Are full HD displays the future of smartphones?

Do all new smartphones really need full HD displays to be successful?
Mobile Entertainment is delighted to introduce a guest post from Phones 4u, focussing on the growing uptake for full HD screens currently sweeping the smartphone market…
The year 2013 is already shaping up to be a great one for mobile technology, with the BlackBerry 10 due to land at the end of January, flexible screens debuted by Samsung, and a number of mobiles with full HD displays unveiled at CES.
This latest trend for full HD screens on handsets is taking the mobile world by storm, with Sony’s Xperia Z, Huawei’s Ascend D2, and ZTE’s Grand S all boasting 1080p displays. But do all future smartphones need to have full HD displays to be successful?
What are ‘full HD’ displays?
High definition (HD) video and imaging offers visuals that are of a high resolution; full HD is known as 1080p. This means the display has 1920 pixels in width and 1080 pixels in height, giving a pixel count of 440ppi (pixels per inch).
Pixels are the little dots that make up a digital image, and the higher the screen resolution, the more pixels per inch the display will have. So, the greater the number of pixels, the more sharp and defined the visuals will be. A phone with a 1080p display will offer crisp, clear, and detailed images, no matter what you are looking at on the screen. It could be a video, a photo, an app, or even just a navigation menu, with 1080p displays, it’ll look pretty awesome.
Now that televisions with high definition screens adorn many a living room, people are wising up to the concept of image quality. In 2011, mobiles with 720p displays started cropping up all over the place, and it seems 2013 is all about 1080p. There are quite a few devices that already boast 1080p video recording functionality, so it makes sense that users would want to watch their videos back at the same quality on a handset.
So, do we need 1080p smartphone displays?
Some people may argue that as smartphone displays are so small, the difference in quality between a 720p and a 1080p screen is unrecognisable to the human eye. However, displays are getting bigger and bigger, and every manufacturer and his dog seems to be jumping on the phablet bandwagon of late. With displays seemingly growing in size, having 1080p as standard for smartphone screens might not be a bad thing. The difference in image quality between 720p and 1080p is certainly noticeable on tablets.
Also, when people are choosing contract phones, it’s likely that they will go for the one with the best spec sheet. So, if you have two handsets of a similar specification, but one has a 1080p display and the other a 720p screen, the full HD device will be more desirable. Side by side the screens probably provide the same visual experience (depending on their size), but you’re going to plump for the higher specced handset.
It’s worth taking into consideration the effect on battery life a 1080p display will have. Whereas tablets have more room to accommodate a larger battery, smartphones are much more restricted and so it could be that in your quest for visual quality you compromise battery life. With a lot of new smartphones now boasting quad-core processors, which will drain mobile juice even further, the choice of high specs over longevity is not one to be taken lightly.
Bright futures?
With a slew of 1080p smartphones already hitting the market, it’s likely that no manufacturer will want to be left behind, regardless of whether the inclusion of a full HD screen really benefits the user. That said, it certainly looks like there is a market for these devices as those who value having the latest tech will snap up 1080p smartphones in their droves, if only to claim bragging rights in the pub. Whether or not mobiles with 1080p displays become the norm remains to be seen, but we reckon we’ll be seeing a whole lot more of them in the coming months.

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