Sharp Sampling 4K IGZO Displays for 15.6-inch Laptops
The tyranny of ubiquitous 1366 x 768 displays may soon be coming to an end.
Sharp has announced that in order to "support emerging demand for 4K panels for notebooks," the company has become the first manufacturer to provide 15.6-inch notebook displays that offer a resolution of 3840 x 2160 (282 ppi).
Though technical specifications are still pending, it is known that the panels utilize Sharp's IGZO technology which "improves light transmission and enables thin-film transistors to be more compact."
Sharp began sample deliveries of its 4K IGZO LCD panels this month, and production is scheduled to begin in February 2014 at Sharp's Kameyama Plant No. 2. While there's no information on what companies will be adopting this display, XBit Labs has speculated that Apple may install it onto the next-generation MacBook Pro "provided that supplies are decent."

And they wonder why the desktop market is losing sales.
Next we will be seeing 4K on phones... As if the clarity between a 720P and 1080P wasn't already baseline indistinguishable by the human eye...
Why does it always have to be about gaming? There are many uses for laptops aside from that and I bet the majority of them are used for non-gaming purposes just like the majority of desktops are also used for non-gaming purposes. Last time I remember seeing numbers about it, computers sold for gaming accounted for less than 10% of retail sales.
Video and photo editing is also out of the question on a laptop.That leaves what? Watching videos? Higher resolutions mean greater viewing area on the desktop which equates to smaller font sizes at any given screen size. I suppose they should include a pair of glasses with magnification as well
Next we will be seeing 4K on phones... As if the clarity between a 720P and 1080P wasn't already baseline indistinguishable by the human eye...
actually, it's quite easy for me to tell the difference between a 1080p phone and a 720p phone.
But that's not the point. Very, very soon they're gonna run into a brick wall as far as advancing mobile displays go. After a flexible 1080p screen, what more could you want in a phone?
Where as on the desktop, there's so much more to improve on and they just won't do it.
If you've ever used a Chromebook Pixel or Retina MP you know what I'm talking about. Looking at those screens is pure joy.
1920x1200 displays work decently well for Eclipse and Visual Studio though they'd work better w/ 4:3 displays which no one makes any more :-P
All I can imagine is my 4k 15.6" notebook, 120" 4k TV, 5" 4k cellphone, and my 24" 1900x1200 monitor...
All I can imagine is my 4k 15.6" notebook, 120" 4k TV, 5" 4k cellphone, and my 24" 1900x1200 monitor...
Hah.
... next to your 4K per eye Virtual Reality glasses.
Not really.
IGZO may have faster pixel switching speed and lower pixel activation energy but that accounts for only a small fraction of total display power. Combined with IGZO's better light transmission, the complete panel including backlight is only ~20% more power-efficient since the bulk of the LCD's power goes to the backlight... and at least 83% of that light gets wasted somewhere between the LEDs and the liquid crystal matrix even under ideal circumstances.
If you want power-efficient displays, you need OLED, SED or other similar emissive technology that does not rely on wasteful filters and polarized arrays: direct emission is 6X as power-efficient as an ideal backlit LCD.