Patent ID: 8839143

Claim:
An apparatus for improving quality of an image displayed on a display unit of a portable terminal, the apparatus comprising: a display buffer for storing a thumbnail of the image and displaying the stored thumbnail on the display unit; a zoom buffer; a memory in which an original image of the thumbnail is stored in a format of a compressed image file; an interface unit for receiving an image enlargement request while the thumbnail is being displayed on the display unit and, upon receiving the image enlargement request, enlarging the thumbnail stored in the display buffer and storing the enlarged thumbnail in the zoom buffer, and sending an image quality improvement request to a decoder; and the decoder for performing a decoding operation to improve quality of the image being displayed on the display unit, wherein a requested image size is checked when an image resize request is received from a user, the enlarged thumbnail is resized to the checked image size, the resized thumbnail is stored in the display buffer, and the resized thumbnail is displayed, and wherein the decoding operation is performed independent from a user interface operation, the decoder commences the decoding operation before receiving the image resize request from the user, and the decoder continues the decoding operation until an image size of the thumbnail reaches a maximum image size to which image quality can be improved.