DisplayMate Rates iPhone 5 Screen as "Best Smartphone Display" They've Seen

[Man9z0r]

By your response I can tell you're biased and haven't really used an iPhone lately. Or a jail broken one for that matter. Go ahead and tell me yeah you have to jailbreak to get certain features. Just as bad as having install custom mods to make your device run on the latest update.

Replying without having to go to messages can also be done after simple jailbreak, but I don't mind going to the messaging screen, to see what was said before.

Again without unlocking the phone either tell it to play a song or playlist, or double click home button and touch play. No need to open an App.

Actually I have used and still do use an iPhone and I know all about Jailbreaking but you have to do that to get any good features. I can use an Android phone stock and do all of those things. Any normal person can see that on iOS it takes you more clicks (taps) to do anything. But since you are so wise I guess you already knew that.

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Apple have an app store with over 700.000 apps. Yes, most of apps probably are usless for an individual (subjective thing) but there has allways been an app that does something that was possible on android. I had pano that does panorama on my iphone lot better then i could do it on samsung galaxy S2 that i had for several months. You see, i have tried both.... android and iOS. I have come to the conclusion that the less customizable iOS does much more and in a better way then android for me. So for myself iOS is great OS that have room for improvment, but is a bit away from a boring OS.

Well if Pano is so good I wonder why Apple needed to make their own app and had to advertise said ability. Plus the one on the original Samsung Galaxy was pretty good. Plus Pano is on android also. It is still a boring looking OS!

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Then why doesn't the S3 beat the iPhone 4 that is 2 years older?

Not really sure where you get your information but I am pretty sure the S3 is way better then the iPhone 4.

 

[Lindsford]

Actually I have used and still do use an iPhone and I know all about Jailbreaking but you have to do that to get any good features. I can use an Android phone stock and do all of those things. Any normal person can see that on iOS it takes you more clicks (taps) to do anything. But since you are so wise I guess you already knew that.

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Well if Pano is so good I wonder why Apple needed to make their own app and had to advertise said ability. Plus the one on the original Samsung Galaxy was pretty good. Plus Pano is on android also. It is still a boring looking OS!

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Not really sure where you get your information but I am pretty sure the S3 is way better then the iPhone 4.

Takes one click of Siri for most the functions I need/use, one swipe to update facebook/twitter. I'm happy with my iOS6/iPhone 5 experience thus far. Truthfully Apple's maps do seem like a fail, and will be downloading Google Maps when it comes out. If it does. 4.1 android finally rivals the smoothness of iOS, but sadly only 1.2% of Android devices have it. I wasn't rejecting the idea of going for an S3. Maybe next upgrade I will be swayed, but right now I'm more then happy with my choice, as you are yours.

We get it, you love android. My 3GS has panorama, but it wasn't nearly as good as quality or accurate as the Panorama built into Camera function.

I fail to realize what you're trying to prove. You get all that stuff stock? I get my updates on time and don't have to use custom mods because my device is stuck on the same version of Android's OS for 9 months at a time. Then you'll tell me to go get a Google Nexus, Meh. So much for ALL the android choices

S3 > iPhone 4s, 4, etc
S3 = iPhone 5 (depending on preference)
/rant

 

[Jimrod]

What did you use to measure that? And how old is your instrument? If it is a Datacolor spider or a X-Rite i1d2 and more than a year old, it is off. Actually if it is a Spyder (even a new one) it is off regardless Main reason I ask, is that red is low and when a colorimeter goes out of spec, red is almost always the first color to drift.

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I will soon take some measurements on the IP5 (I have a C6 and Calman, for those who care lol). And similar to what I did for the "new ipad" I will post the charts. I don't have a S3 to compare it to. But it doesn't really matter. If the IP5 measures well (gut feeling it will), that's really all that matters.

Take the report from Displaymate with a grain of salt. As they are kind of a joke. I would have loved to see a real grayscale graph, instead of just a gamma graph (FYI there is NO 2.2 gamma "standard"). Also the fact that they sell software and software only to calibrate your display is a joke. You cannot do a proper calibration without instrumentation.

