Uncommon Sense: On Display Technologies

I got my first cell phone in 2001, a Philips Xenium DB GSM phone. It is the first of its Xenium line that continued to this day, after a good 12 years. The model was top of the line, targeting at business customers (it has voice control for God’s sake…). Its design was sleek, operation was smooth with the 3-way dial (“Pilot Key”), the OS was a cute one Philips newly designed for the model. Released in 2000, the same year as the blockbuster Nokia 3310, Xenium’s larger, more “refined” display almost has 1.5 more dots (my guess) than the 84*84 on 3310’s. But those monochrome dots (or squares if you look close enough) are still dots nonetheless, visible even from a distance. It was as hard to image iPhone’s “retina display” back then as visualizing a tablet computer in 1940.

Philips Xenium

Nokia 3310

But in mass market’s eye, technology changes over night, merely a year later in 2001, Sharp was already marketing the first camera phone in Japan. 7 years later when I got my Blackberry Curve 8310, the display was 320*240 with 160 ppi pixel density (“retina display” has little more than twice the density). When I view pictures on 8310, there is no noticeable difference from viewing them on most desktop monitors. However, I can still see the little “dots” on the screen. Then comes iPhone 4 and iPod Touch 4 and their “retina display” – it finally becomes almost impossible to see the rough edges and squares on the screens. I remember playing with my new iPod Touch for the first a couple days solely to enjoy its beautiful display. It was perfect.

Blackberry Curve 8310

This piece was originally intended to compare and contrast the current day display technologies on smartphones. Apparently my nostalgic digression has taken too much of my time, leaving little energy in me to continue the quest. So here is the much abridged version:

The basic display technologies on most smartphone today are either TFT-LCD or AMOLED. iPhone 4S uses TFT-LCD, which has lower manufacturing cost and higher resolution. Samsung’s Galaxy Nexus uses AMOLED, which boasts better color and wider viewing angle. Also, the AMOLED used in Galaxy Nexus almost has the same pixel density as iPhone 4S (316 vs 320, who could tell the difference…remember Galaxy Nexus has a larger screen).

The not-so-well-written article by CNET Asia somehow categorized the different technologies except for the most advanced one used on Samsung Galaxy Nexus. I may write a better one if I had the time – it gets frustrating if you dig into the details. For example, Samsung’s AMOLED displays can be broken down by display quality into AMOLED (Samsung Captivate), Super AMOLED (Samsung Galaxy S), Super AMOLED Advanced (Moto Droid RAZR), Super AMOLED Plus (Galaxy S II), HD Super AMOLED (Galaxy Nexus and Galaxy Note), and potentially HD Super AMOLED Plus (for next gen OLED TVs). Perhaps 24 months later we will see Samsung calling its display “Ultra Super Fantastic Extreme Premium Terrific HD AMOLED Plus Multiply Exponentiate Supreme Deluxe”

Below are seriously metaphorical illustration of the different aptitudes of display technologies