Brad Molen, Engadget:
Suffice it to say for this review, the Epic 4G Touch doesn’t disappoint in its display either. We say this with just a smidge of surprise, since it made the screen even larger but yet used the same WVGA (800 x 480) resolution. The pixel density is obviously lower in this case, as there’s more screen space to pack the same number of pixels in. To our delight, however, the Epic’s display looked just as beautiful in spite of the size difference. This was great news to us, since we were able to enjoy the same viewing experience and do so with more real estate on the screen. And what’s better, we took the phone outside in the middle of a sunny day and were still able to see the screen clearly, despite being exposed to direct sunlight.
The Samsung Epic 4G Touch sports a 4.52-inch Super AMOLED Plus display with a RGB stripe 800×480 pixel format resulting in a resolution of 206.41 ppi. Let’s compare the resolution to the ‘regular’ Samsung Galaxy S II that features a slightly smaller 4.27-inch Super AMOLED Plus display but with the same pixel format. The resolution? 218.49 ppi. Do you think most of us can distinguish the 12.08 ppi difference? Probably not. It’s unsurprising that the slightly larger 4.52-inch Super AMOLED Plus display on the Samsung Epic 4G is just as good as the smaller one.
But the performance in direct sunlight is quite surprising. Out in direct sunlight it is difficult at best to clearly see content on a transmissive LCD or an emissive OLED display. Even with anti-reflective coatings, an optically laminated cover glass to eliminate refraction, and an extremely bright display, etc. performance in direct sunlight is poor. Only displays with reflective properties perform well. I’ll chalk this result up to Molen exaggerating a little bit. The Samsung Epic 4G Touch is probably viewable in direct sunlight, and not as bad as one might have expected from a smartphone with an OLED display.
To take things an extra step, we compared the Epic’s Super AMOLED Plus side by side with the IPS WVGA display in the T-Mobile G2x, cranking the devices’ brightness up as high as they could go. The G2x, which has a higher pixel density by nature of its 4-inch display, still appeared dimmer and more pixelated.
Now this at first is weird: how can the T-Mobile G2x appear more pixelated when the 4-inch 800×480 IPS LCD sports a resolution of 233.24 ppi? The G2x has a resolution that is 26.83 ppi denser than the Samsung Epic 4G Touch. Then it came to me.
OLED is an emissive technology. Think CRT or plasma. If you take a very close look at those pixels they are somewhat fuzzy at the edges. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing since it makes the edges smoother and closer to how things look in real life. But it isn’t the best if you’re working on the latest CAD drawing that requires precision.
LCD on the other hand is based on a mechanism that uses liquid crystals to control light that passes through square shaped pixels made up of three rectangular shaped sub-pixels*. The edges of a LCD pixel are sharp. Again, this isn’t a bad thing: LCDs are generally a whole lot better for watching computer generated films such as Pixar’s Wall-E for example. But that razor sharp edge could look more pixelated if the pixels aren’t small enough at a particular usage distance.
So that explains the initially troubling conclusion. The Super AMOLED Plus display on some Samsung smartphones can look less pixelated even at lower resolutions due to the emissive nature of OLED technology that smooth things out at the edges.
The Samsung Epic 4G Touch with the larger 4.52-inch 800×480 Super AMOLED Plus display looks fantastic, just as good as the smaller 4.27-inch version, and better than some LCDs with a higher resolution.
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* In general. There are other sub-pixel structures pioneered by Clairvoyante (now Nouvoyance) such as RGBW, RGBG, etc.
Dana Wollman, Engadget:
Regardless of how much money you sink into it, the Envy 14 has a 1366 x 786 display — a clear let-down from the 1600 x 900 screen we were treated to last year (those sold out and weren’t replaced, tragically). If this were a $700 system we wouldn’t be complaining, but on a system that costs northward of a thousand bucks, we’d expect more. 1366 x 768 is the mark of a budget machine, not a premium one.
The HP Envy 14 sports a 14.5-inch LED backlit LCD with a pixel format of 1366×768. HP calls it the BrightView Infinity LED Display. The much smaller 11.6-inch MacBook Air has the same number of pixels. The resolution of the Envy 14 is a paltry 108 ppi.
And yet, one of the things we loved most the first time around — that stunning display — just ain’t what it used to be. Its resolution is lower, for one, and the entire screen simply isn’t as eye-popping now that HP has discontinued its 14.5-inch Radiance panels.
