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Fortify for frenetic phone fanboy fighting — as part of a series of in-depth investigations into the screen quality of the iPhone and the Nexus One, the visual experts at DisplayMate have claimed that, scientifically speaking, the iPhone’s LED display is a clear winner.
A tip of the hat goes to OLED-Display for tipping us off to the study. Examine the images above for yourself — on the Nexus One’s theoretically more advanced OLED screen, DisplayMate says, “there are lots of issues, problems and artifacts lurking just below the surface”.
One critical error is that the Nexus One’s screen displays in only 16-bit colour, meaning red and blue have only 32 possible intensity levels. “This is common on low-end devices,” says DisplayMate, “but it is unacceptable for an expensive, high-performance ‘Super-Phone’ that Google claims it to be.”
Ouch. The investigation goes on to say that in viewing tests, images on the Nexus One had far too much contrast and colour saturation, making images gaudy and often painful to look at. We’re also informed that the Nexus One suffers from poor factory calibration and quality control, and has generally not received the treatment befitting a device of its calibre. This might explain why our Nexus One’s screen mysteriously failed.
The report does mention that OLED technology is more cutting-edge than the LED gubbins you’d find in an iPhone, so perhaps teething problems with the screen-tech are to be expected. On the other hand, if Google isn’t making the most of the Nexus One’s capabilities, or if it’s letting inconsistencies arise between individual handsets, that’s clearly bad news.
We’ve only scratched the surface of the full report (it’s really long, with graphs and evryfink), so read it for yourself and let us know what you reckon. If your Nexus One has blinded you and your children with horrifying gaudy brightness, we want to hear about it.
