Mitsubishi: The news here is the combination of 3D and IPS. The Diamondcrysta WIDE RDT233WX-3D is a 23-inch LCD monitor equipped with a LED-backlit IPS (In-Plane Switching) TFT LCD with a 1920×1080 pixel format. The 3D technology employed does not seem to be active shutter but will still require putting on a pair of passive 3D glasses.
Viewing angles are excellent, as expected, at 178/178. Brightness at just 250 nits might be less than ideal for 3D. Static contrast ratio is 1000:1 and response time is 3.8 ms GTG (Gray-To-Gray). The RDT233WX-3D will be available on May 30 in Japan.
Apple doubled the horizontal and vertical pixels from 480×320 in the iPhone 3GS to 960×640 in the iPhone 4. This worked because there was a single 3.5-inch display with 480×320 in landscape. From a manufacturing point of view doubling the pixels on a small 3.5-inch LCD was difficult but not impossible. Pixel doubling won’t work for OS X precisely because there is more than one display on the Mac side, probably impossible to volume manufacture at affordable costs with current technologies, and more than what Apple is trying to achieve.
In The Resolution Gap I focused on MacBooks and listed their respective resolution, or pixel density:
I also noted that the 13.3-inch 1280×800 and 15.4-inch 1440×900 would be dropped from the lineup in the near future, leaving the MacBook line with four different display sizes, pixel formats, and resolutions. What I am most interested in is resolution, which determines the visual experience of OS X.
The range in resolution is smaller than I first thought: 125 to 135 ppi. Apple has done two things in terms of resolution. First, the company has continued to shift to displays with higher ppi, from around 100 in the early 2000s to 110 a few years ago to an average of about 130 today. The difference in the visual experience among the four higher-resolution MacBooks is quite small, which is a good thing since Apple wants a more unified, controlled, perfected experience for users. For the sake of argument, let’s quantify the difference in visual experience by taking the difference between the lowest ppi (125) and the highest ppi (135). The 125-ppi user will experience a difference of up to 8% and the 135-ppi user 7.4%.
What would happen if you pixel doubled these displays?
First, let’s talk about why Apple might want to pixel double. Pixel doubling is logically simple. The current 15.4-inch 1440×900 MacBook Pro pixel doubled is 2880×1800. All the UI elements remain the same size but clarity is quadrupled. The math is nice and clean. But, this is impractical for a couple of reasons.
Apple has stopped bringing to market products that are too innovative. I give you the Newton as a good example. The Newton, introduced in 1987, was a technological masterpiece, but was too early, by around 10 years. If the Newton had been introduced after Palm kickstarted the PDA craze it would have garnered much more attention and probably some success. Apple was literally a decade ahead of the competition, but also too far ahead everything else. A ubiquitous and affordable cellular infrastructure wasn’t there. Mobile computing was just getting started and the majority of people didn’t yet have a need for or realized they needed a PDA. There were many other reasons for its failure, including a sky-high price, but the main reason for Newton’s failure was that Apple was too early.
Today’s Apple isn’t like that. Apple brings about products that are revolutionary but not only in terms of technology. The iPad is revolutionary because there was nothing like it before, because anyone could use it, and because it was affordable, something the Newton never was. Apple focuses on the complete user experience and makes sure that its products, especially the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad, are eminently usable both physically and visually. Pixel doubling on OS X is like the Newton: way too much for what we need and want today. That’s one reason why I don’t think Apple will pixel double its MacBook line.
Another reason is to figure out what Apple is trying to achieve. What is Apple trying to get at? A visual experience I’ll simply call the Retina Experience where your eyes cannot decipher individual pixels. The icons, text, and graphics will look seamless. Apple will craft its Retina Experience on its MacBooks based on a thorough understanding of our visual system and how we use our MacBooks.
In The Resolution Gap I proposed that the distance between our eyes and the display on a MacBook was 18 to 20 inches. I base my assumption on what Steve Jobs said about the usage distance of the iPhone, which was stated as 12 inches. The iPad is probably around 15 to 18 inches. The MacBooks a bit farther back at about 18-20 inches. At that range here is the list of pixel formats and resolutions to achieve a Retina Experience:
In my opinion, these displays are manufacturable today using technologies. Compared to pixel doubling these pixel formats are conservative. For three reasons:
One, these pixel formats based on how we use our MacBooks meet Apple’s definition of a Retina Display. Second, Apple is sensitive to our willingness to pay for its products. The pixel doubled displays would be too far out there and prohibitively expensive. Third, a pixel doubled line of MacBooks wouldn’t work toward unifying the visual experience. The disparity in the visual experience of OS X on MacBooks will remain the same. At the Retina level the disparity disappears since we are no longer able to visually see the differences.
To conclude, pixel doubling displays used in today’s MacBooks will be too far ahead of the game, too costly, and beyond what Apple is trying to achieve. Instead Apple will bring us a Retina Experience where visual differences among MacBooks will disappear. There is little gain in moving beyond the point where visual differences evaporate. I’ve focused on MacBooks, but Apple with Retina Displays across its entire line of products will bring us an experience of using OS X that is unified and near visual perfection.
