The Register®

Original URL: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/10/21/samsung_galaxy_nexus_uses_pentile_oled_panel/

Samsung Galaxy Nexus comes up short on sub-pixels

Don't smile, it's PenTile

By Tony Smith

Posted in Phones, 21st October 2011 10:26 GMT

Watch Now : Virtual Machine Movement with Hyper-V

Bad news, folks. The sexy looking Samsung Galaxy Nexus [1], the world's first Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich smartphone, has an inferior OLED display.

Close-up photography of the phone's 4.7in panel taken by website FlatPanelsHD reveal the Galaxy Nexus' OLED uses Samsung's PenTile pixel layout [2].

Samsung Galaxy Nexus display close-up

A Samsung PenTile panel up close
Sourc: FlatPanelHD [3]

That means that instead of each pixel comprising the distinct sub-pixels - reg, green and blue, mixed to generate the coloured dot you see - there are not equal numbers of each sub-pixel. Pixels share sub-pixels.

It's a layout designed to mimic the patten of sensor on the human eye's retina, but the practical upshot is less-smoothly rendered text. The layout gives white pixels a blueish tint.

Does this all matter? FPHD calculates that the Galaxy Nexus' 1280 x 720 display [4] has 1,843,200 sub-pixels, which is exactly the same as the 3.5in, 960 x 640 iPhone 4S "retina display" [5].

In short, the Nexus' extra pixels don't deliver a better viewing experience than the iPhone's LCD. But it's no worse, either. ®