Engadget: The Nokia Lumia 900 sports a 4.3-inch ClearBlack AMOLED, a bit big­ger than the 3.7-inch on the Lumia 800. ClearBlack indi­cates a polar­ized fil­ter to block light from enter­ing the OLED dis­play, min­i­miz­ing reflec­tions, and keep­ing black black. The 4.3-inch OLED packs a pixel for­mat of just 800×480. Unfortunate, but under­stand­able since the single-core Qualcomm CPU prob­a­bly would have croaked under the pres­sure of 1280×720 pixels.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. Unless Nokia has gone RGB-stripe on this larger ClearBlack AMOLED dis­play, we’re look­ing at PenTile Matrix. With Windows Phone 7 tout­ing its beau­ti­ful typog­ra­phy the worst pos­si­ble deci­sion is to marry it with a PenTile Matrix dis­play, which is weak at text ren­der­ing. Now that weak­ness will be more promi­nent with big­ger pix­e­la­tions. Bigger is def­i­nitely not better.

It’s unfor­tu­nate. The Lumia 900 is already behind the curve, right out of the gate. Too bad Farhad Manjoo and MG Siegler has it exactly wrong.

Update: The Verge has con­firmed the Lumia 900 does not use a PenTile Matrix sub-pixel struc­tured OLED dis­play. Now I’m get­ting a bit more excited, except in a world mov­ing toward 300+ ppi, the 217-ppi Lumia 900 sounds pathetic.

Update 2: Vlad Savov at The Verge inter­views VP for Windows Phone, Joe Belfiore, and titles the post, "Phone will com­pete on qual­ity, not specs". Belfiore has a valid point when he says Microsoft is focus­ing its Windows Phone engi­neer­ing efforts on a rel­a­tively nar­row set of hard­ware to improve per­for­mance. This approach will cer­tainly yield bet­ter results, over exist­ing results. And this method works, in a vac­uum with no com­pe­ti­tion. In the smart­phone space the dis­play is it. The 4.3-inch 800×480 ClearBlack AMOLED dis­play on the Lumia 900, is not.

Update 3: The first com­mer­cial.

Update 2012.03.26: US$99.99, AT&T, April 8. For Nokia’s flag­ship smart­phone that’s quite aggres­sive, which is prob­a­bly necessary.

Update 2012.04.03: Joshua Topolsky, The Verge:

On the other hand, I’m dis­ap­pointed by the dis­play on the Lumia. Besides being lower in res­o­lu­tion than com­pet­i­tive devices (new Android phones at 1280 x 720 and the iPhone at 960 x 640), I felt col­ors were far too sat­u­rated. This is a pretty com­mon prob­lem with AMOLED screens, but the issue seems pro­nounced on the Lumia 900 thanks to the stark­ness of the Windows Phone inter­face. Combined with the lower res­o­lu­tion dis­play (which is par­tic­u­larly notable with white text against that black back­ground), the effect is jarring.

Flagship smart­phone mod­els are mov­ing north of 300 ppi. That 300 ppi is a thresh­old set by Steve Jobs for smart­phones that are used roughly 10-12 inches away. Below it the dis­play does not merit a Retina des­ig­na­tion. Only when the display’s indi­vid­ual pix­els, at around 300 ppi, melt into dig­i­tal ink can a smart­phone demand to be taken seri­ously. The Nokia Lumia 900 hand­cuffed by Microsoft’s 800×480 pixel for­mat lim­i­ta­tion packs a decid­edly weak 217-ppi OLED display.

I doubt Microsoft is seri­ous about mak­ing Windows Phone 7 a suc­cess. Why? It failed and con­tin­ues to fail to under­stand that to pro­vide a con­sis­tent visual expe­ri­ence across many vari­eties of dis­play sizes on WP7 smart­phones you do not set in stone the pixel for­mat, such as 800×480, but the res­o­lu­tion, such as 300 ppi. If Microsoft had known what they were doing, the 4.3-inch Lumia 900 would have sported a much higher res­o­lu­tion and would now be a seri­ous option for those seek­ing the very best. Unfortunately that is not the case, at all.