Potential iPhone X deal breaker?

[Falhófnir]

Now, I have to be completely up front that I have obviously not seen the display of the X in person yet, but researching up on it, it is looking increasingly likely it's using a standard pentile layout commonly found on oled panels, not a custom rgb stripe subpixel layout. I have previously owned a phone (Lumia 930) with a similar panel (on paper) - oled with pentile at about 441ppi.

I thought honestly the quality and clarity of the plus iphones' 1080p LCD was more impressive, the pentile layout gives the screen an odd 'grainy' appearance (and this is the case with every oled phone I've seen, just pointing out that it's still visible at this ppi) - remember with pentile you have half RG and half BG pixels, not all RGB.

Obviously I'll have to see the screen in person first but if it's, as seems likely, of similar character to other oled panels, it's going to be a step back from the LCDs in the larger iphones to my eye. Is this a hitch to anyone else?

 

[Jetcat3]

I've been worried about this too. Tried to tweet a couple of tech bloggers about this and what their impressions were hands-on compared to the 8 Plus.

 

[the future]

Now, I have to be completely up front that I have obviously not seen the display of the X in person yet, but researching up on it, it is looking increasingly likely it's using a standard pentile layout commonly found on oled panels, not a custom rgb stripe subpixel layout. I have previously owned a phone (Lumia 930) with a similar panel (on paper) - oled with pentile at about 441ppi.

I thought honestly the quality and clarity of the plus iphones' 1080p LCD was more impressive, the pentile layout gives the screen an odd 'grainy' appearance (and this is the case with every oled phone I've seen, just pointing out that it's still visible at this ppi) - remember with pentile you have half RG and half BG pixels, not all RGB.

Obviously I'll have to see the screen in person first but if it's, as seems likely, of similar character to other oled panels, it's going to be a step back from the LCDs in the larger iphones to my eye. Is this a hitch to anyone else?

Two questions.
1. What "research" have you done that makes pentile "increasingly likely"?
2. This is Apple. Do you really think it is probable that their new super flagship iPhone will have a screen with an "odd grainy appearance"?

 

[MrGimper]

Two questions.
1. What "research" have you done that makes pentile "increasingly likely"?
2. This is Apple. Do you really think it is probable that their new super flagship iPhone will have a screen with an "odd grainy appearance"?

Don't they get their OLED screens from Samsung? Just saying...

 

[Falhófnir]

Two questions.
1. What "research" have you done that makes pentile "increasingly likely"?
2. This is Apple. Do you really think it is probable that their new super flagship iPhone will have a screen with an "odd grainy appearance"?

1. Reading up articles by people who had a hands on with the phone who know what they're talking about; looking on the Apple website for clues like talk of subpixel rendering/ smoothing.
2. Did they have a choice? Limited choice of suppliers, that supplier themself use pentile as they've not been able to overcome premature blue diode exhaustion, need for a large number of panels limiting their options further.

 

[the future]

Don't they get their OLED screens from Samsung? Just saying...

I would imagine that, just like with LCD, there are different quality/price tiers of OLED displays.
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1. Reading up articles by people who had a hands on with the phone who know what they're talking about; looking on the Apple website for clues like talk of subpixel rendering/ smoothing.
2. Did they have a choice? Limited choice of suppliers, that supplier themself use pentile as they've not been able to overcome premature blue diode exhaustion, need for a large number of panels limiting their options further.

Do you have a link to people with a hands on that say that the display looks grainy?

 

[Falhófnir]

Do you have a link to people with a hands on that say that the display looks grainy?

No, but then
1) many reviewers don't seem to mention it anyway - many models of phone I've seen that look weird to my eye have been praised by various reviewers. Don't know if they don't notice it, or just accept it's a thing with the technology, but it's definitely there to me.
2) these reviewers do this for a living and iPhones are their biggest gig of the year - most won't give out anything other than praise for fear of not being invited back next year.
3) google search iPhone X pentile and there's a few reviewers that have mentioned it looks like it is pentile without making any criticism directly (though that they can tell by looking gives you some idea). I guess most are waiting til they can get it under a microscope to confirm first though.

