If I link to an uncached WordPress site, it will go down.
True. I’ve seen this happen enough times. Not here though.
I use WordPress and it’s cached using W3 Total Cache. The combination has been rock solid even during heavy traffic from Daring Fireball links. Prepare your WordPress site; you never know when Gruber might link to you.
PS: In addition to using a cache plugin, I’ve torn out everything I don’t need. There are no more tags. No more categories. There hasn’t been commenting on DisplayBlog for quite some time but the old ones have been cleared from WordPress database tables. Revisions have been turned off.
And I developed a tiny minimalist theme, the one that’s running now. I was forced to, but I’m glad. I used Thesis, but one day it wasn’t happy with the world and decided not to play nice. I prodded, again and again. Begged even. Thesis just shook its head. Arms crossed. So… I kicked the expensive, heavy, unresponsive theme out into cyberspace.
From a blank, new text file I started to type away. I was bone stock at writing a WordPress theme. After an entire days worth of coding and testing a new theme was created. I affectionately call it Min, for more minimal than minimal. It has a user interface that puts content at the forefront and is 100% text. No transitions. No hover animations. There are no images in the UI. I did this to reduce the time it takes to load the content. And it should work really well at all zoom levels. Hope you like it. And Gruber, DisplayBlog is ready for your awesome wave of traffic. Link here anytime.
Brian Klug and Anand Lai Shimpi, AnandTech:
The only major issue outdoors is something else entirely. I noticed pretty quickly with the Infuse 4G and Droid Charge that outside in my climate’s environment (~100+F outdoor temps, lots of sunlight) that the phones would clamp brightness to about 75% to prevent overheating. This is in part a measure to protect the display panel and of course other internal components. I set out to find out whether SGS2 implements the same thermal restrictions, and it does.
Exactly when you need the Samsung Galaxy S II to put out as much brightness as it can, it goes into self preservation mode and limits brightness to 75% of maximum, about 226 nits*. Who should this brilliance be attributed to?
Another small thing about the SGS2’s SAMOLED+ is that I’ve noticed that high contrast images can be persistent for a few seconds. It isn’t burn-in, but a persistence that stays for a few seconds and can be very visible. For example, leaving the Android keyboard up (which is black, grey, and white) and dragging the shade down, a shadow of the keyboard remains visible until it fades after a few seconds. This persists even on other applications as well, and I can only hope doesn’t become something permanent if left up too long.
The 4.3-inch Super AMOLED Plus always pumps out high contrast images, doesn’t it? And that means you’ll be treated to ghosting whatever you do for a few seconds at a time. That would drive me up the wall. I would categorize this type of behavior as defective.
[...] Where WVGA starts to become a problem is at 4.5″. Scaling up area and increasing the diagonal size by 0.2″ doesn’t sound like a problem, but r^2 is a bitch, and at that size both the Android UI elements and subpixels look absurdly huge. Luckily, the international SGS2’s 4.3″ is completely tolerable with WVGA.
A pixel format of 800×480 on a 4.3-inch display calculates to 217 ppi. At a usage distance of 12 inches those pixels will be viewable. Bump the size up to 4.5 inches and resolution falls to 207 ppi. What is needed in the world of ever larger Android smartphone displays is a jump to 1280×720. Put that pixel format on a 4.5-inch display and the resolution gets to 326 ppi, which coincidentally is exactly the same as the 3.5-inch 960×640 Retina Display.
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* The Motorola Droid X2 has a brightness of 697 nits, the RIM BlackBerry Torch 9800 606 nits, and the Apple iPhone 4 571 nits. Comparatively speaking the Samsung Galaxy S II has terribly low brightness, meaning it would be most difficult to use in direct sunlight.
It’s the Jobs side of the equation that Apple’s rivals — phone, tablet, laptop, whatever — are able to copy. Thus the patents and the lawsuits. Design is copyable. But the Cook side of things — Apple’s economy of scale advantage — cannot be copied by any company with a complex product lineup. How could Dell, for example, possibly copy Apple’s operations when they currently classify “Design & Performance” and “Thin & Powerful” as separate laptop categories?
