Sharp reveals a ridiculous 5.5-inch 4K display, but will smartphones ever need that much?

The display arms race has been underway since companies decided Quad HD was the new high-end standard last year, but Sharp says that isn’t enough — displays need to be even more rich and dense than they currently are. The company today announced the development of a 5.5-inch display at a whopping 4K resolution. That’s 3,860 x 2,160 pixels if you aren’t aware, and stuffing all of that into a 5.5-inch form factor stands to bring you a pixel density of 806ppi.

That’s far higher than what the human eye is said to be able to notice, and it should make for a display quality that’s absolutely out of this world. Sharp touted the use of “IGZO” technology that is able to produce a richer picture while using significantly less power, something we imagine was important considering the batteries for the types of devices that these displays will be used for aren’t quite fit to handle such a thing.

A 4K display at this size is seen to be quite useless, though there are many benefits to be had for technologies such as virtual reality where a rich pixel density helps immerse you into whichever virtual world you’re whisked to. We imagine VR will be the initial and primary market for this sort of display, though we wouldn’t be surprised to see smartphone manufacturers wanting to use it just for the sake of saying no other smartphone’s resolution can beat theirs.

We’ll have to wait for its arrival in an actual device to see if there are any significant drawbacks to using the display (such as being more taxing on a mobile processor or sucking a battery dry before the sun sets), but it’ll have to wait as Sharp doesn’t expect to ship these displays until sometime next year.

[via Techblog.gr]

Sprint quickly backs down on ridiculous 600kbps video throttling

Yesterday, many of you expressed disdain for Sprint’s All-In plan. Not because the plan was bad or anything (it’s not terrible, we’ll put it that way), but because this plan seemed to enforce a special throttling clause that didn’t previously apply to any other Sprint plans.

That clause was that video streaming would be limited to 600 kilobytes per second at all times. To be clear, Sprint has always been upfront about having to throttle data usage, but the company’s previous policy was that this would only happen during periods of network congestion, a common tactic among all major wireless carriers.

Now, Sprint has decided against it. The company came forward with a blog post today saying they heard your cries and will no longer go through with plans to permanently limit video streaming speeds, though they were quick to note that they still may “manage the network” in times where things are clogged up.

The move comes at a time where the FCC is cracking down on companies for questionable practices that violate the net neutrality rules that were recently put in place (and more coming into effect down the line). Those rules don’t completely forbid Sprint from limiting speeds in situations where they deem it necessary to maintain network quality, but they do state that the company has to be upfront about it.

And, in defense of the Now Network, they actually were upfront. But they probably thought about that huge 0 million fine AT&T got slapped with not too long ago and thought it best to just avoid getting on the FCC’s bad side altogether.