2019-10-25_Phone_Resolution.utf8

On 2017, I began analyzing mobile device releases and the change of resolution over the years. This is the 4th iteration of that. You can check the last one here - (Resolution Wars: Q4 2018 Update) . It’s been almost 9 months since that article and I think its about time we revisit it and get the full status of 2018.

About Source Data

We will be using dataset based on GSMArena up to 23 October’2019. This time around our final device count after cleaning and munging data is 9,389 up from 9,121 in last report. I’ve outlined the clean up process in my earlier article, so not repeating it here to keep things concise and sane until I change something in the process.


9,389 number of devices in after cleaning data and removing anomalies

Resolution categorization

For categorizing myriad of resolution, I have divided them in six broad categories with little help from this Wikipedia page.


Category Lower.Limit.Megapixels. Upper.Limit.Megapixels.
1. Below nHD 0 0.22
2. nHD 0.23 0.51
3. qHD 0.52 0.91
4. HD 0.92 2.06
5. FHD 2.07 3.68
6. Quad HD 3.69 3.69+

So, a phone having a resolution of 1200x1920 (2.3 Megapixels) will be lumped in FHD category because it has got more pixels than FHD(1080x1920 or 2.07 Megapixels) but less than Quad HD (1440x2560 or 3.69 Megapixels).

Visualization

With all challenges solved, our dataset looks like this-



Lets first plot a stack chart with number of devices in each category since the advent of time (or more precisely, since they started tracking them).


After almost 10 months in 2019 number of device models releases continue to decline as device manufacturers consolidate and simplify their offerings. I expect the full year to end at 33-35% below the 2018 figure

From numbers to share of total devices by resolution category.


It is business as usual. FHD continues to accelerate while HD continues to fall. Quad HD remains at similar percentage for 5 years running possibly due to lack of reasons (read 4K videos and similar battery life) to have Quad HD as handheld devices

Here is the same with picture in stacked column chart for a different take on the same visualization.

End Notes

So, a trend with not much twist - HD is fast becoming old school as FHD is accelerating. Quad HD remains stagnant for 5 years running.

That’s it for today. Stay tuned and keep on commenting and sharing your views.

If you got a data-related challenge worth solving, you can knock me in the links mentioned in profile section and may be we can help each other out.