Help Super AMOLED (again) with PenTile subpixel matrix?

[Bluebrain]

Does anyone know if the Galaxy S' display is also using a PenTile subpixel matrix or "real" RGB subpixels?

 

[galaxyS]

i've read somewhere that it is using that... ive read it from elektrofreak blog.. and from samsunggalaxysforum.com

 

[Bluebrain]

Too sad. This makes the Galaxy-S a no-go for me.

 

[galaxyS]

^ i wonder why? what's wrong with it? just curious..

 

[zafonic]

Too sad. This makes the Galaxy-S a no-go for me.

Why is that?

 

[EarlZ]

From my understanding the PenTile subpixel matrix is better or am I wrong ?

 

[Bluebrain]

@EarlZ You are wrong.

In fact, you don't have a native resolution of 480*800. The whole screen is only interpolated.
(the same crap which is done with webcams where you can read in tall and bold letters "2 Megapixel Webcam" ... with a little * telling you, the sensor only offers 640*480, the 2MP are interpolated)

The practical disadvantages are:
- text is not sharp but scraggy and has some colored edge
- shades of gray are not gray but pinkish
- some colors stick out from the rest (especially pure red, green and orange)
- in b/w images, colors appear where there are no colors

AMOLED is great for viewing photos and videos, but definitely NOT for reading text.

Currently I use a HTC Desire (the same as the HTC Incredible in the US).
Before I had a Motorola Milestone (="Motorola Droid" in US).

The Desire uses the same AMOLED screen as the Nexus One and the HTC Incredible with the PenTile subpixel matrix.
The Milestone has a "common" LCD (displaymate.com says "the best mobile display of the world") with a generic RGB subpixel matrix.
The Milestone display is awesome sharp and clear.
The Desire is a disaster! (at least for me) There is nearly NO single website I can view in portrait mode without zooming (but with the Milestone I could)

You MUST NOT compare the Display with the one of an iPhone or any other old or low-res screen! (... but most people do)
The iPhone display is 5 years old and only offers 320*480 pixel. EVERY newer screen will look better than the iPhone screen.
If you want to compare, then compare with the best display available. And this is the one of the Motorola Milestone/Droid with a native resolution of 480*854 Pixel)
Anything else doesn't make much sense.

I use my phone a lot for surfing and reading news and rss-feeds and it's a pleasure doing this with the Milestone.
Once you had used a Milestone and it's screen, you will never want to use anything worse!

Here are some links with examples and explanations:
metalev: Generating false color images on the Nexus One using only grayscale pixels
Nexus One display and subpixel pattern

Some pics I made. Comparison Milestone LCD vs. Desire AMOLED:

The Desire used here for comparison was very pinkish. But not all are!
So just compare the sharpness!
(But there is no Desire (or Nexus,...) which is absolutely not pinkish. Especially
shades of gray are always pinkish! I tested 4 of them.)

 

[Nex_1]

Oh God That's Terrible .. but who can confirm that the S has this streched-out pixel-thingy ?
on GSM arena says that the colors are crisp and clear , if it's pentile they will note it (like the Desire/Nexus review) .. but still .. the SuperAMOLED might make a difference (right?)

>> i was all set to get that phone but this seriously looks like a game-changer to me .. maybe cause i'm a movie-addicted .. that was brought me to the S in the first place -_-

 

[zafonic]

@EarlZ You are wrong.

In fact, you don't have a native resolution of 480*800. The whole screen is only interpolated.
(the same crap which is done with webcams where you can read in tall and bold letters "2 Megapixel Webcam" ... with a little * telling you, the sensor only offers 640*480, the 2MP are interpolated)

The practical disadvantages are:
- text is not sharp but scraggy and has some colored edge
- shades of gray are not gray but pinkish
- some colors stick out from the rest (especially pure red, green and orange)
- in b/w images, colors appear where there are no colors

AMOLED is great for viewing photos and videos, but definitely NOT for reading text.

Currently I use a HTC Desire (the same as the HTC Incredible in the US).
Before I had a Motorola Milestone (="Motorola Droid" in US).

The Desire uses the same AMOLED screen as the Nexus One and the HTC Incredible with the PenTile subpixel matrix.
The Milestone has a "common" LCD (displaymate.com says "the best mobile display of the world") with a generic RGB subpixel matrix.
The Milestone display is awesome sharp and clear.
The Desire is a disaster! (at least for me) There is nearly NO single website I can view in portrait mode without zooming (but with the Milestone I could)

You MUST NOT compare the Display with the one of an iPhone or any other old or low-res screen! (... but most people do)
The iPhone display is 5 years old and only offers 320*480 pixel. EVERY newer screen will look better than the iPhone screen.
If you want to compare, then compare with the best display available. And this is the one of the Motorola Milestone/Droid with a native resolution of 480*854 Pixel)
Anything else doesn't make much sense.

