SAMOLED vs. SLCD vs. qHD vs Retina Display

[Shocky]

I'm not knocking SAMOLED because I don't have it - I'm knocking all of them for not having any simple adjustment capabilities. The unit-to-unit variations do exist, so what you see on yours may not be what a compadre elsewhere sees on his.

You can adjust the colour with an app from the market on the Galaxy S, however this effects everything not just video but there is an option for colour profiles.

 

[EarlyMon]

You can adjust the colour with an app from the market on the Galaxy S, however this effects everything not just video but there is an option for colour profiles.

Last I looked, I could find no such app. If you'd be so kind as to point me in the right direction, I can pass that on to the many Samsung owners I cross paths with, here on AF and in the outside world - thanks in advance for that.

 

[Shocky]

Last I looked, I could find no such app. If you'd be so kind as to point me in the right direction, I can pass that on to the many Samsung owners I cross paths with, here on AF and in the outside world - thanks in advance for that.

It's called Galaxy Tuner, I've never actually felt the need to adjust it, looks great to me.


https://market.android.com/details?id=com.dowkim.GalaxyTuner

 

[EarlyMon]

^Nice find!

A little confusing - it seems to clearly require Froyo (a specific kernel), but the rooted or not language lost something in translation.

But - it's a start in the right direction.

 

[SupahMatt]

If you put the qHD resolution on a 3.5 inch screen, it would only have 15 less DPI. (315 DPI-->330 DPI) This means that the "retina" display is not that much better than qHD when put on the same size screen

 

[ArmageddonX]

I'm currently reading articles today on the differences between qHD displays. Pentile vs rgb stripe technology. So even that sub-category of display has variety. =)

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this is an article about the differences between RGB LCD and Pentile LCD:
Why Bother With a PenTile RGBW LCD if an RGB Stripe is Available? | PenTile Blog

Pentile vs RGB Stripe Technology

Unless I'm reading this wrong, they only go with Pentile to save power. Correct?
The traditional RGB display is brighter and more colorful. Correct?

EDIT: I just read another article that said it's simple a re-arrangement of how the pixels are displayed. So a cross pattern like # instead of an X pattern. Still researching this on my own.

 

[EarlyMon]

It simplifies when you think in terms of light, optics and perception.

Here's the physics of that:

You conspire with pixels to see a continuous image under the right viewing situations (not too close or too far).

That happens because somewhere between the pixels and your visual cortex, the light from the dots gets integrated.

You see a wide range of colors because red, green and blue are sufficient to integrate in a such a way as for you to perceive a wide range of colors. So pixels typically have individual red, green and blue subpixels.

I've read many reasons for the development of PenTile arrays - maybe I've read the truth, or maybe I've read propaganda to hide trade secrets and compromises at the time.

The idea of PenTile is simple - if colored light integration is going to happen in the end, why not cheat a little and kinda re-arrange the sub-pixels in a way that they share the work between neighboring pixels.

So the pixel count is spec'd the same, but the sub-pixel count is lower (by what? 35%? I don't recall the exact number, it's likely in one of your links).

All in all, a pretty cool approach on some levels. But - there ain't no such thing as a free lunch. So, while I've no doubt that PenTile qHD is sharper than 800x480 anything, it won't be as sharp as RGB qHD for all uses (like text, where the shared subpixels are crossing boundaries between pixels). And color control can be harder with PenTile - doable - but harder.

Many people can't see the difference, many can see it clearly. Last year, I posted two different pictures of the same colored text web page and asked which was LCD, which was PenTile AMOLED - only a scant few guessed correctly that they were both pictures of the same Samsung display from slightly different angles.

 

[ArmageddonX]

So, to clarify for myself, the PenTile makes the pixels work better together but in the process lowers clarity & color? While the traditional RGB Stripe has more vivid color and is even sharper; but less efficient?

