot of the people...or at least "some"...buing devices with VGA screens is to "get more information" on the screen). ...if they follow the treads on XDA-developers they would find it too...but most people don't...most people don't even install extra apps to they phones/PDA's.

...but if Windows Mobile had such a mode built in... :-)

Anyway, I see that there is many who would NEVER EVER want to use a mode with so tiny text/information...there are some who would...and if it is not very hard for you to provide (since it is possible more or less already with these "hacks")...you would potentially get more happy customers...and that's always the goal, right!? :-)

This blog is an example of that spirit!

re: Where did 240 come from?

Reality — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 06:09:32 GMT

> OK I would love a device with GoForce 5500, internal 4GB flash,
> 600x800 very-high-DPI 3.8" screen, sliding keyboard, 800MHz CPU,
> retain SD and CF, scroll wheel, nice cursor pad, 2x900mAh batteries
> (and supply three of them in the package so you can have one charged
> all the time), USB2 host/client (and why not 1394 too), support for
> multi channel audio and the list goes on

Buy a laptop, dude.

re: Where did 240 come from?

NLS — Mon, 20 Feb 2006 14:14:09 GMT

Well "dude", sorry to break this to you but the technology IS here to have PDA like that.

I wouldn't expect ALL those anytime soon though, but I don't see OEM pushing towards there either.

You see the market is better split if you have some other machine with 4GB and your MP3/AVI, some other as a phone, some other as a pure PDA and some other to play games... now if you think this couldn't be ONE machine (today Feb. 2006) then seems you don't really follow technology advances much.

I don't know how big your pockets or waistbag are, but mine don't fit a laptop.

We are getting off topic you know.

re: Where did 240 come from?

MikeCal — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 00:26:22 GMT

Ronny, I completely agree that scaling everything would be the ideal way to go. It would make everyone's lives better. Our devs would have less work to do, our OEMs would have more choices, and our users would get to make things look the way they want it to.

The trouble is that we don't have a good solution for scaling icons and bitmaps. There are OSes that do this well (Mac OSX is a prime example) but they start with very large icons and use a 3d accellerator to help scale them down. But, where hard drive space and processing power is abundant on the desktop, both are at a shortage on mobile devices. We currently don't have the ROM space for the large art assets required to do scaling well. We also, for the most part, don't have 3D accellerators and are pretty short on CPU cycles.

We HAVE looked at doing lower cost scaling, but it results in really bad looking icons and bitmaps.

Now, you could rightfully say that you'd prefer badly scaled icons to professional-looking but unscaled ones. But this is one of those situations where we just can't ship with stuff that looks that bad.

On the other hand, some of us are big fans of the 3rd parties that do things like the True VGA hack.

Mike

Images and Icons

Steve Mueller — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 09:38:14 GMT

When I mentioned "images", Mike, I was thinking more about photos than icons or bitmaps. But let's consider icons, if you want.

You said 320x320 would require 21x21 icons (assuming scaling of 16x16 icons). Again, with pillar-boxing, you could keep 16x16, but they would look smaller. If that was really an issue, why not allow (but not require) 24x24 and 48x48 icons?

That's a bit bigger than what you'd get by using true scaling, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. You might also be able to use those in 480x480 and 480x640 applications instead of pixel-doubling 16x16 and 32x32 icons.

Applications that didn't provide those resolutions would have their icons scaled. If users didn't like that, they'd complain and the software vendor would either add them or risk losing sales (the same as not supporting landscape or 240x240 mode can do).

Microsoft would include include all versions of the icons in the platform, and OEMs (or the platform builder) would choose which versions were used based on the screen resolution of their device. That way, nothing would ship that required scaling (unless the OEMs were lazy and bundled apps that didn't actually support 320x320).

Yes, larger icons would require more memory, but how much memory would really be used by having larger icons? (I've ignored bitmaps for now, but feel free to include those in your memory calculations.)

Steve
Silicon Valley Pocket PC
http://www.svpocketpc.com

re: Where did 240 come from?