I used an EyeOne which is about 18 months old - could well be off by now but I was mainly using it to back up what I was seeing and it did seem to confirm the same sort of tint (I've calibrated quite a few screens now and have a pretty good idea of what "neutral" looks like).

You can definitely tell some colours are off - like blues on Google search text looking purple, whites looking creamy and skin tones looking sickly. The display itself is very good and those figures didn't change with different brightness levels, contrast and black levels are very good too. Would be interesting to see if this is how all the screens look or just some batches etc...

 

[Rennir]

What I find funny are that the people who say the Galaxy S3 is a quad core and does better on non stock browsing benchmarks - that's only the non-US edition. The US edition is slower then the iPhone 5 regardless. Which is where I live, and quite arguably, the biggest smartphone market...

And although this thread talks about the screen metrics. I was referring to all metrics, like the YouTube review videos. IE: Siri vs S-voice, camera quality, screen quality, speed in opening/closing apps, turning on, speed tests, etc.

I'm not saying that the Galaxy S3 is garbage or a bad phone. I think its a great phone. All I want is for the trolls to stop trying to convince people that the Galaxy S3 is BETTER then the iPhone 5. I don't even want them to admit that the iPhone 5 is BETTER then the GS3. It all depends on what the person values in a phone and what is a better fit for them. In my case, it was the iPhone 5.

See, that's where I think people make their mistake. And it's completely understandable. You mention quad core and non stock browsing. Let's go even farther. Let's say they overclocked and souped up their GS3 in a myriad of different ways. Everyone immediately says it's cheating because it's not stock.

But the thinking that "stock is best" is only one paradigm of thinking. It happens to be Apple's paradigm. But it isn't Google's paradigm. And it definitely isn't the only correct one. There are lot of people who prefer stock, and prefer not tinkering at all with their phones. But how about the ones that do? I'd argue the whole point of Android is about customization and tinkering. If one doesn't like those, they'd probably enjoy iOS more than Android, although they wouldn't necessarily hate Android either.

Customization is one of the biggest advantages Android has over iOS. The thinking that any modifications is disingenuous or immediately disqualifies a phone from comparison to the iPhone is 100% biased towards Apple's way of thinking.

 

[Jb07]

You mean you own a GS2 Skyrocket?

And an iPhone 5.

 

[jordonez1372]

Banned iPhone 5 Promo...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFUz6vHEQCM&feature=youtube_gdata_player

 

[flar]

If it didn't suck in portrait mode when viewed with polarized sunglasses, then it would have to suck in landscape mode. Polarized sunglasses are primarily used for driving. Most standalone GPS units are used in landscape mode. So the design is likely intended to support the phone's use as a GPS the way that the majority of people use a GPS.

There are two reasons why an LCD does not have to choose either portrait or landscape to "suck" in.

First, there are LCD displays that can be read at any angle with polarized sunglasses on. I'm not sure if they are IPS or not, but LCD displays in general do not have to have a single polarity. I've looked at a number of tablets and phones that were either way - some of them could be read at any angle, others had one angle where they were completely black and other angles where they worked fine. Note that if they are readable at any angle then the colors tend to be a bit off - nothing that your eyes can't adjust for, but there is no angle where the colors are perfect. My best guess is that they aligned the crystals for each color component in different directions so there is usually no more than one component that is going out at any one time and contrasty things like text tend to be legible as long as at least 2 components are still mostly visible. There are also a variety of angles where the colors are "pretty good" - not great, but it doesn't look like an Instagram photo.

Second, even if they want to have the polarity of all of the components lined up, they don't have to choose either portrait or landscape as the polarized direction that will conflict with polarized sunglasses. Many of the aligned devices I've used chose 45 degrees so both portrait and landscape work (I just checked my MBP with my polarized glasses and it is an example of an aligned display that aligns at 45 degrees to avoid the problem - funny that a device that can only really feasibly be used in a single orientation would go the extra mile to avoid the problem, but a device like the iPhone 5 that is intended to be used in both orientations does not).

Notable fails in LCD mis-orientation that I've seen:

- gas station pumps where you can only read the display if you tilt your head (as if you could use the pump in landscape mode?)

- 50" LCD screens installed in portrait orientation on bus stops for animated advertisements where the manufacturer specifically chose to orient their crystals for landscape because nobody ever turns a TV on its side - right?

