Let's take a minute and talk about the screen: it's beautiful. We almost feel sad that this isn't the first HD screen we've seen on a mobile phone, as it's kind of lost its lustre since the likes of the Nexus, Note and One X have all managed the same trick – but if you've not seen one before and you compare it to a Galaxy S2, it's worlds apart.
If we think back to just four years ago, when HVGA (320 x 480) resolution screens were the norm on phones and 720p TVs were still the plaything of the bigger spenders, it's incredible to think that pixel count has been shrunk down to fit into your palm.
And that means the 309ppi pixel density is up there with the sharpness of the iPhone 4S, and it makes us realise that while a Retina Display is lovely, 3.5-inch screens just don't cut it any more.
We'll be mightily surprised if the combined popularity of the HTC One X and Samsung Galaxy S3 don't prompt Apple into a re-tooling of the screen with the iPhone 5, as the contrast ratio, large display and excellent colour reproduction will definitely wow users on the shelve.
There is an issue here for those that like to let the phone handle the display management - the auto-brightness level is too low for our eyes. It's like Samsung is trying to protect the battery a little too much here, and we'd rather have a variety of auto-brightness settings like in the internet browser.It seems Samsung has tweaked the colour balance on the Galaxy S3 as well – things don't look as saturated as before, which will certainly help entice those that previously were against Super AMOLED before due to the harshness of colours.
This has been overhauled with the new update, giving you a notifications bar option to change the brightness or select auto mode. It's not perfect by a long way - we can't count the amount of times each day we get frustrated with the automatic mode not catching up to the conditions.
When it does work, the brightness is great... but when the brightness drops mid-Temple Run we get hugely frustrated.
It's not too bad in direct sunlight though - the contrast ratio of 3.5:1 Samsung is touting in direct sunlight is just about enough to see what you're doing, and if you're using the camera you can fire the brightness even higher to see what you're snapping.
The same option has been sadly removed from the Video player, so sitting in the sunshine watching Robocop is now no longer a thing to be done with your new Galaxy.
In terms of comparisons to previous iterations of Super AMOLED screens, this is where it gets a little bit technical - we'll try to keep it simple.
The Galaxy S2 packed a Super AMOLED Plus screen, which means that for every pixel, there were three subpixels - red, green and blue. This meant lovely contrast ratios and cleaner whites - this was noticeable close up.
However, in order to facilitate the much higher resolution, Samsung has crammed in fewer sub pixels per pixel, which means a slightly less 'clean' colour close up.
But what does this mean to you, the user? In truth, not a lot. Power efficiency seems to be very similar to that on the original S2 when it comes to firing the screen, and while there might be more of a skew towards green and blue on the colour scale, in practice this simply results in more natural-looking hues.
The sharpness is also technically affected, but with such a high resolution there's very little chance of this affecting the way you get to watch your movies or see the web.
No comments:
Post a Comment