Compatibility Mode

There are plenty of Palm OS applications in the world that don't know about high resolution displays, and let's face it, plenty of those applications will never be rewritten to support the new display. All applications on the N710C start up in "Compatibility Mode", allowing older applications to display exactly as they would on an older, low resolution Palm.

When you start up an unmodified Palm OS application on a stock N710C, you'll see the same old fonts, the same old buttons, the same old everything. This guarantees a very high level of backward compatibility with existing applications.

Enhancing Existing Applications

Showing your old software in low resolution on a new N710C isn't very exciting. Waiting for software developers to update their applications to support high resolution isn't very exciting either. There is a way to run many existing applications in high resolution mode, using what sony calls "High Resolution Assist". The PEG-N710C includes a Preferences panel called "HiRes" that includes a checkbox "Enable High Resolution Assist." If you turn on High Resolution Assist, your N710C will stay in high resolution mode when running all applications. Almost unbelievably, old applications that were written for a 160x160 pixel screen will magically transform into high resolution applications. You will see the exact same amount of information on the screen at the same size, but higher resolution fonts and user interface elements will be drawn. Even custom bitmaps will be drawn at the correct size, though they will not be high resolution (they will be drawn pixel-doubled).

How does the N710C accomplish this amazing feat? All of the Palm OS user interface functions know that the application is assuming a 160x160 pixel screen, so the N710C simply doubles all screen locations and draws the high resolution version of the user interface element at that position. Great care was obviously taken to ensure that all parts of the user interface would be spaced exactly right when running in this mode.

Here's an example of what's going on in this situation. An old Palm OS application that uses the Palm OS user interface functions might want to display a 40 pixel by 15 pixel button on the screen. Let's say the application wants to draw that button 60 pixels from the left and 140 pixels from the top of the screen. If the N710C display is in high resolution mode (and it will be if we have High Resolution Assist turned on), the application will still ask the N710C to draw the 40 by 15 pixel button at location 60,140, but the N710C will actually draw an 80 by 30 pixel, high resolution button at location 120,280, and it will throw in a high resolution font for the button text while it's at it. This is a really nice effect, as it makes almost any old application look really spiffy.

Of course, if the old application draws directly to the video display hardware without using the Palm OS display functions, you can see that this wouldn't work - but that's what Compatibility Mode is for. High Resolution Assist allows you to put a checkmark next to applications that should always run in Compatibility mode.

And Finally... High Resolution!

You can run old applications in low resolution. You can run old applications with high resolution fonts and user interface elements. And, of course, new applications can run in full high resolution mode.

High resolution wouldn't be all that great if you could never display more information on that screen, now would it. Note that in both Compatibility Mode and High Resolution Assist, the screen may have been showing more pixels or nicer fonts, but it wasn't really showing more information. The screen is of course capable of showing four times the amount of information as a standard Palm. For example, let's say you wanted to play AcidFreecell against somebody else in battle mode over a wireless link - the first player to win (or not lose) wins the battle. This head to head mode of AcidFreecell doesn't exist, but as the screen shot on this page shows, it would be a breeze to fit both player's playfields on the screen. For multiplayer games, high resolution is simply a must.

There are many other obvious uses for the high resolution display - text editing and e-book reading applications come to mind. For those that have good eyesight, the old standard Palm font can be used on the high resolution screen to cram four times the information on the screen at one time.

Fortunately, developers don't have to do too much work to support full high resolution. The functions to draw in high resolution are exactly the same as the standard Palm OS function calls, so they will be familiar to all developers. It is even possible to mix and match - some interface elements can be drawn in High Resolution Assist mode, while specific parts, such as text in an e-book reader, could be displayed using the high resolution function call. Supporting high resolution on the N710C really is easy, so expect to see a lot of applications supporting it soon.

More Information

For more information about high resolution mode, pixel doubling mode, running older applications in high resolution, and Red Mercury's support for high resolution, see these pages:

Performance
Technical Info (You Are Here)
Our Impressions
N710C Screen Shots
Red Mercury Games Screen Shots

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