MikeCal — Wed, 22 Feb 2006 04:26:10 GMT

Steve, what you described is EXACTLY what we do. The 16x16 icons on QVGA are 32x32 icons on VGA. The 32x32 icons on QVGA are 64x64 icons on VGA. Our release has all art assets and the OEM picks which ones they want to use based on whether they're hidpi or normal. Whenever an icon is needed, the graphics system loads the closest provided one and scales it if necessary. We also support providing 21x21 icons, etc.

The two biggest work items that would be required to support 320x320 would be creating a set of art assets for that size (ie creating 21x21 icons to replace the 16x16 ones) and doing a full test pass to make sure nothing broke. The test pass is probably larger than you expect because it needs to cover 20+ languages, each of which has different sizes for strings (german words are longer than english words, etc) and a resolution change tends to expose subtle bugs (words wrapping off the screen where you don't expect it, etc).

The scaling issue comes up when users want to have multiple settings on their device and scale everything on the fly. To do that, we've either got to scale the icons, or we've got to provide art assets for all of the different scales. If, for instance, we had "smallest, small, normal, large, and largest" we'd need 5 times as man icons as we currently have. And, yes, it would be a significant amount of space. Roughly on the order of 5M. To some users that's a small price to pay for better scalability. For others they'd be sending me hate mail saying, "How could you possibly bloat your OS so much that you need 5M more than you did in WM5 for just icons? Now I don't have enough room for my favorite apps."

Mike

re: Where did 240 come from?

NLS — Wed, 22 Feb 2006 17:30:44 GMT

Well, then by telling the OEM that 256MB flashROM and 96MB RAM (since much caching takes place there - and for some OEM even more) is the bare minimum for a WM5+ machine, you would solve most of those issues (and more different issues people discussed in some of your older blogs).

It wouldn't be the first time MS actualy pushed the OEM use the storage/memory sizes MS wants.

Maybe then we'll start looking at real pro-level WM5 machines (because I cannot find any currently)...

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Re: Testing for Word Wrapping

Steve Mueller — Sat, 25 Feb 2006 10:39:48 GMT

MikeCal wrote:

> The test pass is probably larger than you
> expect because it needs to cover 20+
> languages, each of which has different sizes
> for strings (german words are longer than
> english words, etc) and a resolution change
> tends to expose subtle bugs (words wrapping
> off the screen where you don't expect it,
> etc).

While it may be larger than I expect, I'm not unfamiliar with the issues. As a software developer, I lead the internationalization of a product at IBM, so I know that some languages require more space (on average) than others.

Does the Pocket PC use true point-size fonts (meaning the fonts stay the same physical size regardless of the physical screen size) or does it use bitmapped fonts (x pixels by y pixels, which get smaller or larger depending on the screen size)? In either case, do you use different font sizes depending on the physical display size?

If you use point-size fonts or bitmapped fonts scaled for the display size, you'd have to test on each display size OEMs use, right? If the fonts aren't exactly the same number of pixels wide on different physical screen sizes, you could have word wrapping problems, I think.

I ask because, if you use unscaled bitmapped fonts and don't want to pillar-box the screen, you could treat a 320x320 screen as a 320x240 landscape screen with better vertical resolution (non-square pixels). This means that you wouldn't have to worry about word wrapping at all (you'd be scaling the fonts vertically, not horizontally). (I'm assuming you can scale things one-dimensionally while still getting reasonable results, which may not be a good assumption.) If the text didn't wrap in your 320x240 landscape tests, it won't in 320x320 testing.

By the way, you should tell the people in the Pocket PC Money group to test their Options, Password and About dialogs. They get truncated on my iPAQ 5550 at 240x320 (in Version 2.05). :-)

Steve

re: Where did 240 come from?

NLS — Sat, 25 Feb 2006 19:11:47 GMT

I think Elvis left the building. :D

re: Where did 240 come from?

MikeCal — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 21:25:13 GMT

Steve, I'm not an expert on fonts. I know we use Truetype which allows scaling by size, and I know that we base our sizes on pixels, no screen size. At a granular level, our OS doesn't know how big a screen the OEM has used. In other words, we can't tell the difference between a PPC QVGA screen that's 3.1 inches vs ones that's 3.0 inches. We know things at a more coarse level, though. We know that the QVGA screen on a smartphone is consideraby smaller than the QVGA screen on a PocketPC, etc. As the line between SP and PPC continues to blur, our assumptions there will start becoming invalid. But they're holding up for the moment.

