Scientific analysis finds iPhone LCD trumps Nexus One OLED - Page 2

I wish they'd go 16:9 personally. Video is mostly 16:9 these days, so the near 4:3 ratio of the iPhone seems pretty nonsensical. There's plenty of empty space above and below the screen too, so no need to make the device any larger.

I assume you have never bothered to actually use one. I have (a friend has one), and it's a very, very slick device. The screen is, to my eyes, amazing, and the overall speed and snappiness of the Nexus is leagues ahead of the iPhone. And multi-tasking is, as you might expect, enough to make any iPhone owner green with envy. I know I am.

Sure And most of them prefer at least 20" IPS displays, not OLED or TN-film

Quality Tekstud rant. If you were to replace your phrase "anybody and everybody knows" to just "I know", a couple people (maybe) would take you slightly more serious.

What anybody and everybody knows seems to dictate to the contrary, what you know.

This article isn't true. Did you guys test the N1?

The problem is that the Gallery app in the N1's 2.1 Android software is rendering images in such a way that the bars show up. Has nothing to do with the display (and by the way OLED and LED displays are apparently typically 18 bit, but coded in 16 bit. The iPhone is no exception).

If you go to the Browser in the N1 and go to the exact image of the sunset on Mars, you get a beautiful, barless rendering. This also works fine in any of the image viewers available in the Market. The display is a gorgeous OLED display capable of displaying as many colors as any other modern smartphone, including the iPhone...

You guys should update this article, as it is not true.

Why would I want a pretend-iPhone when I can get the real thing?

I have seen them side by side and prefer the screen on the Nexus One..... It was sharper and more vibrant in my opinion...

Who cares about truth on the site?

Gizmodo who also picked up the same story, show the problem also affecting the browser. So no the article is not a lie.

http://gizmodo.com/5477320/the-nexus...secret-updated

It wasn't long ago that all you Lemmings thought OLED was the best display since Microsoft was putting one in the Zune HD and you begged that Apple better do the same. Now you fanboys are defending the iPhone and agreeing that OLED isn't that great because you don't like the Nexus One, and the article points out flaws in an OLED display.

Unfortunately Apple thinks 4:3 is the wave of the future. They advertise how great video and movie playback is on the iPad, yet they slap it with a 4:3 screen. Keep dreaming.

But the article was about color ACCURACY.
Every showroom cranks up the intensity on the display monitors precisely to sucker buyers like you into oohing and aahing about the 'vibrancy'. That's an inaccurate way of judging the accuracy of the colors.
I've read several photographers who've seen the iPad's display and who are saying its the first device they've seen that they'd use to display their photos precisely because of its accuracy.
'Pop' is a sucker's way of assessing screen quality.

The screen ratio is due to the fact that the iPad's more common use case will be in portrait mode. Did you notice the orientation Jobs held it in for the first unveil? Portrait.
A 16:9 screen would be relegated to being a movie viewer, which is not its primary focus.
Holding a 16:9 in portrait mode would be a joke, unbalanced, and resulting in narrow screen, ugly web pages and books.

It doesn't scale up to large sizes very well, but handheld devices seem to be the growth area in consumer electronics.


Last I heard, OLED has 30k hours now, and it's a half-life, in 30k hours, it's half as bright. Still, getting to 30k is about 3.4 years of being constantly on, day, night, weekday, weekend & holidays. Assuming it's on 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year, that's 15 years of use. If you're using it 2000 or more hours a year, then I'd say it's probably worth replacing every few years, and you might never notice it fade before it's long obsolete anyway.


It seems they're saying it has a wider color gamut. It's up to the rendering engine to make sure the image properly mapped to the gamut of the output device.

Now the banding is kind of an issue, wider gamut doesn't help so much if it's that prone to banding, one step forward, one step back.


It's a 3:2 ratio, not that close to 4:3. Exact fit for SLR photos, works well for just every other use, some space is black for videos, but that is only one use of the device. Also, there are components under the "empty space" that's not apparent unless you tear the device apart, it's not simply a matter of stretching the screen.

