NVIDIA claims 10 times the graphics performance of run-of-the-mill netbooks and up to 10 hours of battery life. Unofficially known as Ion 2, the new GPU that works with Intel’s Atom Pine Trail CPUs in concert with the company’s Optimus technology improves performance as well as battery power.
You can now expect smooth HD video playback and the ability to play some high-power games, for a long long time: Optimus automatically switches between the Ion 2 and integrated GPUs. Acer’s Aspire One 532G (10-inch) and Asustek’s 1201PN (12-inch) will be the first to feature NVIDIA’s Ion 2. Apple should take careful note of the automatic GPU switching feature. Source: DIGITIMES
Engadget‘s Ross Miller:
… seems like the typical underpowered laptop you know and love …
Hardware specs include: Capacitive multitouch 11.6-inch TFT LCD with LED backlight, Core 2 Duo CPU, 8GB RAM, 320GB HDD. The 1820PT’s battery life is stated at greater than 8 hours. The price is a very palatable €599. And I like the 8GB of RAM. Image Source: Engadget
News Corp. Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch confirmed that The Wall Street Journal will be coming to the iPad. Source: The Wall Street Journal
Acer’s K11 looks downright sexy. The K11 is a DLP pico projector that beams 858×600 pixels with a brightness of 200 lumens. Expect the K11 to keep projecting those high-contrast (2000:1) pixels for 20,000 hours. Connectivity options include HDMI, VGA, and composite. You can use a SDHC card or the USB connection to playback music, video and photos. The K11 is just 1.34 pounds. Source: Engadget
This is Part III, the conclusion, of the Display Showdown: Nexus One vs. iPhone 3GS series, produced as a collaboration between DisplayBlog and DisplayMate Technologies. Let’s get on with the point-for-point comparison.
Display Resolution/Pixel Format: Nexus One
The Nexus One has a pixel format that is equivalent to a 3.7-inch LCD with a 800×480 pixel format. The iPhone 3GS is limited to just 480×320. [Nexus One (1) - iPhone 3GS (0)]
Color Depth: iPhone 3GS
The Nexus One has a limited 16-bit color depth for the Google Browser and Gallery. The iPhone 3GS makes use of 18-bit color depth and mimics 24-bit with dithering, leading to smoother and more accurate colors. [Nexus One (1) - iPhone 3GS (1)]
Image Scaling to Fit the Screen: iPhone 3GS
The Nexus One exhibited scaling artifacts, especially in the Google Gallery, while the iPhone 3GS didn’t. [Nexus One (1) - iPhone 3GS (2)]
Factory Calibration: iPhone 3GS
Color tracking and accuracy were poor for the Nexus One. The iPhone 3GS was very good. [Nexus One (1) - iPhone 3GS (3)]
Peak Brightness: iPhone 3GS
The Nexus One showed a peak brightness of 229 cd/m², relatively low for a mobile device. The iPhone 3GS’ peak brightness was 428 cd/m², an excellent result. [Nexus One(1) - iPhone 3GS (4)]
Black Level Brightness: Nexus One
Blacks were absolutely black on the Nexus One with a brightness of just 0.0035 cd/m². On the iPhone 3GS blacks were merely very dark gray and measurements showed a very high black level brightness of 3.1 cd/m². [Nexus One (2) - iPhone 3GS (4)]
Contrast Ratio for Low Ambient Light: Nexus One
The Nexus One’s contrast ratio of 65,415:1 was one of the highest measured. The iPhone 3GS did poorly at just 138:1. [Nexus One (3) - iPhone 3GS (4)]
Contrast Ratio for High Ambient Light: iPhone 3GS
The Nexus One did quite well in low light but in bright environments the contrast ratio decreased to just 15:1, a very low result. The iPhone 3GS beat it easily with a contrast ratio of 47:1. [Nexus One (3) - iPhone 3GS (5)]
Screen Reflectance: iPhone 3GS
Lower screen reflectance means the display is easier to see. The Nexus One had a 15.5% screen reflectance, which is relatively high. The iPhone 3GS had a screen reflectance of just 9.2%, a very good result. [Nexus One (3) - iPhone 3GS (6)]
Dynamic Color and Contrast: iPhone 3GS