- Cameras whose LCD preview screens aren't visible in landscape mode (they should be using unaligned LCDs or 45 degree orientation, but if they needed to use an aligned screen, is landscape really the best mode to align them in?)

 

[flar]

The test explains its findings:

"If you want to see accurate colors in photos, videos, and all standard consumer content the display needs to closely match the Standard Color Gamut that was used to produce the content, which is called sRGB / Rec.709. A display with a larger Color Gamut cannot show colors that are not in the original content - it just exaggerates and distorts the colors. Most of the recent generation LCD Smartphones have Color Gamuts around 60 percent of the Standard Gamut, which produces somewhat subdued colors. The iPhone 4 has a 64 percent Color Gamut, but the new iPad pulled way ahead and has a virtually perfect 99 percent of the Standard Color Gamut. The iPhone 5 has an almost identical Color Gamut to the new iPad and the Viewing Tests confirm its excellent color accuracy."

Larger color gamut = clipping/color compression. The closer to standard color gamut, the less clipping.
That is the reason for larger gamut problem with Mobile OS.

As you pointed, no Mobile OS is color managed ( it's a phone not an image editing work station) so the above explanation addresses those limitations.

I think you are misreading what they wrote. A larger gamut does not mean clipping or compression, it means expansion. When they say "A display with a larger Color Gamut cannot show colors that are not in the original content" don't read that as "is physically unable to", but "should not" or "cannot just". Basically larger color gamuts can show a superset of the colors of displays with smaller ones. That *should* be an advantage as long as the software is aware of how the input maps to its overly generous output capabilities and is why graphics designers desire displays with very large gamuts because they always use advanced software that performs this correction and expensive devices that test their display to calibrate the advanced software. But, the article is (rightly) assuming that the software in the phones does not make these adjustments and so instead what you get is them taking a color in the image that should be "100% of sRGB output" and displaying 100% of their native output which is out of range for what the image wanted.

They "can't" do that because it would lead to bad results, but they do, in fact, do it anyway and they live with those bad results. The bad results are, as the article mentions "it just exaggerates and distorts the colors".

So...

Larger color gamut != clipping/color compression.

Larger color gamut (without proper adjustments in the display software) == exaggerated and distorted colors, the opposite of clipping.

 

[Pockleton]

I think you are misreading what they wrote. A larger gamut does not mean clipping or compression, it means expansion. When they say "A display with a larger Color Gamut cannot show colors that are not in the original content" don't read that as "is physically unable to", but "should not" or "cannot just". Basically larger color gamuts can show a superset of the colors of displays with smaller ones. That *should* be an advantage as long as the software is aware of how the input maps to its overly generous output capabilities and is why graphics designers desire displays with very large gamuts because they always use advanced software that performs this correction and expensive devices that test their display to calibrate the advanced software. But, the article is (rightly) assuming that the software in the phones does not make these adjustments and so instead what you get is them taking a color in the image that should be "100% of sRGB output" and displaying 100% of their native output which is out of range for what the image wanted.

They "can't" do that because it would lead to bad results, but they do, in fact, do it anyway and they live with those bad results. The bad results are, as the article mentions "it just exaggerates and distorts the colors".

So...

Larger color gamut != clipping/color compression.

Larger color gamut (without proper adjustments in the display software) == exaggerated and distorted colors, the opposite of clipping.

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We're agreeing in different ways.

My point is that color standards are necessary and clipping effects how you view/ print an image.

Taking/sharing/viewing a picture from a wide (non standard) gamut smartphone does nothing helpful for the end user if there is a universal multi platform color standard already in place and adopted by the majority. It's the main reason why we choose to calibrate. So that we CAN take advantage of a standardised color space.

Every user benefits from that as you know and SRGB standard is one real solution Mobile OS makers can work with. That is a consideration Apple has atleast made some attemt to adopt based on these tests with iOS which is evidently not the case with the Samsung unit.

 

[flar]

--

We're agreeing in different ways.

My point is that color standards are necessary and clipping effects how you view/ print an image.