 

[EarlyMon]

So, to clarify for myself, the PenTile makes the pixels work better together but in the process lowers clarity & color? While the traditional RGB Stripe has more vivid color and is even sharper; but less efficient?

I don't want to misrepresent or confuse, so please bear with me.

For a given same technology (say LCD for example) and same resolution (say qHD for example), PenTile will use less control circuitry than RGB, so will be more electrically efficient for that reason, despite having a potentially teeny-tiny energy penalty for calculating that cross-pixel control.

Depending on the individual panel properties, you may get an apparent increase in vivid color. Why? Suppose I'd like to present a solid red panel. In the RGB case, 2/3 of my pixels are dead and dark. In the RGBW PenTile arrangement 3/4 of my pixels are dead and dark - and there are 33% fewer subpixels to begin with. In order to reduce the screen-door effect (where you can see a checkerboard of black lines with colored dots, like looking through a screen door) and to achieve the same total light output, the red LCD apertures must be opened wider - or the backlight must be increased - on the PenTile display in order to see the same solid red field.

So - claims of up to 50% power savings on PenTile arrays may or may not be true, depending on the user's settings for brightness, chosen based on the user's source preferences (text pages, movies, that sort of thing).

But PenTile should be more energy efficient.

(EDIT - I'm retracting this position - http://androidforums.com/motorola-photon-4g/374557-photon-lcd-screen-pentile-not-2.html#post2987452)

To confuse matters, there's been more than one PenTile - consider this Samsung RGB PenTile from their AMOLED days:

File:Nexus one screen microscope.jpg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

So - vivid is up for grabs, but I'd suggest you'll get a truer color rendering with RGB.

As for the subpixels working better together - they all work great together.

It's just that with PenTile, they're trying to work more cleverly with fewer subpixels.

The lowering of clarity will depend on the matrix layout - but with more subpixels, the edge will go to RGB.

This discusses subpixel rendering and may be helpful -

Subpixel rendering - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[ArmageddonX]

I think I understand.

RGB-Stripe = may have better color, sharper image, more power consumption

RGB-PenTile = clever way to save power & display *nearly* identical clarity & color

 

[EarlyMon]

Yes.

And if your vision is less or more sensitive to fine details then that *nearly* part goes up or down accordingly.

(Everyone claims to have incredibly sensitive vision and gets touchy about it. You can no more choose that than you can your height - but it seems on the intertubes most people act like it's a personal deal. People are highly variable, including their vision and eye-brain systems. Fact.)

 

[ArmageddonX]

You're the best EarlyMon. Thank you.

 

[novox77]

Sometimes it helps to have a picture. Below is PenTile RGBG (used on Samsung SAMOLED screens):

In the above picture, all pixel elements are on, so this screen is showing white. Because red+blue+green light gives white. It doesn't look white cause it's magnified. Not really the point. Now, Early gave an example of a screen showing something red. That means the greens and blues turn off. The following pic shows what happens when PenTile RGBG has to render the primary colors alone and the rediculous amount of screendoor effect:

Note that the screen door effect is different depending on which color the screen is rendering. There's a ton of black between the red and blue. Green shows up more like vertical stripes. Because the ratio of dark to subpixel is much higher in PenTile display, given equal brightness of subpixels compared to a traditional square layout, PenTile screens will appear less bright. To compensate, the screen must shine brighter, using more power.

With images, you rarely have a solid color for a large area, so this screen door problem is masked somewhat. But for solid blocks of colors seen on lots of websites and apps, it's quite obvious. Also, white text on black background, basically the settings menus in Android, look horrible on Pentile because text has tons of perfectly vertical and horizontal lines. And that's where PenTile really suffers. Remember I said white requires all three of the primary colors? Look at the top pic and tell me how you can possibly derive a straight line from that mishmash tile pattern of subpixels, making sure each "pixel" uses the same amount of R G and B. You can't.

So... what you get is a fuzzy or jagged edge on your text with a bit of red, green, and blue glow along the edges. You see this kind of "chromatic aberration" along any edge of contrast, actually.

