Is it possible to upgrage the LCD panel?

I’ve noticed the LCD viewing angle in landscape orientation is pretty poor, I think the LCD was designed to be viewed in portrait. If you’ve got any gradients in your graphics they look noticeably different in your left and right eye when the LCD is in landscape and it’s kind of jarring.

Would it be possible to upgrade the LCD (or even drop in an OLED) if there are any compatible parts? I don’t know enough about components to try and source one myself.

I asked the same thing from the lcd supplier. The glass is cut to work from portrait orientation (used in featurephones). Asking for a different orientation was an option they were not willing to even offer

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That sucks. How interchangeable are LCDs?

The display business is not “off the shelf” business. You need to use a display type that is common in some other application. In the case of Pokitto, this is a fairly standard size (=cut of glass & controller) with a custom flex cable. Custom because that dropped the price alot. They are made for Pokitto.

You can have any sort of display in any size and orientation and controller made just for you but we are (seriously) talking about devices that sell in the 100k-1M units range. We’re not there yet.

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Ah, OK. I was wondering if it was a decision you made to hit a certain price point. If it’s all that individually tailored then fair enough.

Thanks for the info!

It was a decision to hit a price point. Look at the back buttons? Look familiar? They are from GBA.

Pokitto would not have been possible without cutting some corners. Launching a plastic injection molded product with 1.5 people of manpower and <20k$ is not a usual thing.

Edit: making something in the 100 - couple of thousand range is the most difficult area to work in. You do not have economies of scale yet you can’t do everything by hand.

@eried was asking about marks on the side of the plastic parts. Or why the display holder has a screw. Its because molds were designed as “natural” molds with no sideways actions. Nintendo doesn’t have such marks or artefacts in their parts. Reason? Their molds cost 50-100 times more. Simple as that.

Everything about Pokitto was getting to a price point. Thats what I am trying to explain.

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Oh, no, I appreciate that! I’m not having a go. I understand that at this scale you have to make trade-offs. What I was trying to get at is if you picked the LCD to hit a price point but if it was an off the shelf unit that could be easily swapped out for something more expensive if we wanted to. You’ve explained that’s not possible, I just didn’t make myself clear.

Apologies if I’ve come across as complaining. The pokitto is an excellent platform and quite an achievement. I’m having fun developing for it.

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Don’t worry. I didn’t take it in any bad way. I work in product R&D and I get beaten every day :grinning:

The reason why I go into detail is I want to encourage people to look at the products they use and try to understand how they were created. I am completely open to criticism!

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I failed to answer your question though.

Replacing with a bigger TFT is entirely possible provided you are a hot shot with a soldering iron (to hack the display connector) :wink:

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