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IPS Tablet Display Technology Shoot-Out

Amazon Kindle Fire  –  Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet  –  Apple iPad 2

 

Dr. Raymond M. Soneira

President, DisplayMate Technologies Corporation

 

Copyright © 1990-2011 by DisplayMate Technologies Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

This article, or any part thereof, may not be copied, reproduced, mirrored, distributed or incorporated

into any other work without the prior written permission of DisplayMate Technologies Corporation

 

 

 

Introduction

A new wave of Tablets has arrived just in time for Christmas… But as we have seen many times before, most new Tablets are poorly thought out contenders that just wash away with the next wave. To survive (let alone succeed) in this incredibly competitive marketplace you had better have a really good “reason de existence.” The Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook series of Tablets clearly fall into this category because they both started by providing a great reading experience with excellent E-Ink displays that behave like electronic paper. But these are pretty much restricted to displaying printed text because of their very limited imaging and graphics capabilities (black and white, 16 intensity levels, and very slow speed screen updates).

 

In order to stay competitive with the incredibly successful Apple iPad the next logical step was to offer a color LCD display. Tablets are essentially large portable displays – so if you are going to offer a product in this area you had better do the display right! Apple did that from day 1 with the iPad. For Tablets the display is the single most expensive and important hardware component because it determines the quality of the visual experience for every application on the Tablet. In this very hot ultra-competitive category an outstanding display is the single best way for manufacturers to make their Tablets stand out from the competition because the display enhances or degrades the appearance of everything that runs on the Tablet. Cutting corners, costs and quality for the display is a serious mistake because it results in sub-standard image and picture quality for everything that runs on the Tablet. Two examples of what not to do are the Motorola Xoom and Acer Iconia, which had low-end LCD displays and tested poorly in our 10 Inch Tablet Display Technology Shoot-Out.

 

Manufacturers now seem to have gotten this message because many of the latest Tablets are offering improved IPS LCD displays, the same screen technology that Apple uses in the iPad and iPhone. It offers wider viewing angles, better image contrast, and faster response times than the cheaper LCDs used in many products. IPS stands for In Plane Switching, which has two transistors for every sub-pixel. It was developed by Hitachi, but LG is now the world’s leading manufacturer of IPS LCDs, and the principal supplier of displays for the iPhone as well as the Tablets in this Shoot-Out (but most Tablets have more than one supplier). Other manufacturers offer similar technologies that are often called IPS displays, such as Fringe Field Switching by Hydis and Plane Line Switching by Samsung.

 

The two new Tablet stand-outs for this Display Shoot-Out are the Amazon Kindle Fire and the Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet. It was nice to hear that they both feature IPS LCD displays like the iPad. But IPS displays are not all the same and do not perform equally because, like cars, they are actually complex assemblies that include lots of options and variables. So we decided to see how these newbies compare with the grand-daddy of them all – the Apple iPad…

 

Tablets Are Shown to Scale

Amazon

Kindle Fire

Barnes & Noble

Nook Tablet

Apple

iPad 2

 

The IPS Display Shoot-Out

To compare the performance of these IPS displays we ran our in-depth series of Display Technology Shoot-Out tests on them. We take display quality very seriously and provide in-depth objective side-by-side comparisons of the displays based on detailed laboratory measurements and extensive viewing tests with both test patterns and test images.

 

The Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet are competing head-to-head with similar price points, feature sets, and 7 inch screens. The iPad 2 has a much higher price point, much greater feature set, and much larger 9.7 inch screen – non-the-less these Tablets are competing in functionality and particularly for finite consumer dollars. It remains to be seen whether the Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet grow at the expense of the iPad, or whether they just expand the market for Tablets. I predict the latter… Tablets are so useful that there is plenty of room for 7 inch, 10 inch, and even 12 inch screens – the first for extra portability and the latter for professional and office applications… and there are lots of people that would own more than one size based on their varying needs. One of the more credible rumors flying around is that Apple will introduce a 7-8 inch iPad in 2012. I hope so…

 

 

Results Highlights

In this Results section we provide short comparative Highlights for each Tablet display based on the comprehensive lab measurements and extensive side-by-side visual comparisons using test photos, test images and test patterns that are presented in later sections. The Comparison Table in the following section summarizes the lab measurements in the following categories:  Screen ReflectionsBrightness and ContrastColors and IntensitiesViewing AnglesDisplay Backlight Power Consumption, and Running Time on Battery.

