WinMo team member explains why Microsoft went with 240 x 240

by Evan Blass posted Feb 17th 2006 at 5:00AM

Maybe we're a little biased, but we think blogs are great- especially when they allow big corporations to disseminate information and serve as a communications channel for interacting with customers. Such is the case with the Windows Mobile Team Blog, where Microsoft veteran Mike Calligaro answers a question that's crossed everyone's mind at one time or another: Why did big M choose to support 240 x 240 resolutions for mobile screens, when rival Palm was making devices with 320 x 320 displays? Calligaro explains that when Microsoft was looking for a resolution to support that would improve upon QVGA screens, the next logical step was of course VGA. But since they wanted the OS to also support QWERTY-based devices with square screens, they could either choose to lop off pixels from QVGA and VGA versions of the code, or go with the non-standard resolution of 320 x 320 (which Palm had naturally used to improve upon their old 160 x 160 devices). Ultimately Microsoft chose the 240 x 240 route (which we're starting to see on devices now), along with 480 x 480 support (which will start to appear on future handsets) for backwards compatibility purposes: it's easier to scale QVGA apps to look right on VGA screens than it is to scale back and forth with native 320 x 320 apps/screens. So there you have it- apparently we've been comparing apples and oranges all along, or in this case hi-res versus lo-res smartphones.

Filed under: Handsets, Windows Mobile

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Neutral

Pete M @ Feb 17th 2006 7:34AM

Thanks for that info!

Neutral

Saif @ Feb 17th 2006 9:50AM

So, rather than make the interface more flexible, they chose to support resolutions that were graceful degradations from their target resolutions. It makes sense, but it's not very satisfying. I would have expected a bit more extended GUI support from an OS with the word "windows" in the name.

Neutral

Ivan Icin @ Feb 17th 2006 2:38PM

240x240 is really too little for smartphone applications, whatever the reason.

Neutral

Rob Mars @ Feb 18th 2006 9:27AM

They just don't get it.
Consumers don't give a sh*t about satisfying producers' product line lifecycle goals; they want to see products IMPROVE.
(you hear that, Palm?)

Neutral

Lincoln @ Feb 19th 2006 3:52AM

A 650 would be wonderful!

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