[Verizon Samsung Galaxy Note II] minazaki:
All, jprovan1 had some questions about DPI settings, and I helped him via PM. I thought this post might be helpful to some others who wanted to start experimenting with LCD density, but weren't too sure how. Anyone who's more knowledgable than me about this, please make any corrections. Just trying to help.

OK. First of all, the basic concept of LCD density (or DPI) on the phone is similar to changing the resolution on the monitor of your computer. In real life, it means making things look bigger or smaller, and being able to fit more or less on the screen. The way it works in Android is a little bit different than the way it works on a computer though. This informative link explains exactly how the phone calculates how to scale: http://www.androidtablets.net/forum/android-tablet-usage-tips-tricks/9444-lcd-density-explained.html

So that's conceptually what changing DPI settings is.

Now, in terms of practically how to do it, there are a few things you should know:

1. The LCD density for your device is defined in a very important file called build.prop. This file lives in /system/build.prop. You should back this up before you make any changes to it.

2. The default LCD density on the Note 2 is 320.

3. You can change the DPI GLOBALLY (for the entire device) by editing the build.prop file.

4. You can change the DPI on a per-app basis if you have the Xposed framework installed, along with the Per App Settings module, both of which are included in Beans ROM.

TO CHANGE LCD DENSITY GLOBALLY

1. You need a file explorer with root capabilities. I personally use Root Explorer.

2. Using your file explorer, navigate to /system/build.prop, and make a backup.

3. Open build.prop for editing. (You may need to mount your system as R/W instead of R/O in order to do this).

4. Scroll down and look for the lcd density entry (note, it may be listed twice, you have to change both):

ro.sf.lcd_density=320

5. Change the value to your desired LCD density (remember, this change will be system-wide). True "phablet" mode uses an LCD density of 240

6. Save your changes and reboot your phone.

Caveats: some apps (most notably, Contacts/Phone) will not work at 240, and you will have to manually set them back to 320. More on this in the next section.

TO CHANGE LCD DENSITY ON A PER-APP BASIS

1. Go to Settings -> Custom Settngs -> Xposed Framework Installer

2. Press "Install/Update" and proceed to install Xposed framework. Reboot as prompted.

3. Go back to Settings -> Custom Settings -> Xposed Framework Installer

4. Go to the "Modules" tab. Enable App Settings and Xposed Tweakbox

5. Go to Settings -> Custom Settings -> Per-App DPI Settings

6. Select the app for which you'd like to change LCD density and adjust the settings as desired. As an example, let's change the EMail app to tablet mode:

- Search for the EMail app (com.android.email) and select it

- Turn the On-Off switch at the top to on

- Change DPI to 240

- Change screen (dp) to 600x1024

- Optional: you can increase font scale if after changing to tablet mode, you find the fonts too small.

- Hit the save button in the upper right hand corner, and accept the prompt.

7. Go into the app, check to see that it worked.

8. Profit.

NOTE: If you chose to change your global LCD Density by editing build.prop, and need to revert some apps that aren't working correctly, you would follow this exact same procedure, except you would change the DPI for those apps to 320 (since your system-wide LCD density is 240)

IMPORTANT:

Don't try to force tablet mode for the settings app. It will not work, and you won't be able to get into the settings app.

If you do something that you can't fix (like try to force tablet mode for the settings app) and you need to fix it, you have to flash the Xposed-Disabler-CWM.zip in recovery. This zip is automatically pushed to your device when you flashed Beans ROM. You can find it in /sdcard/jellybeans/. After you flash this file, Xposed framework will be disabled, and everything will be back to default.