Smartphones are getting larger and larger, a trend that irks some of the staff at the IntoMobile offices, and it looks like it isn’t going to reverse any time soon. Back in January of this year Samsung and AT&T announced the “Infuse”, an Android smartphone that packs a 4.5 inch screen. We didn’t really know what to think of it since it’s impossibly large. We’re only now starting to get used to 4.3 inch screens, as seen in the Samsung Galaxy S II, and those extra 0.2 inches makes a huge difference. Many who reviewed the Infuse thought the same thing, so we predicted we’d never see such a behemoth hit the market again. That’s likely due to change now thanks to an announcement from Hitachi. They’ve developed a new 4.5 inch IPS LCD that does 720p, meaning 1280 x 720 pixels worth of delicious resolution; it’s even 3D capable. The way they’re doing 3D is unique too, using a system they’re calling the “liquid crystal lens system”, which offers twice the brightness compared to the “parallax barrier method” seen in devices on the market today such as the Nintendo 3DS or Sprint EVO 3D. See the image below for a rudimentary example of how this works.
Now there’s a lot to be said about how useless 3D is on smartphones today. It’ll likely continue to be nothing more than a marketing ploy in the years to come, but that 720p resolution … that’s pretty. The only device we can think of that has the same type of gorgeous high end display is the rumored Nexus Prime. It’s set to run the latest version of Google’s Android operating system, dubbed Ice Cream Sandwich, and it should be out by the end of the year. We’ve yet to see it in action, but considering the retina display on the iPhone 4 is one of the many reasons the that device is popular, we can’t wait to see what others do with an even higher resolution screen.
[Via: TechCrunch]