With SAMOLED, at least you have the deep blacks and the super-saturated colors to dazzle you and help you overlook the PenTile crappiness. But there's no excuse for putting PenTile RGBG on an LCD-based screen. Yep, I'm looking at you, Motorola... Only reason I can think of is for the power savings, and possibly cheaper construction cost. At a sacrifice to clarity and brightness efficiency.

This article shows comparison pics between regular square RGB stripe LCD and PenTile RGBG LCD. AnandTech - The Motorola Atrix 4G Preview

You can clearly see the difference in brightness and the screen door effect. And note all the chromatic aberration around the text in the Google Maps comparison on the PenTile side, particularly the "dio" part (below). Looks horrendous on PenTile.

No need to go easy on PenTile. It sucks. Samsung ditched it for the Galaxy S2.

 

[ArmageddonX]

Wow, you guys are really into this display thing. Hehe... I have to say, you have convinced me never to buy a PenTile display ever. As a heavy text messager and I do a lot of reading on my phone I can imagine that would be miserable! I'll make sure my next phone is a Stripe/traditional LCD/display.

 

[mrqs]

Fun home experiment especially if you have a high-res laptop: sit at your laptop where you usually do - I'll bet you see no pixels, just lines. Hold your phone up between you and your laptop at your comfortable, normal, phone-viewing distance.

Now - what is the percentage or fraction of your phone's _apparent_ display size with respect to the _apparent_ size of your laptop.

Finally - take into account the resolution of the phone vs. the resolution of the final area that the phone _apparently_ occupies on the laptop.

In my personal case, my 800x480@4.3" phone has same or better resolution than my 1440x900@15" laptop.

I've yet to complain about pixelation on my laptop.

there's a very important aspect to that comparison you didn't take in to account: information density on the screen

say you're viewing a webpage
on the laptop everything's fine with a 1440x900 resolution; plenty of text and pretty pictures of naked ladies android phones
go to the same page on your phone and all of that information is being shrunk to a fraction of the physical size
the text on the phone will be much smaller than the one on the laptop - you'll be able to read it because you generally hold your phone closer to your eyes than the laptop screen, but the pixel density is going to have to be much higher as well, or else the character will become blurry and eventually unreadable

 

[EarlyMon]

there's a very important aspect to that comparison you didn't go into in this thread: information density on the screen

ftfy

That part had been discussed elsewhere - but you're right, best to have it a part of this thread as well.

 

[1ds]

Every Display panel boasts its own USP, in the end it depend upon user eye taste what he likes.

I Chose SUPER LCD because

Immune to burn-In which starts in excessive usage
No tints hues like we get in AMOLEDS(AMOLEDS are known to show tints like blue n yellow)
True to life accurate colors without over-saturation(Again AMOLED pushes colors way to hard makes images un-real)
Bit more viewing angle than AMOLED +
White is really WHITE

there are some downsides Super LCD too

Poor sunlight readability
Blacks are not True BLACK they are more like GREY BLACK
Cant save power with black themes


at the end of the day there is no such display which overcomes every display flaw and we have to compromise because of their limitations.

 

[ArmageddonX]

So, the qHD LCD displays are immune to burn it? Or is that just the Sony (Super) LCD brand?

I'm on my Smartphone (when I have one) probably 30-45minutes out of every hour. So immunity to screen-burn is a big selling point to me actually...

Good information about the up & downsides to AMOLED (and LCD too). Most the time you just see people praising it and it can be difficult to get a non-biased opinion of different display types.

 

[EarlyMon]

LCDs act like little valves or shutters or apertures. They open or close to allow the backlight to flow through, then through a colored lens and/or polarizing layers.

You can get stuck pixels on an LCD. This is because there are transistors creating an electrical field that the LC material responds to (to open or close) and sometimes, those transistors can get stuck into a constant state. And the transistors can stay in stuck state even if you remove power - when you power up, you'll get pixels that are stuck at black, red, you name it.