 

Ship Just in Time for Christmas…

One major issue for most Tablets has been that the manufacturers are all scrambling to get their products to market so there isn’t enough time to properly engineer everything. It’s clear that this was the case for both the Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet – ship by Thanksgiving and provide patches, tweaks and enhancements later. That’s understandable, while both the Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet are quite functional, they are both going to need lots of fixes and tweaks. It's possible that the serious display issues we found for the Kindle Fire will be improved in future software updates.

 

Apple iPad 2   Highlights

We’ll begin with the iPad because it’s the standard that all other Tablets are compared to… The iPad 2 has an excellent display, virtually identical in performance to the impressive iPhone 4 Retina Display, with a somewhat higher pixel resolution but a much lower pixel density of 132 ppi due to its much larger screen size. The iPad 2 IPS LCD display is fairly well calibrated and delivers bright images with excellent contrast, reasonably accurate colors and very good Viewing Angle performance with small color shifts but a large decrease in Brightness, which is the case even for the best LCDs. A major shortcoming is a reduced Color Gamut, but the iPad 2 improves on-screen image color saturation by steepening its intensity scale. For more details see the dedicated iPad 2 LCD Display Shoot-Out.

 

Amazon Kindle Fire   Highlights

In principle, the LCD on the Kindle Fire is a fairly good display, comparable in most respects to the Nook Tablet and iPad 2 – but it has two major flaws, and only one of them is fixable with a software update.

 

Amazon advertises that the Kindle Fire has an “anti-reflective treatment” but our lab tests found it to have among the highest reflectance levels we have ever measured – it’s 70 percent higher than the iPad 2, and more than double the reflectance of the Nook Tablet. That may not matter much if you are reading in bed but it’s likely to be a significant factor indoors and especially outdoors. It’s also a surprising piece of puffery for Amazon – who’s generally a very straight shooter…

 

Another big disappointment for the Kindle Fire is the Gallery, the native application that is used for viewing photos and images. First, the gray-scale is way off, and overdriven so hard that significant picture detail will be lost with bright images. It’s very similar to what happens with an over-exposed photograph – all of the bright content appears washed out or even lost all together – see the screen shots in Figure 4 below. Like the Nook Tablet, the Kindle Fire uses a version of Android for its OS, but the User Interface on the Kindle Fire is much closer to vanilla Android – and most of the time it’s much nicer than the Nook’s own UI. But the Kindle Fire still carries a major flaw in Android that I pointed out almost 2 years ago with the Nexus One, and which Google acknowledged. The Gallery provides only 16-bit color – that’s 65 thousand colors not the “16 million colors” that Amazon advertises. It also produces noticeable steps (called false contours) in some images. While the display hardware can do 24-bit color it doesn’t show up on-screen in the Gallery viewer due to the software design. It’s about time that Amazon and Google fix this… Fortunately, the Web browser on the Kindle Fire does support full 24-bit color for web images.

 

Another display related issue is that the chunky menus in the Kindle Fire Gallery eat up 100 pixels of the screen, so photos only get 500 of the screen’s 600 vertical pixels. If you display a standard 4:3 digital camera photo it only fills 54 percent of the screen and a 16:9 photograph only fills 72 percent of the screen. To fix this the UI needs to be updated so that the menus disappear after a few seconds the way they do in other parts of the Kindle Fire UI.

 

Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet   Highlights

The LCD on the Nook Tablet is also a fairly good display comparable in most respects to the Kindle Fire – but Barnes & Noble has done a much better job in pulling everything together into a nice all around display.

