Where did 240 come from?

Artikkeli
02/14/2006

You may have noticed a number of Windows Mobile devices coming out with 240x240 screens. And you're probably asking yourself, "Who came up with this 240 number, anyway? Why aren't they doing 320x320?"

Now, please don't interpret this entry as my trying to convince you that 240x240 is somehow better than 320x320. In almost all cases, it's not. I'm just trying to explain how we got here.

Those who cannot remember the past...
We've been doing Windows CE devices for around ten years now. We did a bunch of devices that were, basically, small versions of laptops--"clamshell" devices with screens that were wider than high (landscape) and qwerty keyboards. Then, somewhere around 1998 (I don't remember the exact year), we released what we called the "Palm-sized PC." It was intended to be held in one hand with a stylus in the other. It had no keyboard and a portrait orientation. Basically, it was the predecessor of Windows Mobile PocketPCs. And its screen resolution was 240x320.

As a quick aside, 320x240 (a 240x320 screen turned on its side) is frequently called "QVGA" or "Quarter VGA." This is because many of them were made, effectively, from a 640x480 (VGA) screen that was cut into quarters.

Fast forward to 2003. All PocketPCs since that original one had QVGA screens turned portrait. But we were starting to see higher resolution screens that were physically the same size as the normal ones. We decided that it was time for Pocket PC to start supporting higher resolution screens.

To scale or not to scale, that is the question
First we had to decide what to do with the extra pixels. On the desktop, more dots means you see more stuff on the screen. You see more of the web page at a time, or more of the long email at once, etc. The trouble with that approach, however, is that everything gets smaller. Conceptually, the desktop compensates for this by making the screen physically larger, but the code really doesn't pay attention to screen size. You can buy a 14 inch 1280x1024 screen and you can buy a 17 inch 1280x1024 screen. Everything will be much smaller on the smaller screen.

We knew that our higher resolution screens wouldn't be any larger than our normal resolution screens. And we were worried that, if we went the desktop route, everything would be too small on the high resolution screens. So we made the controversial decision to not go the desktop route. Rather than showing more stuff on the higher resolution screen, we'd show the same amount of stuff, only we'd make it look a lot better.

I call decision "controversial" because I was against it. (-: I felt that the higher resolution screens should let you see more stuff. Of course, I have better than 20/20 vision. At the time I was running my 17 inch desktop monitors at the insane resolution of 1600x1200. So the claims that people wouldn't be able to see the tiny text kind of fell on deaf ears here.

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 with same-sized text but more dots. Also, the setting at Start->Settings->System->Screen->Text Size gave me something of a best of both worlds. Check it out if you don't know about it. It works on both high and normal resolution screens.

A double by any other name
Now, for devices using QVGA (320x240) screens, the most natural place to go is VGA (640x480). The advantage of this is that you can do backward compatibility with apps that were written to assume PocketPCs would always be QVGA. In those situations we could "pixel double" the screen and make the app think it was still 240x320. "Pixel double" is kind of a misnomer. We double the pixels in both the horizontal and vertical directions. So "double" here really means "multiply by 4." But what you end up with when you do this is a screen that looks exactly like the lower resolution one. Everything scales correctly, and everything looks fine.

So we went with VGA screens as our second PocketPC resolution. We had our art teams do a second set of icons and bitmaps that were four times as big but that would take up the same amount of space on the screen, and we scaled our fonts to match. Backward compatibility with low res apps worked through pixel doubling.

Square pegs
We also wanted to enable devices with keyboards on the front, like the ones you're seeing now. And we knew that a portrait rectangular screen with a qwerty keyboard would make the device too big. So, while we were doing the work to lay stuff out for higher resolution, we also did it for square. It was pretty natural to take a 240x320 screen, lop off 80 pixels, and make it 240x240. It was similarly natural to take a 480x640 screen and support 480x480. So those are the square resolutions we support.

We actively talked about doing 320x320. But we decided against it for a number of reasons. The first was that there's no good backward compatibility story for it. You can pixel double, but "pixel one and a half" doesn't work very well. The next was that there's not much of a growth path for 320x320. Hardware vendors told us that they had no plans to make 640x640 screens (where they do have plans to make 480x480 screens).

So, why did Palm go with 320x320 for their non-WM devices? If you study their history, you'll find that they made all the same decisions we made. It's just that their original resolution was 160x160. So, when it came time to choose their higher resolution, it was natural for them to pixel double up to 320x320. We're in an unfortunate situation at the moment where we're comparing the high res PalmOS device to the low res WM device.

