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The idea of 4K TVs still boggle my mind (and eyes), but 4K phones? Do we even need them? According to a comment last week by Qualcomm’s VP of Product Management, Raj Talluri, we will see phones with resolutions higher than 1080p one day, and speaking to Sony’s UK Managing Director Pierre Perron, that’s something Sony would back — if enough people showed interest, that is.
In an interview during CES, Perron outlined his thoughts on the possibility of 4K (or UltraHD) phones to me, saying “We might consider it. We can now see the 4K technology being deployed across different screen sizes, but as a smartphone manufacturer we always need to balance the technology with cost, and other factors. If it doesn’t bring any consumer value, I don’t think we need to follow it.”
Referring to the Xperia S, which was outed at last year’s CES, Perron explained that Sony “only went for quad-core now because we weren’t sure the technology was there last year. Consumer experience is always the driver for what we do, not keeping up with other manufacturers.”
As my US colleague Brent said, this could fast become the new pissing contest for headline-grabbing manufacturers. Sigh.
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If the phone can push the content, then it’ll handle 1080p without batting an eyelid
I do, however, like the look of the 20″ 4K tablet Panasonic showed off if they could shoehorn some decent innards into it!
He says they “might consider it” but also says they “only went for quad-core now because we weren’t sure the technology was there last year” and “If it doesn’t bring any consumer value, I don’t think we need to follow it” so that’s hardly a ringing endorsement is it. I suspect even Apple are looking at 4K screens, but they won’t adopt them till the price doesn’t interfere with their precious margin.
I’ll go out on a limb and say he said this just to get a story out of it which he’s achieved
Nice idea but battery life on phones have serious got to catch up first
He would be an idiot not to be at least ‘considering it’. Anyone in that position should be.
Wasn’t there an article recently about 4K phones ability to push 4K stuff to your TV being more important that their actual screen pixels?
I would agree. Watching 4K on the phone is pointless, but pushing it to a main TV is a seriously viable option. Most of the TV I watch is pushed via Airplay from my iPad to my TV and in HD, so 4K is the obvious next step. Other phone and tablet developers should really look carefully at this as Airplay is such a phenomenal success.
Surely your phone would die, pushing that amount of data to your tv? Our poor batteries!
There is no 4K content.
4K is pointless. POINTLESS.
There will be no 4K discs, we won’t see a new disc format after Blu Ray.
4K Movies will be hundreds of gigabytes, the internet infrastructure is not ready for them.
At a typical viewing distance of 9 feet, even on a TV as big as 51 inches it’s quite difficult to discern the difference between 720p and 1080p in moving images.
Phones are at a point where the screen resolution is beyond the visual acuity of the human eye. 300 dots per inch.
Any more than 1080p for moving images on anything other than a super-gigantic display is POINTLESS.
Except for when there is and you’ve obviously never seen 4K.
See my reply to ovbg.
Totally disagree. 4K is certainly not pointless and having seen the 4K LG TV currently for sale at our local Saturn store in Frankfurt, I can testify firsthand that the quality difference over HD is phenomenal on a large screen. The funniest thing about your post, is that everything you stated, pointless, too difficult to discern from HD, the internet not ready for it, is exactly what people were saying with HD over SD and that certainly succeeded. I would never have guessed 10 years ago I could get 50mbps Internet easily and cheaply and certainly my bandwidth now is many times wider than what I had just two years ago. By the time 4K becomes mainstream, we will see further improvements.
4K in fact is the real next step after HD and not 3D. Current 3D technologies are simply not here yet, especially with silly glasses that still need to be worn in most cases. Whilst 4K was already used to great effect during the Olympics (which I also witnessed in London) and the first 4K satellite channel is now broadcasting. It will take a few years still to become mainstream and by then internet bandwidth will be even greater than what it is now, although since the HEVC codec will likely provide streams lower than 20mbps, even many people’s existing bandwidth is possible today.
You did point out two truths though. BluRay is most likely the last physical format, streaming is the way of the future, and yes, 4K on a phone screen is as pointless as HD. But if you understand the technology correctly, it’s not for viewing on a phone, but using the phone to send to a main screen, much like Airplay works now. I stream full HD from my phone to my TV and it works a treat.
You’re massively wrong. Mathematically speaking, of course.
It’s provable that unless you meet certain criteria, like having a 150″ screen (not viable for normal consumer home sizes) or sitting much closer than 8 or 9 feet from the set, greater than 1080p resolutions give no benefit.