The Nexus One made use of dynamically controlling color and contrast that led to a degradation in picture quality and accuracy. The iPhone 3GS did not use dynamic color and contrast resulting in colors that were more accurate. [Nexus One (3) - iPhone 3GS (7)]
Color Temperature: iPhone 3GS
The Nexus One had a color temperature of 8870° Kelvin that casted a blue tint. The iPhone 3GS’ 6977° Kelvin was much closer to D6500, the color of natural daylight. [Nexus One (3) - iPhone 3GS (8)]
White Point Chromaticity: iPhone 3GS
The white points for the Nexus One were a bit off u’=0.1871 v’=0.4508 while the iPhone 3GS had white points closer to standard at u’=0.1903 v’=0.4692. [Nexus One (3) - iPhone 3GS (9)]
Color Gamut: Neither
The Nexus One’s color gamut was much larger than the standard sRGB color gamut while the iPhone 3GS had a color gamut that was much smaller. [Nexus One (3) - iPhone 3GS (9)]
Color Saturation: Neither
Color was way over-saturated on the Nexus One and under-saturated on the iPhone 3GS. [Nexus One (3) - iPhone 3GS (9)]
Intensity Scale and Image Contrast: Neither
The Nexus One had an irregular intensity scale and contrast was too high while the iPhone 3GS had the opposite problem of contrast being too low and an intensity scale that was concave. The intensity scale should follow Gamma 2.2. [Nexus One (3) - iPhone 3GS (9)]
Gamma for Intensity Scale: iPhone 3GS
The iPhone 3GS beats out the Nexus One by a very small margin. The iPhone 3GS has a 1.90 intensity scale, which is too low. On the other hand the intensity scale on the Nexus One is very irregular and ranges from 1.82 – 2.55. Neither are good but the iPhone 3GS is less bad. [Nexus One (3) - iPhone 3GS (10)]
Brightness Decrease with 30° Viewing Angle: Nexus One
At a 30° viewing angle the Nexus One’s brightness decreased 28%, large for an OLED, but smaller than the whopping 63% decrease for the iPhone 3GS. [Nexus One (4) - iPhone 3GS (10)]
Black Level Increase with 30° Viewing Angle: Nexus One
The black level increase on the Nexus One is visually insignificant. The iPhone 3GS increased 19% leading to washed-out images. [Nexus One (5) - iPhone 3GS (10)]
Contrast Ratio with 30° Viewing Angle: Nexus One
The contrast ratio on the Nexus One is extremely high while the iPhone 3GS exhibited an extremely low 44:1.
Color Shift with 30° Viewing Angle: Nexus One
The Nexus One showed a color shift of Δ(u’v')=0.0262, which is 7 times Just Noticeable Color Difference (JNCD). The iPhone 3G shifted more by Δ(u’v')=0.0418, 10 times JNCD. [Nexus One (6) - iPhone 3GS (10)]
Power Consumption for Peak White: iPhone 3GS
Power consumption is certainly important. Though there would be little to no occasion whereby we would turn the display completely white, this test to a large degree shows how much power the two displays consume. The iPhone 3GS beat out the Nexus One by a very small margin: 0.81 watts vs. 0.91 watts. [Nexus One (6) - iPhone 3GS (11)]
Power Consumption for the Same Peak Luminance 229 cd/m°: iPhone 3GS
The iPhone 3GS consumed considerably less power at 0.44 watts compared to the Nexus One’s 0.91 watts. [Nexus One (6) - iPhone 3GS (12)]
Power Consumption for Black: Nexus One
The Nexus One’s OLED display consumes zero power then black, severely beating the iPhone 3GS’ 0.81 watt power consumption. [Nexus One (7) - iPhone 3GS (12)]
For a colorful table outlining all of these factors, hope on over to DisplayMate. The final tally is 7 for the Nexus One and 12 for the iPhone 3GS. Of course, this does not conclusively determine which display is better than the other. Users will put more importance on some results and less on others. For instance if you are very comfortable with high-tech gadgets and like to tinker you generally spend considerable time with your gadgets indoors and late at night. In this case the Nexus One, which performs much better in low-light environments would be the better choice. For soccer moms that are out and about when its sunny outside might be better off with an iPhone 3GS. So it really depends on what you want in a display.