Joanna Stern back in August 2010 when the HP Envy 14 sported the 1600×900 Radiance Infinity LED Display:
The 14.5-inch, 1,600 x 900-resolution display is a breath of fresh air compared to the laptops we’ve recently reviewed. Not only is the resolution better than the 1366 x 768 displays we’ve been staring at lately, but the quality of the flush glass LCD is miles better than the others HP’s used lately. A lot of that has to do with the HP Radiance Infinity LED panel, which was also on the Envy 13. The 350nit display has a higher color gamut than other displays, and you notice the difference upon first boot [...]
Last year’s HP Envy 14 had the mark of a premium machine; this year’s version has the mark of a budget machine, a US$1000 budget machine.
Jensen Harris, Director of Program Management for the Windows User Experience Team, introduced the Metro UI in great detail during Build. At around 41 minutes, Harris puts up a slide titled “Scaling across form factors”. And on that slide the third bullet states:
HD (~200DPI) and Ultra HD (>250DPI) screens a reality soon
Does Harris know something that we don’t? Here’s what he claims during the presentation:
High DPI screens are coming. I’ve seen them. They’re beautiful. The screen manufacturers are doing an amazing job of creating these.
And then he puts up a slide comparing an image on a 10-inch display with a 1366×768 pixel format with one that has 1920×1080. Think about that: a 10-inch LCD with 1920×1080. That calculates to a resolution of a little over 218 ppi. (I prefer to use ppi.) Microsoft will be using SVG, CSS Primitives, and XAML to scale up to 300 ppi class displays. And Metro will have a minimum pixel format requirement of 1024×768.
I reported in late July regarding HiDPI modes in OS X Lion. It would be amazing to have a 3840×2400 pixel format on my 17-inch MacBook Pro. Because of the extra screen real estate? Heck no. Because fonts and icons will be super sharp like they are on the iPhone 4. But are these larger Retina Displays coming?
According to the latest rumors the Retina Display equipped iPad I dub the iPad Pro won’t be making it this year because of difficulties in manufacturing a 9.7-inch LCD with 2048×1536 pixels. Cramming a lot of pixels while maintaining high yields isn’t easy and that means whoever makes the first batch of large Retina Displays will have to pay a lot for them. Remember the spat of news earlier on this year about Apple investing in LCD manufacturers? Maybe Apple has already paid. I still think the Retina Display equipped iPad Pro will be announced soon, but maybe that’s just hopeful thinking. But Harris has already seen large “high DPI” screens…
Windows chief Steven Sinofsky at Microsoft’s Build developer conference as reported by Daniel Robinson, V3.co.uk:
We’re not going to port the installed base of x86 applications to ARM. They don’t take advantage of the things that make ARM a great architecture.
But Microsoft has announced that Windows 8 will run on ARM. So there is only one conclusion. Take it away John Gruber:
I had been reading statements like this as meaning that they wouldn’t be doing Rosetta-style emulation of x86 software on ARM [...], but that developers would be able to recompile traditional Windows apps for ARM. Now I’m thinking what they mean is more profound: that on ARM, Metro will be the only Windows interface.
Metro is actually a well thought out user interface (UI). Jensen Harris, Director of Program Management for the Windows User Experience Team, introduced the Metro UI in great detail during Build. The complete lack of chrome leading to an elegant, minimalist user experience centered around content is what impresses me. iOS in comparison feels heavy. Again here’s Gruber:
So I hereby amend my punditry. Windows 8 with the full Windows desktop will never be an iPad rival. But a version of Windows 8 with nothing but Metro looks like an excellent design for an iPad rival.
The Metro UI certainly seems to be a worthy rival to iOS on the iPad. But a brilliant UI alone isn’t going to get you places. Take a look at what many consider a superb mobile OS: Palm’s webOS. It’s going nowhere. And there are many reasons for that.
Tight integration between hardware and the OS wasn’t there. HP makes good enough notebooks and desktops, but when it comes to tablets, good enough isn’t good enough. It’s clear HP couldn’t get beyond good enough with the TouchPad.
A robust army of great developers with efficient tools to create amazing apps, weren’t there. A place to securely and easily purchase those apps in addition to a huge multimedia library was absent, too. For all of these reasons and more webOS despite it being a solid mobile OS didn’t make it.
Sure, Metro looks nice, but Microsoft will need a flawless execution on the entire tablet experience to not only compete with the iPad but to beat it.
Update: Well, there goes Gruber’s theory. Joanna Stern put up a video showing an ARM-based tablet running Windows 8 with both Metro and the traditional desktop.
