I've seen way too many times people asserting that they will be in shock if Nintendo's next handled will not have a 1080p screen and find this fact inexcusable because even mid-end phones have these kind of screens and yadda yadda.
I want to put an end to this because these kind of expectationsare wrong not only for Nintendo but for everyone that at this point in time wants to build an handheld console.
Everything circles around one single factor and that's power consumption.
The first point is that however you want to put it the screen would incredibly inefficient power wise either it being 3,5 inches or 5 inches, the first ones because higher the pixel density is more power you need for light to go through all these pixels and the second ones because obviously you need more powerful lights to cover such a wide area. The difference in energy required between different resolution screens is huge.
The second point is simply horsepower, to drive those pixels you need a lot of power and even if mobile processors are evolving like crazy it's simply not enough, let me elaborate:
The most powerful mobile chip at the moment is arguably the A8X in the iPad Air 2 and its theoretical power is weaker than (but kinda comparable to) the one in the PS360, why did i bolded "theoretical"? Because even under stress your tablet/smartphone will never use the 100% of its horsepower otherwise its battery would drain in minutes not hours and you convey that a console that lasts this much is not a very good one... to add to all that please also notice that this is a tablet SoC which takes benefit of the way bigger body and battery, useless to say that such processors are not fit in a console form factor.
Now let's cheat and let's say that they use a chip this capable one for the console, how many PS360 games you remember that run flawlessly at 1080p? Even the WiiU which is kind of more powerful than those two doesn't manages to do so. An even better example of this would be the PSVita that with a very very high end 2011 SoC struggles to run games at its native resolution of 960x544.
I hope that everyone now understand that you need an huge amount of power and a stupidly big battery to game at these resolution, the Nvidia Shield Portable for instance, which is the closest thing that some of you guys want, to play Half Life 2 which is a real game unlike the ones of smartphone/tablets for 2-3 hours with a "mere" 720p screen needs a Tegra4 (high-end 2013 hardware) and a whopping 7350 mAh battery which is twice as big as the one in the Galaxy Note 4 and the same capacity of the one found in the iPad Air 2.
Also Nintendo nowadays never goes for the high-end hardware but that's another whole story.
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A little side note to say that while it seems that i talk all big and stuff i'm not an expert in technology and all i learned is thanks to stuff i read on the internet so please if real experts wants to chime in to correct something stupid i said or to back me up please do so.
I want to put an end to this because these kind of expectationsare wrong not only for Nintendo but for everyone that at this point in time wants to build an handheld console.
Everything circles around one single factor and that's power consumption.
The first point is that however you want to put it the screen would incredibly inefficient power wise either it being 3,5 inches or 5 inches, the first ones because higher the pixel density is more power you need for light to go through all these pixels and the second ones because obviously you need more powerful lights to cover such a wide area. The difference in energy required between different resolution screens is huge.
The second point is simply horsepower, to drive those pixels you need a lot of power and even if mobile processors are evolving like crazy it's simply not enough, let me elaborate:
The most powerful mobile chip at the moment is arguably the A8X in the iPad Air 2 and its theoretical power is weaker than (but kinda comparable to) the one in the PS360, why did i bolded "theoretical"? Because even under stress your tablet/smartphone will never use the 100% of its horsepower otherwise its battery would drain in minutes not hours and you convey that a console that lasts this much is not a very good one... to add to all that please also notice that this is a tablet SoC which takes benefit of the way bigger body and battery, useless to say that such processors are not fit in a console form factor.
Now let's cheat and let's say that they use a chip this capable one for the console, how many PS360 games you remember that run flawlessly at 1080p? Even the WiiU which is kind of more powerful than those two doesn't manages to do so. An even better example of this would be the PSVita that with a very very high end 2011 SoC struggles to run games at its native resolution of 960x544.
I hope that everyone now understand that you need an huge amount of power and a stupidly big battery to game at these resolution, the Nvidia Shield Portable for instance, which is the closest thing that some of you guys want, to play Half Life 2 which is a real game unlike the ones of smartphone/tablets for 2-3 hours with a "mere" 720p screen needs a Tegra4 (high-end 2013 hardware) and a whopping 7350 mAh battery which is twice as big as the one in the Galaxy Note 4 and the same capacity of the one found in the iPad Air 2.
Also Nintendo nowadays never goes for the high-end hardware but that's another whole story.
----
A little side note to say that while it seems that i talk all big and stuff i'm not an expert in technology and all i learned is thanks to stuff i read on the internet so please if real experts wants to chime in to correct something stupid i said or to back me up please do so.
