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- By the end of 2026, how useful do you think agentic/multi-agent AI systems will actually be in your daily work or personal projects? Posted on March 11th, 2026 | 1681 votes
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- By the end of 2026, how useful do you think agentic/multi-agent AI systems will actually be in your daily work or personal projects? Posted on March 11th, 2026 | 22 comments
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I don't see the point (Score:5, Insightful)
If I need 4k on my phone, then I would need like 20k or higher for my laptop/desktop computers. If I can't tell there is a pixel on the phone, anything beyond that is a waste.
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It's true that you can't see a pixel, but I'd be willing to bet you can still see aliasing. The improvement is slight, but it's disingenuous to say that there is no improvement.
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This is what anti-aliasing is for :-P
Aliasing is tied to vernier acuity which is about 5-10 times what your eye can see. So, to make the higher resolution imperceptible, you need either a 20K screen with no anti-aliasing or a 2-4K screen with good anti-aliasing.
Re:I don't see the point (Score:4, Insightful)
I want anti-aliasing to die.
Re:I don't see the point (Score:4, Insightful)
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Anti-aliasing in itself is not a hack, it is just rendering the way is should. And it definitely improves things even on a 4K display.
There are some anti-aliasing techniques that are hacks, like FXAA. However it is for a good cause : it is much faster than proper AA and is a close enough approximation.
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So does having millions of pixels that you otherwise can't even distinguish.
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Memory and computation. One of the big reasons higher resolution screens are bad for battery life is that you need a bigger, more powerful GPU to run them. As someone pointed out, to eliminate aliasing completely you need ridiculously high resolution, several times what 4k offers. Unless you're willing to pay the memory and computation cost for that, antialiasing is an excellent solution, and also one that's much less computationally intensive.
Re:I don't see the point (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't need a 4k screen on my phone, but I'd quite like my phone to have enough graphics power to drive 4k.
That way I could use my phone as a portable computer rather than lugging a laptop around. It might not be powerful enough for everything, but so much is web based nowadays I could see it working pretty well.
Re:I don't see the point (Score:4, Interesting)
Logically I would like to be able to adjust graphics resolution to actual a current use so say from 1/4K to 1K to 4K dependent upon actual use. This to cut back on processor and graphics use to increase battery life. So unless you want it, it normally drops back to 1/4K, until you use a program that needs more but basic menus and phone use et al, keep the resolution down as low as reasonable. This of course in conjunction with user replaceable batteries to ensure extended use, I mean, the very stupid idea of destroying the resale ability of a device because it battery will no longer work properly and fixing costs more than the resale value of the phone, when you want to move onto the new model is just so gullibly idiotic (what the PR douche bags will get gullible fools to accept is simply mind boggling at times).
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Dare I say it, Microsoft Continuum?
which allows one to plug a Windows Phone 10 into a hub for essentially a Windows RT experience.
Re:I don't see the point (Score:5, Insightful)
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"normal" visual acuity is ~0.017 degrees. At 1m (desktop distance) that means a pixel size around 0.3mm. On a 30" screen, that's 2300x1270. At 30cm (phone distance), it's a pixel of 90um. On a 6.5" phone, that's 1600x900. At 10cm (Google Cardboard), it's 4800x2700. You can make some arguments about about Nyquist aliasing by the eye, and we've all seen Moire patterns in physical objects, but phones are basically sized to have about the same image quality as a monitor. If you can tell 4k on your desktop
Re:I don't see the point (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I don't see the point (Score:5, Informative)
because your photos will look nicer when the image has to downscale.
Plus Facebook doesn't necessarily downscale that much these days.
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Yeah - I was running an emulator for the Nexus 5 on my (portrait) monitor and it was taking up the whole screen, and my colleagues were mocking it - until I pointed out that that was infact the pixel-to-pixel actual rendering of the phone screen on a normal density monitor...
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If I can't tell there is a pixel on the phone, anything beyond that is a waste.
You can tell if you use a magnifying glass. That's why we need 4k. No I'm not joking. This is exactly what emerging VR experiences do and even the highest end of the current smartphones have big and ugly pixels when used in some VR capacity that destroys the effect. 4k will be a big boost to the VR experience.
VR is the point (Score:2)
If I can't tell there is a pixel on the phone, anything beyond that is a waste.