In the display segment, Corning expects combined glass volume in the second quarter to be consistent with the first quarter. Glass volume for the company’s wholly owned business is anticipated to decline in the low- to mid-teen range sequentially, primarily the result of lower utilization rates at several customers. At Samsung Corning Precision, volume is expected to increase in the low- to mid-teen range for the quarter. Glass price declines are expected to continue to moderate.
The Display Technologies segment sales increased 5% Q/Q to US$790 million. As Corning expected LCD glass substrate prices declined more moderately than in Q4’10. Samsung procures a significant portion of SCP’s LCD glass capacity.
James Flaw, Vice Chairman and CFO at Corning, expects a significant bump in LCD glass demand in the third quarter due to Sharp resuming production.
AUO: Consolidated revenues were down 9.1% Q/Q to NT$93.23 billion with gross profits of -NT$6.27 billion. Large-area LCD panel shipments increased 1.3% Q/Q and 4.3% Y/Y to 28.4 million units. On the other hand, small/medium LCD unit shipments were down 17.8% Q/Q and 23.7% Y/Y to 43.5 million, not surprising considering the focus on smartphones and tablets.
Sean Hollister at Engadget:
Not only do you have to affix an (included) screen protector to achieve the matte effect, but the Adam’s viewing angles are terrible. Approach it from any angle but head-on and either the whites or blacks wash out, and if you tilt it to the left everything begins to turn a sickly yellow. The colors are also a bit washed out, and if you’re a fan of deep, inky blacks you’d best look somewhere else, as the best the Adam can do is a shade of noisy purple. Moreover, the matte screen protector is fairly thick and we suspect it may be to blame for making the tablet’s capacitive digitizer less effective than it should be, as it often felt like we had to press with a little bit of effort to get the Adam to respond to our touch. All that said, the Pixel Qi’s reflective mode most certainly does work, and it does its job well, saving hours of additional battery life and making the screen quite viewable outdoors. The question is whether that’s worth all the other tradeoffs.
I wrote back in July 2010 with much excitement about the 3Qi LCD by Pixel Qi:
Pixel Qi’s 3qi is a fantastic technology that allows full-color displays that also can be a reflective display that sips tiny bits of power good enough to be used as an ebook display. It can even be seen in direct sunlight and that’s not just marketing speak.
Yes, the unique reflective mode works as promised. But the regular transmissive mode with full color has terrible viewing angles. A matte screen protector film? How about a screen that’s matte, without the film?
Poor touch response will kill any tablet experience, including the Adam, regardless of how much power the Pixel Qi display saves. If reading is your pleasure then there are other more capable products like the Amazon Kindle. In regards to the Pixel Qi 3Qi display and the Notion Ink Adam, I’m surprised to be disappointed.
Dell: The Dell Precision M4600 (15.6 inch) and M6600 (17.3 inch) mobile workstations have a modern, simple industrial design that I appreciate. What excites me even more is that the smaller M4600 can be equipped with a 1920×1080 IPS LCD sporting a RGB LED backlight. This incredible option is called PremierColor.
PremierColor brings two features that are currently lacking in almost all notebook PC displays. First is IPS for In-Plane Switching. IPS exploded into the minds of the everyday user thanks to the iPhone 4 and the iPad. LG Display is the largest manufacturer of IPS LCDs. IPS is considered to be the best LCD technology for color, brightness, and contrast consistency at wide viewing angles.
Second is RGB LED backlight. Most LED backlights use a white LED, which is both easier and cheaper to make. A white LED is generally composed of a blue LED chip and a yellow phosphor coating. Unfortunately the light spectrum generated by a white LED has some limitations: in short distances it gives off a blueish tint and in longer distances it turns into a yellowish tint. Apple even submitted a patent application titled “Backlight Unit Color Compensation Techniques” overcoming this challenge. A RGB LED backlight generates light that is closer to full spectrum resulting in brilliant colors.
The two, IPS and RGB LED backlight, combined should make for one of, if not the best display you can find on a notebook today. I’m not surprised at all to see this on a Dell: previous Precision models had the best display options in the industry.
I just heard of this thing called a Shuriken Display by LG Display (LGD). DigiTimes posted up an article stating that Acer will be using a 14-inch Shuriken Display on its up-coming notebook PC. Here’s what I know from the article:
The Shuriken Display will have really thin bezels. A 14-inch Shuriken Display can be integrated into a notebook PC sized to fit a regular 13.3-inch LCD. The bezel is only 8 mm thick, which knocks of 4 mm from a typical bezel thickness of 12 mm. So imagine a 14-inch notebook that is as small as a 13.3-inch one, but with a bigger display. Kudos to Acer for getting ahead of the pack with a narrow-bezel LCD, a feature I’ve been expecting for quite some time. LG Display and others have reduced the bezel thickness on TVs and it was only a matter of time.
