Checking overscan - Bezel.apk

[Renate]

This is a very simple utility so that you can check if your device is overscanned.
It shows little arrows that should just kiss the edge.
If your overscan is greater than the number the arrows will be blunted.
If your overscan is less than the number you start seeing arrows from the outside.
Just play with the buttons until it's right, that number is how many pixels are hidden by the bezel.
http://www.temblast.com/android.htm
This screen grab shows the outside arrows creeping in.
Visually, you can't see that.

[mergen3107]

Mine has also 5 points optimal.

Is there a way to change the view frame size?

[Renate]

Originally Posted by mergen3107

Is there a way to change the view frame size?

Sorry, I don't know what you mean. Isn't it showing full screen?

[mergen3107]

Sorry, didn’t make it clear. Can the Android “reported screen” be changed? So that it will draw inside this 5 points offset

[Renate]

Originally Posted by mergen3107

Sorry, didn’t make it clear. Can the Android “reported screen” be changed? So that it will draw inside this 5 points offset

Oh, I see what you mean. You don't want a change to the app, you want a change to the system.

I was helping someone once and they had accidentally set their screen to 50 x 50 pixels. They were unable to password swipe their way in after doing that. To help them I did the same to mine. Wow, that was tough getting out!

Some of the older eink panels had a "border" circuit. They had little pixels just like the main area but they could only be controlled all together.

Anyway, I know that you can change the resolution, but it scales to the screen.

$ wm size 480x640
$ wm size reset

This is harmless (as long as you do the reset afterwards) and it will make the arrows in Bezel really big.

I've seen apps that deal with overscan, but I haven't looked at how they are doing it.

I'll look into this.

[Renate]

Oh, that's interesting. My Poke3 has it, but my Poke5 doesn't.

$ wm
  overscan [reset|LEFT,TOP,RIGHT,BOTTOM] [-d DISPLAY ID]
    Set overscan area for display.

Overscan option was removed in Android 11.

[mergen3107]

I have it, it seems. What units are these? Pixels?
Like, can I do “wm overscan 5,5,5,5”?

[mergen3107]

Update: I tried it with these values. Looks OK for the most part of it. KOReader looked much better after restart. However, some apps need adjustments. For example, my custom jbak2 keyboard did not adjust well although it button sizes are given in percentages from the total width. So it doesn’t know about the overscan stuff. I might ask the dev about it.

Also, I can just try changing “wm size XxY” where X and Y are the same as original res, but each 10 px shorter

[mergen3107]

This didn’t help much, though. KOReader didn’t see the change at all. Size+overscan at the same time looks terrible, UI elements are skewed randomly left/right

[mergen3107]

Here is the example of how it looks with 5px overscan around the screen. It just draw a black border.

KOReader shrinked down nicely, the bottom progress bar now doesn't affect the number of lines per page so much. So I was able to move its bottom margin from 1 to 5.

[mergen3107]

P.S.: “black” borders are only visible when taking screenshots. Screen itself just doesn’t start drawing most of the UI outside overscan values.

[Renate]

OMG, what are all those numbers at the footer. It would drive me insane.
5,5,5,5 is correct (in pixels).
Yes, I've seen that it just does a black border.
Probably a theme change could turn that to white.

There's so much stupidity to fight against.
I'm still trying to figure out what's wrong with the Poke5 "Squonds" or rounded squares or whatever kind of icons they are.

[mergen3107]

Originally Posted by Renate

There's so much stupidity to fight against.

Isn’t these are the reason we are all here in this thread?

For icons, I was able to change them in developer setting, almost at the very end of the list. There are droplets, squares, circles and mixes of those.

[Renate]

Originally Posted by mergen3107

For icons, I was able to change them in developer setting, almost at the very end of the list. There are droplets, squares, circles and mixes of those.

Yeah, but I'm dealing from the other end, that goofy shapes make my icons look bad.