You can tell if you use a magnifying glass. That's why we need 4k. No I'm not joking. This is exactly what emerging VR experiences do and even the highest end of the current smartphones have big and ugly pixels when used in some VR capacity that destroys the effect. 4k will be a big boost to the VR experience.
This. VR on smartphones is amazing. If you haven't at least picked up a ~$15 Google Cardboard yet and run through the demos, you and everyone you show it to will instantly be 1. amazed and 2. clamoring for more pixels. 2x 960x1080 is good but definitely not enough.
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why use a smartphone and have 'tunnel vision' when for a little more money http://www.roadtovr.com/infiniteye-210-degree-vr-headset-becomes-star-vr-this-is-what-it-look-like-breaking/ [roadtovr.com] dual 5k screens dedicated to games is currently vaporware, but if the tv networks can have thousands of screens, there is the possibility of military options for a 210 degree by 130degree VR Headset.
VR displays (Score:5, Insightful)
4k seems like it should be obviously useless. 2k already makes it really hard to see individual pixels, and more pixels take more power to push.
Where 4k makes sense is for VR displays. The Samsung Gear VR and the Google Cardboard use the phone for the display. And the accelerometer. Those do need higher resolution to look good.
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I can still discern individual pixels a foot away from my LG G3's 2560x1440 5.5" screen.
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and more pixels take more power to push.
That's the real problem. If it weren't for the negative sides, like power and increased cost, who wouldn't take 8k?
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All we need is a way to fix the horrible drift problem that plagues cardboard... and a way to stream 4k to that screen without lag and I'm sold :)
Desktop first. (Score:4, Interesting)
Let's get 4K on the desktop first. Try finding a laptop that can drive 4K. HDMI won't support it, and try finding a laptop with DisplayPort.
Re:Desktop first. (Score:5, Funny)
Let's get 4K on the desktop first. Try finding a laptop that can drive 4K. HDMI won't support it, and try finding a laptop with DisplayPort.
You could mount a fresnel lens on your desk and a dock for your smartphone. Add a bluetooth keyboard and you have a great solution. Terry Gilliam would approve.
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My laptop supports 4K, and it works just fine over the HDMI port. [dell.com] It also support Linux natively (Ubuntu; I installed Fedora, it "just works")
Really, this is a beautiful system.
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DisplayPort on laptops is ridiculously common once you step just outside of consumer-ish devices stocked at Wal-Mart.
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Not quite. I also like to do a little casual gaming. Intel integrated graphics suck for gaming, so that leaves two choices:
1) Separate GPU
2) AMD device
A separate GPU pushes you into "gaming" machines that are hard to find for much below $1,000.
Personally, I prefer the AMD approach, but those devices never have DisplayPort. My dream machine would be something with an AMD FX-8800p (Carrizo)
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A separate GPU pushes you into "gaming" machines that are hard to find for much below $1,000.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/... [newegg.com]
It's worth a little more for the 17" screen (10 point multi-touch as well), and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M. Budget gaming, with a discrete card looks to start about http://www.newegg.com/Product/... [newegg.com]
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Those links. Did you see the DisplayPort outputs? Yeah, me neither.
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Yeah. Stupid me for having a 30" monitor that I love. It is great for coding -- lots of windows open at the same time.
I would have thought that with 4K becoming almost cheap, that being able to drive that would be kind of a deal right about now.
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Ummm. Because I need a laptop? Because sometimes I like to work in other rooms of the house? Because sometimes I go on trips and like to take my stuff with me?
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Try to get HDMI to drive 2560x1600.
I am sorry that my needs don't fit into your predefined usage models. I humbly beg for your forgiveness.
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It's not that you are wrong. That's obvious and trivial to prove. It's that you are too much of an idiot to say "It's my opinion. I don't care what's best, I believe in the religion of Display Port and will use it regardless of technical merits. HDMI sounds too much like HDCP, so I can't use that demon cable."
Nobody could arg
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I've commented below about my preferences, but it's funny (to me) that you happen to post those links. I just bought a Dell refurb from ebay, and spent a couple weeks looking for similar systems before I settled on what I considered the best choice for $500. It has three things I wanted: discrete video, 1080 screen, recent Intel CPU.
Dell Latitude 3540 Laptop i5 1080P AMD RADEON HD8850M
Intel Core 4th Generation i5-4200U (Dual Core, 1.60GHz, 3M cache, 15W)
15.6 Inch FHD (1920x1080) Wide View Anti-Glare LED-bac
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And I don't want Display Port. My last job with company provided laptops, the laptops were all Display Port, and the meeting rooms were all HDMI. When I go to a friend's house and plug in my laptop and play a movie or something on the big screen, HDMI is vastly superior, because it works.
