

IPhone 4 to have dense IPS display - mootymoots
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/05/29/czech_report_says_iphone_4g_will_sport_dense_960x640_ips_display.html

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tumult
I love my Nexus One's screen (AMOLED.) Android 2.2 corrected a lot of color
calibration problems present when it was released, so the red/warm caste is
mostly gone. The colors seem 'cartoonish' at first, since the contrast ratio
is so ridiculously high compared to a normal screen.

You'll use it for a few days, then look at your iPhone (well, if you're a dork
like me, you'll have both) and the iPhone will look washed out and crappy. The
dark areas on an AMOLED are especially dark -- it looks like the screen when
it's off. In other words, the screen on a Nexus One (and HTC HD2, etc.) looks
pretty much the same with a full black screen as it does when it's powered
off. Very cool.

Here's the downside: it's garbage in daylight. Even if you aren't in direct
sun, as soon as you're outside, that vibrant screen turns into an
indecipherable grey rectangle. Far worse than a TN or IPS display.

Apparently there are upcoming 'Super AMOLED'-type panels that should work
better in daylight, but it's not what you'll get on a device right now, so oh
well.

I spend most of my time in the dark, so the daylight thing doesn't bug me too
much. The viewing angle is also very good on an AMOLED screen, better even
than IPS.

It makes sense that Apple would choose IPS over AMOLED. IPS works in a broader
range of conditions. Imagine the howls of anguish if people couldn't use it in
daylight. There are lots of Android phones to choose from, so you could always
get one without an AMOLED display. But there's only one iPhone.

The condescending tone in this article ("made this way to save money" repeated
over and over) is retarded. They come off sounding like fanboys. At 250+ dots
per inch, you can't see the difference between an irregular grid or a regular
grid. Seriously.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
HTC HD2 and the very similar Evo 4G have a standard screen, not AMOLED. If you
happen to be allergic to one or the other then Android's _fragmentation_ lets
you choose.

Also, don't fall into their rhetorical trap. The irregular grid may well be
better, and the difference may well be visible at current iPhone resolution
and be positive in AMOLEDs direction. This may, or may not, become less true
as the next iPhone doubles height and width, but I'm not going to assume
anything based on Appleinsider's take on the matter.

I don't think anyone's linked yet to the very in-depth Ars Technica article
that looked into this screen technology:

[http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2010/03/secrets-of-
the-n...](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2010/03/secrets-of-the-nexus-
ones-screen-science-color-and-hacks.ars/)

spoiler: the 800x480 RGBG screen could be considered equivalent to a 653x392
RGB one, and regarding the iPhone:

 _The Nexus One screen remains better than the iPhone screen for text
reproduction because the overall resolution is much higher, even taking into
account the factors I describe. So if the iPhone is your measuring stick, the
N1 screen really rocks. Overall, the N1 display is beautiful and vivid with
dark blacks and incredible photo reproduction._

So this screen (and other standard screens with 800x480 pixels such as the
Droid he mentions in the article) had leapfrogged the iPhone. A new iPhone
will be out soon, that it appears will leapfrog these screens. Welcome to
technology.

~~~
tumult
Oops, you're right, the other phones are not AMOLED. I had assumed they were,
for some reason.

I don't doubt the resolution on the iPhone HD/4g will be better than the Nexus
One. I just don't think that the non-rectangular pixel grid on the Nexus One
is a huge drawback at that DPI.

This is going to seem like a really silly conversation in 10 years, when
technology has moved on.

------
axod
> "The Nexus One's screen uses a "PenTile" grid, reportedly to reduce costs,
> which packs smaller green pixel components between red and blue elements.
> This irregular arrangement of subpixel elements results in the Nexus One
> providing a less accurate display of lines on the screen."

Is that really accurate? Our eyes are less sensitive to green than red and
blue so it seems like the nexus one grid is logical. Also anecdotally my Nexus
One display actually seems clearer and more vibrant than my iPhone 3g.

It'd be cool to have a more technical description of how the 2 approaches
compare.

Edit: I just took pictures of my iPhone 3G, Nexus One, MBP and Samsung LCD TV.
It's a close up of the Google logo on each display.

The Samsung one is especially interesting. It does make for a very clear
bright display actually.

<http://axod.net/IPhone3G_Google.jpg>

<http://axod.net/NexusOne_Google.jpg>

<http://axod.net/MacBookPro_Google.jpg>

<http://axod.net/SamsungTV_Google.jpg>

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Eyes are _more_ sensitive to green, that's why Pentile RGBG as in the Nexus
One screens have twice as many green pixels as red or blue ones.

Also, as anyone who follows the Apple blog scene knows, the author Mr. Dilger
is either a callous manipulator who has hit on a lucrative pro-Apple-troll
writing style, or is a very scary individual indeed.

~~~
axod
Oops. Thanks. I knew it was one or the other.

The article here seemed to just blindly dismiss it as an "irregular pattern",
suggesting it's like that purely for some cost reason - why would it be
cheaper to create an irregular pattern rather than a regular one? :/

~~~
DougBTX
(OT Snark: So, regardless of which way round it is, it's still logical right?)

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anigbrowl
The AMOLED pixel layout on the Nexus one is actually the same as that employed
in many professional video codecs, just in case anyone was wondering where it
originated. There's a lot of research backing up its viability as a balanced-
looking display arrangement.

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frou_dh
It's nice to see Apple get behind IPS to the extent that you don't even have
to dig in to the Tech Specs page to be told that the iPad uses it (
<http://www.apple.com/ipad/> )

IPS monitors on the desktop are a treat to use, especially if they're
calibrated. All TFTs are nowhere near created equal.

~~~
MikeCapone
Absolutely. I'm still waiting for a good, affordable IPS and LED backlit
desktop LCD to replace my aging Dell 20", and my hope is that Apple will help
push this technology back into the mainstream consciousness as a "thing to
have", and that companies will start mass producing them to have a competitive
edge.

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zokier
I don't care about iPhone. But when do I get dense IPS displays for desktops?
Feels like we have been stuck to 100 PPI forever.

24" 300 PPI IPS _droool_

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spot
Now that there are 3 different iphone resolutions, are we going to keep
hearing about how bad fragmentation is?

~~~
ugh
What’s the third one? The iPad? That’s fragmentation you want – iPhone apps
make no sense on that device.

Other than that, doubling the horizontal and vertical number of pixels (four
times the pixels) is actually quite clever and will probably not lead to any
fragmentation. Since the display’s size won’t change in any significant way,
old iPhone apps will just look the same on the new device (every pixel will
just be displayed four times, no need for ugly interpolation) – everything
that’s a vector and not pixels will just look better without any effort on the
developers’ part. The old iPhones presumably won’t have any problem with apps
that come with higher resolution bitmaps.

Since the screen size doesn’t change it also doesn’t make any sense to add any
additional elements which would then be too small for older devices – the size
of our fingers and the resolution of our eyes is the limiting factor here, not
the resolution of the screen.

All of this also means that a increase in resolution is no more a big leap
forward (i.e. it allows you to display more stuff), it “merely” makes text,
videos and photos look much nicer. It’s quite cool that we finally reached
that point.

~~~
DougBTX
Palm did the same trick when they switched from 160x160 screens to 320x320,
back in the day.

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s3graham
320ppi is getting to be pretty sweet. Hook me up with a 30" version, along
with one more doubling of ppi and it's going to be amazing.

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ZitchDog
Looks like Gruber was right on the money again. From April:
<http://daringfireball.net/2010/04/why_960_by_640>