My understanding (flawed that it is) of the issue with localization at random scalings is around edge cases. You have a phrase that fits on one line. You scale the text to a new resolution (like 320x320) and it scales fine for English, but the longer German word, which was tight at 240x240 happens to scale one pixel larger than we expected, which puts it over the edge and makes it word wrap.

Solving this problem certainly isn't insurmountable. But it takes work.

Mike

re: Where did 240 come from?

joshbu [msft] — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 02:00:19 GMT

TrueType is a pretty complicated standard. It uses vector font descriptions as a baseline, but allows bitmap glyphs to be inserted by the font designer for particular point sizes where he feels the vector rasterization is not correct.

So, to answer Steve's question: both, and it's pretty much dependant on the font, the point size, and the glyph in question.

re: Where did 240 come from?

Alethea — Sun, 12 Mar 2006 00:55:48 GMT

As an "average" user who just stumbled onto this discussion because of a couple of quotes in other blogs, first, thanks for an honest peek into how decisions are made in development.

Second, whether or not it is possible to scale or to scroll third-party applications, it is not at all obvious to new users *why* only a part of the welcome screen for their application comes up. I suppose that's the fault of HP (in this case, for the 6515) - but I haven't seen better for the Treo 700: and there's a brief explanation in Troubleshooting that amounts to "tough luck if your 3rd party apps don't display properly". That's frustrating.

After reading your post and the comments, I do understand why, but my wish would be that it *would* be possible to scale to multiple levels on the fly (let's say, three, with a smaller- and bigger-than-optimal apparent size). And you would only need to provide icons for the middle size, and then put a generic icon like HTML does for the "broken image link" with text, for the other sizes. Perhaps I don't quite understand the icon thing but I think I'd be alright with this compromise.

Thanks for reading and responding to the comments. I am not sure to get back and read an answer but perhaps someone else will benefit it as I have from the previous comments.

re: Where did 240 come from?

Jasper Janssen — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 22:32:37 GMT

All else being equal (primarily physical screen size) and the OS doing seamless scaling at any factor, higher dpi is better, yes. All else being equal (primarily dpi), a larger screen is better. But all else is never equal, particularly not with a mobile OS designed for (no offense meant, but it is, still, for good reasons) very limited resolution options. When the screen resolution is fixed, making the screen larger or smaller is primarily a function of how close to your face it can/should be. At least for a nearsighted person like me -- I can hold a 3" screen at 3/4 the distance to my eyes of a 4" screen and have more or less the same experience, except for my arm getting more tired.

If you go the 'desktop route', where higher res means more visible on the screen, then higher dpi is effectively not making the screen clearer, it's just larger (even if it's not *physically* larger).

If you go the Windows Mobile route, you're making the screen clearer, giving you the ability to have smaller readable letters and much more detail, without making the device hard to use.

Incidentally, that route had been pioneered at length by Palm -- which started off at 160 square, went to 320 square for exactly the same reasons as the qvga>vga shift, and then proceeded to make the graffiti area also part of the screen, going to 320x480, and adding landscape mode. Windows Mobile is not being particularly original, except their starting form factor is the other way around and 240 wide instead of 160 wide. I suppose one could argue that Palm may not be the best role-model given the current state of business over there, but I don't think this particular hurdle was the reason for that.

Reducing the screen size from 3:2 to 2:2 is purely a way of reducing device size. It's not *meant* to be a cost cutting excercise *let alone* something to fit more detail on the screen. At the very least with apps designed for square (including the whole OS and built-ins - and many people never use anything else) you want the experience to roughly parallel that with other devices, which means simply lopping pixels off is the best way to go. It's also exceedingly easy -- at least for the Portrait mode, and Landscape mode on a Square screen device is even easier to implement. Whereas implementing another 1.5x mode, and that would be required, in addition to regular and 2x (used by VGA and 480-square devices), would be expensive. I don't see square-screen devices becoming all that popular, since IMHO they're a step back, so I also don't see spending that much on it.