I'm not saying it's unbearable to look at, just if you put it next to an equivalent ppi LCD (or even RGB oled) it definitely does make a difference, indeed a 401ppi iPhone plus looks better than a 441 ppi Lumia 930 - granted that's now a few years old, but I don't see how they can make it better if it's an inherent pattern of the subpixels. It's always there too, at least up to that pixel density (haven't seen a newer Samsung with 5-600 ppi, but then the iPhone isn't at that density anyway) across various different brands of phone. I believe Samsung were trying to develop a way of making RGB oled work at higher PPIs but had to give up as the tech wasn't there yet. That adds credence both to the fact there is a benefit from RGB and Apple will have had to settle for pentile.

Perhaps it's one of these issues only some people will notice and others who do notice will consider 'fine' but if that's the case I hope Apple keep an LCD option in their lineup for a good while yet, because I'd rather stay with a tech that looks better to my eye.

 

[the future]

3) google search iPhone X pentile and there's a few reviewers that have mentioned it looks like it is pentile without making any criticism directly (though that they can tell by looking gives you some idea).

I did (google) but couldn't find anyone that had hands-on time and said anything about pentile (or not pentile). The Verge only said "I’ve generally preferred LCDs to OLEDs, but the X’s OLED display doesn’t seem to share any of the extreme oversaturation or pixel matrix weirdness of other OLEDs I’ve seen."

We'll have to wait and see, I guess. FWIW I've never looked closely at a modern, high dpi pentile OLED display so I'm not sure if it would really be a problem, let alone deal breaker. Low dpi pentile OLEDs look like trash, though.

 

[serialiphoneuser]

https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&vertical=default&q=iphone x pentile&src=typd

#CrossHatch-gate

 

[5105973]

Everything Apple Pro had a video that briefly touched on a comparison of the X's display to that of a Note 8. The X display was dim and had an unpleasant subtle blue green tint to it. The picture on the display was of a Tiger and the tiger looked washed out and sort of sallow on the X and beautiful and realistic on the Note 7. Anyone reading this keep in mind I have loads of posts elsewhere explaining I am NOT interested in the Note 8 this year. I'll either ultimately end up with an X or an 8 Plus but I already have an S8's+ and that suffices for me this year as far as Samsung offerings are concerned.

This post is about my own questions about the quality of the X display. Obviously we can only hypothesize and chat about POTENTIAL shortcomings until we have solid reviews and opportunities to see it for ourselves.

Edit: correction. I mistook what I was seeing in the video. It is a comparison of the X display to the iPhone 7 he was showing. He was saying that the X has the same maximum brightness as the iPhone 7 so he was using that as a basis for comparison. I mistook what I was seeing and well, he talks kind of fast and my brain at night was running kind of slow so I made a mistake. My apologies for the misleading description and thanks to @the future for catching this.

 

[the future]

Yeah, on the other hand I read that the Apple displays with wider colour gamut (P3) will only show photo/video material in this gamut that has actually been produced in/for it while other manufacturers like Samsung will drag everything into the wider gamut. This means that the material may look more "colourful/vibrant" in comparison, but will have objectively wrong/unintended colours.

 

[Jetcat3]

Ah, this is disappointing. I was really hoping it wasn't Pentile as I've compared the default resolution of the Note8 at 391 PPI and it still looked decent compared to the 3K resolution at 522 PPI. I figured at 458 PPI it would look similar in sharpness to the current LCD 7 Plus. Now it may look a bit worse with the Pentile layout which is pretty disappointing. Granted, this is coming from a pixel snob haha.

 

[d5aqoëp]

No, but then
2) these reviewers do this for a living and iPhones are their biggest gig of the year - most won't give out anything other than praise for fear of not being invited back next year.

Sadly that is true. They won’t dare to say that the “OLED is Pentile” or they might be booted out of that hall instantly.

We have to wait out till sites like iVerge or iAnandtech review it thoroughly.

This first gen iPhone X is a pure beta product. There might be some teething issues which might pass under Apple’s QC.
Like Antennagate with iPhone 4, Bendgate with iPhone 6+ and scratchgate with Glossy black iPhone 7. If price is reasonable next year, I might buy iPhone X2. BTW, Xiaomi Mi Mix2 is seriously looking like a value for money device. It only doesn’t have OLED.