I use my phone a lot for surfing and reading news and rss-feeds and it's a pleasure doing this with the Milestone.
Once you had used a Milestone and it's screen, you will never want to use anything worse!

Here are some links with examples and explanations:
metalev: Generating false color images on the Nexus One using only grayscale pixels
Nexus One display and subpixel pattern

Some pics I made. Comparison Milestone LCD vs. Desire AMOLED:

The Desire used here for comparison was very pinkish. But not all are!
So just compare the sharpness!
(But there is no Desire (or Nexus,...) which is absolutely not pinkish. Especially
shades of gray are always pinkish! I tested 4 of them.)

If you don't mind me asking if you were happy with the Milestone then what made you want to change to the Desire?

 

[Bluebrain]

@Nex_1
If your main intention is to watch movies, go and get it! Colors are more vivid and black is true black.
But when it comes to text and readability, you see the difference.

@zafonic

If you don't mind me asking if you were happy with the Milestone then what made you want to change to the Desire?

Don't know if the Droid suffers from the same problem, but the Milestone has a huge problem with speech quality. Your conversational partner hears a lot of dropouts and in general, the overall speech quality is very bad.
As we found out, it has to do with the noise cancelling function with the second microphone of the Milestone.
And with all the fun a smartphone brings. A phone's main field of application remains making phone-calls!
Especially my friends begged me to call them back over landline because they only understand every second word I say. That's bloody frustrating, dude!

Secondly: other than the US Droid, the Milestone has a signed bootloader which only accepts signed images which makes custom roms impossible.

Thirdly: The milestone is not slow, but the Desires' 1GHz is just better. (since about 2 weeks overclocking of the Milestone is possible - well, long after I ordered my Desire)

Fourthly: The Desire was offered to me from my provider for as low as 180 EUR = 220 US$ ... you can't say no to this. At least I can sell it on eBay or give it to my wife.

I'd give anything to get an EVO 4G! (well, a GSM version of it)

 

[EarlZ]

I've seen the display on AMOLED screens and comparing it to my current 5800 the amoled is significantly better even text is sharper


Thanks for the clarification, it still sounds better to me since I dont usually stare at text on my phone for extended amounts of time.. probably more on pictures/movies/music

 

[Bluebrain]

I've seen the display on AMOLED screens and comparing it to my current 5800 the amoled is significantly better even text is sharper


Thanks for the clarification, it still sounds better to me since I dont usually stare at text on my phone for extended amounts of time.. probably more on pictures/movies/music

Do you mean the Nokia 5800?
That's the same as I mentioned when comparing with an iPhone. Also the Nokia 5800 has a much lower resolution, that's why it looks better.

It has to mess with the best! With a native 480*8xx screen.

But as you said: for pictures/movies it's the better choice.

 

[Ahmed Alzayani]

The big issue with PenTile RGBG layout is that you can't address each pixel individually with any of the 16 million color, in traditional RGB layout, each pixel is the same and have all the primary colors on it, enabling it to display any color, in PenTile RGBG layout you get Red and green in half of the pixels and Blue and green in the other half. so rendering most colors can't be done with any 1 pixel, instead the display driver use the adjacent pixels to correct the issue, thus effectively lowering the resolution and decrease the text sharpness.

Samsung are pioneers in the AMOLED tech displays and also in PenTile tech they even have a page to explain that stupid technology . the good news is that there previous AMOLED screens uses the traditional RGB layout .... let hope that this amazing 4" Super AMOLED with WVGA resolution and 16m colors uses the traditional RGB layout that we all know and love.

 

[Bluebrain]

@Ahmed Alzayani
Good explanation. Thanks!

btw. The HTC Legend is equipped with a RGB AMOLED screen but it has a lower resolution. (320x480)

Beside from if you care about the PenTile matrix or not, it's a mess for us customers.
As a manufacture, you are not allowed to title your webcam, digicam or camcorder as a x-MP device if it's not the native resolution (at least I think so that it's prohibited)

But when it comes to smartphone screens like we are talking about, you get absolutely no information regarding PenTile or not when buying such a device.

A screen-pixel is defined as to consist of, at least, of a Red, Green und Blue subpixel.
(wikipedia sasy: "In color image systems, a color (pixel) is typically represented by three or four component intensities")
And it's a fact, that the 480*800 PenTile AMOLED screens don't have "full/real" 480 Pixels in width!