 

Barnes & Noble advertises that the Nook Tablet has “reduced reflection and glare” and they have clearly done their homework on this one because it has the lowest reflectance of any Tablet we have ever tested – the iPad 2 has 28 percent higher reflectance and the Kindle Fire has more than double that of the Nook Tablet (lower is better).

 

The Nook Tablet also has a very good factory display calibration. Its gray-scale is actually more accurate than most living room HDTVs. The White Point at 6,016K degrees is somewhat more yellowish than the 6,500K standard – that was most likely done in order to increase the screen’s maximum brightness, power efficiency, and battery run-time.

 

Like the Kindle Fire, the Nook Tablet also uses a version of Android for its OS. But unlike the Kindle Fire the Nook Tablet delivers very smooth and accurate 24-bit color on-screen, including for its Gallery. Photos and even test patterns are free of the ugly image artifacts seen on the Kindle Fire. The reason is that the Nook Tablet doesn’t use the Android Gallery but rather developed its own. Unfortunately, that has a down side…

 

Barnes & Noble has developed its own distinct user interface for the Nook Tablet – the Kindle Fire is much closer to vanilla Android. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work anywhere near as well and still needs lots of work. In particular, the User Interface for the Gallery is primitive and combines all of the photos and videos into one gigantic grid. The only way to organize photos and videos with Folders is through a cumbersome “My Stuff” User Interface that is buggy as well. We use hundreds of test patterns, test images, test photos and videos for the Shoot-Out, so dealing with this problem UI was a major ordeal. User Interfaces are hard to get right… Hopefully Barnes & Noble will keep working to improve it over time.

 

 

And the Winner Is…

While these Tablets have very different price points, features, and screen sizes, it is still useful to compare the quality and performance of their displays because the display enhances or degrades the appearance of everything that runs on the Tablet.

 

There is no absolute winner for this Display Shoot-Out because all 3 Tablets were both winners and losers in some categories, which is interesting in and of itself. In most categories the 3 displays were reasonably close in their lab test performance, which again is interesting, but perhaps not that surprising since they are all IPS LCDs. But the Nook Tablet was the leader in more categories – both in the lab tests and the viewing tests – so it is the declared winner in overall display performance and picture quality, at least for this round…

 

The iPad 2 also has an excellent display and is very close in performance to the winner. What is impressive is that the iPad 2 is still delivering top display performance close to what many predict is the end of its product cycle, with lots of interesting predictions for its next generation.

 

The Amazon Kindle Fire came in with a decidedly last place finish behind the Nook Tablet and iPad 2. In most categories it was just somewhat behind the Nook Tablet and iPad 2, but as the Highlights section above explained the Kindle Fire has 2 major flaws. These two significant points aside, it’s otherwise a good Tablet display. The Gallery viewer delivers only 16-bit color and has a significantly distorted gray-scale, which could be fixed with a future software update if Amazon chooses to do so. However, its high screen reflectance cannot be fixed. Note that some after-market screen protectors that claim to reduce glare actually increase the overall reflectance but fuzz it out with a matte finish – so they are not recommended as a fix. The best solution is just to carefully orient yourself so that there aren’t any bright sources of light behind you that can reflect off the screen and degrade or obscure the image. In fact, a lot more can be done to reduce screen reflections, so I consider all of the Tablets unsatisfactory in this regard, although the Nook Tablet has the lowest reflectance for now.

 

 

What’s Coming Next

The next Tablet Shoot-Out will be an in-depth scientific comparison and analysis of the Kindle and Nook E-Ink displays to their LCD cousins to examine their laboratory and visual performance differences, strengths and weaknesses. Check this link for Display Shoot-Out updates.

 

 

The Next Generation of Tablet Displays in 2012

Tablets are evolving very quickly, and 2012 will definitely produce some major jumps in display technology for all Tablets. I’ve made some objective display predictions, suggestions and recommendations for the Next Generation of Tablet Displays including an analysis of several popular rumors. They also apply to 7 inch Tablets. I believe that the smaller 7-8 inch category will grow tremendously in 2012, and hopefully Apple will introduce a Tablet in this smaller size as well.

