I can see Steve's point but what he's actually complaining about appears to be failings with S60 rather than any inherent problem with VGA.
If a version of S60 were compiled that supported VGA (proper zooming, dedicated fonts etc) and it was put on a platform that could move that many pixels around smoothly, there would be no performance/experience issue.
As for cost, well that will obviously come down as VGA becomes the standard.
The issue here isn't that QVGA is in some way better - it isn't - but that it is a better fir right now for a company that has always struiggled to produce software to the same high standard as its hardware.
Furthermore, if you think asbout Nokia's increasingly desperate attempts to monetise mobile data for itself and its operators, then VGA must be the immediate future as it's in video and gaming that the company appears to have ther best shot at taking on iPhone's extraordinary boost top mobile data use.
No Unregistered, going from QVGA to VGA doesn't double the number of pixels on the screen, it quadruples it. The performance degradation is most noticable in software rendered games (as Steve pointed out in the original article), but also when scrolling in any app.
When porting a gaming engine to the first S60 3rd edition devices (going from 176x208 to 352x406, meaning four times the number of pixels on the screen), I ran some benchmarks, and the frame rate dropped from 40-50fps for eg. the N70, to around 20 for the E60, E70, N80 etc.
Sure, the E71 is a business device, so gaming shouldn't be a high priority, but the lower performance would definitely be noticable. And if Nokia changed the screen resolution to VGA, they'd have to use a much faster CPU, which might just make the device too expensive for the customer group they're targetting.
(And as always, people who discuss phones on web forums are not representative of the general customer. Not even for smartphones.)
Steve,
The example you are giving on a 96 dpi platform are not justifying.
Nokia really got it all wrong this time with E71
a 2.8 or 3 inch with 640x480 is really worth it.
I can say this from my experience of N82 and N6300.
Although both the screens have same 320x240 rez, there is nothing that comes close to the N6300 screen in terms of clarity and readability.
if Nokia can manage 320x240 on a 1.8 inch screen why not have a 640x480 on a 2.8 or a 3 inch screen?
Have a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo_1973
Display:2.8 in. VGA (480�640) TFT, 282 pixels/in.
Stated; --- The E90 struggles on many sites and some apps because "They're" not expecting the screen size.
Be Innovative
Build them (VGA+) and they will come.
Hi. The argument should not be why VGA or QVGA, but should be why Nokia did not use 416x352 as the E70/N80. But for phones with 2.8 inch and bigger screens then maybe we could ask why not VGA.
However, if you're on a Symbian 9.3 device like the N78 for example, you'll see:
176x208
208x176
240x320
320x240
320x480
352x416
416x352
480x320
480x640
640x480
800x352
Nokia seems reluctant to use the full potential of QVGA, using needlessly large text sizes for most applications. For smaller screens (less than 2.8 in) they should stick to the current S40 font sizes or lower. What's the use of having all that real estate if you're seeing the same amount of data?
Most importantly, font smoothing like Cleartype should be implemented for *all font sizes*, in all S60 devices. Small doesn't have to mean illegible, but this is the case in most of the S60 screens now. Cleartype works wonders with small font size legibility.
If Nokia does move on from QVGA, the next step should be 480x320 or 320x480. It has a wider/taller AR than QVGA, which would be better for widescreen videos, browsing etc (Less black bands). TVs and PCs are already moving to widescreen, and the mobile should follow.