... like the fake with the color depth. 16M Colors. That great. ... IF android would support it, which it doesn't. It can only handle 64k colors. Only special, "native" appllications can handle and display Images in 16M.
I personally don't care much about this issue because practically you will no notice a difference between 64k and 16M except in color shades, but others do!

 

[Phawx]

Text is quite clear on my i8910. I don't think it effects me all that much.

 

[KMA]

i've read somewhere that it is using that... ive read it from elektrofreak blog.. and from samsunggalaxysforum.com

Link to posts?

Anyone have any reliable info on whether or not the Galaxy S's Super AMOLED screen uses PenTile? All I could find was this comment on another forum:

"Yeah, WVGA AMOLEDs in the market are all using PenTile thus it's not really 800x480 but rather around 640x360. But the Super AMOLED is said to have true 800x480 resolution."

http://forum2.mobile-review.com/showpost.php?p=855156&postcount=4

Thanks!

 

[galaxyS]

The size of the screen is also inconsequential when what we're talking about is the number of polygons being drawn and textured on the screen. The resolution of the screen is important when determining the number of pixels per frame that need to be processed, but that's a completely separate value from the number of pixels that are physically on the display. The PenTile system that Samsung employs uses a special arrangement of pixels and unique image processing algorithm to produce an image that is able to scale appropriately with video output as well as produce (supposedly) accurate color representation. This method has fallen under a little bit of fire recently for the image quality produced by the Samsung PenTile AMOLED display on the Nexus One under certain circumstances (hence the 'supposedly' before), and it'll be interesting to see how this has been addressed in the Super AMOLED display.

- Electrofreak

 

[galaxyS]

The obsessions of an electronics freak: Hummingbird vs Snapdragon: the 1 Ghz smartphone showdown

this is also his site that talks about the galaxy S and the evo..

 

[galaxyS]

>> i was all set to get that phone but this seriously looks like a game-changer to me .. maybe cause i'm a movie-addicted .. that was brought me to the S in the first place -_-

as far as i know, the only thing affected by this subpixel is the fonts or texts.. but not the images, this technology is better for images and video viewings...

does it really make a difference?

 

[galaxyS]

pentile is owned by samsung right? so i assume they will use that on their products..

 

[KMA]

pentile is owned by samsung right? so i assume they will use that on their products..

I think this is the reason most people are assuming the Super AMOLED screen will use PenTile... I don't think there is any other concrete info at this time, correct? It seems to all be speculation... i.e. maybe it will, maybe it won't...

Although he seems like a smart enough guy, I'm not sure why Electrofreak would have any inside information on Samsung's upcoming products.

 

[Bluebrain]

I think some people presume that AMOLED = PenTile Matrix. This is wrong.

AMOLED has nothing to do with the PenTile matrix.
You could even build a LCD TFT with PenTile matrix. It would just make no sense.
PenTile only describes a special arrangement of the subpixel alignment and control.
An (AM)OLED display with PenTile matrix is just less expensive in production and increases the lifetime of the display.

e.g. the AMOLED of the HTC Legend has a common RGB 3-Subpixel layout.

Nothing indicates that the Super-AMOLED of the Galaxy S also uses the PenTile technology. Even less the fact that just it is an AMOLED.

If I were Samsung, and I would build the most advanced mobile display, and call it "Super", I would NOT use a PenTile matrix.
But well, if I were Samsung, I would do a lot of things an other way!

 

[elchingon666]

Guys,

I am also a former user of a Samsung i8910 with Amoled screen and believe me there is absolutely NO problems with text clarity. Here's a screenshot from the Galaxy S, as you can see there is nothing to worry about, the text looks fine.

And another from a little farther away...looks fine to me, nothing like the pics showing the blurry text at all.

 

[galaxyS]

I think this is the reason most people are assuming the Super AMOLED screen will use PenTile... I don't think there is any other concrete info at this time, correct? It seems to all be speculation... i.e. maybe it will, maybe it won't...

Although he seems like a smart enough guy, I'm not sure why Electrofreak would have any inside information on Samsung's upcoming products.

i know.. im not doubting him whatsoever, but how credible his statements are, right?

 

[Bluebrain]

Guys,

I am also a former user of a Samsung i8910 with Amoled screen and believe me there is absolutely NO problems with text clarity. Here's a screenshot from the Galaxy S, as you can see there is nothing to worry about, the text looks fine.

And another from a little farther away...looks fine to me, nothing like the pics showing the blurry text at all.

I would be very interested in your pics, they don't get displayed.
If I try to access

http://attach.mobile01.com/attach/201005/mobile01-9e9e3e904048a09807a72e5712ff3163.png

I get an Error 403 (Forbidden)