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Image quality. Is it an Android issue?

V

VGPod36

Newbie
I have had two Android phones so far, my first being an HTC Dream running Cupcake, and now I am on the Samsung Captivate. My issue though, is the very poor image quality of every single image when browsing the internet. I tested wether or not the phones are just downsizing them for the sake of memory, but nope, when you save these same images onto your phone and view them in your gallery, the image is still crappy. When you view the downloaded image on your computer, it's as if this quality reduction never happened.

I do a lot of browsing and so far this is the one thing I can find that the iPhone has over the Android. It is very annoying, and it even does this to images that are less than 100x100! Is there anything out there to fix this? Will Froyo fix it?

Thanks,
 
can you give an example of a website that is being ruined so to speak? i have never run into this issue on my phone when browsing the web on sites like engadget and stuff.
 
I don't know the specs of your phone, and I don't know, but am assuming Froyo isn't available for the Samsung Captivate if you haven't upgraded yet since it's free, but if your phone has a poor resolution that's likely just the specs for your phone. I have a Nexus One and the browser resolution is pretty good. When I download a picture from the browser the resolution seems to be the same. I'm not an expert in if software will fix image quality, but this is based on my experience pre and post the Froyo update.
 
The captivate is one of the new Galaxy S line of phones (i beleive AT&T's version) Verizon has the fascinate and the web images are perfect i find that i prefer the quality over my laptop. there may be a setting on your phone that needs to be changed but im not 100% on that one.
 
gallandof said:
can you give an example of a website that is being ruined so to speak? i have never run into this issue on my phone when browsing the web on sites like engadget and stuff.
Click to expand...
A decent example would be this image, the Geocaching.com logo.

On the web, it looks like this
http://www.geocaching.com/images/masters/logo_gc_large.gif

When viewed at full resolution on my phone, it looks like this
http://i56.tinypic.com/2qbu6p1.jpg
EDIT: This above image was just a re-creation done in MS Paint, not an actual example from my phone, however... it's very close to the real deal! I based this edited image on the actual image as viewed from my phone.

The Captivate is supposed to be one of the best phones on the market, and videos look amazing on it! But images from the web always look like crap... It can't be the resolution of the phone, because when you expand the image to it's full resolution, the image looks worse! For example, a solid vertical line as part of an image will look like a pixely distorted blurry line when viewed at full resolution..
 
Well the iphone have retina display so it will be a lot smoother when you zoom in all the way.The only android phone i see that have this is a sharp ios3 oversea that they call super view.
 
I don't really understand how the display has anything to do with it in this regard...

If an image is say.. (just an example, don't freak out!) a line of 4 pixels, should it not display as a line of 4 pixels, instead of a broken line of 4 pixels? Correct me if I am wrong, but at full resolution, an image should fill up the screens pixels in a 1:1 ratio, which would mean there is absolutely zero distortion. Even if the image is so large that when zoomed in, you only see 10% of it because of the pixel ratio of your screen, it should still look like the source image?
If my screen is 480x800 pixels, it should be able to display a 480x800 pixel image perfectly fine. All video, apps, games display fine, but still images in the standard .jpg, .gif, .png, .whatever do not display properly at all...

Maybe I am comparing a mobile screen too closely to a TV/Computer monitor, but... it's a pretty glaring issue that really does bug me. Maybe I will post a photo of an example later, if I can properly capture it with a phone screenshot or something..
 
VGPod36 said:
I don't really understand how the display has anything to do with it in this regard...

If an image is say.. (just an example, don't freak out!) ...
Click to expand...


Too late, I'm freaking out!

a line of 4 pixels, should it not display as a line of 4 pixels, instead of a broken line of 4 pixels? etc. ...
Click to expand...

Yes, so far that is correct.

If my screen is 480x800 pixels, it should be able to display a 480x800 pixel image perfectly fine. All video, apps, games display fine, but still images in the standard .jpg, .gif, .png, .whatever do not display properly at all...
Click to expand...

Theoretically, but practically there are other considerations. Pixel depth being the one i think is at play here. When you display video or 24 or 32 bit images, and they are not displayed at their native resolution, there is enough levels of variation in each RGB channel to properly interpolate the image to display smoothly. A .gif, OTOH is generally an 8-bit file and will not scale well.

Maybe I am comparing a mobile screen too closely to a TV/Computer monitor, but... it's a pretty glaring issue that really does bug me. Maybe I will post a photo of an example later, if I can properly capture it with a phone screenshot or something..
Click to expand...

FWIW, I tried your example file previously posted and it saved fine for me.
 
I have a Captivate, and I went to that website, and all the images looked perfectly fine to me. Went to some other random sites with high quality images, and still no issue. No clue why it would be doing that for you. If you're under warranty then maybe take it back to AT&T? I tried saving that pic and it didn't come out looking amazing, but I'm guessing that just how the pic is? Because I've downloaded wall papers from websites with no quality loss.
 
After a little testing using your example image here's what I am getting.

Test image is a 160 x 185 pixel 8-bit gif file.

This is the file saved from the desktop using Google's Chrome browser:

logo_gc_large_chrome.gif


This is the image saved from the default browser in Android 2.2.1 (Nexus One):

logo_gc_large_n1.gif


Here is the same file as viewed in the gallery:

image_test_gif.png


You will notice the poor quality. This is because the original image is only 160 pixels wide and the gallery app enlarges it to the 400 pixel width of the screen. It's exactly as expected for such an image.

Here is the screen shot with the image resampled back to its native resolution:

image_test_gif_native.png


I don't think your image quality issue has anything to do with Android altering the files, only in how the particular app presents it.
 
Any chance this might be a side effect of the AMOLED pixel setup? I think those screens are set up where instead of each pixel having a Red a Blue and a Green element, one will have RBB and the next one will have RGG, or something like that? I remeber reading about that when those screens where first coming out, and that odd setup can make images look a little jaggy to some people.
 
I'm 100% positive ya'll are over thinking this. It's a low qualitybimage, yet you expect the phone to re-render the image or something, as full quality or something?

I can, and will, tell you this. The way a picture is displayed, now days, has nothing to do with the screen type. If the image is of VERY poor quality and is very small, as the example provided was of both things, it will turn out looking very shitty. Look at an actual picture versus blowing up an icon, and you'll see what I mean.
 
In the gallery on Android 2.1, images are limited to 16-bit color, regardless of what the phone can display. Same with the web browser. Not sure if this was fixed in 2.2.

HTC phones are limited to 16-bit color (AMOLED) and 18-bit (SLCD), period. No software will fix that. But if 2.2 does fix the 16-bit issue, your Captivate should look better soon.
 
Thanks everybody, there is some good info in this thread. I will try and come up with a better example of a larger, really good quality image when I can find the time. Hopefully when the time comes, I can upgrade to 2.2 when Samsung releases it, instead of waiting for Rogers to release it... Oh I hate being in Canada sometimes.. example, we JUST got the captivate!
 
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