Filling the Gap: AMOLED and LCD from 2010 to 2012
by Joshua Ho on July 26, 2014 6:00 AM ESTHTC Rezound
The Rezound is one of the last devices that hit the market before devices regularly saw color accuracy testing and closer evaluation of grayscale performance. Subjectively, this display is still great even today. While the Rezound’s display is supposedly S-LCD (implying *VA), the viewing angles are much better than what was seen on the Desire HD. The one issue here is that the display isn’t laminated to the glass lens, so at extreme angles the display quality isn’t as good as what we see on S-LCD2 or S-LCD3 from phones like the HTC One X. At any rate, it’s very obvious that HTC has put a large emphasis on display with this device.
While luminance is dramatically improved over the Desire HD, I suspect that brightness was clamped to some extent again to alleviate battery life issues. Contrast isn’t great here either, at 733:1. As before, there’s no dynamic contrast active here to try and artificially boost contrast. Modern LCD displays have around 1000:1 typical contrast, so this is just a bit worse, all things considered.
HTC definitely didn’t do a perfect job in grayscale once again, as there’s still too much blue and green, but white point is at a reasonable level compared to the wildly unbalanced white points that we saw with the Galaxy S2. Things are also significantly improved here relative to the Desire HD.
In the saturation sweep, HTC did an incredible job calibrating the display. It’s quite clear to me that HTC made display a priority with this device. There’s a hint of saturation compression, but overall things are very close to perfect. This is definitely a leap ahead of AMOLED at the time.
Unfortunately, the Rezound falls a bit flat in the ColorChecker. Poor grayscale calibration definitely didn’t help with the average, although there is significant error elsewhere. Of course, this is from the lens of the present. At the time, it seems that HTC was making a concerted effort to do things right, even though no one was truly paying attention to display accuracy yet and reviewers seemed to be impressed by blue white points and intensely oversaturated colors.
Final Words
Looking through this new information, understanding the past is now much easier in terms of display. While I was only able to test Samsung and HTC devices, they serve as a relatively accurate barometer for trends in the rest of the industry. As the past is an excellent predictor for the future, a few trends are evident. First, AMOLED has had far more progress than LCD, although checkered due to the pressure for higher pixel density displays and relatively little pressure (at first) to improve color accuracy. Second, while LCD has been slower to advance it has also started at a far better place. One of the chief issues seems to have been controlling gamma/grayscale color balance, although this has been steadily improving throughout the industry. Color gamut and saturation sweep accuracy has generally been acceptable in LCD, although there seems to be a bit of a cyclical relationship as consumers favor wildly inaccurate colors for showroom appeal. LCD seems to have stagnated in contrast, with relatively little change in static contrast ratios over the past few years, and brightness seems to be limited to around 600 nits in practice, barring unconventional subpixel layouts.
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scy1192 - Saturday, July 26, 2014 - link
Definitely worry more about the sharpening effect than the contrast and colors. LG needs to fix that ASAP, and I say that as a G3 owner. My only complaint about the phone.fokka - Sunday, July 27, 2014 - link
the g3 has a 1440p display, not 4k/uhd. your points are still valid though.Rocket321 - Sunday, July 27, 2014 - link
After reading reviews of the G3,i bought a pair of G2's for me and my wife (they can be had for less than $300 new/off contract if you shop around for. Considering the G2 essentially matches the spring 2014 flagship specs but is selling at "last year" prices makes it the best buy currently (imo).solnyshok - Tuesday, August 5, 2014 - link
but has limited storage. I am considering getting one with 32GB soon. Those are more like $400 (EUR300 here in old europe). But, then, I must wait for August/September announcements to see what's coming ofr iOS/Nexus/SG-Note. And, surprisingly, Sony Z3 Compact looks interesting, though a bit on a small side (less than 5")josemiguelcastillo - Monday, July 28, 2014 - link
As far as I can tell you, the default contrast profile the phone uses makes everything a bit washed out. BUT you can control and configure as you please in "Settings > Accesibility > Color Adjustment".Once calibrated the screen looks gorgeous. Try it on a demo unit and you'll see how good it looks in real life
Hrel - Monday, July 28, 2014 - link
I'd get the LG G2, or equivalent Nexus 5. Great phone.solnyshok - Tuesday, August 5, 2014 - link
wait! there is LG G3 Stylus coming soon with 6" screendjw39 - Saturday, July 26, 2014 - link
How was Apple doing? Were iPhone 4/4s displays much better calibrated than those of Android phones at the time?name99 - Saturday, July 26, 2014 - link
It's just one datapoint, but I still have my iPhone 1, bought a week or so after Apple released them). I use it like a transistor radio, as an audiobook player that I can use without headphones.- The battery is still going strong. Pretty damn amazing. Especially considering there was one unfortunate dropping in the sink two years ago (saved through rapidly pulling it out, application of paper towels then hair dryer, then three days in a tupperware container with dried rice to suck out any remaining moisture).
- The thing feels slow as all hell when switching from one app to another. Within an app, speed is OK, but app switching is tough --- I guess 128M RAM means a LOT of constantly hitting flash, and it's not the fastest CPU in there. It's also running iOS 3, and I expect that every version of iOS adds some features that shift the speed-memory tradeoff to use a little more RAM for a little more speed.
- the display looks to me as good as the day I bought it. Brightness, contrast, color accuracy all fine. No noticeable problems with viewing at an angle. It's not retina, of course, so there is the inevitable fuzziness that implies, but nothing as noticeable as what is being described in the article. The LED backlighting, the diffuser, and the actual LCD all seem to have survived 7 years so far just fine.
I had an iPhone 4 till about a month ago, and the story there is much the same (in that there were no problems at all with it). That's retina of course, and running iOS7.
Again, feels slow compared to my iPhone 5, but not the unbearable slowness of the iPhone1. I gave it to a friend in a developing country and he seems very happy with it, even compared against the various no-name brand super cheap Android clones that his friends have.
dylan522p - Saturday, July 26, 2014 - link
Since the iPhone 4 they haven't advanced much. I mean they got it right with the 4 so they don't need much improvement.