The hardware supports 16 million
The OS supports 16 million

for performance, the OS is running the hardware at 65k colors.

It would be an interesting experiment to see how it performs running at a 32 bit depth, but not that interesting.

Note that even if X is running at 16 bit, it should(/might/I can't really remember anymore) be possible for an app to directly access/set the hardware framebuffer and display video/images at 32 bit depth.

All LCDs used on mobile phones use TN-Film LCD matrices which gives them 6-bit per color (or in human-readable numbers - 64 levels of red, green and blue). However, since programming in 18bit is a bit awkward, again, while the displays can show 18bit (3 x 6bit per color), or 262144 different colors, framebuffers are limited to 16-bit (or 65536 different colors).

So N900, just like any other mobile device featuring a LCD screen, is capable only of 16-bit color palette (or less). And it doesn't stop only on cell-phones, most, if not all of the laptops also have 18-bit screens, but since they have greater resolution and stronger hardware they could do away with working on 24-bit palette and using various dithering methods to give an illusion of fuller color fidelity. M/PVA and H/S-IPS screens that could display real 24-bit color palette are way too expensive and way too power consuming for mobile devices.

save for the iphad ... it uses ips, and is "mobile(ish)"

Yes, but hardly a handheld, and certainly not a mobile phone... What's even more perplexing is that Apple uses TN-Film on their MacBooks (incl. Pro), while they've added an IPS screen on an arguably useless device, especially where such a screen is not needed at all...

The clarity of the screen doesn't help on the colours fluctuating when watching movies or display high quality images on it. If we have 16Mil colours then we can display higher definition images and displaying its colour vividly and exactly like how it supposed to be.

165xxxxxxcolurs > 65356colours

The more colours the better display, and no need dithering just to fool the eyes to believe that the colour is there.

It seems like everyone thought the N900 has 16M colour TFT resistive screen, but it actually got only a fraction of the 16M colours. 65k is just out dated. After find out about this, my N900 seem to be an old lady with so much cosmetic makeup on to flush the flaw.. of the imperfection.


I've found mixed of blog said that the N900 has 16M colours and some say 65k colours.

http://www.conceptsnews.com/htc-hd2-vs-nokia-n900/
"The display is great at both phones.The resolution is the same 800X480 but the HD2 has a screen of 4.3” wider than the N900 that only has 3.5”.But that’s not a big loose for the N900 because it has 16M colors when the HD2 only has 65k.But not so bad after all."


http://www.phonegiz.com/2010/02/nokia-n900-review.html
"The fully functional keyboard QWERTY is not the only easy feature for you to gain comfortable usage of the phone but also the touchscreen. The N900 has a 3.5 inch capacitive touch screen TFT 16 million colors and offers resolution 800 x 480 pixels. The series features screen acceleration sensor for the automatic sensor and proximity to disable the auto-off included."


http://www.articleultimate.co.cc/?p=1028
"Whereas Nokia N900’s 3.5 inches TFT Touch Screen has 480 x 800 Pixels resolution and offers 16 Million colours. "


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_N900
"The Nokia N900 has a 3.5 inch resistive touchscreen with a resolution of 800 × 480 pixel (WVGA, 267 ppi) capable of displaying up to 16.7 million colors.[30] The LCD is transreflective to permit usability over a wide range of luminosity (from daylight to dark)."

Outdated you say? What other cell phone has an LCD panel with 16.7M colors? Show me one that is publicly available and I'll personally refund your N900 purchase! For f. sake, MacBook Pro (and all the older iMacs) has a worse screen than the N900 (same kind of panel, but much lower dpi), and it is used on a daily basis by those who claim to be graphics professionals.

Easy. Every LCD smartphone done until today has been 65k.

hey so instead of an argument how about we find out how to fix the issue, how can we change the bitdepth to show more than 65K cuz this is really bothering me, esp if the screen and OS are capable id at least like to see the downside for myself.

Can anyone help this situation out? I mean do we know which cfg's control bit depth?