I myself use an MDA Pro (HTC universal, aka Qtek 9000, iMate JasJar, etc.etc.etc.), which has a Portrait/Landscape VGA screen, and you'll pry it from my cold, dead fingers. VGA or 480x480 is clearly the way forward, and anything else is really just a placeholder.

What I'd like to see in a future version of the OS is the option (say by using something akin to the old PIF files) to set, on an application by application basis (and counting Today as an application), at least for applications not explicitly VGA aware (TomTom seems to be both VGA and landscape aware -- it just chooses to always remain in Portrait mode, accessing the screen directly, Mobipocket reader appears to know it's on a VGA device as well, etc), whether the application will be run in compatibility mode (pixeldoubling, and tell the app the screen is qvga), regular mode (tell it there's a VGA screen if it asks but do what you currently do - ie all the complex stuff) or force-VGA mode -- tell it there's VGA resolution availability and that its elements should be half the physical size of normal, or IOW the same number of pixels as normal.

Even better if it's implemented such that a configfile or regentry simply contains the dpi_x and dpi_y values (as seen in the vga hacks) to be told to the app, so that a little imagination and a willingness to live with crappily scaled icons can get you whichever scale is comfortable.

Palm Treo 700p review

VoIP & Gadgets Blog — Mon, 15 May 2006 07:00:22 GMT

Palm's Treo 700p, the heavily anticipated successor to the popular Palm Treo 650, launched on Monday. Speculation and rumors has surrounded the Palm Treo 700p as far as which features it would and would not support. For instance, speculation was...

re: Where did 240 come from?

Will Maitner — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 08:07:30 GMT

Why didn't they just do what the TV people are doing.. For the 320x240 apps, go letterbox.. So you have some black bars on the sides until they upgrade the software.. Then the apps that actually support 320x320 would fill the screen.. Simple, elegant, the virtual 320x240 driver.. Plus, then they could go landscape too.. =)

re: Where did 240 come from?

MikeCal — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 19:07:36 GMT

Will, the problem is that the icons and bitmaps are either designed for 240x240 or 480x480. On a 320x320 screen the 240x240 icons would be too small and the 480x480 icons would be too big. That would still be true if we letterboxed a 320x320 screen.

Mike

re: Where did 240 come from?

Will Maitner — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 08:41:16 GMT

That would be a temporary problem, wouldn't it? The 320x320 screen would display a virtual 320x240 screen. Sure, things would be smaller, but clearer. Like looking at a high resolution but smaller screen notebook. It is like when the Librettos came out. Sure it's smaller, but the sharpness of the screen made it usable. I guess the way I'm reading things is that the problem was with third party apps. Add the ability to code for 320x320 into the developers kit. Release the OS and core apps with the 320x320 res available. I figure atleast 50% of PDA owners use the core apps 90% of the time anyways. A little pocket word, pocket ie, email, etc. Then as new editions of the third party apps come out, they can make 320x320 versions just like the 320x240 vs. 640x480 versions. Or am I over simplifying things again?

re: Where did 240 come from?

MikeCal — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 19:07:40 GMT

I wouldn't say that compatability with 3rd party apps was the issue. For the most part, if the app was hard coded in such a way as to not support 320x320, then it wouldn't have supported 240x240 either. It was reasonable for app developers to get burned when we went from EVERYTHING being 320x240 to allowing rotation to 240x320. But after that happened, I expect all app developers to handle WM_SIZE or OnResize and make their apps work at any screen size.

No, the real problem is the art assets, how much work it takes to generate them, and how much space they take up on the device.

As for making it "smaller but clearer," please re-read the "To scale or not to scale, that is the question" section of this entry. While I originally agreed with your opinion that smaller but clearer was the way to go, I'm biased by extremely good vision (I'm guessing you're the same). People with vision that's not as good as ours (a majority) wouldn't have done well with everything smaller.

Mike

re: Where did 240 come from?

Will Maitner — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 03:33:52 GMT

Ok, so the problem is graphics. Then make the development kit code for 480x640. And have the developer kit handle the artwork scaling. If there is that little powertoy for picture resizing, then adding that to the devkit should have been fairly easy and small. Personally, I think all the WM apps should have been coded to 240x240, 320x320 or 480x480 so you could use the onscreen keyboard and not loose anything. But that's just me.