Both the Nexus One and the iPhone 3GS have ample room for improvement. For the Nexus One the blue OLEDs can be driven less resulting in: a color temperature that is closer to standard, more accurate colors, less power consumption, longer battery life and a decrease in differential aging. By opening up color calibration capabilities on the Nexus One the much larger color gamut can be reigned in to match sRGB. By altering the Android UI to make use of more black colors power consumption can be further reduced leading to longer battery life.
The iPhone 3GS has opposite problems: colors are washed out due to the much smaller-than-standard color gamut. Blacks are not really black. Brightness, contrast and color shifts at angles are terrible. I think a RGB LED backlit IPS TFT LCD would be the way to go to correct some of these problems.
This concludes the Display Showdown: Nexus One vs. iPhone 3GS series. I want to thank Dr. Raymond Soneira for his excellent tests, measurements and analysis. And I hope you learned a thing or two about the Nexus One and iPhone 3GS displays. Thank you!
Porsche 918 Spyder Concept: This is why it is important to have a quality display. More photos and a video at Autoblog.
Edward Tufte writes in Windows Phone 7 Series (WP7S) interface design:
Compared to the IPhone, most of the WP7S organizing screens have considerably lower content resolution, which violates flatness and leads to hierarchical stacking and temporal sequencing of screens. In day-to-day use, maybe the panorama screens will solve the stacking/sequencing problem, or maybe they will just clutter up the flow of information. Of course Microsoft’s customers are already familiar with deep layerings and complex hierarchies.
Though simple-looking WP7S maybe still too complex. Will Kendall on negative space:
One of the first things that struck me during the reveal of WP7S was how ‘uncomfortable’ the home screen looked. Why would the designers create so much negative space on the right and top of the home screen?
Edward Tufte on negative space:
On a small handheld device, screen real estate is extremely valuable. So the content-free big black band on the right margin is a puzzling waste of space, resulting in a 20% downgrade in screen resolution.
Negative space is bad and WP7S has a lot of it.
Steve Jobs:
We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We’ve decided to do something about it. We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours.
Apple has issues with HTC and has requested “a permanent limited exclusion order prohibiting infringing mobile communication devices, and components thereof … from entry into the United States” to the ITC. HTC’s product list is long:
The “Accused HTC Android Products” include the HTC Nexus One, the HTC Dream (T-Mobile G1), the HTC Magic (HTC myTouch 3G), the HTC Hero, and the HTC Droid Eris. HTC’s products that include DSP functionality are roped in too: the HTC Touch Pro, the HTC Touch Diamond, the HTC Touch Pro2, the HTC Tilt II, the HTC Pure, the HTC HD2, and the HTC Imagio. (from Page 6, IV. THE TECHNOLOGY AND PRODUCTS AT ISSUE, #19-20)
And the patents that HTC is accused of infringing are:
Source: Engadget
According to Witsview, panel prices in the second half of February were:
LCD panel expected price changes in the first half of March compared to February:
Relatively high levels of LCD panel inventory in China and possible price cuts by South Korean LCD manufacturers might lead to LCD panel price declines in Q2’10 according to LJ Chen, president of AU Optronics (AUO). Source: DIGITIMES
via Buzzfeed, Geeks are Sexy
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