Where do we go from here?
Windows Mobile fully supports 480x480 devices. But the cost of those screens is a bit too high at the moment. As those costs come down, we will start to see devices that use them. In the mean time, as you're looking at your 240x240 screen, don't start thinking, "if this were 320x320, I'd see 50% more of my email at a time." You wouldn't. It's just that the text of your email would be clearer. Small compensation, I know, but it's all I can really offer.

Mike Calligaro

Comments

Anonymous
February 14, 2006
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.
Anonymous
February 14, 2006
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Anonymous
February 14, 2006
Its not hard for CE. Windows Mobile can switch res's very easily. The issue is purely third-party app compatibility.
Anonymous
February 14, 2006
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.
Anonymous
February 14, 2006
...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.
Anonymous
February 14, 2006
240x240, 320x240, 640x480, QVGA, VGA - confused?
Well one of my colleagues Mike Calligaro has written...
Anonymous
February 14, 2006
That's an absolutely excellent explanation.
Anonymous
February 14, 2006
That's an absolutely excellent explanation.
Anonymous
February 15, 2006
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Anonymous
February 15, 2006
PingBack from http://thinkabdul.com/2006/02/15/where-did-the-240x240-screen-for-windows-mobile-phones-comes-from/
Anonymous
February 15, 2006
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Anonymous
February 15, 2006
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.
Anonymous
February 16, 2006
Thanks for the piece! I had been wondering.

Ben
Anonymous
February 16, 2006
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Anonymous
February 16, 2006
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").
Anonymous
February 16, 2006
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
Anonymous
February 16, 2006
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?"
Anonymous
February 16, 2006
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.
Anonymous
February 16, 2006
I totally agree with NLS... Even with the typos!!! ;)

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

Way to go NLS!!!
Anonymous
February 16, 2006
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Anonymous
February 16, 2006
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.
Anonymous
February 16, 2006
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...
Anonymous
February 17, 2006
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Anonymous
February 17, 2006
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.
Anonymous
February 17, 2006
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
Anonymous
February 17, 2006
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
Anonymous
February 17, 2006
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Anonymous
February 17, 2006
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.
Anonymous
February 17, 2006
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.
Anonymous
February 17, 2006
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)
Anonymous
February 17, 2006
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
Anonymous
February 17, 2006
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Anonymous
February 17, 2006
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
Anonymous
February 17, 2006
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Anonymous
February 17, 2006
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.
Anonymous
February 17, 2006
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
Anonymous
February 17, 2006
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Anonymous
February 18, 2006
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Anonymous
February 19, 2006
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Anonymous
February 19, 2006
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Anonymous
February 19, 2006
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.
Anonymous
February 20, 2006
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Anonymous
February 20, 2006
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
Anonymous
February 21, 2006
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
Anonymous
February 22, 2006
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)...
Anonymous
February 24, 2006
PingBack from http://www.zonapda.net/archivo/2006/02/24/porque-el-treo700w-tiene-una-resolucion-de-240x240-px/
Anonymous
February 24, 2006
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Anonymous
February 25, 2006
I think Elvis left the building. :D
Anonymous
February 27, 2006
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Anonymous
February 27, 2006
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.
Anonymous
March 11, 2006
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.
Anonymous
April 29, 2006
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Anonymous
May 14, 2006
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...
Anonymous
August 15, 2006
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.. =)
Anonymous
August 16, 2006
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
Anonymous
August 16, 2006
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Anonymous
August 17, 2006
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
Anonymous
August 17, 2006
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.
Anonymous
August 18, 2006
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
Anonymous
August 21, 2006
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.
Anonymous
August 21, 2006
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
Anonymous
August 22, 2006
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
Anonymous
November 15, 2006
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Anonymous
November 20, 2006
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.

Anonymous
November 20, 2006
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
Anonymous
March 02, 2007
A little over a year ago, I wrote a blog entry that explained why we chose to support 240x240 screens
Anonymous
March 02, 2007
A little over a year ago, I wrote a blog entry that explained why we chose to support 240x240 screens
Anonymous
March 13, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
March 13, 2007
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
Anonymous
March 18, 2007
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?
Anonymous
March 19, 2007
JAT60, please see this entry. http://blogs.msdn.com/windowsmobile/archive/2005/10/06/477999.aspx Mike
Anonymous
June 19, 2007
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.
Anonymous
July 31, 2007
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)
Anonymous
November 28, 2007
PingBack from http://hyiplive.org/want-to-know-where-did-240-come-from-on-wm

Jaa

Where did 240 come from?

Comments

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.

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