Wha?
> Both chips are capable of powering QHD+ (circa 3200 x 1440) displays at a smooth 90Hz refresh rate. Things get slightly bonkers when you drop the resolution down to FHD+ (roughly 2400 x 1080), with the Dimensity 1100 supporting refresh rates of 144Hz, while the Dimensity 1200 is capable of powering 168Hz screens.
> This feature is likely only of interest to those using their phones for competitive multiplayer gaming.
I know there's competitve games on mobile, but will refresh rates really make any perceptible differences? With your fingers obscuring lumps of the screen - and all the auto-aim mechanisms which have to be in place due to the low precision of touch-screen controls - I would have thought that the impact of upping the screen refresh rates would be so small as to be unquanitfiable.
(Saying that, this Nvidia page makes a lot of claims for how higher FPS affect gameplay. OTOH, they're literally in the business of selling faster and more expensive hardware to drive faster FPS, so I suspect their claims will be somewhat... embellished, shall we say.
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/what-is-fps-and-how-it-helps-you-win-games/)
is anyone likely to be doing serious competitive gaming on a mobile phone?
> In normal use, you'd crank that way down to conserve battery power, with 90Hz offering the perfect compromise between display speed and battery consumption.
Really?
I see a fair number of reviews from people enthusing about how upping the refresh rate makes things "buttery smooth". But I've never been convinced it makes a measurable difference.
And it doesn't take much searching online to find some (non peer-reviewed) blind testing which shows that even at best, very few people notice the difference between 90Hz and 60Hz.
https://www.androidauthority.com/90hz-smartphone-display-test-1065904/
https://www.phonearena.com/news/90Hz-vs-60Hz-display-refresh-rate-oneplus-7-pro-do-people-see-difference_id117148
https://www.phonearena.com/news/60Hz-vs-90Hz-refresh-rate-test-can-people-tell-the-difference_id121479
So, yeah. I can't help but suspect that the ability to drive screens at a million Hz is being done more for marketing purpose than anything else. And it'll sadly be turned on by default in most smartphones, thereby driving down battery life and wasting energy for no good purpose whatsoever.
(Though to play devil's advocate for myself, I'm guessing the high refresh rates can be useful when driving 3D displays, since there you have two displays to render and 3D viewing is notoriously more sensitive when it comes to refresh rates. But that's pretty much a niche case)
Anyhow, that's my "I don't see a need for it, so no-one else must have a need for it either" grumpy post of the day. Maybe I should have some more caffeine before going back on the interwebs again...