I'm just saying that a fairly minor modification in the devkit (ok, minor to the end user) would make it fairly easy to go to 320x320. Maybe my idea can go into WM6? =) Then you could handle any size/resolution screen hardware devs come up with.

Oh, and I'm with you on the screen usage. I would love to be able to make things smaller in WM and display more on the screen. With my glasses (need them for distance), my eyes are actually better than 20/20. I would love to be able to display as much info as I can under PalmOS on my Treo. Maybe another possibility in WM6. I do not think that WM has look as much like Windows as it does, so smaller with it might not be a bad thing.

re: Where did 240 come from?

MikeCal — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 21:13:09 GMT

Will, we're really rehashing a discussion we already had here. Can I ask you to read through the comments here, or at least my responses to them?

Mike

re: Where did 240 come from?

David P. — Tue, 22 Aug 2006 08:25:41 GMT

Mike, just stumbled in here from a link on a forum.

I just wanted to let you know that you have done an incredible job with both the original article and answering highly technical questions in an easy to understand way.

Definitely gives me a new appreciation of the difficulty of these decisions...

BTW, I use a Treo 700w and can't comprehend why people seem so upset about the 240 screen... looks very good to me. Would I enjoy higher res? Sure. Is it neccessary? Absolutely not.

re: Where did 240 come from?

beemer — Tue, 22 Aug 2006 10:50:27 GMT

I think it's time to go to a windows based model, where old apps runs on a window of 240x320, apps prepared for VGA runs on a window of 480x640 (or 640x480.

This is how windows CE 5 works and how old HPCs worked, and today, with the new 800x480 and biggers displays being made on 4.3" and 5" Windows mobile is losing positions against "competitors" like UMPC.

Maybe it's time to resurect HPCs? Now with pocket office apps that really works and good comunications they would be useful, not like the ones in the past... and much better adapted to mobile use than the UMPCs

re: Where did 240 come from?

MikeCal — Tue, 22 Aug 2006 23:21:11 GMT

Thanks David. I'm glad you're finding the blog useful.

Beemer, although it's not a true apples to apples comparison, I'm pretty sure we've already sold more 240x240 devices than all Handheld PCs combined. I've been here since the HPC days, and bought a number of them, but I certainly don't want to go back to those days.

Mike

re: Where did 240 come from?

Bryan Varney — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 22:42:37 GMT

Hey mike,

Thanks for the informative take on screen sizes for handhelds. I used to login to corporate servers using a vpn/vnc combo to restart servers and such and can appreciate the issue with things becoming too small to be useful.

But what I really want to say is that I think people mis-understand the greater value of a blog like this one.

You said: "I eventually came around to their way of thinking, but it wasn't until I really got to play with a high res device and saw how much better it looked."

and :"We literally have anthropologists that we send out to observe users in their native habitats"

We have a chance to make a good case for change (if we truly have a good case) to someone with input to the system.(at a level much likely to effect change than ours) It's like going to the "anthropologists" since they can't come to all of us.

Those who want to banter words are wasting them if they truly want to change things.

Your "extra time" is truly appreciated by this developer. Keep up the good work!

Bryan

re: Where did 240 come from?

MikeCal — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 19:53:06 GMT

I've got this comment in email but don't see it on the blog. I'm afraid one of us accidentally deleted it. Apologies calvin. (We get about 10 spam comments for every real comment, and our filters aren't stopping them, so we have to delete them manually.)

Mike

--------------------------

calvin has made a new post: re: Where did 240 come from?.

But what do we call 240x240?

320X240 is called QVGA, 640X480 is called VGA, 320X480 is called HVGA.

-----------------------------

re: Where did 240 come from?

MikeCal — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 20:00:19 GMT

Bryan, thanks!

Calvin, I'm not sure who comes up with those xVGA names. QVGA is pretty clear because it's "Quarter VGA" but I don't know what the "H" in "HVGA" stands for. Internally, we just called 240x240 "square screen." We didn't have any 480x480 devices to test, but we would have probably called them "HiDPI Square." Or we would have just called it 480x480.

