Akihabara News: LG’s Arena Maxx LG-LU9400 mobile phone is the first to incorporate a 1GHz Snapdragon CPU in South Korea. The S-Class UI driven LG-LU9400 will be available on both KT and SK Telecom networks. Other specs include: 3.5-inch 800×480 touch TFT LCD, 5MP autofocus camera, WiFi, EV-DO, microSD (max. 32GB), DMB, GPS, and supports HD video recording and playback in HD DivX.
This is Part IId of the Display Showdown: Nexus One vs. iPhone 3GS series taking a closer look at the iPhone 3GS’ Display Power Consumption and Display Spectra.
Display Power Consumption
Unlike an OLED where power is consumed only when it is emitting light, the backlight is always turned on in a mobile LCD. Power consumption is dependent only on the brightness setting. The average power consumed during standby mode when the display is black is used as the baseline. Luminous efficiency is luminance divided by power and is normalized to 1.0 for peak white.
The iPhone 3GS uses considerably more power compared to the Nexus One but also generates quite a bit more luminance. For instance, the iPhone 3GS’ peak green puts out 288 cd/m² while on the Nexus One it is just 193 cd/m². The Nexus One beats the iPhone 3GS being a power miser but doesn’t get the job done in bright environments.
Display Spectra
The display spectra is the spectrum of the backlight filtered through the individual red, green, and blue sub-pixel filters within the panel. By using Konica Minolta’s CS-2000 Spectroradiometer, the LCD’s red, green, and blue spectra were measured: the iPhone 3GS display spectra is a filtered broadband spectrum but with a fairly narrow blue spectra.
You can find more technical and in-depth explanations at DisplayMate.
This is Part Id of the Display Showdown: Nexus One vs. iPhone 3GS series taking a closer look at the Nexus One’s Display Power Consumption and Display Spectra.
Display Power Consumption
On an OLED display power is consumed only when it is emitting light. On a totally black screen the OLED display is consuming next to nothing; the driving circuitry does consume just a bit.
The blue OLEDs consume the most amount of power but produces the least amount of brightness resulting in a luminous efficiency of just 10%. As noted before, the Nexus One has a blue tint due to its high color temperature of 8870° Kelvin. By reducing power to the blue OLEDs the Nexus One will benefit from better color accuracy, enhance battery life and reduce differential aging of the blue OLEDs.
Display Spectra
The display spectra is the spectrum of the backlight filtered through the individual red, green, and blue sub-pixel filters within the panel. Because OLEDs are emissive the spectra of the Nexus One is the sum of the individual red, green, and blue OLED spectra, partially obstructed by the touch and anti-reflection layers. By using Konica Minolta’s CS-2000 Spectroradiometer, the OLED’s red, green, and blue spectra are narrow due to their high color saturation.
You can find more technical and in-depth explanations at DisplayMate.
This is Part IIc of the Display Showdown: Nexus One vs. iPhone 3GS series taking a closer look at the iPhone 3GS’s Brightness Decrease with Viewing Angle, Contrast Ratio Shift with Viewing Angle, and Color Shift with Viewing Angle. The Nexus One exhibited significant brightness and color shift at angles. Let’s see how the iPhone 3GS does.
Brightness Decrease with Viewing Angle
The iPhone 3GS exhibited a significant decrease in brightness: a 63% (vs. 28% for the Nexus One) decrease to 161 cd/m² (vs. 161 for the Nexus One) in brightness at 30° viewing angle. Terrible.
Contrast Ratio Shift with Viewing Angle
The black level brightness of the iPhone 3GS increased 19% to 3.7 cd/m² resulting in the contrast ratio decreasing to just 44:1. The Nexus One, on the other hand, had no noticeable decline in contrast ratio.
Color Shift with Viewing Angle
At a 30° viewing angle, red shifted the most by Δ(u’v’)=0.0418 (vs. 0.0262 for the Nexus One). Blue shifted by 0.006 (vs. 0.0169 for the Nexus One) and green shifted by 0.0105 (vs. 0.0107 for the Nexus One). These numbers are terrible and except for blue much worse compared to the Nexus One.
