Tired of squinting at your smartphone or tablet display on a bright sunny day? We may have the answer for you, then. DisplayMate Technologies president Dr. Raymond Soneira took a look at four tablets and four smartphones, gauging their performance in a wide range of lighting conditions from absolute darkness to indirect outdoor sunlight.
Apple and Samsung’s displays took top honors, with the iPhone 4, iPad 2, Samsung Galaxy S, and Tab 10.1 taking top honors. Doing much worse was Amazon’s Kindle Fire, while the HTC Desire, Motorola Xoom and Droid X also fared poorly. Overall, it appears by a slight margin Samsung’s displays are the best, while Dr. Soneira found the HTC Desire as the worst performer.
Soneira’s tests find that HTC has a lot of work to do on its displays. At a level of 20,000 lux, which is equivalent to full indirect outdoor sunlight, the display is unusable. Tablet-wise, the worst performer was the Kindle Fire, which shows similar readability problems at 20,000 lux and above.
“Other than jacking up the screen Brightness, manufacturers have done very little to improve screen readability and picture quality under high ambient lighting,” Dr. Soneira says. His company sells the software which he uses to judge the displays, which it says will also correct the problem. In other words? This guy has a vested financial interest in the results. Regardless, it’s a good look into what electronics manufacturers still need to do to improve displays.
We’ve heard a ton about Gorilla Glass, but in the end Corning was more focused on making thin, unbreakable glass than working on light reflectivity issues, where a lot of readability issues when it comes to ambient light come from. So that’s not the answer either.
Apple’s made a lot of hay over its Retina display and its advantages. While it has done wonders for the readability and clarity of these displays, it’s done jack for their readability in bright light — and DisplayMate has already said the display isn’t that great. Since we’re becoming ever more dependent on these devices, this is a problem that begs for a fix. “While Apple and Samsung are currently the best performers in high ambient light, it is possible to do substantially better with advanced scientific lab tests and analysis”, Soneira says.
I doubt for one second that Apple will reach outside of its bubble in Cupertino for help, but you have to think they would be interested in Soneira’s findings. Other companies like HTC and Amazon look like they could benefit greatly from this work — putting it bluntly their displays are pretty crappy. Then again, they do say you get what you pay for, right?
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