I don’t see the value in separating and comparing two, of many, Apple advantages over its competition: design to economy of scale. What Gruber fails to consider in this must-read article is the fact that design isn’t limited to external industrial design (ID) or the user interface (UI). Design encompasses ID, certainly, but also manufacturing design as in the aluminum unibody production process, and linked to the internal design of products is the procurement execution and management of those components which in turn are dictated by ID, the manufacturing process, and so on. In the case of the unibody aluminum MacBooks the unique manufacturing design allowed Apple to reduce the number of steps in the manufacturing process, maintain robustness without having to add supporting structure in the chassis, minimize the number of components, simplify the design of the components themselves, resulting in a dramatic reduction in defects and bill of materials. Design in the case of Apple is integrative. Apple itself is the ultimate culmination of integrative design.
ID and UI are indeed copyable. Just look at all of the me-too smartphones and tablets on the market today, but the economy of scale advantage can be copied too. The Cook side of Apple can be copied by simplifying the product lineup. If you are Dell how can you simplify a mind-numbingly complex product lineup? You can’t; not if you lack the design ethos, the integrative design ethos, of someone like Steve Jobs.
This realization sort of snuck up on me. I’ve always been interested in Apple’s products because of their superior design; the business side of the company was never of as much interest. But at this point, it seems clear to me that however superior Apple’s design is, it’s their business and operations strength — the Cook side of the equation — that is furthest ahead of their competition, and the more sustainable advantage. It cannot be copied without going through the same sort of decade-long process that Apple went through.
Again, it might be easy to to start thinking that Apple’s design can in some way be separated from the business side of things. I don’t think you can. The separation is merely theoretical and cannot be done in the case of Apple because the company itself is the result of integrative design, which includes the company’s superior design, business and operations strength, among other things. As long as whoever is in charge realizes Apple is integrative design, the company will continue to have a sustainable advantage over its competition.
Bill Gates may have been the satiric target of the “1984” commercial, but did he ever push his monopoly power as far?
And now we’re into the “getting basic facts wrong” part of the piece. Bill Gates was not the target of the ad; it was IBM. Nobody knew who the heck Microsoft was in 1984.
For the very first time in computing, the user has been put in control of how best to utilize the display portal they have been given — not the manufacturer.
Monitors that pivot?
For a fifth consecutive time, Apple ranks highest among manufacturers of smartphones in customer satisfaction with a score of 795 and performs particularly well in ease of operation, operating system, features and physical design. Motorola (763) and HTC (762) follow Apple in the smartphone rankings.
The iPhone is the only smartphone that garnered five out of five Power Circle Ratings, which represents “Among the Best”. Both Motorola and HTC were given just three or “About Average”.
Chris Burritt, Bloomberg:
Next month, Lowe’s will introduce its MyLowes online tool that customers will be able to use to store owner’s manuals, warranties and paint formulas, Chief Information Officer Mike Brown said in an interview. The Mooresville, North Carolina- based company is arming workers with 42,000 iPhone 4s to answer shoppers’ questions and ring up purchases.
Each Lowe’s store will be equipped with about 25 iPhones. Home Depot dispatched Motorola smartphones last year.
Hankyung.com: The Mobile Communications arm of LG Electronics is undergoing a major reorganization. LGE is drastically reducing overseas procurement and marketing personnel as the company continues to experience losses. About 20-30% of dispatched employees have been ordered to return to Korea. LGE Vice Chairman BJ Koo is reportedly behind the reorganization to shift LGE from a focus on marketing to technology and quality.
