So I'm sure at one point during our phone shopping careers we've seen ads bragging about the type of display it has. Retina (Apple), Super LCD (Sony),or Super AMOLED (Samsung). There are many others, but let's focus on Retina and Super AMOLED for today, as they are best available currently. We'll talk about what these terms mean and why you should even care. I don't plan to discuss the technology behind either one, as there have been plenty of articles written that explain that subject in full detail. This article will concentrate on what ther terms actually mean (with a fun little activity about pixels) and the pros and cons of each. Let's get this started!
First things first: What the heck is a Retina display? Apple was very proud of their new display technology when it debuted on the iPhone 4 in 2010, as they should've been. The display was gorgeous. It had a 960x640 pixel LED display, which could produce very sharp detail.
"Ryan. What in the world does 960x640 mean?" Try not to jump ahead, ok? We'll get to that.
Jump ahead a year or so, and in comes the Samsung Galaxy S2, featuring a Super AMOLED (Active Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diode. Thank Cthulu for acronymns) display, which had a resolution of 800x480. As you can see when comparing that with the iPhone display of 960x640, the S2 has less of a pixel count, which results in a still very sharp picture, but not as "smooth" as the iPhone's. (See experiment below on why pixel count matters). BUT, and this is a big BUT, an AMOLED screen has far better color quality than a standard LED display. The colors tend to pop off the screen. AMOLED displays offer a "richer" color experience.
Then we jump ahead to 2012 and the release of the Samsung Galaxy S3. The S3 has a 1280x720 Super AMOLED PLUS display. The PLUS, means more subpixels, which is basically a pixel within a pixel resulting in an very sharp picture combined with the color quality of a AMOLED display. This. Thing. Is. Gorgeous!
But what does all this technobabble mean?! And how does it make Farmville look better?
Apple claims that the iPhone contains so many pixels per inch(ppi), that they become small enough to where human eyes can't see them individually, creating a "smoother" image. Apple's specs state that there are 326ppi on their iPhone and iPod Touch Retina displays. Note: The iPad and new Macbook Pro's also claim a Retina Display, but they have less ppi than the iPhone with the 3rd Generation iPad having 264ppi and the Macbook Pro with 220ppi, far less than the iPhone. So according to Apple, anything with a ppi higher than 220 could be considered a Retina Display. The Galaxy S3 comes in around 319ppi, meaning it could be considered a Retina Display as well, under Apple's definition, and let's face it, when we're talking a ppi count that high, 7ppi less is a very small difference. So how does having more pixels create a smoother image?
Well I'm glad you asked, anonymous blog reader. Let's do a little experiment that you can easily reproduce at home with some sticky notes. Each sticky note will represent one pixel. Pixels in displays are actually square shaped as well, so this is just like making a little bitty pixel big enough to see closely.
I like to refer back to early video games because it's easy to see the difference adding more pixels make. I'm sure we have all seen the game Pong at some point in our lives. It's been on every gaming platform since its inception. Well do you remember what the ball looked like? It wasn't really a ball at all. It was a square that bounced back and forth. The reason it looked like a square was because the technology at the time could only create so many pixels. So let's say it had 4 pixels to work with to make the ball. If you take 4 sticky notes, try to make a circular shape. And remember, the sticky notes have to be in a grid pattern, so they have to be all lined up.
As you can see, it's hard to make a round shape when using square pixels. And since pixels can't be round, the solution is to make the pixels smaller, allowing you use more pixels in the same amount of space and tricking the human eye into seeing a rounder shape, like so:
In this situation, we just doubled the resolution which gives us 4 times as many pixels to use. So instead of working with a grid that is 2 pixels high by 2 pixels high (or 2x2, its Resolution. This should answer your 980x640 question. See how we came full circle, or full square in this case.), we are now working with a grid that is 4x4, so it has 2 times the resolution of the 2x2. As you can see, you don't have to use every pixel in a grid. Some can be turned off, which is represented by the white sticky notes.
So what happens if we add even more pixels? "Now you're just getting crazy, Ryan." Let's double the resolution again so that we are working with a 8x8 grid:
And with more pixels available, we can start to put designs within the ball:
As you can see, everytime we double the resolution, the ball appears to be more rounded and gets "smoother" around the edges.
Now in the experiment with the sticky notes, we kept the pixels the same size due to me being lazy and not wanting to cut a bunch of little squares. On a phone display, the amount of space you'd be working with would stay the same, but the pixels would just get smaller.'
So what's the Best Display available?
We've discussed Apple's Retina display and all of its pixels per inch, and we've also discussed the Color Rich Super AMOLED Plus display from Samsung. Which one is better?
Well if you've ever shopped for a TV, you'll know that resolution and display type don't mean diddly if it doesn't look good to your own two eyes. I'm a huge fan of Plasma TV's and I can argue all day with an LED lover, but in the end, it's just personal preference.
The Retina display on the iPhone is gorgeous display, but its one downfall is that it's only available on a 3.5" display and compared to current smartphones, it's just way too small. Of course that's my personal preference and you may like the smaller display. I own an iPod Touch and when I compare it to phones with bigger displays, it just looks dwarfed.
The Samsung Super AMOLED Plus display is just as, if not more, gorgeous than the iPhone display. Colors seem to jump off of the large 4.9" screen. And by Apple's standards, the Galaxy S3 can also be considered a Retina Display.