 

 

DisplayMate Display Optimization Technology

All Tablet and Smartphone displays can be significantly improved using DisplayMate’s advanced scientific analysis and mathematical display modeling and optimization of the display hardware, factory calibration, and driver parameters. We can improve the performance of any specified set of display parameters. This article is a lite version of our intensive scientific analysis – before the benefits of our DisplayMate Display Optimization Technology, which can correct or improve all of these issues. If you are a display or product manufacturer and want to significantly improve display performance for a competitive advantage then Contact DisplayMate Technologies.

 

Tablets Are Shown to Scale

Amazon

Kindle Fire

Barnes & Noble

Nook Tablet

Apple

iPad 2

 

IPS Tablet Display Shoot-Out Comparison Table

Below we compare the IPS LCD displays on the Amazon Kindle Fire, Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet, and Apple iPad 2 based on objective measurement data and criteria.

 

For additional background, context, and information see the 10 Inch Tablet Display Technology Shoot-Out article that compares the larger Motorola Xoom, Asus Transformer, Acer Iconia A500, and Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 Tablets with the Apple iPad 2, and the dedicated iPad 2 LCD Display Shoot-Out article with additional analysis for the iPad 2.

 

Categories

Amazon

Kindle Fire

Barnes & Noble

Nook Tablet

Apple

iPad 2

Comments

Display Technology

7.0 inch

IPS LCD

7.0 inch

IPS LCD

9.7 inch

IPS LCD

Liquid Crystal Display

In Plane Switching

Screen Shape

1.71

Aspect Ratio

1.71

Aspect Ratio

4:3  =  1.33

Aspect Ratio

The iPad screen has the same shape as 8.5x11 paper.

Kindle and Nook have active screens similar to HDTVs.

OS Version for the Tests

6.2

1.4.0

4.3

The current OS versions available during testing.

Display Resolution

1024 x 600 pixels

 

1024 x 500 Active

Small Gallery Images

1024 x 600 pixels

 

1024 x 560 Active

Medium Gallery Images

1024 x 768 pixels

 

1024 x 768 Active

Large Size Images

The more Pixels and Sub-Pixels the better.

 

Kindle and Nook reserve pixels for Buttons and Status.

Active size is for the Gallery image viewer.

Pixels Per Inch

169 ppi

Good

Noticeably Sharper

64% higher area density

169 ppi

Good

Noticeably Sharper

64% higher area density

132 ppi

Good

Noticeably Less Sharp

39% lower area density

At 12 inches from the screen 20/20 vision is 286 ppi.

Best human vision is about 20/10 vision or 572 ppi.

See this on the visual acuity for a true Retina Display

Display Color Depth

Full 24-bit color

256 Intensity Levels

Full 24-bit color

256 Intensity Levels

Full 24-bit color

256 Intensity Levels

24-bit displays produce images with relatively

smooth and artifact free colors and intensities.

Gallery / Photo Viewer Color Depth

16-bit color

32 – 64 Intensity Levels

Poorly Calibrated

Full 24-bit color

256 Intensity Levels

Excellent Calibration

Full 24-bit color

256 Intensity Levels

Very Good Calibration

Kindle Fire has a poor Android Gallery viewer

that provides 16-bit on-screen color.

 

Kindle Fire

Nook Tablet

iPad 2

 

 

Overall Assessments

This section summarizes the results of all of the extensive Lab measurements and viewing tests performed on all of the Tablets.

 

Viewing Tests

Washed Out Highlights

False Contouring

Rank 3

 

Small Color Shifts

with Viewing Angle

Whites Too Yellow

Reds Appear Orangey

Best – Rank 1

 

Small Color Shifts

with Viewing Angle

Whites Too Blue

Slight Bluish Tint

Rank 2

 

Small Color Shifts

with Viewing Angle

The Viewing Tests examined the accuracy of

photographic images by comparing the displays

to a calibrated studio monitor and HDTV.