While the various 240x240 devices have been very popular and have sold well, in the scale of the entire computing industry, I'm not sure they'll ever have enough market share to justify an xVGA name. I guess time will tell.

Mike

320x320 Revisited

Windows Mobile Team Blog — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 03:04:38 GMT

A little over a year ago, I wrote a blog entry that explained why we chose to support 240x240 screens

320x320 Revisited

RSS It All — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 03:06:51 GMT

A little over a year ago, I wrote a blog entry that explained why we chose to support 240x240 screens

re: Where did 240 come from?

John — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 17:24:17 GMT

The H for HVGA would be Half, which is what the iPhone has. I considered getting one when they announced it and it seemed like a "cool" device, but then I came to my senses and realized that I couldn't develop for it, and that would just suck. So I went with the HTC P3600 (Trinity) instead. I absolutely LOVE the 2.8" QVGA screen on it.

I've owned three devices with 3.5" QVGA screens and a 3.7" VGA Axim. The 3.5" screens seem so bloated now that I've seen the 2.8" screen. The VGA screen, when running in "true VGA" mode, does add a bit of strain on the eyes, even though it's the best for web browsing.

When the 240x240 screens came out, it was a bit tricky to program for them. The Treo 700w's GAPI implementation reported the screen as QVGA, even though it wasn't, and then it scaled the Y-direction to make things fit, but the screen still reported stylus taps using 240x240. But other square screen devices (like the HP phones) reported the screen size correctly at 240x240. This made it necessary to check the OEM string...

The real "problem devices" now are the Blackjack and Motorola Q. These devices have QVGA screens, but their GAPI implementations think the screen is 176x220, the old smartphone resolution. Life would be a lot easier if all devices reported the actual size of the screen.

-John

re: Where did 240 come from?

MikeCal — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 19:24:21 GMT

Ah, "Half VGA." That makes sense. Thanks!

Separately, I've been thinking about doing a blog entry on GAPI, but it keeps degenerating into a lot of swearing....

To keep my blood pressure low, I'll just say that the best solution for anything involving GAPI pain is to use DDraw instead.

Mike

re: MICROSOFT MUST BE ASHAMED

JAT60 — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 04:01:56 GMT

You guys at Microsoft must be ashamed for failing to listen to the users of your trusted softwares on their Windows Mobile Pocket PCs.

I am making this comment because of your refusal to develop an upgrade from the WM2003 to either the WM5 or WM6 ROM for XDA IIi/Qtek 2020i/Alpine or SPV M1500.

This is perhaps the hegemony of monopoly.

Surely, people have cried out enough, can you not do something for them?

re: Where did 240 come from?

MikeCal — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 20:10:47 GMT

JAT60, please see this entry. http://blogs.msdn.com/windowsmobile/archive/2005/10/06/477999.aspx

Mike

re: Where did 240 come from?

trafalgah — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 23:54:36 GMT

Even with Direct Draw, the motorola Q is seriously messed up. The width and height have to be swapped, and even after doing the image has to be flipped horizontally. At present I have no idea what was done with the colors as I can't really get it to work at all. Very frustrating! Would be sooooooo

much easier if you just released a fixed gx.dll for

the Q and let us install it with our app.

re: Where did 240 come from?

Donlee — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 05:29:24 GMT

I wonder which resolutions are supported on WM.

QVGA is common resolution nowaday for smartphone - 240x320 (Portrait), 320x240 (Landscape).

But for Next generation smartphone, Various Display Resolution are being prepared for smartphone. VGA, HVGA, qHD, WVGA etc.& of both type - Landscape type and Portrait type.

Among those, Can I know which resolutions can be supported by Window Mobile?

cf)

Portrait VGA 480(H)x 640(V)

Landscape VGA 640(H)x 480(H)

Portrait HVGA 320(H)x 480(V) - iPHONE

Landscape HVGA 480(H)x 320(V)

Portrait qHD 360(H)x 640(V)

Landscape qHD 640(H)x 360(V)

Portrait WVGA 480(H)x 800(V)

Landscape WVGA 800(H)x 480(V)

* qHD stand for quater HD (base on 720i)

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