What I look for in a laptop is a strong GPU and quad cores. The external display interface is secondary, if you have a single monitor at home, you can usually adapt almost anything to
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Just because your last company was an too stupid to leave a DisplayPort -> HDMI cable in the meeting rooms does not mean that the interface is useless.
Suppose you have a trio of monitors at home, but want to plug them into your laptop with only one cable. DisplayPort does that.
Suppose you later buy a new laptop with USB-C and want to keep the same functionality: DisplayPort does that, too, over the same USB-C connector that is feeding the monitors.
[...]
HDMI? *crickets*
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Did he say they didn't have the adapters? I have customers who have HDMI/VGA adapters for their wall-mounts in the conference room. I'm sure getting adapters for DisplayPort wouldn't be too much of a problem, but they might not have worked well. That's still a valid gripe.
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The more expensive was 1920 x 1080.
My mistake. I must have seen one of the other sets of numbers, and my brain thought it was the resolution. Or I opened the links in new tabs more than once and saw the cheaper system twice.
Thanks for the correction.
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This may sound absurd, but: Look at used machines. Especially if you're not into gaming.
I recently picked up a Precision M4500 for less than $200, shipped. eBay. Very clean, plainly off-lease or part of a corporate upgrade cycle. Was plainly seldom actually used away from a desk or a docking station, as I could tell from the pictures I saw before I paid for it.
It's from 2010. The Quadro 880 doesn't quite support 4k, but it does support greater than 1920x1200 and that's good enough for my needs, and it
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...as I could tell from the pictures I saw before I paid for it.
You actually claim to have seen the actual unit that you were buying online? Not saying it did not happen just that the likelihood is very very low.
The theory is sound I'll give you that but in practice most of the time you don't know what you are getting. A laptop that did just sit docked nearly all the time and was well taken care of or one that just barely passed its re certification.
Honestly, brand new cheap laptops are not that hard to find. You will spend more than $200, and no it won't say Alienw
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Yes, I'm quite certain it's the same one. The wear patterns are identical; so is the service code.
I've done it many times, for all manner of things.
When looking for a used laptop, my options were very quickly narrowed:
1. It would be a Dell Precision or a Dell Latitude, because servicability on other options is complete shit in my experience.
2. It was going to be a model with some manner of dedicated GPU which is not known to have BGA issues, and a socketed CPU.
3. It would be from a vendor who was in the
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Let's get 4K on the desktop first. Try finding a laptop that can drive 4K. HDMI won't support it, and try finding a laptop with DisplayPort.
You mean DisplayPort 1.3 right? DisplayPort is on almost all laptops, the problem is that most are still DP1.2 which can only drive 4K at 30Hz.
Re:Desktop first. (Score:5, Informative)
Er, no.
DP 1.2 handles 4K 60p just fine, DP 1.3 supports 5K displays and even 8K at reduced color (4:2:0)
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Let's get 4K on the desktop first.
Like my 5 year old video card?
Try finding a laptop that can drive 4K. HDMI won't support it, and try finding a laptop with DisplayPort.
Most macs. The Microsoft surface line. Every Dell Latitude, Every Dell XPS, the Dell Alienware machines ship with USB-C and you can buy a Displayport dongle. I think that's most of the medium range products from the most popular suppliers of machines in the world that can do what you want.
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Like I said elsewhere. I want to do some light gaming, and keep it under $600. None of those fit the bill. Intel integrated graphics suck for gaming, and throwing in a GPU jacks up the price. This means an AMD box.
Battery (Score:5, Insightful)
I voted don't want it instead of Ok if the price is the same, as I bet it will have a battery hit. I don't want the price or battery hit. If those are ok, and it doesn't impact CPU usage or memory usage, price or battery, then it is fine.
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I think the hit would be on the GPU which has to manage that many more pixels, which take up more RAM, which leaves less for other processes and causes garbage collection churn, etc. In other words, it makes the system as a whole less efficient. And for what, exactly? I think that's well into the "zero marginal benefit" range for almost all human eyes.
