Recently, I had to replace the screen of my Pixel 7 Pro. After a three week delay, it’s finally back in my hands and working like a champ. When I turned it back on, the first thing I noticed was the screen brightness and sharpness.
This is not due to the new screen, but rather to the fact that I had reused the Pixel 6 Pro in the meantime. True, the difference between the screens of these two smartphones was immediately noticeable.
After noticing the difference, I opened the Pixel 7 Pro Settings to check what was happening. At that point, I remembered that the Pixel 7 Pro had the ability to switch between high resolution (at 1080p FHD+) and full resolution (at 1440 QHD+). I was surprised, even though the screen was absolutely brilliant, to see that my 7 Pro defaulted to 1080p FHD+. So it’s no surprise that I decided to push it further and see how much better it would be at 1440 QHD+.
What’s even more curious is that the Pixel 6 Pro has the same option, but defaults to 1440p HQD+. When you go to change the resolution in the Pixel 7 Pro to 1440p, it warns you that it will negatively impact the battery. And yet, the battery life of the Pixel 6 Pro was outstanding.
So I chose to switch my Pixel 7 Pro to 1440p to first see if it improved the display further and then see the impact on battery life.
Let’s talk about it. First, I’ll show you how to switch between resolutions, then I’ll tell you whether or not you should.
How do I enable 1440p QHD+ resolution?
What you will need : the only thing you will need is a Pixel 6 or 7 Pro.
1. Open the display settings section
The first thing to do is open the settings from the notification screen (or app drawer). Then press Display.
2. Open Screen Resolution
In the section Display from settings, locate and press enter Resolution of the screen.
As you can see, my Pixel 7 Pro is set to 1440p QHD+. Jack Wallen/ZDNET
3. Enable 1440p QHD+
Enable 1440p QHD+ resolution. Once done, close the Settings app.
At this point, you may need to close and restart some of the open apps. Otherwise, they might not take advantage of the new setting or behave a little weird (or crash).
Take note of the warning, but be aware that it is slightly exaggerated. Jack Wallen/ZDNET
Should I enable QHD+ 1440p?
This is the most important question. You would think the answer is a resounding “yes”. However, after spending a weekend going from one to the other, I was rather surprised by my findings, which are as follows:
-
Battery life I barely noticed a difference in battery life after switching to the 1440p QHD+ screen. -
Display Due to the size of the resolution, you get more images on your screen, but the difference in image quality isn’t as dramatic as you might imagine. -
Animation Animations are much smoother at 1080p. -
Scroll Scrolling seems a bit jerky at 1440p QHD+.
I noticed that over time (probably as frames were cached) scrolling and animations improved, but not as much as 1080p.
As for whether you should enable 1440p QHD+, the answer isn’t as complicated as you might think. For watching videos, 1080p is the best solution. With the naked eye, the image is just as sharp and does not suffer from jerks. However, if you tend to browse a lot of websites, read ebooks, or use other applications where more content is needed on screen at the same time, 1440p QHD+ resolution is by far higher than 1080p FHD+ resolution.
Think about it: since you get more frames on screen at 1440p, you’ll need to scroll less than at 1080p.
In the end, I recommend you upgrade your Pixel 7 Pro to 1440p QHD+ and see if that works for you. Because battery drain isn’t nearly as bad as Google might suggest, it’s certainly worth having the extra information displayed on your screen.
I left my Pixel 7 Pro on 1440p QHD+ and haven’t had a reason to put it back on…yet.
Source: “ZDNet.com”