Even with a 50 inch set, at 9 feet your eyes cannot distinguish every pixel of a 1080p set.
Basically, stop being a dumb consumer. Not every facet of technology needs to ‘increase’ for a discernible improvement. Your argument that this is the same as being wrong about going from SD to HD, as stated in the linked article below, is one of false equivalency – a logical fallacy.
Read this. http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-33199_7-57491766-221/why-4k-tvs-are-stupid-still/
For goodness sake. Read it and understand why this is all total bollocks for home consumer use.
We need 4K for MASSIVE convention screens or projection use, but that’s it.
Your argument itself proves you are wrong, Kauzion.
What you’ve said about HD screens and viewing angle is ‘somewhat’ correct. However, the greater the pixel density, the better the viewing experience for the same distance/screen size. HD at nine feet or more is about the max for a 46 inch TV and you will see a difference between SD/HD broadcasts. Having 4K on the same size of screen looks quite amazing. I know. I’ve seen 4K. It’s not just about projection nor is it about mathematics.
The author of the above article you linked to has a degree in audio production and should really know better. I’ve seen 4K screens and content with my own eyes in my line of professional work.
Thanks for your reply Kauzion, but quite frankly it’s like HD all over again. I can’t tell you how many times I read someone telling me I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference of HD over SD in any real practical way, and given the argument of mathematics to explain it.
Now you’re just repeating the same thing with 4K.
Maybe you should let me decide what I can differentiate between rather than you making that decision for me.
Not only are you completely wrong, I have actually seen with my own eyes how completely wrong you are. The funny thing is, I could see it so clearly back in the same shop I mentioned above. When I first saw the LG 4K set in Saturn, they were running a 4K demonstration video and it was breathtaking. When I was back in the shop last Friday, I could tell immediately that the video was back to old HD as soon as I saw the screen from at least 8meters away! The fools were playing their usual HD demonstration video, a great quality feed on an HD screen, but clearly not 4K. I asked if they could put the 4K one back on again and the difference was breathtaking. You could even compare the difference between the 4K on the LG and the HD screens on either side.
You can take all the mathematics you like, and claim I’m nothing less than a dumb consumer, but either you haven’t seen one for yourself or you have very bad eyesight.
Oh, by the way, my computer monitor has a resolution of 2560×1440 and as a professional photographer who knows and understands pixel peeping, I can tell the difference between an image of that resolution and 1080p’s 1920×1080 without even thinking about it.
You do not have sufficient evidence to compare, it doesn’t matter if you’ve seen the screen in a shop.
What was the bitrate of the 4K video?
What was the bitrate of the 1080p video?
Were they the same source video? Was it 4K downsampled to 1080p? 2K? What kind of compression?
There are professional tests you can use to test display clarity and accuracy. A 4K demonstration video from a store that floggs gear demonstrates absolutely nothing.
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-33199_7-57366319-221/why-4k-tvs-are-stupid/
“Depending on technology, a 1080p 50-inch flat panel TV’s pixels are approximately 0.023 inch wide. This is presuming they’re square (many aren’t) and that there’s no intra-pixel distance (there is)… Most people sit about 10 feet from their television. At 10 feet (120 inches), your eye can resolve an object 0.035 inch wide, if like I said above, there’s enough difference between it and the background (or its adjacent pixel, in this case)… What’s interesting is that a 720p, 50-inch TV has pixels roughly 0.034 inch wide. As in, at a distance of 10 feet, even 720p TVs have pixels too small for your eye to see.
That’s right, at 10 feet, your eye can’t resolve the difference between otherwise identical 1080p and 720p televisions.
Extrapolating this out, you’d have to get a TV at least 77 inches diagonal before you’d start having a pixel visibility problem with 1080p. Or, you can move closer… So if we say 8 feet (96 inches), or 0.028 inch on the resolution side, this means you’d need a TV that’s bigger than 60 inches to really benefit from 1080p.”
Caveat: The above he states is based on 20/20 vision. I’d say my vision is considerably better and I personally can tell the difference between 720p and 1080p up to at least 10 feet on a 50″ screen (I have one). Although I have excellent vision I find the difference between 720p and 1080p at this distance, even on my 50″, marginal for film. What is much MUCH MORE IMPORTANT is the bandwidth and quality of the source. A high quality 720p source is way better than a 1080p stream off Netflix.
I thought Qualcomm’s point was about phones being able to handle 4K content, not being equipped with 4K screens.