Goin' Mobile Japan! #25 | Print |
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Trendwatch: Will VGA soon become the standard resolution for mobile phone screens?

On February 13, Toshiba announced the development of a VGA controller for mobile phones. This announcement coincides with the industry trend, particularly in Japan, of moving towards a more graphical interface for mobile phones. Toshiba’s new technology will allow screens to display 16 million colors with 8MB DRAM and 400Mpbs maximum throughput. This means that you can receive high quality video and graphics at a fast transmission rate.

 
Toshiba VGA LCD Controller

 

Toshiba is not only the only company to produce a VGA based mobile phone. At a news conference on February 28, Vodafone announced the world’s first VGA phone (904SH) manufactured by Sharp. This announcement gained a lot of attention from industry experts and the media. In the images below you can see how the VGA (640 x 480) screen is able to display more detailed graphics when compared to current QVGA (320 x 240) and QQVGA (160 x 120) mobile screens. As multi-media applications and data intensive communication becomes more common on mobile phones, higher resolution and wider displays will be needed.

Vodafone’s new VGA screen
 


 

Today, in Japan, the market is excited about the April 1 release of One Seg (territorial digital TV broadcasting) (please see our coverage in October edition). One Seg currently uses QVGA for video steaming, but by using a VGA screen, other contents can be transmitted simultaneously from third party business/commerce providers. Possibly, One Seg will be able to broadcast television to a VGA screen in the future when the hardware is widely available. It would not be a far stretch to say that VGA screens will drive much more businesses for the mobile industry.

 


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