Overall Display Assessment

Lab Tests and Viewing Tests

Good Tablet Display

Needs Software Updates

Excellent Tablet Display

For Current Generation

Excellent Tablet Display

For Current Generation

The Nook Tablet had the best display overall.

Overall Display Rank and Grade

 Rank 3    B–

Best – Rank 1    A–

Rank 2    A–

The Nook Tablet scored slightly ahead of the iPad 2.

 

Kindle Fire

Nook Tablet

iPad 2

 

 

 

 

 

Screen Reflections

Figure 1.  Screen Reflection Photos

Click to Enlarge

All of these screens are large mirrors good enough to use for personal grooming – but it’s actually a very bad feature…

We measured the light reflected from all directions and also direct mirror (specular) reflections, which are much more

distracting and cause more eye strain. The 10 – 15 percent reflections can make the screen much harder to read even

in moderate ambient light levels, requiring ever higher brightness settings that waste precious battery power. Hopefully

manufacturers will reduce the mirror reflections with anti-reflection coatings and haze surface finishes.

Average Screen Reflection

Light From All Directions

14.8 percent

Very Poor

6.8 percent

Very Good

8.7 percent

Good

Measured using an Integrating Hemisphere.

The Kindle Fire reflects more than double

the ambient light as the Nook Tablet.

Mirror Reflections

Percentage of Light Reflected

16.3 percent

Very Poor

7.0 percent

Very Good

10.8 percent

Poor

These are the most annoying types of reflections.

Measured using a narrow collimated pencil beam

of light reflected off the screen.

 

Kindle Fire

Nook Tablet

iPad 2

 

 

Brightness and Contrast

The Contrast Ratio is the specification that gets the most attention, but it only applies for low ambient light, which is seldom

the case for mobile displays. Much more important is the Contrast Rating, which indicates how easy it is to read the screen

under high ambient lighting and depends on both the Maximum Brightness and the Screen Reflectance.

Measured Maximum Brightness

is the Peak Luminance for White

Brightness 354 cd/m2

Good

Brightness 342 cd/m2

Good

Brightness 410 cd/m2

Very Good

Maximum Brightness is very important for mobile

because of the typically high ambient light levels.

Black Level

at Maximum Brightness

Black is 0.34 cd/m2

Very Good for Mobile

Black is 0.30 cd/m2

Very Good for Mobile

Black is 0.43 cd/m2

Very Good for Mobile

Black brightness is important for low ambient light,

which is seldom the case for mobile devices.

Contrast Ratio

Relevant for Low Ambient Light

1,041

Very Good for Mobile

1,140

Very Good for Mobile

962

Very Good for Mobile

Only relevant for low ambient light,

which is seldom the case for mobile devices.

Defined as Maximum Brightness / Black Brightness.

Contrast Rating

for High Ambient Light

24

Mediocre

50

Very Good

47

Very Good

Defined as Maximum Brightness / Average Reflectance.

Screen Readability in Bright Light

Mediocre    B–

Very Good    A–

Very Good    A–

Indicates how easy it is to read the screen

under high ambient lighting. Very Important!

 

Kindle Fire

Nook Tablet

iPad 2

 

 

 

 

 

Colors and Intensities    

Figure 2.  Color Gamuts

Click to Enlarge

Figure 3.  Intensity Scales

Click to Enlarge

Figure 4.  Screen Shots

Click to Enlarge

 

The Color Gamut, Intensity Scale, and White Point determine the quality and accuracy of all displayed images and all

the image colors. Bigger is definitely Not Better because the display needs to match all the standards that were used

when the content was produced. For LCDs a wider Color Gamut reduces the power efficiency and the Intensity Scale

affects both image brightness and color mixture accuracy. The Intensity Scale for the Kindle Fire in its Gallery Viewer

is highly distorted, but its Intensity Scale in the Browser is virtually identical to the Nook Tablet.