How much time do you spend watching video on a small handheld device? Personally, the only device that I want 16:9 is my TV. For every other use, 16:9 makes the small dimension feel cramped, I get the same cramped feeling on the ZuneHD and my parent's laptop with 16:9 screen. My parents have never used the laptop to watch movies, so why must the screen be an exact fit for a particular use that it's only rarely going to see, and a poor fit for most other uses? There aren't a lot of taller screen laptops available now.

Than it should be 8.5 X 11. Anything else then using your logic is a joke.

Chinese and Koreans do spend a lot of time watching TV on their mobile phones

It wasn't touting" LCD" as the great standard.
It was comparing specifically the iPhone LCD to the AM-OLED display on the Google Nexus One.

The lack of AM OLED screen turns out to be one more gripe that I had with apple that was wrong. Don't get me wrong but when apple did not allow native apps or did not have a speaker in the Touch, or now when there is still no mic or video in the touch I was pretty pissed. But lack of flash (which I saw on a Nokia internet tablet, and it sucked major B@lls), and lack of OLED have actually turned out to be false gripes.

I am still in awe at how much better the iPhone is then other platforms. Music, video, internet and the way they all come together quickly and easily still blows me away. In fact if the original iPhone had an appstore, it would still be kicking everyone else's butts.

What's scientific about an opinion? He used no scientific equipment to actually test the two, just his eyes.

With that said, I'm not surprised that he finds the iPhone more accurate. A real test would have involved removing the displays from each phone and using the same equipment to generate the images on the displays.

Only a few manufacturers make LCDs, but they look very different on different brands of devices. If I had to guess, I'd say that its the iPhone software that's the reason for the more accurate images and not the quality of the display itself.

Pedantically speaking, a hypothesis could easily be deemed an opinion.

As for the article, the testing is sound. What you propose is a more involved and more accurate test, but that doesn't mean that the tests they did aren't valid.

The linked article did make measurements using a chromameter, that information didn't show up in the AI article.


I agree, and you'd have to calibrate for each panel, panel types respond differently to signals, so the profiles will be different, not just a matter of plugging in panels to a neutral device. But Apple doesn't offer a way to tweak the settings, I would be pleased to find that Google offers a good way to do it, I've yet to see or hear about color calibration being available for consumer handheld devices.

The handset has a resolution that is too low, and a contrast ratio of about 100.

160ppi is low res now?

How do you propose that I use the display without the phone?

Comparatively speaking it is. The iPhone has kept the same dot pitch since the first iPhone, demoed over 3 years ago. It's definitely time for a bump. Here is some maths I did last month on this subject...

When the iPhone came out its PPI was above the standard, now it's well below the standard. I expected a higher dot-pitch last time so this time around I think it's absolutely necessary. I don't expect Apple matching some other devices out there as those devices are using it as a selling point since they don't have much else, but I would expect at least 25% more in each direction and hopefully as much as 50% in each direction. By now, any power saving that could be had from rendering less pixels should be easily handled going into the 4th iteration.

. .Current :: 165 ppi = 153,600 / 3.5" = 480 x 320
. 25% more :: 206 ppi = 240,000 / 3.5" = 600 x 400 = (480 x 1.25) x (320 x 1.25)
. 50% more :: 247 ppi = 345,600 / 3.5" = 720 x 480 = (480 x 1.50) x (320 x 1.50)
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
.Nexus One :: 252 ppi = 384,000 / 3.7" = 800 x 480
Moto Droid :: 264 ppi = 409,920 / 3.7" = 854 x 480

. . .(Math is reversed for easier reading)

Good old Tekstud. Lacking anything intelligent to say, he goes out of his way to prove just how stupid he really is. If anybody and everybody knows that OLED is superior, why is it that when you actually do a scientific test to measure the difference, OLED loses. What you're bragging about is that you let your uninformed biases overwhelm reason.

We already knew that.


Why don't you wait to see what happens before having your wet dreams? If Apple switches to OLED, you can bet that it will be high quality screens, not the bargain basement garbage that others use. Apple has a long history of using very high quality components.


