Thread: Asus Eee PC launched
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Milhouse is offline Milhouse
2007-11-04 , 05:53
Posts: 3,401 | Thanked: 1,255 times | Joined on Nov 2005 @ London, UK
#64
Originally Posted by exon View Post
Really? These are LCDs, not OLEDs. Isn't the backlight the primary source of power consumption in a LCD? This would suggest that the power required is a function of physical size and the designed/selected brightness, but not resolution. (Excepting the additional demands that more pixels place on the CPU/GPU.)
Backlighting could well remain the same assuming they replace the 7" 800x480 screen with a 7" 1024x768 screen (and backlighting is the biggest power drain) however LCDs are like dynamic memory and each pixel (row/column address) needs to be constantly refreshed so by increasing resolution it means more pixels need to be refreshed in a given period of time, requiring slightly more power than would be needed for a screen with fewer pixels. I really don't know if it's a big enough difference to have a noticeable impact on battery life, but I've read that doubling the amount of dynamic RAM in an N800 (ie. 128MB->256MB) would have resulted in reduced battery lifetime and I'm guessing the same is true of a higher res LCD.

But yeah, the warehouse theory is equally likely!