As I have mentioned in Part Ic, most smartphone users will be looking straight at the display so brightness, contrast or color shifts at off-center viewing angles might not be a problem. However there are situations when you would want little to no shifts: trying to take a picture at an off angle or playing games that require the display to be viewed at off angles. Scientific measurements and tests point to significant shifts in color, contrast and brightness for the LCD used in the iPhone 3GS, and it is quite a bit worse than the Nexus One. Again, if color is important to you make sure you’re looking dead on.
WHAT’S UP NEXT
Part IId is next that looks at Display Power Consumption and Display Spectra. You can find more technical and in-depth explanations at DisplayMate.
Samsung has begun mass production of its Super-Wide LCD for digital signage applications: a 43-inch with a 4:1 aspect ratio with a pixel format of 1920×480. As you can see from the picture above, it works quite well.
This is Part Ic to Display Showdown: Nexus One, part of the Display Showdown: Nexus One vs. iPhone 3GS series. Part Ic looks at Brightness Decrease with Viewing Angle, Contrast Ratio Shift with Viewing Angle, and Color Shift with Viewing Angle.
Brightness Decrease with Viewing Angle
The Nexus One exhibited a significant decrease in brightness, unusual for an OLED display, which should show no viewing angle effects. Tests showed a 28% decrease to 166 cd/m² in brightness at 30° viewing angle. The most likely culprits are the touch layer and the anti-reflection (AR) layer.
Contrast Ratio Shift with Viewing Angle
The contrast ratio shift was not visually significant due to the extremely high contrast ratio enabled by near-zero brightness when black. This is excellent.
Color Shift with Viewing Angle
Red shifted the most and became orange, by Δ(u’v')=0.0262, which is visibly quite noticeable. Blue shifted by 0.0169 and green shifted by 0.0107. According to Dr. Soneira these numbers are surprisingly large and most likely due to the two layers: touch and AR.
Although most smartphone users will be looking straight at the display, scientific measurements and tests point to significant shift in color and brightness for the OLED used in the Nexus One. If color is important to you make sure you’re looking dead on.
WHAT’S UP NEXT
Part Id is next that looks at Display Power Consumption and Display Spectra. You can find more technical and in-depth explanations at DisplayMate.
Regular LCD TVs with edge-lit LED backlights have a strip of LEDs on all four sides. Slightly cheaper versions have just two strips. Now, to get these LED backlit LCD TVs even cheaper, new designs are using just a single strip of LEDs. Lower prices are absolutely critical if you are playing the LCD TV game in China. Single-sided edge-lit LED backlight units (BLUs) for 32-inch LCD TV applications will be US$35 cheaper compared to multiple-sided versions. Coretronics, a Taiwan-based backlight unit (BLU) manufacturer, is able to produce single-sided edge-lit LED BLUs for up to 46-inch LCD TVs.
My guess is that LCD TVs with single-sided edge-lit LED backlights won’t necessarily be better than those with CCFL backlights in terms of brightness uniformity. Of course LEDs have a major non-performance benefit over CCFL: they do not contain mercury, which is a carcinogen. Source: DIGITIMES
Rafat Ali’s Mags To Their Digital Units: Drop Dead:
Five of the leading publishers — Time Inc., Hearst, Condé Nast, Wenner Media and Meredith — have banded together for this “power of print” campaign…
For the foreseeable future, I don’t think the reality of how we consume information will be either print or digital. Instead, I’m fairly sure it will be print and digital. Think of the digital pen and paper and you realize how entrenched our simple habits are. I am sure pen and paper will be the most popular method of jotting down notes for quite some time, and so will reading real magazines, newspapers and books. The transition toward digital will continue but it will be slow, snail slow. via Daring Fireball
John Gruber on iPhone feed reading apps:
… there are a bunch that are pretty good, but not one that’s great.
I think Apple could develop a great RSS reader for the iPhone. But if OS X for the Mac is any evidence of Apple’s considerations for a RSS reader, I wouldn’t hold my breath. Apple integrates RSS reading capabilities into Mail and Safari, but doesn’t have a standalone app. This is interesting to me. Maybe Apple thinks RSS reading is just an adjunct function for different apps.
Shawn Blanc in iPhone’s Missing Feed Reader:
The predicament with feed reading apps is most certainly not in the quantity of the selections; rather, the quality. … I prefer a simple app that does less and does it better.
Agreed, I too like simple, functional, elegant apps.
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