OLED display stinks

[amirm]

At least it does on latest smartphones. The display on the Samsung SIII is quite disappointing. It is blue and colors are wrong. Reduce the brightness and there is a massive blue shift as there is in off-axis viewing. The store demo version had burned in ghost of all the home icons showing how easily the pixels age. The adjacent motorola M had all the same issues. I compared the SIII against my ancient Motorola Droidx. And against my laptop which has one of those rare PC LCDs that is color accurate. The Droidx lacks some of the contrast but otherwise was very close to the laptop. The SIII on the other hand had a blue shift and its green color was just wrong.

It makes me almost, almost, think about getting an iPhone 5!

Does not bode well for the implementation in TVs. Hope they get the aging problem under control. This is taking us back to the days of CRT!

 

[Keith_W]

You want an android smartphone without OLED? Try the HTC One X

 

[DaveyF]

It makes me almost, almost, think about getting an iPhone 5!

Unless you do, you'll never know what you are missing..

 

[amirm]

You want an android smartphone without OLED? Try the HTC One X

That does look good although sadly it won't be offered on my carrier (Verizon) if the past is any indication.

 

[Steve Williams]

It makes me almost, almost, think about getting an iPhone 5!

say what

I just fell off my seat

 

[Keith_W]

Well I have to say I agree with you, Amir. I used to own a Motorola RAZR - it had a 4.3" SAMOLED pentile screen. For a while I thought the screen was amazing - the blacks were incredibly black. So black, that if I set the wallpaper to black, it looks as if the phone is turned off. The contrast was excellent, and the colours were really bright and saturated. But after a while, the super-saturated colours started to get to me. It is a bit like listening to a system which is larger than life - at first it impresses, after a while it fatigues. Also, after a while I noticed that the text (particularly small print, black on white text) was ever so slightly less crisp than the iPhone 4 I had upgraded from. The incredible contrast and the larger screen was enough to stave off any screen envy from the iPhone.

When the HTC One X and the Galaxy S3 came out, it was a toss-up between these two models. The GS3 has superior hardware, but was let down in two critical areas - it did not have LTE (not in Australia, anyway) and the screen on the HTC was superior. In fact, vastly superior - the next time you get a chance to look at one, you will see that the image seems to float on the surface of the screen. Colours are so much more natural, and there are no resolution problems. If you want a decent sized smartphone display and not feel constricted by low-end devices which have 4" screens and smaller, it is the only way to go.

I admire OLED technology. The blacks are truly black, the screen is thin and light, and power consumption is low. Samsung will have to do something about those colours and stop using (*&^(^(*&^)(* pentile displays before I am tempted back.

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Have you seen any others? Samsung's colors were never natural before, though I woud have said they were more red than blue. OLED is new and problems would be no surprise, but I wouldn't judge by Samsung alone. Can you tell i'mnot a fan?

Tim

 

[rblnr]

I've noticed that blue shift on a lot of phone screens, makes you wish there was a color temp slider. Was at a Best Buy the other day and was reminded of the TV section while looking at phones -- a competition on who could be the most over-saturated.

Don't think either issue matters much to the masses but the ghosting issue is serious if it's not just a bad sample here and there.

 

[Johnny Vinyl]

I must not be a videophile (actually I know I'm not) so I'm not seeing the issues described on my Galaxy Note. Also, and to be perfectly honest, I don't really care too much....it's only a phone.

 

[JonFo]

I have a bunch of Androids for my business, and yet, I use an iPhone 5, why? Because it has the best display bar none. Not just my opinion, backed up by facts:

http://www.displaymate.com/Smartphone_ShootOut_2.htm

 

[amirm]

I've noticed that blue shift on a lot of phone screens, makes you wish there was a color temp slider.

Without hacking the kernel, apparently there is no way to adjust anything.

There is a really cool display test program called strangely, display tester , https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.gombosdev.displaytester&hl=en. Download and put up a gray screen. Then slide your hand down to lower brightness. The samsung turns quickly blue as you do that. It also puts up different color images, some of it makes image burn very easy to see.

The bad news is rolling in on Samsung. Now my son says when listening to headphones there is a hiss. Apparently the European version uses premium DAC. The US version uses the Qualcomm internal DAC which can't apparently produce better signal to noise ratio than a cassette tape! For an AV company like Samsung, these things are not acceptable. Sadly the general market does not care so they will keep doing what they are doing.

 

[rblnr]

There is a really cool display test program called strangely, display tester , https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...aytester&hl=en.

Sounds cool, thx for the headsup. I'll check it out.

 

[amirm]

Cnet did a rather lightweight test of displays on iPhone 5 and Samsung SIII. The Samsung wings on contrast ratio due to its OLED display that can go nearly black. But here is what is wrong with it:

The dots need to be inside those squares. We consider a display lousy if it is just outside of the square. Look at how far the green dot is on the SIII. It is in a different planet! It is way, way outside of calibration. Someone is sleep at the help at the company or else this is their way of getting this display to be as bright as they can.

 

[Johnny Vinyl]

Thanks for making that Cnet test clearer to me as I couldn't make heads or tails of what they were saying.

 

[amirm]

You are welcome. Just to add on, when we take pictures or produce video, they assume a certain gamut or color set. Without it, you wouldn't know the digital value of color would be for anything you see. That standardization then locks you into the device producing exactly what is assumed when the content was produced. It can NOT extend the gamut. If it does, the the same digital value now maps to a different color as the gamut is stretched. It is classic display marketing to advertise larger gamut than say, broadcast TV and claim there is something good there. There is nothing but negative from picture quality point of view.

 

[Johnny Vinyl]

You are welcome. Just to add on, when we take pictures or produce video, they assume a certain gamut or color set. Without it, you wouldn't know the digital value of color would be for anything you see. That standardization then locks you into the device producing exactly what is assumed when the content was produced. It can NOT extend the gamut. If it does, the the same digital value now maps to a different color as the gamut is stretched. It is classic display marketing to advertise larger gamut than say, broadcast TV and claim there is something good there. There is nothing but negative from picture quality point of view.

So what then, if anything, did Samsung accomplish by doing this?

 

[amirm]

I think they either didn't know any better (and you will be amazed how often that happens) or they think the overly saturated greens/colors make people think it is better.