Retina displays were are nice (and tangible!) upgrade over their predecessors. I don't think 4K offers a measurably better experience, but carries a real cost
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Not to mention they'll probably often give you pixels instead of OLED or some other tech that gives you a better contrast and colour gamit vs a normal LCD screen. They need to make a phone that you can play with all day and still have plenty of charge left over. If I have to choose between watching 4hrs of video content on my commute everyday and not getting through the day on my phone battery or lugging my iPad around too, that is what I do now. At which point why do I need a fantastic screen on my phone?
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I agree. There are a lot of things I'd rather have before 4K. A better, not higher resolution screen. Better battery life, tougher shell, more storage and a lower price. I've got a 1080p screen and really I don't need or want 4K.
Better battery first... (Score:5, Insightful)
...then higher display resolution.
In that order.
What's the use of a 4K display if you only have hours (and not days) of autonomy?
Holding Out for 640K (Score:5, Funny)
That ought to be enough for anyone.....
okay, bye......
they should stop calling them smartphones (Score:3)
and start calling them pocket tablets that just happen to be able to make PSTN calls.
This is the push to a personal data device that just does EVERYTHING that all your other separate data crunching devices (ie desktops, laptops) do but worse - you're not clocking that quad/quad 2.1/1.6 processor in your S6 without serious cooling because PHYSICS, that extra horsepower is just for show unless and until they figure out just how to maximise utilisation while minimising thermal output. So you're still going to be able to record video in 4k from the front camera at 30fps but not an entire movie's worth in one go.
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For what is worth, movies are not shot in one go (except Russian Ark), but are composed out of several "takes". This is an axample where a technical limitation will actually teach you better cinematography skills. But then again you wouldn't be using your phone for shooting a movie. Unless you are recording your kid's shool play, in which case you should go out and buy a camcorder already.
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I'm waiting on my brother to shoot Trainspotting 3 on his S6.
It won't be long before someone beats him to the punch. Several TV shows have been shot using palmcorders... the Discovery Channel considers stabilised DV footage in independent submissions for airing all the time. Found footage movies such as Cloverfield and fast edits such as 28 Days Later were shot using "prosumer" camcorders.
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Gizmodo article on Cloverfield camera [gizmodo.com] - not really prosumer at a cost north of $115,000.
But yes, 28 Days Later was shot in part on a Canon XL1 which I once hankered after and could reasonably have afforded.
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the Sony camera that was used for most of Cloverfield was a full-on cineHD, the one the characters were passing around was a low-end consumer DVSD palmcorder.
I'm waiting for 1TB displays (Score:2)
ffs 720p is overkill for even a phablet (Score:3)
4K resolution on any screen under 22" is wasteful and likely nearly indistinguishable from 720p. Maybe audiophools have metamorphosed into videophools now with golden eyeballs that can see into the hidden microscopic world, but I sure as fuck can't. Sounds like a scheme to part them from their money though.
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I disagree. I have a TF201 and I want more dots. 1080p is about right for 10". It makes photos look purty.
A smartphone? (Score:2)
If your screen only supported 16 bit color depth and you had to
UI Problem (Score:2)
I feel we've reached the point where more pixels doesn't really help. What we need is people to come up with better ways to interact with what's already there. I can't *do* anything with the megapixels I already have because simply interacting with the device obscures 10% of the screen, and 100% of what I wanted to interact with.
For instance: I've been waiting for a good CAD system that works well with a touch interface since my first iPhone's 3" screen. Now I'm at 5" with 20x the pixels and there's stil
Sliced Bread? (Score:2)
I don't think that pre-sliced bread is any good at all, I think it's a low mark when it comes to product offerings.
Eye Strain (Score:2)
The reason we need silly resolution (Full HD as low, 4K as high) is that when things are blurry and what the eye sees is something that ought not to be blurry, the eyes will (in my humble non-medical experience) strain themselves trying to focus hunt over a small range, rather like a confused consumer camera. Pin sharp means that when focus is correct, it is clear to the focus regulation circuitry in the brain that it is.
It's a phone (Score:2)
Devices are now mainly something to make money for suppliers, sell you stuff and track you, not to make phone calls. Except for brief use-based excursions, mine stays in the kitchen drawer.
Homeopatic pixels (Score:2)
The ignorance of the consumer (Score:3, Insightful)
"Neutral; I won't complain, but won't pay extra"
Ah, the ignorance of the average consumer I see still exists here, as this leads the polls.
