>Why would anyone want more than 1080p on a phone?
Because 1080p on a 5 - 6 inch device creates visible pixels to the naked eye, and can be improved upon with a higher quality screen.
I have a 1440p 5.5" smartphone and the difference next to 720p is staggering and the difference next to 1080p is still noticeable to the untrained eye. The tests I use to demonstrate to people include well formed text display, comic-book display, and Unreal4 demo. People pick out the 1440p screen as best without much issue in every test.
I get that > 1080p makes sense for text and vector graphics. But really, what are you realistically going to watch on your phone that's been filmed with a 4K camera and optics that match that resolution? The fact that phones are shipping with 4k video capability does not mean the quality is better than the same camera shooting 1080p, especially when you take into account the limit on bandwidth in the encoder chip, so 1080p can be recorded at a higher bitrate.
I remember with previous size jumps, it gets to a certain point when you want to be able to decode 4k video, even if your display (or eyeballs) can't handle it, just because that's easier than transcoding the original file.
I'm not entirely convinced that the minor benefits from increasing resolution so much offset the cost in terms of battery life, especially on devices where screens are already the most power-hungry parts.
>But really, what are you realistically going to watch on your phone that's been filmed with a 4K camera and optics that match that resolution?
You seem to be avoiding the fact that the primary use case of smartphones includes images and text, not video.
You're right that video of sufficiently high enough quality to notice isn't readily available -- but who cares?
1440p makes the text under an app icon easier to read.
It makes webpages easier to read.
It makes "online magazines" crisper. It takes better advantage of a plethora of high resolution iconography and imagery designed to take advantage of "retina" this and "4k" that.
Sure, it maybe a decade before we're streaming >1440p video on our devices, but higher resolution screens making better text was a need ten years ago, not just today.
>>Why would anyone want more than 1080p on a phone?
>Did you miss the fact that we are discussing a video codec?
I apologize that you cannot follow basic thread context. I have provided the question that I answered for you so you can understand that the context of this thread wasn't artificially limited as you suggest -- (the question wasn't "with regards to video content only, why would anyone want >1080p"...)
Furthermore, I broadened the context explicitly by listing my 3 different tests (including video) that I based my answer off of. If you didn't want to use this context, you should not have replied to me, because I found these tests relevant to the larger question of why >1080p is useful and will become standard.
Because 1080p on a 5 - 6 inch device creates visible pixels to the naked eye, and can be improved upon with a higher quality screen.
I have a 1440p 5.5" smartphone and the difference next to 720p is staggering and the difference next to 1080p is still noticeable to the untrained eye. The tests I use to demonstrate to people include well formed text display, comic-book display, and Unreal4 demo. People pick out the 1440p screen as best without much issue in every test.