Tell you what - if you're so sure there's another doctor (no need for quotation marks unless you're alleging that this researcher fabricated his diploma - which is way out there, even for you)), then why can't you provide a name? Where's the academic research to back up your position?



I don't think Apple ever said that 4:3 was the wave of the future. In fact, Apple was one of the first computer manufacturers to really push 16:9.

Apple is just smart enough to realize that you don't need the same format for every device from an iPod to a big screen TV. 4:3 makes more sense for the iPad because of the way it's held.

I'm surprised that iPhone screen is considered weakest part of iPhone.

I'm perfectly happy with the screen, but think iPhone's radio is really missperforming. It could be network or even firmware related - I don't know - but me and people I know (owning iPhone) all have significantly worst reception with iPhones compared to other devices (in my case Nokia E63 and Blackberry Pearl).

A screen is a visual device, it it looks better what other issue makes any damn difference????

P.S. The two phones in question were owned by two of my firends. So your comment is even more stupid....

While Apple was probably one of the first to push 3:2 and 16:10, they trailed with regard to 16:9. All their notebooks and separate monitors are still 16:10, when it seems like the rest of the computer industry went to 16:9.

It's interesting, we've seen a lot of mockups which look like they were from Apple. We've seen a lot tablets come and go over the years, and we've seen a plethora of new arrivals at CES trying to get the jump a then rumoured Apple tablet. Now we have the iPad using an display ratio that that was considered "old tech" and likely not considered by anyone yet Apple thinks it's ideal for that device type and usage.

Personally, I think one of the worst things about netbooks is the insistence on using a 16:10 ratio on a 10" display. They are just god awful for reading text because of that and I'm sure not a single one of those companies seriously considered 4:3 as an option because it wasn't the "cool look". Even the 13" MB's display is shorter than the 12" PB's display, though barely.



If that is the weakest part of that phone then that is a pretty damn good phone.

I hope they don't move to 16:9 in their notebooks.

I agree, I intentionally left my opinion out of that post so the facts could stand on their own. From what I understand, the 16:10 ratio was intended for working with two portrait oriented documents or adjacent pages. 3:2 was intended for working with video, that's the dot ratio of the old DV standard, at least in NTSC (720x480). In my opinion, 16:9 serves only videos and on laptops, needlessly shortens the useful screen height. I regularly watch videos on my computer, and I don't mind the black bars, I don't want to cut them out and hamper the other uses for my computer.

I always thought my iPhone screen was fine.

For handheld and small devices that are most likely going to be replaced in 3-4 years or sooner its not really an issue. However when considering this technology for an HDTV I believe OLED still has a way to go. The biggest issue is still with the color blue, which the last time I read has a halflife of around 7000-10000k. If you look at OLED TV's they always have blue hue to them.

I had an iPhone and replaced it with a Google Nexus One (which I love, btw). Dr. Soneira needs to get his eyes checked. The N1 screen blows the iPhone's screen right out of the water. It's brighter, sharper and the colors are much more appealing. And the screen is also considerably larger than the iPhone's. Every time I show my N1 to my friends who own iPhones their jaws drop. It's that much better.

Huh? you mean like Apple's glossy displays when compared to matte displays??

Seriously now... Who with a Ph.D. would spend their time doing this so called "scientific" comparison???

Which ones? Which "fanboys" were begging Apple to go OLED and are now dismissing same?

I'll give Google the benefit of the doubt, they'll likely fix it. I mean how much crap have we iPhone users put up with over the years, waiting for the next firmware update to correct...

It must be true. The article says it is scientific. And the guy who did it is a Doctor.

This article was about handheld device displays. You don't need to repeat yourself about large TV use, I already agreed with you on that.

I'm pretty sure those life numbers are a few years old.

2007:
http://www.macnn.com/news/48102

2008:
http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/25/t...-exceeds-lcds/

Almost all TVs are set to a blue hue to show best under bright fluorescent lighting in a retail setting. They need to be re-calibrated for use in a home environment, regardless of type, including LCD and plasma.