And you honestly believe you're somehow not going to pay for that extra tech you don't need because new smartphone prices keep going down, right?
Give me a break.
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Considering I am not enslaved to buying the newest phone each year when they come out, No, I don't think I will be paying for the extra tech. I buy the less powerful, 2 years old line of phones, this time from Samsung, and it does everything I need it to. I don't use it as an interface to my entire existence as some do, so it is up to the task of letting me connect as needed, even with tethering and mobile hotspot to support my laptop. I got the phone when it went on sale this spring for under $100. So for
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Considering I am not enslaved to buying the newest phone each year when they come out, No, I don't think I will be paying for the extra tech. I buy the less powerful, 2 years old line of phones, this time from Samsung, and it does everything I need it to. I don't use it as an interface to my entire existence as some do, so it is up to the task of letting me connect as needed, even with tethering and mobile hotspot to support my laptop. I got the phone when it went on sale this spring for under $100. So for cheap bastards like me, I say let the techno-slaves subsidize development of 4K screens; it's the natural order of things.
With the concept of ownership becoming all but extinct, the "natural order of things" will make it illegal for you to own your cellular hardware in the future.
Call it the new "lease" on life.
transcoding (Score:2)
I'd never use streaming services on cellular service (I live in the land of "Oh bandwidth caps") so it would be wifi. I might as well copy the files to my phone. So: 4k might be useful if that means I don't have to transcode it down to a smaller size like I have to do with nearly everything for my iPad mini. Saving 1h per show of CPU time (I'm guessing I can do a 2GB 1080p file in about 30min on my hardware) + having duplicates around so I have the biggest version around should I end up watching it on a big
I'm just happy with more than 1080 (Score:2)
After a decade of monitors and TVs basically being frozen in time, the market finally decided to surge past the 'HD' bottleneck and offer us a better resolution. Yes, I know there have been monitors that are higher resolution than 1080 vertically, but they were expensive and only in the 'too large for normal desktop' sizes. Some of my customers have three or four large displays because they are in the building trade, and they make good use of the screen size. But for normal office operations, they take up t
I just need (Score:2)
4K glasses.
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Re:S5 (Score:2)
And, my 5s is good enough.
morepixels = morebandwidth, data, costs. (Score:5, Insightful)
Everytime I get more pixels on my iphone my data usage surges. less pixels, and photos/vidoes optimized for low res screens please!
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Not to mention that it's difficult to store, transfer, and backup such imagery.
The tools for doing so (Photos, Aperture, Image Capture), all suck at it, too.
Re:morepixels = morebandwidth, data, costs. (Score:4, Informative)
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Or are on a second tier network.
Re:morepixels = morebandwidth, data, costs. (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless you believe the world only consists of the US and Europe, this certainly isn't true.
But then, on here it often seems like people think exactly that.
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As for encoders. Holy fucking slow as balls encoding. ffmpeg does 4K x.256 at about 3fps and x.264 at about twice that on a FAST quad core processor. Ten hours to encode 1 hour of video? WTF!
This might be to slow for your personal videos, but for a video that will be encoded once and decoded thousands of times, this is more than acceptable, given the saved bandwidth. It's not as if you needed to sit in front of the PC while encoding either.
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And why do you think anyone's going to create 4k content if there's nothing to display it on? Is this your first incremental bump in display technology?
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hdmi out to your 4K TV.
At the least, your phone's GPU should support 4K even if the internal screen doesn't.
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That's ok, I don't think anyone was doing the math. :^)
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Well, it's either the axlotl tanks or the soylent green tanks. Take your pick. :^P
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Ok okay I'd even settle for a 2nd 1680x1050 monitor, except they don't make them anymore, R.I.P best aspect ratio ever.
I agree 16:10 is a much better aspect ratio for computer work than the "TV" 16:9 that currently dominates.
And you can still get 16:10 aspect ratio monitors. They're just all in 1920x1200 (which is better anyway).
Here is the first hit for that aspect ratio on Newegg: http://www.newegg.com/Product/... [newegg.com]
There are many more.
Unfortunately, 16:10 isn't available at any higher DPIs :(
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Not only CPU/GPU : at this point, the connection between the CPU and display gets power hungry! and I remember reading the more pixels, the more dead space around the pixels (or opaque circuitry), diminishing brightness so more intense lighting is needed.
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I want a 4K phone and a magnifying glass attachment so I can replace my 1366x768 laptop.