Hopefully this cleared up some of the vagueness that surrounds advertising and offers a little insight as to why the display type matters.
The pixelated ball is in your court now.
First things first: What the heck is a Retina display? Apple was very proud of their new display technology when it debuted on the iPhone 4 in 2010, as they should've been. The display was gorgeous. It had a 960x640 pixel LED display, which could produce very sharp detail.
"Ryan. What in the world does 960x640 mean?" Try not to jump ahead, ok? We'll get to that.
Jump ahead a year or so, and in comes the Samsung Galaxy S2, featuring a Super AMOLED (Active Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diode. Thank Cthulu for acronymns) display, which had a resolution of 800x480. As you can see when comparing that with the iPhone display of 960x640, the S2 has less of a pixel count, which results in a still very sharp picture, but not as "smooth" as the iPhone's. (See experiment below on why pixel count matters). BUT, and this is a big BUT, an AMOLED screen has far better color quality than a standard LED display. The colors tend to pop off the screen. AMOLED displays offer a "richer" color experience.
Then we jump ahead to 2012 and the release of the Samsung Galaxy S3. The S3 has a 1280x720 Super AMOLED PLUS display. The PLUS, means more subpixels, which is basically a pixel within a pixel resulting in an very sharp picture combined with the color quality of a AMOLED display. This. Thing. Is. Gorgeous!
But what does all this technobabble mean?! And how does it make Farmville look better?
Apple claims that the iPhone contains so many pixels per inch(ppi), that they become small enough to where human eyes can't see them individually, creating a "smoother" image. Apple's specs state that there are 326ppi on their iPhone and iPod Touch Retina displays. Note: The iPad and new Macbook Pro's also claim a Retina Display, but they have less ppi than the iPhone with the 3rd Generation iPad having 264ppi and the Macbook Pro with 220ppi, far less than the iPhone. So according to Apple, anything with a ppi higher than 220 could be considered a Retina Display. The Galaxy S3 comes in around 319ppi, meaning it could be considered a Retina Display as well, under Apple's definition, and let's face it, when we're talking a ppi count that high, 7ppi less is a very small difference. So how does having more pixels create a smoother image?
Well I'm glad you asked, anonymous blog reader. Let's do a little experiment that you can easily reproduce at home with some sticky notes. Each sticky note will represent one pixel. Pixels in displays are actually square shaped as well, so this is just like making a little bitty pixel big enough to see closely.
I like to refer back to early video games because it's easy to see the difference adding more pixels make. I'm sure we have all seen the game Pong at some point in our lives. It's been on every gaming platform since its inception. Well do you remember what the ball looked like? It wasn't really a ball at all. It was a square that bounced back and forth. The reason it looked like a square was because the technology at the time could only create so many pixels. So let's say it had 4 pixels to work with to make the ball. If you take 4 sticky notes, try to make a circular shape. And remember, the sticky notes have to be in a grid pattern, so they have to be all lined up.
As you can see, it's hard to make a round shape when using square pixels. And since pixels can't be round, the solution is to make the pixels smaller, allowing you use more pixels in the same amount of space and tricking the human eye into seeing a rounder shape, like so:
In this situation, we just doubled the resolution which gives us 4 times as many pixels to use. So instead of working with a grid that is 2 pixels high by 2 pixels high (or 2x2, its Resolution. This should answer your 980x640 question. See how we came full circle, or full square in this case.), we are now working with a grid that is 4x4, so it has 2 times the resolution of the 2x2. As you can see, you don't have to use every pixel in a grid. Some can be turned off, which is represented by the white sticky notes.
So what happens if we add even more pixels? "Now you're just getting crazy, Ryan." Let's double the resolution again so that we are working with a 8x8 grid:
And with more pixels available, we can start to put designs within the ball:
As you can see, everytime we double the resolution, the ball appears to be more rounded and gets "smoother" around the edges.
Now in the experiment with the sticky notes, we kept the pixels the same size due to me being lazy and not wanting to cut a bunch of little squares. On a phone display, the amount of space you'd be working with would stay the same, but the pixels would just get smaller.'
So what's the Best Display available?
We've discussed Apple's Retina display and all of its pixels per inch, and we've also discussed the Color Rich Super AMOLED Plus display from Samsung. Which one is better?
Well if you've ever shopped for a TV, you'll know that resolution and display type don't mean diddly if it doesn't look good to your own two eyes. I'm a huge fan of Plasma TV's and I can argue all day with an LED lover, but in the end, it's just personal preference.
The Retina display on the iPhone is gorgeous display, but its one downfall is that it's only available on a 3.5" display and compared to current smartphones, it's just way too small. Of course that's my personal preference and you may like the smaller display. I own an iPod Touch and when I compare it to phones with bigger displays, it just looks dwarfed.
The Samsung Super AMOLED Plus display is just as, if not more, gorgeous than the iPhone display. Colors seem to jump off of the large 4.9" screen. And by Apple's standards, the Galaxy S3 can also be considered a Retina Display.
Hopefully this cleared up some of the vagueness that surrounds advertising and offers a little insight as to why the display type matters.
The pixelated ball is in your court now.
Am I rights only ones who reads this stupid blog? At least the idiot who writes it is somewhat original. I cannot wait until he screws up and I can really lay into this moron.
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