Not only that the Shuriken Display is just 4-mm thick. I’m not sure how that compares to the thinnest out there but it sounds pretty thin. Assuming that 4-mm is thinner than what you get on thin notebooks on the market today, I’m dreaming of even thinner notebooks with bigger displays in the same-sized box.
There is one downside though: price. And this is as it should be since I’m all for rewarding innovation. The Shuriken Display reportedly costs 50% more than your regular thick-bezeled LCD. The Acer notebook with a 14-inch Shiruken Display will no doubt be an ultra-thin high-end notebook PC. Can’t wait to take a look.
Sean Hollister at Engadget:
And thanks to the fairly stellar viewing angles of Acer’s 10.1-inch, 1280 x 800 TFT LCD display, sharing such multimedia might actually make sense. It’s no IPS screen, to be sure, and we won’t make any excuses for the incredible amount of glare and raw fingerprint grease attracted to its mirror-like finish, but for a plain-jane LCD panel, it’s surprisingly good. Text is crisp, colors pop, whites get blindingly bright and blacks fairly dim, and those features only wash out marginally when viewed at oblique angles. Acer’s capacitive digitizer is also blissfully responsive — Honeycomb struggles to keep up — and tracks ten full points of contact simultaneously (we checked) for whatever multi-finger gestures app developers might eventually roll out. Weaknesses include pixels visible with the naked eye and the near-uncertainty of being able to see anything on the screen outdoors, but we’ve seen plenty of sub-$1,000 laptops that wish they had the screen Acer brings to the table here.
The 10.1-inch TFT LCD used in the Acer Iconia Tab A500 Honeycomb tablet seems to have a relatively good display. The 1280×800 pixel format in a 10.1-inch display results in a resolution of 149 ppi, which isn’t in Retina Display territory unless you hold it 23 inches from you. At normal viewing distances of around 18 inches you’ll be able to distinguish individual pixels given you have 20/20 vision. To be fair the iPad 2 is even further from giving you the Retina Experience with a resolution of only 132 ppi.
The one point I can’t quite understand is how a digitizer can be responsive while the OS isn’t. Don’t the two go hand in hand?
K.T. Bradford at Laptop:
The A500′s 10.1-inch, 1280 x 800 WXGA screen has an aspect ratio of 16:10 and good color depth. Brightness and clarity matched that of the Motorola Xoom, but the 8.9-inch T-Mobile G-Slate’s display seemed a bit crisper when we compared the two side by side, and the iPad 2′s display was far brighter. In some cases, too, the A500′s screen was a little washed out. Among 10-inch Android tablets, some may prefer the IPS panel on the Eee Pad Transformer which promises wider viewing angles.
The 10.1-inch LCD is a 6-bit panel good for 256,000 color combinations. I wouldn’t consider that good at all. What is good is an 8-bit LCD with millions of colors, something you find in the iPads.
The T-Mobile G-Slate has an 8.9-inch LCD with a 1280×768 pixel format good for a resolution of 168 ppi, which is probably why it looked crispier than the Motorola Xoom (10.1-inch, 1280×800, 149 ppi). And why would anyone not prefer an IPS LCD?
TMD:
Toshiba Mobile Display Co., Ltd. has developed a 7.0-inch low-temperature poly-silicon (LTPS) thin-film transistor (TFT) liquid crystal display (LCD) for vehicle-mounted and industrial uses that enables multi-touch input on the display screen without the need for additional installation of a touch panel as a demonstration of its new touch panel technology.
Thickness is reduced by 57% to about 1 mm. Weight is also reduced by 10%. Apple invested a large sum of money in Toshiba to secure displays. Naturally I wonder if TMD’s in-cell touch technology will be applied to a future iPad. The iPad 2 is already quite thin, but looking at this I don’t think it unreasonable to expect a thinner and lighter iPad 3 is in the works.
Lenovo (PDF): The ThinkPad X1 is a 13.3-inch ultra-thin notebook PC with a thickness of just 21.5 mm (0.85 inches). The LED backlit LCD with a 1366×768 pixel format is covered by Corning’s Gorilla Glass. Comparisons to the Apple MacBook Air and the Samsung Series 9 come naturally since both are ultra-thin and ultra-light 13.3-inch notebooks.
Ranking based on thickness:
In terms of weight, the ranking is the same:
In terms of pixel density, or resolution, the MacBook Air with a pixel format of 1440×900 good for 128 ppi beats the other two’s 118 ppi.
There is a unique feature on the X1 called RapidCharge, a battery technology that recharges the non-removeable battery to 80% in just 30 minutes. That’s mighty impressive.
But at the end the ThinkPad X1 outclasses itself with a price of ₣2585 (about US$2919). The Samsung Series 9 looks comparatively cheap at just $1650. Interestingly the MacBook Air from Apple, often criticized for being overpriced, is the cheapest among the three, by a good margin: the base model starts at $1299.
DisplayBlog is written and produced by Jin Kim. Subscribe via RSS.