Device Resolution lower than advertised

[bmgsmith]

I have a new Samsung Tab A 8.0. It is advertised as having a resolution of 1280x800. However, when I ran a test app I got an effective resolution of only 961.5 x 600.9. I have seen this kind of behavior with Samsung before and I was always able to correct this with the Zoom feature. Adjusting the Zoom to the minimal value has always corrected this so that the advertised resolution and the effective resolution were the same. In this case, for my new Tab A 8.0 (and also my new Tab A 10) setting the Zoom to the minimum does not fix this, it still appears to be zoomed in slightly. 

I tested this theory by enabling developer options and setting the Minimum Width attribute manually. Doing this gets me the result I am looking for, and the screen looks great, but is clearly not a practical  solution.

So, my problem is this. I have many Enterprise clients that use Samsung tablets, and we tune our UI to take advantage of the 1280x800 resolution, but Samsung seems to have thrown a wrench into this by not actually allowing some devices to operate at this resolution.

Am I missing something here, or misunderstanding something?

Is the Zoom feature faulty on newer devices?

Is Samsung trying to improve gaming FPS by forcing a lower resolution? 

I can use all the help I can get on this. Thanks everyone in advance.

[mytech]

@CHMultimedia can you confirm or deny this 🤷?

[oooOmitoOooo]

the unit is dp, not px.

the attached screenshot, as reference, is from my tab s4.

[bmgsmith]

Yes. However this is the part that I guess I don't understand. The number of pixels is a physical reality and cannot be changed, and so of course is the dpi, however DP is an abstraction and not actually fixed, you can change it, which is what the zoom does. If you change your zoom level on your s4 you will end up with a different dp and density factor (since they are related). Changing the dp in the developer options does the same thing as the zoom, but with more precise control. If you change the zoom level you will see this reflected in the dp in the developer options.

Now, my Samsung Tab A 8 (SM-T290) is an 8x5 tablet rated at 1280x800. This yields ~160 dpi. With this I should be able to achieve a 1:1 ratio of dp to pixels with default zoom levels but I get much lower than this (962 x 601). At 962x601 my screen is basically zoomed in from what I would expect, and I cannot zoom it out any more without directly adjusting the developer options.

Same problem on my Tab A 10, but with my older Tab E I get the exact result I expect.

So, what I am really trying to figure out is if the default zoom, or minimum zoom, is incorrect on the newer devices or is Samsung artificially reducing the effective resolution the device can operate at? Or am I just insane...

[oooOmitoOooo]

ok, first lets clarify that resolution and density are not the same.

what app is giving you 961.5 x 600.9?     Does it label it resolution or dp?

I'm doing some tests here.

In my tab s4 under settings -> display -> font and screen zoom I set both zoom modes to HUGE.

attached screenshot of result.

[oooOmitoOooo]

ok, I understand your question now.

no matter what zoom you set (min or max), the resolution is fixed.  

Zooming will affect density.

The confusion, IMO, is with the factory default value of settings -> display -> zoom screen.

on a side note:  did you check developer options -> minimum width?

[bmgsmith]

Yes, I believe the problem is with the default value of the settings->display-zoom.

I should be able to adjust the zoom setting to get the dp higher, near a 1:1 ratio with the pixels. This has not been a problem on previous devices I have owned but appears to be a problem with a lot of newer devices.

Yes, I did check the developer options->min width. By adjusting this manually I can achieve exactly the behavior I was expecting from the zoom setting. Unfortunately, I cannot ask my enterprise clients to enable developer options and manually adjust this, it needs to be done from the settings->display-zoom setting. I should also note that adjusting the zoom setting will of course reset the value in the developer options. 

Thanks.

[ShardCollector]

I have a Galaxy S6 and it has a similar problem.

The device has a physical resolution of 2560 x 1600, but I cannot get it to show to websites for more than 1280px x 800px. You can test this with www.mydevice.io

In Firefox, if I select use desktop site, the viewport width is actually even worse, at 980px.

I don't seem to be able to render webpages at full resolution, even if I have set the zoom level and font sizes to minimal values.

[oooOmitoOooo]

cool site

www.mydevice.io

thanks!