iPhone 4 Retina Display vs Samsung Galaxy S Super AMOLED

UPDATED · News · 24 Jun 2010 · MTW Editorial Team

Here’s a quick comparison between the iPhone 4’s Retina Display and the Samsung Galaxy S’s super AMOLED. The first thing you will notice is the PenTile Matrix sub-pixels arrangement on the Super AMOLED which make the panel look really inferior to the IPS LCD on the iPhone 4. People will automatically jump to the conclusion that the higher pixel density on the iPhone 4 is the winner here, but this isn’t the case. The problem here is the PenTile Matrix which cause the image to look fuzzy not the lower PPI. A interesting test would be to snap a couple of pictures of the Droid X or regular Droid screen and compare them to the Retina Display of the iPhone 4. Both Motorola handsets have a similar ISP LCD panel as Apple’s device (but with lower PPI because of the size of their screens) so you probably won’t notice any major difference other than the smaller size of the pixels on the iPhone 4 (check out how the LCD panel of the HTC HD2 compares to the PenTile Matrix on the HTC Desire here). I personally think that Apple made a good decision when going for an IPS panel instead of a Super AMOLED now that it is known that Samsung’s latest and greatest tech still uses the PenTile Matrix. Sure you won’t notice any big differences from a normal viewing dsitance but the text does look fuzzier and can be a little bit annoying after a while (but that’s just my opinion after my experience with the HTC Desire).

Two more videos comparing the outdoors visibility and veiwing angles after the break:

Source: engdaget

Upadte: Engadget has posted another comparison showing both devices playing back the same 1080p video:

I’m all for doing comparison post, but why didn’t Engadget do this when the iPhone, iPhone 3G and 3GS had HVGA displays ? An no talk about the silly aspect ration of the iPhone (1.5) ?