AMOLED performance in bright light

[Guest dwallersv]

...and sunlight. As we all painfully know, the Omnia screen is nearly invisible in bright light. What's the situation with the newer AMOLED technology being used on the Omnia HD?

I have a Garmin eTrex VistaCx handheld GPS that I bought several years ago with the most amazing, best color screen I've ever seen. Has a superb backlight that makes it bright, sharp, and readable in low-light conditions. Under bright light, even (especially) sunlight, it is just as bright, sharp, colorful, and readable as in low-light -- not from the backlight, but from reflected incident light. Under good lighting conditions, you can turn the backlight off completely.

It is a TFT LCD -- not an AMOLED. It's my standard of performance for a display, and it's always been a mystery to me why Garmin can do it, and yet with these very sophisticated, meant-to-be-used-everywhere devices like the Omnia we don't have a screen like that Garmin VistaCx.

Comments, everyone?

[Guest kav]

...and sunlight. As we all painfully know, the Omnia screen is nearly invisible in bright light. What's the situation with the newer AMOLED technology being used on the Omnia HD?

I have a Garmin eTrex VistaCx handheld GPS that I bought several years ago with the most amazing, best color screen I've ever seen. Has a superb backlight that makes it bright, sharp, and readable in low-light conditions. Under bright light, even (especially) sunlight, it is just as bright, sharp, colorful, and readable as in low-light -- not from the backlight, but from reflected incident light. Under good lighting conditions, you can turn the backlight off completely.

It is a TFT LCD -- not an AMOLED. It's my standard of performance for a display, and it's always been a mystery to me why Garmin can do it, and yet with these very sophisticated, meant-to-be-used-everywhere devices like the Omnia we don't have a screen like that Garmin VistaCx.

Comments, everyone?

like u mentioned, the garmin is only a handled gps device,, it is meant to be used only as a gps device and only for a couple of hours on battery or rest of the time on the car charger, therefore not much multitasking going around, not much using it only on batteries for days. but in a mobile phone , especially like the omnia, it is a different story as u have a specific OS running in the background, several tasks running and if u are using the gps as well then its extra power being used.

if they made the lcd on the omnia to work like this, then with all the use we make of the omnia, calling, pictures, video rec, music, gps, movies, the battery life would hardly be of more than 1 hour.

they had to make a balance between battery life and allowing all the functions to be used pretty much at the same time and for a long time (relative for some people B) ).

there are few hardwares u can save battery power on, and the one which takes the most and the one that u can "tweak" to save the most is the LCD screen. therefore they didnt make the screen so good in bright light.

in the AMOLED screen, it uses lower power and therefore it can be made to use a "higher" power to make it better as per the standards lcd screens. when i say higher i mean in relation to the normal power usage of a AMOLED when giving a display as "bad" as a typical phone LCD. it wont affect the battery so much if it is a low power consumer in the device from the beginning, so u can increase the power it uses to make the display better but it would still be under the range of power that an LCD requires.

besides the omnia, like any other phones need to have a reasonable battery lifetime without constant charging, otherwise it would be no more than a wireless home phone with the charging stand IMO.

well this is my 2 cents...

[Guest mobilehappy]

From Mobile Review:

the picture quality put up by the Omnia HD is mind-blowing, as it delivers exactly what you’d expect from a top-notch AMOLED screen. Not only are its colors juicy and natural, the top brightness settings can make your eyes hurt, and even when you slide the brightness bar all the way down, it beats TFT screens effortlessly. We pitted it against the Apple Touch and Nokia 5800 with highest display brightness levels, while the Omnia HD’s settings were just above the minimum and it still looked superior. If you really spend a lot of time browsing images and watching videos on your mobile phone, then the new Omnia is probably your best bet primarily because of its dazzling display.

[Guest lastnikita]

it's better in manual at max.

[Guest Ingvarr]

AMOLED as any other OLED becomes totally unreadable in sunlight.

Thats because LCD at least reflects some (if miniscule) amount of proper image, OLED reflects nothing, it only shines.

Its bright though, so even little shadow will be sufficient.

[Guest vynz]

...and sunlight. As we all painfully know, the Omnia screen is nearly invisible in bright light. What's the situation with the newer AMOLED technology being used on the Omnia HD?

I have a Garmin eTrex VistaCx handheld GPS that I bought several years ago with the most amazing, best color screen I've ever seen. Has a superb backlight that makes it bright, sharp, and readable in low-light conditions. Under bright light, even (especially) sunlight, it is just as bright, sharp, colorful, and readable as in low-light -- not from the backlight, but from reflected incident light. Under good lighting conditions, you can turn the backlight off completely.

It is a TFT LCD -- not an AMOLED. It's my standard of performance for a display, and it's always been a mystery to me why Garmin can do it, and yet with these very sophisticated, meant-to-be-used-everywhere devices like the Omnia we don't have a screen like that Garmin VistaCx.

Comments, everyone?

Your Garmin device has a Transreflective LCD display. These are more expensive to make than other LCD panels. Therefore a quality product like a Garmin GPS would have to have one or its customers would not tolerate it. Mobile phone users are much more tolerant and hence companies can save money buy going for cheaper LCD panels.

Nothing to do with power consumption I'm afraid just $$.

[Guest row hide in]

no thanks...

[Guest joža]

A lot of things encounter low outside visibility. Some are already listed in previous posts..

First and most important thing is digitizer! It lets through only around 80% of light, because there are two layers of electric-conductive coating on it...

Capacitive screens are somewhat better, they have only one conductive layer, therefore letting through more light. Also, the space between digitizer and LCD is important, or if display panel is transreflective and what kind of backgighting it has.

To summarize, there is a lot of things that make omnia perform bad outside. But other phones do also, it comes down to production expenses, battery and space saving. We also use phones inside most of time (or don't we?), so it just doesn't pay off.