If that happens there are apps and web pages that will cycle the colors for several minutes. What that does is pulse those control signals until the transistors in question get unstuck.

Left untreated for a _long_ period of time, the LC material at a stuck pixel will experience a chemical change and you'll get the LCD equivalent of burn-in: a permanently stuck pixel.

Leaving stuck pixels alone is NEVER a good idea. If you have a whole bunch of them happening it'll look like ghosting or burn-in.

(On the first cheap LCD displays coming out about a decade ago, they'd even ghost the screen badly. Haven't seen that in years and years.)

Whole stuck LCD pixel thing applies to every LCD made - phone, computer, TV - because it's a transistor issue.

Last time I suffered it was on a JVC LCD HDTV several years ago - fixed by changing color pattern with a slide-show.

~~~~~~~

Actual burn-in on OLED-type displays seems relatively rare from what I've read from users here, but it does happen. In those cases, it's like the old CRT days - actual image constantly burned in to the display.

Samsung Galaxy S owners have reported good results with that same rotating color app or web sites in very many - but not all - cases at the first hint of possible burn-in.

With OLED, light energy is produced at the subpixel itself. With LCD, the light is just a light behind the panel.

 

[ArmageddonX]

I still have an old 19-inch CRT I bought when I built my first Pentium 133 rig I keep just to remind myself... it's huge... anyway... Off-Topic lol...

 

[Stuntman]

I recall reading an article about AMOLED displays where the lifetime of blue pixels are much shorter than that of the red and green pixels. It seems the manufacturing process or material for each colour of pixel is different and the longevity of blue pixels is an issue with AMOLED displays. There is no such issue with LCD's.

 

[1ds]

So, the qHD LCD displays are immune to burn it? Or is that just the Sony (Super) LCD brand?

I'm on my Smartphone (when I have one) probably 30-45minutes out of every hour. So immunity to screen-burn is a big selling point to me actually...

Good information about the up & downsides to AMOLED (and LCD too). Most the time you just see people praising it and it can be difficult to get a non-biased opinion of different display types.

Burn-in only affects AMOLEDS because each pixel is like a lamp which glow on its own, i have Sony CRT tv at home 21" whenever i switch it on for prolonged hours channel logo on top right leaves a hue or say burn-in that place( to notice it on CRT display a static image of RED BLUE or GREEN on same area for 3 hours and you will see that static image have left some residue when you change the channel but that vaanishes when set is switched off overninght but AMOLED makes a tattoo of that which never goes!!) i think AMOLEDS do the same but very slowly but they do, a friend of mine keeps his Galaxy S AMOLED on max brightness all the time and his screen shows etched battery logo & signal bar when white background is displayed though its no HUGE but its there if you look after it, and it justifies Burn-in,


S-LCD not matter its an Sony,Samsung or qHD from other display makers will never ever show burn-in or etching whatsoever i have very old sony ericsson k750i which i bought way back and i use as a bed clock and believe me from past 2 years its continuously ON(24X7 on charging!!!) and back-lit is on always and yet no sign of display wear or pixel dead/stuck! though led lamps are bit dim but its only noticeable in 100% brightness, in the end i say AMOLED panels are good but they are like CFL lamp yes they glows more than edsion Bulb but one day they will fuse, it will take few more years for AMOLEDS to be on par with SLCD( on wear and tear grounds)

 

[MyNamesTooLong]

Personally I think its all just marketing...no one is complaining of horrible experiences because thier phone has x type of display. Besides it isn't just the screen that sells the phone

 

[ronrelyea]

is super amoled plus the way to go if I need the best readability in sunlight??

 

[MaFi0s0]

I prefer slcd over amoled, much sharper and more accurate colour, how is super amoled plus for colour accuracy?

Btw any fans of amoled can get the same effect on windows by going into graphics options and turning on digital vibrancy for nvidia cards, not sure what it's called for ati.