I have a few questions about this...

It seems the screen is fixed to 18bpp and software is generally written in RGB565. Obviously, a h/w limitation many devices are subjected to. On the device, that's fine because the pixel density is quite high and everything generally looks quite good.

- I'm not clear as to whether the frame buffer is similarly limited or can it handle True-Color (or whatever it's called)? Indeed, is that what the much-touted specs really refer to - the SGX530 can render 16M colours, even if the screen can't?

- The reaason I ask is when an external screen, capable of displaying 24bpp, is used in lieu of the standard one, can the graphics hardware cope even if the display cannot?

- Can data go straight from the frame buffer to the out channel, without going to/via the screen, thus no need to be interpolated down? (out channel could be any, not just the normal tv-out e.g. BT, wifi, etc).

- Can the frame buffer render different sizes/proportions to that of the screen? Again, if connected to a different screen, this would be ideal for running desktop applications. Not much more, say 1024 x 768. Though, the N900 might have to live in a bucket of dry ice to do this!

Incidentally, those green artifacts that appear on embedded video streams - do they occur because of the 888 - to - 565 conversion?