Pixels very much exist in hardware outside mobile. Microsoft’s clear type even exploited the specific layout of color channels in discrete hardware pixels. Mobile displays are all over the place, but most other displays use standard RGB layouts.
Right, but there's still an addressable set of display units that convert an RGB signal to actual glowing lights, right?
It seems like defining px to be perceptual is one of those compatibility hacks that probably helped a ton back in the day, but we have perceptual units and now we're stuck with that baggage.
I don't have much of an opinion on this (I use em) but it has taken me by surprise a few times.
> Right, but there's still an addressable set of display units that convert an RGB signal to actual glowing lights, right?
Yes. But those glowing lights aren't little squares in a neat horizontal and vertical rows.
The square pixel is useful in logical contexts - like an SVG or bitmap graphic. But when it is turned into a physical display, those pixels aren't displayed as little squares. The RGB elements are arranged in dozens of different formations depending on the display technology.
Yes, except 80% of those displays align them as neat little rows and columns. Mobile is really the outlier with odd formations. Nearly everything else is physically identical to the grid conceptual model.