White Color Temperature

6,540 degrees Kelvin

Very Close to D6500

6,016 degrees Kelvin

Slightly Too Yellow

6,991 degrees Kelvin

Slightly Too Blue

D6500 is the standard color of White for

Most Content and necessary for accurate

color reproduction.

Color Gamut

See Figure 2

Color Gamut Too Small

55 percent of Std

See Figure 2

Color Gamut Too Small

55 percent of Std

See Figure 2

Color Gamut Too Small

61 percent of Std

See Figure 2

sRGB / Rec.709 is the color standard for most

content and needed for accurate color reproduction.

Note that Too Large is visually worse than Too Small.

Intensity Scale and Image Contrast

See Figure 3

Gallery Awful

Browser Same as Nook

Accurate and Smooth

Close to Standard

Very Smooth But

Contrast Too High

The Intensity Scale controls image contrast needed

for accurate image reproduction. See Figure 3

Gamma for the Intensity Scale

Larger means more Image Contrast

See Figure 3

Gallery 0.1 to 2.81

Browser 2.29

Very Good 2.28

Close to Standard

Good 2.66

Gamma Too High

Gamma is the slope of the Intensity Scale.

Gamma of 2.2 is the standard and needed for

accurate image reproduction. See Figure 3

 

Kindle Fire

Nook Tablet

iPad 2

 

 

Viewing Angles

The variation of Brightness, Contrast, and Color with viewing angle is especially important for Tablets because of

their large screen and multiple viewers. The typical manufacturer 176+ degree specification for LCD Viewing Angle

is nonsense because that is where the Contrast Ratio falls to a miniscule 10. For most LCDs there are substantial

degradations at less than ±30 degrees, which is not an atypical viewing angle for Tablets

Brightness Decrease

at a 30 degree Viewing Angle

51 percent Decrease

Falls to 172 cd/m2

 

Very Large Decrease

55 percent Decrease

Falls to 153 cd/m2

 

Very Large Decrease

58 percent Decrease

Falls to 171 cd/m2

 

Very Large Decrease

Screens become less bright when tilted.

LCD brightness variation is generally very large.

Contrast Ratio

at a 30 degree Viewing Angle

612

Very Good for Mobile

621

Very Good for Mobile

564

Very Good for Mobile

A measure of screen readability when the screen

is tilted under low ambient lighting.

Primary Color Shifts

at a 30 degree Viewing Angle

Small Color Shift

Δ(u’v’) = 0.062

1.6 times JNCD

Small Color Shift

Δ(u’v’) = 0.0077

1.9 times JNCD

Small Color Shift

Δ(u’v’) = 0.0100

2.5 times JNCD

JNCD is a Just Noticeable Color Difference.

IPS LCDs have smaller color shifts with angle.

Color Shifts for Color Mixtures

at a 30 degree Viewing Angle

Reference Brown (255, 128, 0)

Small Color Shift

Δ(u’v’) = 0.0070

1.8 times JNCD

Small Color Shift

Δ(u’v’) = 0.0040

1.0 times JNCD

Small Color Shift

Δ(u’v’) = 0.0047

1.2 times JNCD

JNCD is a Just Noticeable Color Difference.

 

Reference Brown is a good indicator of color shifts

With angle because of unequal drive levels and

roughly equal luminance contributions from Red

and Green.

 

Kindle Fire

Nook Tablet

iPad 2

 

 

Display Backlight Power Consumption

Figure 5.  LED Backlight Spectrum

Click to Enlarge

  

The power used by the Backlights at Maximum Brightness accounts for roughly 50 percent of the total Tablet power.

Since the displays have different screen sizes and maximum brightness, the values were also scaled to the same

screen brightness and screen area in order to compare their relative power efficiencies. The larger iPad 2 screen

is significantly more efficient than the smaller 7 inch displays.

