WinMo team member explains why Microsoft went with 240 x 240
By Evan Blass 
posted Feb 17th 2006 5:00AM
posted Feb 17th 2006 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.
Thanks for that info!
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.
240x240 is really too little for smartphone applications, whatever the reason.
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?)
A 650 would be wonderful!