I had the thought the other day that the total screen resolution of the N900 is twice that of the iPhone, and I have been wondering about the implications of this.

First off, am I right? Math is not my strongest suit, but the numbers convinced me

iPhone screen res: 480x320 = 153,600 total area pixels
N900 screen res: 800x480 = 384,000 total area pixels

This makes it double the visible resolution, in about the same size of space, correct?

The reason this makes such a big deal to me is this - I have found that I am experiencing much less eye fatigue while using the N900 when doing things that are fairly eye-intensive - like reading text, for example.

I make this comparison to all the other hand-held LCD units I've had in the past, which have had resolutions equal to or less than the iPhone's.

For example, a key use I have always strived to get out of my handheld units is that of an e-book reader. However, I have never felt fully satisfied by them for that purpose, and I always felt it was because reading off the LCD screen was just not a comfortable, stress-free experience.

When e-ink became the new rage (Kindle, et al), and was being touted as the best solution to eyestrain on a portable screen device, I was very excited. However, I was not that impressed in the end.

I never thought it was because of the fineness of the resolution of the screen (well, never thought that was the main problem.

But what I have discovered in the N900 is a screen that I can read text off of for hours at a time, with almost no eyestrain.

So my question is, could the fineness of the resolution really be the Holy Grail of usability when it comes to portable screens? And it really never did have anything to do with the strengths and weaknesses of reflectivity, or back-lighting, or anything else?

I am interested in other people's opinions about this - about how the quality of the N900 screen has affected their sense of usability of the screen, for longer perionds of time, in particular.

Or am I the only one who spends time viewing the screen form more than a few minutes at a time? I do acknowledge that I might be an anomoly in this regard. I spend very little time texting, or "power browsing", etc, but I will gladly read pages of text for upwards of an hour or more. The N900 makes this more possible than ever for me.

I like more pixels (see my thread on reading PDFs on the n810

I've read a number of novels on the n810 (800x480 as well) with fbreader, and it worked out really well. I've also read novels on the Palm T5 without eystrain, so it's not much evidence one way or the other.

Personally, for reading scientific articles, I'd prefer a full page (8.5x11") but otherwise the nxx0 series has been ideal. I could never make it really work out on the T5.