Samsung is reportedly working on an 11K screen, claims it can create 3D illusions

Samsung is reportedly working on an 11K screen, claims it can create 3D illusions

A recent report claims that Samsung is working with an industry consortium in a bid to create ultra-high definition screens, with some additional investment from the South Korean government. The new project, dubbed EnDK, will focus on building an 11K display in partnership with 13 unnamed foreign companies and a total of $26.5 million dollars of government funding. Apparently Samsung is hoping to have a prototype display by the 2018 Olympics.

The Korea IT News claims Samsung is targeting 2,250 pixels per square inch, which works out to a shade less than 11,520 by 6480 pixels on a 5.1-inch screen. Put in pixel terms, that’s a massive 74 megapixels. Modern 1080p screens are two megapixels, 4K displays are eight megapixels, and even hypothetical 8K displays top out at 32MP. In short, Samsung wants to slam on the gas to build ultra-dense displays and it claims that doing so would create images so vivid “there is an optical illusion where it is same as watching 3D screen. Because 11K is able to show screen colors in detail, it is able to show 3D-effect.”

This is a rather strange claim. There are already existing technologies for using glasses-free 3-D — Sharp has previously marketed 3D LCD panels and Nintendo’s 3DS uses a parallax barrier already to create 3D imagery. An 11K display might have astonishing levels of clarity and detail, but such features aren’t enough to create what’s typically thought of as a 3D image. We reached out to Dr. Raymond Soneira, to see if we’d missed something. Dr. Soneira runs DisplayMate and regularly puts together some of the most comprehensive screen evaluations in the entire display business.

According to Dr. Soneira, there’s no known method for making a display look 3-D just by pushing pixel density — and there’s even less reason to think that a massive 2,250 pixels-per-square inch density would be particularly useful. Human visual acuity typically tops out at 20/10, though the absolute lowest acuity ever measured was 20/8.9, meaning that an individual standing 20 feet away from an object could see detail that a person with what’s considered “normal” vision (20/20) would see at 8.9 feet. If 20/20 represents normal healthy vision, 20/10 would be the typical human peak, with only a tiny number of people capable of seeing better than that.

“The highest human visual acuity is 20/10 Vision, which is twice as sharp are normal 20/20 Vision,” Dr. Soneira told ExtremeTech. “At a typical smartphone 10 inch viewing distance 20/10 Vision corresponds to about 690 ppi. At an obnoxiously close 5-inch viewing distance that is 1,380 ppi (but note that it is very hard to focus that close, so the eye’s acuity would actually be lower due to optical distortions in the lens). That’s still only about half of the proposed 2,250 ppi.”

He went on to note that even the 20/10 claim could be inaccurate when applied to smartphones because the conditions used to test acuity typically assume high contrast, very sharp test images viewed in near-darkness. Smartphones aren’t used in anything like these conditions, which means it’ll be even harder to see any benefit from the proposed resolution. To test this, try using your phone in daylight as opposed to darkness – you’ll see much less image details, even with the display at maximum brightness. “For example, the iPhone 6 has a measured contrast ratio of just 76:1 in 500 lux, which is typical indoor lighting, and about 300:1 in 125 lux, which is very dim indoor lighting,” Dr. Soneira said.

Why high resolution displays are the wrong idea

I’ve written before about why high-resolution displays are fundamentally barking up the wrong tree, but with Samsung talking up 11K displays, it’s time to return to the topic. First and foremost, every pixel in a mobile display requires power to operate. When you ramp up the pixel counts, you increase the amount of power required to operate the panel, while simultaneously decreasing the amount of light that can pass through the tiny gaps in the display and actually reach the end-user.

Companies have continued to innovate around these problems, to be sure, but an 11K display would pack approximately 9.25x more pixels than a current 4K panel. In order to keep power draw constant compared to 4K, we’d have to reduce total panel power consumption by roughly 90% from present levels. That’s going to be extremely difficult, particularly when you consider the need for GPU technology that can actually drive the panel.

Modern high-end GPUs from AMD and Nvidia can drive 4K above 30 FPS with system power consumption of 280-350W and hundreds of GB per second worth of memory bandwidth. While Wide I/O should be available by the time Samsung hopes to debut its technology, keep in mind that 11K is more than 9x the pixels of 4K, and driving 4K successfully requires the most expensive GPUs you can buy today. A 74-megapixel display on a 5-inch device would need far more GPU firepower than we can build into desktops or can reasonably expect to build into desktops. Keep in mind that since the absolute best human visual acuity tops out around 690 PPI, we’re still talking about PPI densities that no one can actually see.

There are other, better ways to improve visual quality. Higher-quality color reproduction. Better wireless standards that allow for less image compression. Redesigned display standards that consume less power and allow for longer viewing, or better, more even backlighting — all of these options would improve what people see when they reach for a smartphone or tablet. And they’re all a better idea that shoving pixel density out the point where you literally need better-than-human vision to see differences.