Elias Samuel, International Business Times:
Motorola’s Droid Bionic uses a qHD (540 x 960 pixels, 256 ppi pixel density) TFT display for its 4.3-inch screen. qHD is a display resolution of 960×540 pixels which is exactly one quarter of a full HD 1080p and three quarters of a 720p frame, in a 16:9 aspect ratio. Droid Bionic’s screen fits the same 16:9 ratio as your HD TV which, in conjunction with that extra inch or so, and makes film and TV viewing a far more natural fit. Full HD resolution (1920 x 1080) looks good on 40-inch LCD TV, but here we are talking about a quarter of the full HD resolution (i.e. 540 x 960) which perfectly fits the 4.3-inch screen and is more than enough to get that HD effect.
The resolution of the 4.3-inch 960×540 LCD used in the Motorola Droid Bionic cannot be calculated at 256 ppi. The reason being each pixel is different. Each pixel on the Droid Bionic is made up of a RGBW sub-pixel structure arranged in a 2×2 format. If you count the pixels you won’t find 256 of them in a diagonal inch. On the other hand, the 3.5-inch 960×640 Retina Display used in the Apple iPhone 4 has a RGB-stripe sub-pixel structure good for a resolution of 326 ppi. Look through a microscope and you’ll find 326 pixels in each diagonal inch.
Here’s how you calculate ppi. First, the number of pixels on the diagonal pane needs to be calculated:
Diagonal Pixels = Square Root ( Horizontal Pixels Squared + Vertical Pixels Squared)
In the case of the 3.5-inch 960×640 Retina Display in the iPhone 4 this becomes:
1153.78 = √(921,600 + 409,600)
And then to get ppi:
Pixels Per Inch = Diagonal Pixels / Diagonal Length
Which would put the Retina Display’s ppi at:
329.65 = 1153.78 / 3.5
The actual size of the iPhone 4 Retina Display is a slightly larger 3.54 inches if Apple’s stated ppi of 326 is accurate. This calculation can be done because we assume that each hardware pixel equals a pixel we see. This isn’t the case with a RGBW PenTile Matrix pixel.
Each RGBW hardware pixel doesn’t translate into a pixel we see on a PenTile Matrix display. Nouvoyance has decoupled hardware pixel from addressed pixel. In other words, a pixel we see on a RGBW PenTile Matrix display can be made up of any combination of those sub-pixels, sometimes using all four and at other times using just two. For instance, when a RGBW PenTile Matrix display is showing a pattern of black and white lines only two sub-pixels are used.
Because the standard method of determining resolution depends on whether or not these black and white lines can be distinguished from one another Nouvoyance rightly claims that its 4.3-inch RGBW PenTile Matrix LCD has a pixel format of 960×540 resulting in a resolution of 256 ppi.
There is just one problem. We experience a difference: images or text on a RGBW PenTile Matrix display look different than on a display with RGB-strip sub-pixels with an equivalent ppi. Just read the initial wave of reviews for the Motorola Droid Bionic.
The next point I’d like to make focuses on the aspect ratio. A 16:9 aspect ratio on a smartphone is great when you want to watch video in that same aspect ratio. Most HD content created for TV has a 16:9 aspect ratio, but very few feature films do. Still 16:9 is better, not perfect, for feature films than a more squarish 3:2 aspect ratio you find on the iPhone 4. For everything else, I propose that a less wide display is better in iPad 2.0: A More Perfect iPad. The article looks at the iPad in particular but the general conclusion can be applied to smartphones.
Suppliers in the iPhone 5 supply chain in Taiwan have geared up production recently with volume shipments of the new Apple smartphones to begin soon. Production of iPhone 5s at OEM maker Foxconn Electronics has reportedly reached 150,000 units per day, according to industry sources.
Largan Precision (lens), TPK Holding (touch panel), G-Tech Optoelectronics (cover glass), Simplo (battery), and Dynapack (battery) are all operating at full capacity. If this report is true the iPhone 5 is on its way to becoming announced by Apple shortly.
DisplayBlog is written and produced by Jin Kim. Subscribe via RSS.