HP: The ZR2740w sports a matte 10-bit IPS LCD good for over one billion colors. To get that though you’ll need to use a DisplayPort connection and 10-bit content. Unfortunately I can’t seem to find evidence suggesting there is an embedded programmable lookup table (LUT) for precision color tuning.
The 2560×1440 pixel format should be a boon for dual window workers like me allowing two expansive 1280×1440 windows. Unfortunately I would have liked 160 extra vertical pixels for a 16:10 aspect ratio.
For some of us who like working in dark environments the ZR2740w can be throttled down to just 50 nits of brightness, saving power and your eyes.
One feature I’d like to point out is the HP Quick Release 2 feature. At deployments that require easy access to thousands of monitors, the QR2 system allows for quick and easy dismount by installing a QR2 plate compatible with 100×100 mm VESA holes.
The HP ZR2740w is aggressively priced at US$729, undercutting the Dell UltraSharp U2711 by $220 and the Apple Thunderbolt Display by $270.
The premise is simple: there’s a small amount of memory contained within the panel itself that stores a copy of the current frame being displayed on the screen. If the screen is static, the display is fed from its internal frame buffer rather than from the PC’s GPU allowing the PC (both CPU and GPU) to go to sleep. In the demonstration Intel showed power savings of 500mW, which could add up to an extra hour of battery life depending on the usage model and notebook.
Battery life is expected to increase by 45 minutes to one hour. The technology behind the panel self refresh (PSR) technology is eDP, which stands for embedded DisplayPort. A timing controller (TCON) that is eDP compliant will have an integrated frame buffer. The system takes advantage of eDP PSR only when there is a static image. The static image is identified, stored into the buffer, and displays the image from the buffer allowing CPU and GPUs to power down.
Sony: With a 10-bit OLED display, the Sony Trimaster EL PVM-2551MD can generate 1024 colors per sub-pixel resulting in a color palette of more than one billion. Accurate color reproduction is critical on a display used for visualization in the healthcare industry.
Sony uses its Super Top Emission (STE) OLED structure to brighten the overall OLED display. With a top emission design light is emitted from the emissive layer (where the organic electroluminescent film is) and travels toward the top or toward the front of the display. The thin film transistor (TFT) layer, which is behind the emissive layer, do not partially block the light resulting in a more efficient display with higher aperture ratios, lower power requirements, and increase OLED lifetimes.
STE one ups a typical top emission structure by utilizing a microcavity structure that is sensitive to the different wavelengths of Red, Green, and Blue. As explained by Sony:
The microcavity structure utilizes light resonance effects between the two electrodes. Red, Green and Blue all have different light wavelengths. Therefore the thickness of the organic film corresponding to each color is adjusted to produce the spectral peak wavelength (the optimum light) for each color. Only light that possesses the same wavelength as the distance between the “cathode electrode semitransparent film” and the “anode electrode reflective film” resonates. Light wavelengths that do not match are weakened. As a result, the spectrum of the extracted light is sharpened while brightness and color purity are enhanced. This ensures the strongest light from each color.
The Sony Trimaster EL PVM-2551MD will be available this month. Priced at ¥980,000.
Large-area panel makers are reducing output hoping to boost slumping panel prices. Among them, LG Display (LGD) has reportedly reduced its 8.5G plant utilization rate, with the possibility of a further cut to 50-70% in fourth-quarter 2011.
TV demand continues to be weak. Just look at U.S. national retailer Best Buy’s latest quarterly results: profits were down 30%. Utilization rate reductions will need to more than offset the decline in demand for big display items like TV. But I would think LGD will need all the manufacturing capacity it can handle with demand for its IPS displays increasing thanks to the iPhone 5 (or iPhone 4S) that will be soon announced and the iPad 2, which is going on strong.
While the retailer said it gained market share in smartphones and tablets—the hot growth categories in electronics retailing—those gains fell short of offsetting declines in its old cash cows, sales of televisions and computers.
TV sales have been weak for quite some time and will continue to be for the foreseeable future as long as retailers and brands push stuff few care about, like 3D TVs and “smart TVs”. That’s one: a mismatch of what companies want to sell us and what we actually want. And then there’s another: our TV viewing habits are changing. The folks that buy smartphones and tablets, aren’t they using them to watch TV?
Wacom: The 24-inch LCD is wonderfully matte so our eyes won’t need to fight glare. Thank you Wacom. The cordless and battery-free digitizer has 2048 levels pressure sensitivity. The 63.8-pound Wacom Cintiq 24HD costs US$2499.
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