My phone does not have an HD display, but it can still play 720p videos. Why is that?

[venom0706]

I have a Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini. It does not have a full HD display, however, it can still play 720p videos, without any problem and with no lagging. Is this normal and will this damage the phone? If it does not support hd videos, why does it still play them? Thank you.

 

[krtshv]

I have a Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini. It does not have a full HD display, however, it can still play 720p videos, without any problem and with no lagging. Is this normal and will this damage the phone? If it does not support hd videos, why does it still play them? Thank you.

720p is not full HD.
Full HD is 1080p.

Playing 720p is normal.

Besides, by "supporting Full HD" I think they mean the ability to provide is full quality.

 

[venom0706]

My mistake, I meant that the display is not HD - the resolution of the display is 540x960. My question is, will playing 720p (1280x720) damage the phone and will it lag? Until now I have tried several videos and they seem to run just fine. But how does the phone play them if the display is not HD? How do they not lag, but run smoothly?

 

[ipwn3r456]

Playing videos that is higher than the device's display resolution will not damage the phone. As long as the phone supports the video file, it will play. About lag, most smartphones nowdays should play 1080p videos, doesn't really take that much processing power. If you are taking about very high resolutions (something like 4k videos), or codecs that requires high CPU processing power (something like h265 codec, which isn't widely used yet, still new), phones will have a hard time playing the video, which will cause lag because phone's hardware today aren't enough for that (for now, as technology always advances).

 

[truegenius]

chipset of galaxy mini s4 supports video playback and recording of full HD (1080p @30fps) using hardware decoder

thus you can process/play h264 encoded 1080p video @30fps without any lag

and it does not damage you phone
it means that you can enjoy your 1080p content without any lag irrespective of your display resolution that is 960x540