MS Smartphone

Uhm, noone smartphoning around?

Doesn't it just use the PocketPC API?

I assume yes. If there's GAPI or direct framebuffer access, it's all right. But if I had to blit every single pixel using GDI, it rather would be a slideshow...

GAPI can give you raw access to the primary display surface. So can DirectDraw on Windows Mobile 5.0 devices. GAPI is a deprecated API and apps should be written to use DDraw going forward.

You can get decent performance from GDI if you create an offscreen DC and DIB section, then do a 1:1 blit from the offscreen DC to the display. Reading/writing to the DIB section will be as fast or faster than reading/writing to the display using GAPI/DDraw. It probably won't be as fast as using DDraw or GAPI to get your bits on the screen, but it has the advantage that it you'll only need one code path to work on all previous and future Windows Mobile devices.

Also on the GDI blit vs. GAPI, on most VGA WM2003 devices, GDI is faster than GAPI.

So not only is it good for moving forward to WM5, it works well with QVGA and VGA devices. There are a few drawbacks to just using GDI for fullscreen applications, mainly that there are so many ways to get minimized or hidden by other windows. If you can live with that, GDI is great.

thanks for the tip, frob
the GDI vs GAPI speed you mentioned, has anything to do with GAPI's pixel doubling on VGA devices?