9 replies to this topic

[fexpop]

Hi,

I'm from Germany and don't know about the Galaxy's advertised specs in the UK. So while the folllowing holds true in Germany you have to decide about it's relevance in other countries.

In Germany the Galaxy is advertised as displaying a color range of 16 million colors, i.e. 24bpp color depth. To the best of my knowledge, this is not true!

• $ cat /sys/devices/virtual/graphics/fb0/bits_per_pixel
    16
  
• I've put a small programm "Galaxy Lie Detector" on the german www.android-hilfe.de forum , which should display all 256 shades of red, green, and blue which are possible on a 16 mio. color display together with a RGB_565 (16bit color depth) version. As you can clearly see, the 24bit and 16bit versions of the gradients don't differ and there's very obvious banding. That is: The Galaxy is only capable of displaying 65536 colors (at the moment???)

Samsung keep perfectly quiet about this after inquieries. Nobodoy, but hem, knows if this is going to be fixed in future Firmware versions.

After all, even if the display isn't any better on the Hero, I'd prefer not being ripped-off.

Kind regards, Felix

P.S. : The attached scrennshot is directly from my Galaxy. As an interesting side not: Look how the banding of the green gradient differs from the red and blue ones. It's because on the 16bit RGB_565 color space, green has a 6bit color depth while the others are only 5bit.

Attached Files

•  GalaxyLieDetector.png   8.75K   60 downloads

[kam187]

I read about this, its quite anoying!

That forum seems very active, but its all in german Maybe your could answer a couple of questions for us english people!

- Is there any rumour of when a new firmware update will be available? (eg did anyone from that forum email samsung or O2 and get any news)

- Is it possible to downgrade to the old firmware yet (I saw some firmeware downgrade project but the translation was pretty bad)

- Any news on the missing apps problem? I read that the new italian rom doesnt have this problem, but an itlaian user on here says he does.

- Is there any clean nandroid backup of the old firmware available anywhere?

- Anyone working on customisation now the source code is released?

I'm sure you don't have all the answers, but just a quick line on if there is any news or rumours amoungst the huge ammount of samsung users there would be nice

thanks

Edited by kam187, 22 August 2009 - 02:02 PM.

[fexpop]

kam187, on Aug 22 2009, 14:02, said:

I read about this, its quite anoying!

Yes, it is!

kam187, on Aug 22 2009, 14:02, said:

That forum seems very active, but its all in german Maybe your could answer a couple of questions for us english people!

- Is there any rumour of when a new firmware update will be available? (eg did anyone from that forum email samsung or O2 and get any news)

End of August is expected. Presumably when the Galaxy starts in the UK btw.

  

kam187, on Aug 22 2009, 14:02, said:

- Is it possible to downgrade to the old firmware yet (I saw some firmeware downgrade project but the translation was pretty bad)

I'm not quite sure, but I don't think so. Both firmware versions are just different shades of bad! But I for one wouldn't want the old firmware back. After some time, the battery really does seem to last longer now.

kam187, on Aug 22 2009, 14:02, said:

- Any news on the missing apps problem? I read that the new italian rom doesnt have this problem, but an itlaian user on here says he does.

It's solved! Apperently by Google. It doesn't seem to be directly related to the firmware, but to a misconfigured filter in the market server.

Kind regards, Felix

[kam187]

cool, thanks for the answers

[Gintoki]

fexpop, on Aug 22 2009, 16:48, said:

End of August is expected. Presumably when the Galaxy starts in the UK btw.

Are you sure? Do you know if it will fix the flickering problem and the low battery life?

[fexpop]

Gintoki, on Aug 23 2009, 01:37, said:

Are you sure? Do you know if it will fix the flickering problem and the low battery life?

No, I'm not sure at all. On the contrary, I'm only sure that *nothing* is sure with respect to the Galaxy. In Germany, meanwhile o2 has changed the specs to reflect the missing of previously advertised features (modem/tethering, Bluetooth data transfer).

I've completely lost my faith in the future perspective of the Samsung Galaxy. I'm expecting halfhearted patches and denial of bugs. BTW, don't expect multitouch to come to the Samsung Galaxy anytime. I don't expect Samsung to go for Android 2.0 on the Galaxy and there is no Open Source multitouch driver for the Melfas touchscreen they use.

I'm personally going to withdraw my contract tomorrow, and get a HTC Hero.

For the flickering problem. I can't tell you, I don't see any flickering on mine. My display actually looks quite good, it just hasn't the 16 mio. colors that they advertised.

The battery life doesn't seem to be any worse than you could expect on an Android device. It's really not that bad, if you keep it out of the cover that comes with it: The cover seems to push the camera button so that the device would not go into sleep mode.

Kind regards,

Felix

Edited by fexpop, 25 August 2009 - 08:18 PM.

[kam187]

Check out the new firmware.  Its made a big difference to the speed and available memory.

[fexpop]

kam187, on Aug 27 2009, 04:04, said:

Check out the new firmware.  Its made a big difference to the speed and available memory.

Does the new firmware solve any of my primary issues?

• Modem functionality (advertised by o2 Germany)
  
• Bluetooth data transfer (advertised by o2 Germany)
  
• 16 million colors (advertised by Samsung and o2 Germany)

These are the reasons for my returning the phone. Speed has not been an issue.

[kam187]

fexpop, on Aug 27 2009, 08:10, said:

Does the new firmware solve any of my primary issues?

• Modem functionality (advertised by o2 Germany)
  
• Bluetooth data transfer (advertised by o2 Germany)
  
• 16 million colors (advertised by Samsung and o2 Germany)

These are the reasons for my returning the phone. Speed has not been an issue.

I'm not sure, but I'd guess not!

[kooy]

fexpop, on Aug 27 2009, 07:10, said:

Does the new firmware solve any of my primary issues?

• Modem functionality (advertised by o2 Germany)
  
• Bluetooth data transfer (advertised by o2 Germany)
  
• 16 million colors (advertised by Samsung and o2 Germany)

These are the reasons for my returning the phone. Speed has not been an issue.

Modem has always worked.

I'd like to see a fix for the other two though (especially Bluetooth, don't really care about the colours).