TOKYO: Sony Mobile says no plans to launch smartphones using an ultra-HD 2K screen in the near future because it remains difficult to convince consumers of the benefits of such an upgrade.
Jonathan Lin, general manager of Sony Mobile’s Taiwan branch, said his company has held a lot of internal discussions about adding a 2K screen with a resolution of 2560 x 1440 pixels to a phone.
Such a technical progression from a full-HD screen with a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels will need to wait until Sony Mobile can make significant improvements in display quality and digital image processing technology, he said.
“At the moment, making the move to 2K technology on 5- to 5.5-inch screens does not seem able to achieve market segmentation, so we have no plans to launch 2K phones,” Lin told the press at the Taiwan launch of the Xperia Z3+ flagship phone, which sports the same-resolution 5.2-inch full-HD 1080p display as its predecessor.
Lin confirmed that Sony Mobile will use a 2K screen only on its tablet lineup, such as the new 10.1-inch Xperia Z4 Tablet, which he said has resulted in significantly better performance than the company’s previous models.
2K screens have been used by a number of other Android phone makers, including Taiwan-based HTC Corp. South Korea’s LG Electronics Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co., and China’s Xiaomi Inc., Oppo Electronics Corp. and Vivo Electronics Corp.
While a 2K screen allows more details on the same size of display, battery life of mobile devices remains a major concern for this technology because it consumes more power than lower-resolution screens.
