Scott When I click on those links, I get a message that the image could not be found.

I haven't seen a UI setting for increasing the display resolution when in screen mirroring.

      Scott Oh wow, that really looks pixelated. Far from the pretty sharp picture I get on an 1080p monitor. 🤔

        2 months later

        Scott
        I also see a lot better quality than this using and anker usb c hub with hdmi output. How are you connecting the monitor? Usbc straight from the phone to the monitor?

            Scott

            Looks like that monitor is prone to issues, especially with the usb port.

            Also the usb cable they supply isnt great -

            Included USB-C cable will not pass 5K resolution to your newer Macs

            I tested monitor with that cable and everything worked fine but supplied cables were trash. So I would expected additional costs associated with this monitor purchase to get the resolution up to spec. Still need to test hub with a new cable since failed to function correctly with supplied cable.

              With HDMI cable on TV it's working fine.
              With LG UltraFine 5K no luck.

              Ive not heard of other people having this issue. Most likely to be an issue with usb cables or the monitor.

              It's working reasonably well now. But I certainly don't have 4K resolution (the TV could), that's massively less. How can I have 4k output? I have a Pixel 8a. Thank you.

              3 months later

              Apparently the Pixel 8a is not the only affected model.

              The issue is the same or very similar on some other Pixel models, at least when connected to an external 4K display via USB-C DisplayPort to HDMI 2.0 adapter. It also results in a pixelated image on the external display. Though not quite as pixelated as in the example photos, but still quite noticeable.

              In general, it seems like the output currently is limited to a maximum of 1920x1080 @ 60 Hz, even if the external display and HDMI adapter is capable of 3840x2160 @ 60 Hz. And there currently seems to be no way to increase the resolution with the Android system settings GUI, not even with the new external display Android settings (which only seem to offer to adjust the rotation at the moment).

              This essentially limits the resolution on the external display to 1920x864 with black bars at the top and bottom (in landscape orientation) or even just 486x1080 with black bars on the sides (in portrait orientation).

              But even with these small resolutions, it shouldn't be as pixelated as it currently is.

              And the issue does not seem to be unique to GOS. Because it's also happening on the stock OS.

              It's not clear why @GrapheneOS set this forum thread to "Solved"?

              • de0u replied to this.

                DeletedUser130 In general, it seems like the output currently is limited to a maximum of 1920x1080 @ 60 Hz, even if the external display and HDMI adapter is capable of 3840x2160 @ 60 Hz.

                In any system there is some limiting factor. A GPU that can drive large monitors with a high refresh rate costs more chip space and more money and more heat than a GPU that can drive smaller monitors. A GPU pulling more and larger pixels per second out of the phone's DRAM will leave less DRAM bandwidth for running apps. Any given USB-C implementation (hardware and drivers) has some limit, which may well be less than the nominal "guaranteed not to exceed" throughput. Once any limit inside the Pixel is exceeded, it doesn't matter if the HDMI adaptor could do better or if the monitor could do better.

                DeletedUser130 And the issue does not seem to be unique to GOS. Because it's also happening on the stock OS.

                It's not clear why @GrapheneOS set this forum thread to "Solved"?

                This isn't a security issue (at least, it doesn't appear to be a security issue). And, since Google has steadily been making changes to their external-display support, it seems likely they will be making more changes. Typically the GrapheneOS project does not spend developer time trying to fix non-security "it would be nice" issues in areas of code that Google is changing rapidly. If the project doesn't plan to do anything about this, I can imagine that marking the thread as "Solved" makes sense from a tracking perspective.

                      de0u

                      In any system there is some limiting factor. A GPU that can drive large monitors with a high refresh rate costs more chip space and more money and more heat than a GPU that can drive smaller monitors. A GPU pulling more and larger pixels per second out of the phone's DRAM will leave less DRAM bandwidth for running apps.

                      It should not simply be assumed that recent Pixel Android devices can't do more than 1920x1080 @ 60 Hz over the USB-C DisplayPort.

                      Because Samsung and Motorola Android devices for example can do 3840x2160 @ 60 Hz (and more) over their USB-C DisplayPort, for multiple years. Some random example videos:

                      And they do not show any pixelation.

                      And:

                      de0u

                      This isn't a security issue (at least, it doesn't appear to be a security issue).

                      That's irrelevant. @GrapheneOS itself states that regular desktop operating systems (incl. Linux distributions) would be less secure than GOS.

                      So it's reasonable to assume that proper image quality on the USB-C DisplayPort output is in @GrapheneOS 's best interest, to enable the use of GOS devices as desktop alternatives.

                      And:

                      de0u

                      And, since Google has steadily been making changes to their external-display support, it seems likely they will be making more changes.

                      Hopefully so. But that still is not a reason to not bring it up on this forum.

                      Because @GrapheneOS is reporting to contribute to upstream. So it's not necessarily unreasonable to report these issues to @GrapheneOS (via this forum for example).

                      de0u

                      Typically the GrapheneOS project does not spend developer time trying to fix non-security "it would be nice" issues in areas of code that Google is changing rapidly. If the project doesn't plan to do anything about this, I can imagine that marking the thread as "Solved" makes sense from a tracking perspective.

                      As indicated above, it's not a "it would be nice" feature. It's an essential feature.

                      And instead of assuming what @GrapheneOS would or wouldn't think, maybe it would be better to simply let @GrapheneOS reply.