Display Backlight Power

at Maximum Brightness

1.7 watts

1.6 watts

2.7 watts

Lower power consumption is important for energy

efficiency and improving running time on battery.

Display Backlight Power Efficiency

same Peak Luminance 342 cd/m2

same 7.0 inch screen size area

1.7 watts

1.6 watts

1.1 watts

This compares the Relative Power Efficiency

by looking at the same screen brightness and

screen area.

 

Kindle Fire

Nook Tablet

iPad 2

 

 

Running Time on Battery

The running time on battery was determined with the Brightness sliders set for maximum and minimum brightness,

with the Tablet in Airplane Mode, with no running applications, and with Auto Brightness turned off (if equipped).

Note that Auto Brightness can have a considerable impact on running time but we found abysmal performance for

both the iPhone and Android Smartphones in our BrightnessGate analysis of Ambient Light Sensors and Automatic

Brightness. The Kindle Fire and Nook Tablet do not have Ambient Light Sensors or Automatic Brightness. They need

a more convenient Manual Brightness Control as described in the BrightnessGate article.

Running Time

At Maximum Brightness Setting

Running Times

Not Yet Available.

Running Times

Not Yet Available

7.2 hours

Display always On at the Maximum setting with

Airplane Mode and no running applications.

Running Time

At Minimum Brightness Setting

Running Times

Not Yet Available

Running Times

Not Yet Available

19.8 hours

Display always On at the Minimum setting with

Airplane Mode and no running applications.

Categories

Kindle Fire

Nook Tablet

iPad 2

Comments

 

 

About the Author

Dr. Raymond Soneira is President of DisplayMate Technologies Corporation of Amherst, New Hampshire, which produces video calibration, evaluation, and diagnostic products for consumers, technicians, and manufacturers. See www.displaymate.com. He is a research scientist with a career that spans physics, computer science, and television system design. Dr. Soneira obtained his Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics from Princeton University, spent 5 years as a Long-Term Member of the world famous Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, another 5 years as a Principal Investigator in the Computer Systems Research Laboratory at AT&T Bell Laboratories, and has also designed, tested, and installed color television broadcast equipment for the CBS Television Network Engineering and Development Department. He has authored over 35 research articles in scientific journals in physics and computer science, including Scientific American. If you have any comments or questions about the article, you can contact him at dtso.info@displaymate.com.

 

About DisplayMate Technologies

DisplayMate Technologies specializes in advanced mathematical display technology optimizations and precision analytical scientific display diagnostics and calibrations to deliver outstanding image and picture quality and accuracy – while increasing the effective visual Contrast Ratio of the display and producing a higher calibrated brightness than is achievable with traditional calibration methods. This also decreases display power requirements and increases the battery run time in mobile displays. This article is a lite version of our intensive scientific analysis of smartphone and mobile displays – before the benefits of our advanced mathematical DisplayMate Display Optimization Technology, which can correct or improve many of the deficiencies – including higher calibrated brightness, power efficiency, effective screen contrast, picture quality and color and gray scale accuracy under both bright and dim ambient light, and much more. Our advanced scientific optimizations can make lower cost panels look as good or better than more expensive higher performance displays. For more information on our technology see the Summary description of our Adaptive Variable Metric Display Optimizer AVDO. If you are a display or product manufacturer and want our expertise and technology to turn your display into a spectacular one to surpass your competition then Contact DisplayMate Technologies to learn more.

 

 

Article Links:  10 Inch Tablet Display Technology Shoot-Out

Article Links:  Apple iPad 2 LCD Display

 

Article Links:  Smartphone "Super" LCD-OLED Display Technology Shoot-Out

Article Links:  Smartphone Automatic Brightness Controls and Light Sensors are Useless

 

Article Links:  Mobile Display Shoot-Out Article Series Overview and Home Page

Article Links:  Display Technology Shoot-Out Article Series Overview and Home Page

 

 

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This article, or any part thereof, may not be copied, reproduced, mirrored, distributed or incorporated

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