 

[WilliamG]

Pentile is the worst. I hope this isn’t true.

 

[the future]

Everything Apple Pro had a video that briefly touched on a comparison of the X's display to that of a Note 8. The X display was dim and had an unpleasant subtle blue green tint to it..

I searched for that clip. They didn't have an X for the comparison, obviously, but rather an iPhone 7. So your description of what was shown is rather deceptive.

 

[hank moody]

i am curious about this

 

[Nozuka]

never noticed anything on the galaxy s7, although that one had 577ppi..

 

[Technarchy]

Pentile is the worst. I hope this isn’t true.

The S8/+ feature a Diamond PenTile pixel layout and are the best displays in the business. I’m wagering Apple is sourcing the same panels with their own calibration requirements.

 

[matty.p]

Nilay Patel the crusader against Pentile was at the event and didn’t mention it in his hands on. I will go with the assumption it’s not pentile.

 

[WilliamG]

The S8/+ feature a Diamond PenTile pixel layout and are the best displays in the business. I’m wagering Apple is sourcing the same panels with their own calibration requirements.

Absolutely. However, the S8 starts with a much higher res to begin with.

Look at the sppi... some colors the same as a Plus iPhone...

Red 403 SPPI
Green 570 SPPI
Blue 403 SPP

Perceived res of the X could be noticeably lower than the Plus line.

http://www.displaymate.com/Galaxy_S8_ShootOut_01.htm

 

[Nozuka]

Absolutely. However, the S8 starts with a much higher res to begin with.

Look at the sppi... some colors the same as a Plus iPhone...

Red 403 SPPI
Green 570 SPPI
Blue 403 SPP

Perceived res of the X could be noticeably lower than the Plus line.

http://www.displaymate.com/Galaxy_S8_ShootOut_01.htm

also from this article:

The Galaxy S8 uses Sub-Pixel Rendering, which further improves image sharpness because the individual Red, Green and Blue Sub-Pixels are treated as independent addressable image elements and are not bound together into fixed Pixels, so the closest sub-pixel is used when rendering the image. In some cases Sub-Pixel Rendering can make the screen appear to have up to 3 times the resolution of traditional Pixel Rendering. As a result, for Smartphones it is absolutely pointless to further increase the display resolution and pixels per inch (ppi) up to 4K (3940x2160 pixels) for a silly marketing wild goose chase into the stratosphere…

 

[WilliamG]

also from this article:

Well... yes. But not in this case!

 

[5105973]

I searched for that clip. They didn't have an X for the comparison, obviously, but rather an iPhone 7. So your description of what was shown is rather deceptive.

I will have to find it again and try to link it here. I was pretty sure he was comparing pictures he had from some source of an iPhone X to the Note 8 but I could be wrong. Thanks for calling out my mistake if I'm wrong. I hope I am wrong!

Ah yes, you're right. Good catch, I thought I was looking at an X with black bars cropping out the notch and I misheard him say it was IPhone 7. I apologize for my mistake.

His video is here and the comparison in question starts at the 3:44 mark.

 

[WilliamG]

I will have to find it again and try to link it here. I was pretty sure he was comparing pictures he had from some source of an iPhone X to the Note 8 but I could be wrong. Thanks for calling out my mistake if I'm wrong. I hope I am wrong!

Ah yes, you're right. Good catch, I thought I was looking at an X with black bars cropping out the notch and I misheard him say it was IPhone 7. I apologize for my mistake.

His video is here and the comparison in question starts at the 3:44 mark.

There are so many things wrong with that video I just can't even... Not just because he continues to show a fake mock-up with the white surround.

Anyway, 1200 nits? Who cares? Why would I want my battery life to be THAT compromised? Has anyone complained about phone brightness with the iPhone 7 lines? No? Color me shocked. That's because it's MORE than bright enough.

It really is hilarious how quick people are to judge so many things on iPhone X.

On the positive side, the more that people try to make themselves not want one, the easier it gets for me to get one on launch day.

 

[Rogifan]

Keep complaining just means there’s more stock for the rest of us.