Taking/sharing/viewing a picture from a wide (non standard) gamut smartphone does nothing helpful for the end user if there is a universal multi platform color standard already in place and adopted by the majority. It's the main reason why we choose to calibrate. So that we CAN take advantage of a standardised color space.

Every user benefits from that as you know and SRGB standard is one real solution Mobile OS makers can work with. That is a consideration Apple has atleast made some attemt to adopt based on these tests with iOS which is evidently not the case with the Samsung unit.

DisplayMate was only measuring the display, not the camera, so their findings don't point out any problems that one might have with sharing "from" the smartphone.

If the images from the camera had a larger gamut then that would cause clipping on other devices, but they were pointing out the problems of a display with a larger gamut and that can only need to exaggerated out of bounds colors on that display (in the absence of color correction).

 

[Pockleton]

DisplayMate was only measuring the display, not the camera, so their findings don't point out any problems that one might have with sharing "from" the smartphone.

If the images from the camera had a larger gamut then that would cause clipping on other devices, but they were pointing out the problems of a display with a larger gamut and that can only need to exaggerated out of bounds colors on that display (in the absence of color correction).

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Since it's already established that the Samsung device isn't adopting any color standards, who is to say that what it produces will not look screwed up on another device. Yes that wasn't part of the test but just because that was not carried out doesnt mean that it's a dumb oversight by a phone maker. I have family photos that I have stored on my phone and Id like them to look similar on other devices too.

So I can't help if it doesnt look great on a non-standard gamut phone. Oh well one has to live with that, but it's a sign that the phone maker doesn't think its important to attemnt to use a color standard.
NO big deal I guess but its the point I was trying to make.

Source will not MATCH the end users view AT ALL: like two different monitors (Dell and Apple) if one is bothering to nitpick about a smart phone NEEDING to be calibrated for the next Tiffany photoshoot.

 

[flar]

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Since it's already established that the Samsung device isn't adopting any color standards, who is to say that what it produces will not look screwed up on another device. Yes that wasn't part of the test but just because that was not carried out doesnt mean that it's a dumb oversight by a phone maker. I have family photos that I have stored on my phone and Id like them to look similar on other devices too.

So I can't help if it doesnt look great on a non-standard gamut phone. Oh well one has to live with that, but it's a sign that the phone maker doesn't think its important to attemnt to use a color standard.
NO big deal I guess but its the point I was trying to make.

Source will not MATCH the end users view AT ALL: like two different monitors (Dell and Apple) if one is bothering to nitpick about a smart phone NEEDING to be calibrated for the next Tiffany photoshoot.

I agree that having a phone display that closely matches sRGB is desirable, but Apple had not been using such a standard display on prior iPhones. Would you have characterized Apply as a company that "isn't adopting any standards" when they produced 4 iPhone models that did not match the sRGB standard? If you find a phone that does not match the standard as suspect and beneath your standards then you should equally reject all prior iPhone models as they also did not match the standard.

Samsung didn't "deciide not to adopt a standard" - they chose a display technology that has some advantages and some disadvantages just as Apple did with prior iPhones. At least in the AMOLED case of supporting a superset of the standard they have the option to add software to correctly support the sRGB images (I don't have any faith that they will, but the technology inherently allows for that option). With the first 4 iPhone models supporting a subset of sRGB no amount of software updates would ever be able to display your images accurately.

I'm not saying that Samsung chose a superior or great technology, but I don't see any evidence that the capabilities of their display technology suggest any larger motive or philosophy that would suggest anything about the capabilities of their image sensors.

Based on reputation I would probably put money on Apple choosing one of the best image sensors in the industry as well, but the performance of the AMOLED display on the Samsung phone has absolutely no impact on that prediction. Samsung phones have had good showings in many an image quality comparison as have iPhones. Many manufacturers are taking phone image sensor quality to heart these days as phones are quickly becoming consumer's favorite cameras.

 

[Pockleton]

Yes, each version of iPhone is overall better than its predecessor as the test indicates. But BOTH iPhone devices are closer to srbg standard than the Samsung and the iphone 5 is now srbg certified.

So it's a step in the right direction with regard to color..

 

[DJTaurus]

How did they do it?
http://dot-color.com/2012/09/27/how...-saturation-measure-up-against-apples-claims/