Display shootout: HTC One X vs. Galaxy Nexus (vs. iPad 3) screen comparison

FeaturedThe Lab

  • April 18, 2012 at 6:02 pm

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The two hottest Android smartphones right now are the new 4.7-inch HTC One X and the incumbent 4.65-inch Galaxy Nexus that we have reviewed in-depth here. A key hardware distinction between the two is the use of different display technologies. Both have a 720p resolution, but the Samsung Galaxy Nexus features a PenTile Matrix Super AMOLED display while the HTC One X has a standard RGB Super IPS LCD2 screen. You can read more about the differences between Samsung’s PenTile Matrix technology and standard RGB here.

Now, we can easily argue that the display is probably the single most important hardware feature of any mobile device so we’ll be taking an in-depth look between the two Android smartphones. We also have a 3rd generation iPad handy with its amazingly sharp and most importantly color accurate display, so we’ll occasionally be throwing it in our comparison for good measure.
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Sharp expanding production of first IGZO LCD panels, too late for the iPad 3 but in time for a 7-inch iPad?

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  • April 14, 2012 at 5:27 am

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Sharp Kameyama plant entrance

Sharp has just announced that it’s ramping up production of the world’s first LCD panels using advanced indium gallium zinc oxide (IGZO) semiconductors at its Kameyama Plant No. 2 in order to meet increased demand. Production of the panels began in March 2012 and the IGZO technology allows Sharp to produce LCDs with high pixel density but lower energy consumption because of the smaller thin-film transistors and increased pixel transparency.

Sharp was long rumored as an Apple partner providing the retina displays in the 3rd generation iPad. However as the IGZO technology was too young, the company couldn’t yet mass-produce the 10-inch 2048×1536 panels required for the new iPad. Apple finally went with the same IPS LCD amorphous silicon panel technology as in the iPad 2, but the new iPad retina panel now consumes 2.5-times the power at the same brightness. To compensate Apple has loaded the new iPad with almost double the amount of battery, meaning that it takes much longer to recharge the iPad 3, and it’s also slightly thicker and heavier.
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Samsung is ready to mass produce flexible, unbreakable and lighter AMOLED displays called YOUM

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  • April 8, 2012 at 4:57 am

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Samsung flexible AMOLED display

Most display panels are sandwiched between layers of glass making them rigid and also pretty breakable. Samsung Display has just filed a patent application for a new flexible AMOLED display technology, called “Youm”, that does away with the glass layers, replacing them with a special plastic film. The result is a flexible display, which can even be rolled up or folded, that according to Samsung is unbreakable and lighter than conventional displays.

You can see a comparison between the Samsung YOUM AMOLED panel technology and standard LCD and OLED panels below.
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Galaxy Nexus drops 1.8m, joins the ranks of shattered glass-screened phones

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  • November 26, 2011 at 2:27 pm

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Galaxy Nexus shattered glass screen

It comes at time in a glass-screened gadget’s life when it will be accidentally dropped. Some will survive, others will be shattered. A user over at XDA forums going by the name tamarian, was unfortunate enough to drop his new Samsung Galaxy Nexus from a height of 1.8 meters (5.9 feet) and onto some unforgiving kitchen tiles. You can see the result in the picture above.

The Galaxy Nexus’ 4.65-inch display doesn’t feature Corning Gorilla Glass, rather another type of fortified glass, which seems to shatter just as much; though 1.8m is a big drop by any measure. Our hearts are with you tamarian, we hope you can get it fixed soon.
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Sony starts selling its ‘magical’ OLED panels, coming to a camera EVF or head-mounted display near you — hopefully

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  • November 4, 2011 at 12:42 pm

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Sony OLED panels ECX331A and ECX332A

Sony has just reminded us of its recent accomplishments in organic EL display technology and, well, just how awesome its duo of small OLED displays is. Sony had announced its pair of high resolution OLED panels back in late August, which have since found their way into the company’s latest digital cameras and 3D head mounted display.

First you have the 0.5-inch ECX331A XGA (1024×768) panel, which has taken its place in electronic viewfinders (EVFs) and is one of the major selling points of the Sony A77 and A65 DSLT cameras and the NEX-7 mirrorless interchangeable-lens camera. The slightly larger, 0.7-inch ECX322A 720p HD (1280×720) can be found in the equally exciting Sony HMZ-T1 OLED 3D head-mounted display.

What’s so special about these OLED panels? Well, they offer a wide color gamut (90% of NTSC), high 10,000:1 contrast ratio, and fast 0.01ms response time, with 200 cd/m2 brightness. More importantly they pack an insane amount of pixels in a small area.

To put things into perspective, the 0.5″ ECX331A with a resolution of 1024×768 (RGB) has a pixel pitch of just 9.9μm. In comparison, the iPhone 4S with a 3.5″ 960×640 resolution retina display has a pixel pitch of 77.1μm. In layman terms, pixel pitch measures the size of a pixel; the smaller it is the harder it will be for your eyes to distinguish between them and the sharper and more lifelike the image. That means that each individual pixel (made up of three subpixels, Red, Green and Blue) on Sony’s OLED panel is almost 8 times smaller than that of the iPhone 4S display. This makes them ideal for applications where you need a compact design and you would put your eyes very close to the display, such as EVFs and head-mounted displays.
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Galaxy Nexus not Gorilla Glass but another type of fortified glass

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  • October 27, 2011 at 2:21 am

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Samsung Galaxy Nexus Android smartphone

For anyone who hasn’t yet heard of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, it’s going to be the first device to carry Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. It’s also a large screened, 4.65-inch, Super AMOLED HD curved beauty. We’ve already discussed how Samsung managed to achieve a 1280×720 HD resolution on the AMOLED screen using PenTile Matrix technology and any caveats that might entail. Well there has also been a lot of discussion whether the Galaxy Nexus features the scratch resistant and durable Gorilla Glass to protect its large display.

Corning, the makers of Gorilla Glass, have now confirmed through Twitter that the Galaxy Nexus doesn’t use their trademark technology.
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Apple’s 27-inch Thunderbolt Cinema Display finally shipping to stores, pre-orders get mid-September estimates

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  • September 7, 2011 at 8:44 am

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Apple 27-inch Thunderbolt Cinema Display

If you’ve been waiting on a new Apple Thunderbolt display then we have good news. The new 27-inch LED Cinema Display, that was announced back in July, is finally shipping to Apple Stores and resellers this week, according to MacRumors. At the same time, Electronista reported that, online pre-orders could be shipping in mid-September. The $999 display is the first to feature Thunderbolt I/O technology offering two 10-Gbps channels in both directions.

The 27-inch Thunderbolt Cinema Display has wide 178-degree viewing angles thanks to its IPS technology and edge-to-edge all glass front. It features a 2,560×1,440 resolution (16:9), LED backlighting, a FaceTime HD camera, 2.1 speakers, three USB 2.0 ports, a FireWire 800 port, a Gigabit Ethernet port, and of course a Thunderbolt port.

Thunderbolt technology allows daisy-chaining of up to five additional devices, such as hard drives and peripherals as well as up to two displays. So that, you can have two displays running from one computer; just not the new MacBook Air.
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