SCREEN UPGRADE 1366 x 768 to 1920 x 1080 touchscreen for Latitude E5540 impossible?

Moggy,

The resolutions for the system are HD 1366 x 768
HD+ 1600x900 

@DELL-Jesse L, a quick look at the Specifications section of the Service Manual on support.dell.com (not to mention perusal of eBay) reveals that the E5540 was absolutely available with a WUXGA/FHD/1080p display.  The specs you're quoting are for the E5440, although even there I would personally bet that was due to a market positioning decision and not a technical limitation.

Maggy, this one surprises me.  I would have predicted that if the display worked at all, it would do so at its maximum resolution.  The display output used for the internal connector would certainly have the bandwidth to support 1080p, so my only guess for the behavior you're seeing is that there's something in the firmware that's hard-coding that output for the resolution of the display it shipped with, which might have been done to ensure that things like the Dell logo and the BIOS setup render appropriately. This is more of an issue on systems available with either 1080p and 4K displays due to the vastly different pixel densities, for example, although even there I would have thought that the display resolution would have been dynamically detected and the output automatically adjusted as needed rather than being hard-coded. Anyhow, if I'm right and that firmware setting isn't user-configurable, you may be stuck. Sorry!

The BIOS simply reads the EDID from the screen -- if it's still showing 1366X768, then that's the screen type you purchased.  Check with the seller of the screen for details.

A quick check with parts-peoople.com shows that FHD IS supported on this model - but only with non-touch screens.

www.parts-people.com/index.php

Jesse,

I have another Latitude E5540 which was originally bought with 1920*1080 screen (non touch)

So you answer might not be correct?

thanks

Indeed all these reasons you state, many thanks for your suggestions

My idea to upgrade to 1920 AND touch was a bit of an experiment (I needed 1920 anyway)

Glossy gives a bit more vibrant colors...

Sorry to hear about the error, but glad you found the answer!  For what it's worth, if you weren't aware of the non-touch version, you might want to consider that. Unless you really need the touch functionality or like the glossy look, I personally find anti-glare far more useful because I'm not trying to see my display content through essentially a mirror. Touchscreens also add weight, thickness, and cost, and decrease battery life a bit.

I think ejn63 has the right answer here.  You probably just got the wrong part from the seller.  Simplest explanation is probably the right one. Except the point about 1080p only being available with non-touch, because this data sheet says there are 1080p non-touch and touch displays available for that model.

I just checked; seller made a mistake indeed!

You're right on all accounts... :-)

Thanks for your follow up!