mobile phone

IPHONE                                          VS                  HTC LEGEND

With the recent release of DisplayMate Multimedia Edition for Mobile Displays, a battery of tests to measure the quality of portable screens–and apparently because I’m a glutton for punishment–I thought now would be the perfect time to bring five popular smartphones back to CNET Labs for a down-and-dirty comparison of their screen performance.

The five phones I chose to put through the ringer (ahem) are the Samsung Behold II, the Motorola Droid, theApple iPhone 3GS, the HTC Nexus One by Google, and the Palm Pre Plus. These five were chosen because of their relative popularity and similar feature sets.

We used three different types of tests to evaluate each phone:

Scientific measurements: We used the Konica Minolta CS-200 ChromaMeter to test the maximum brightness, black level, and contrast ratio of each phone and reported numbers for each of these three tests.

Test pattern screens: We used several DisplayMate Mobile test patterns to test for color-tracking errors, 24-bit color, and font legibility, among others.

Real-world: Finally, we conducted real-world anecdotal testing using 3D games, photos, and a little tool I like to call “the Sun” to test the diffuse reflectance of each display.

All test screens were viewed within each phone’s native gallery application. Some phones may handle pictures differently–and even improve them to some extent–outside the application. That said, we believe that testing within the respective gallery applications is still a viable test as this is where most users will view pictures on their phones.

In order to diminish potential repetition, I’ll dive right into the details of how each phone performed; if you’d like to know more about our tests, you can binge off nerdy details in our “How we tested” section at the bottom of this article. Please note that this is an evaluation of each phone’s screen performance and nothing else. Check out the full reviews of these phones to determine which is right for you. Also, DisplayMate recently conducted a moretechnically focused evaluation of the iPhone 3GS’ and the Nexus One’s screens that I recommend you take a look at.

The bottom line

Here’s how we rank the phones in screen performance:

1. Motorola Droid
2. Palm Pre Plus
3. Apple iPhone 3GS
4. HTC Nexus One by Google
5. Samsung Behold II

Keep reading to find out why we ranked them this way.

I know everyone has strong opinions and usually fiery passions about their smartphone of choice, so I don’t expect everyone to agree with my assessment or the methods used in drawing my conclusions. If there are any questions about how I came to my conclusions or anything relevant I may have left out, please leave a comment saying as much. Also, if you’d like to see even more detailed information of each phone’s performance, let me know. If enough are interested, I’ll do a follow-up post with that information.

Lastly, though I hope consumers get something useful out of this, I’d be just as happy if the respective manufacturers of the phones took a serious look at these results and at least considered them when making their respective hardware and software revisions. We all want these phones to continue improving, and I’m just attempting to contribute to the cause.

Motorola Droid

The Droid achieved an incredibly impressive contrast ratio, given that it’s not OLED-based. It also had the most-accurate colors of any of the phones as well as the sharpest text. Also, unlike the Nexus One, the Droid was capable of displaying 24-bit color. Its only glaring mistake was an overly reflective screen when viewed in a sunny, natural environment. Despite that, the Droid is clearly the performance winner, followed fairly closely by the Palm Pre Plus and the iPhone 3GS, which washes out color as a result of its superbright screen. Both the Behold II and the Nexus One have incredibly deep blacks, but they both oversaturate colors to the point that they’re inaccurate and sometimes distracting.

Palm Pre Plus

The Palm Pre Plus was one of the best performers we tested, coming in right behind our overall best performer, the Droid. The Pre Plus’ color was accurate and fuller than the iPhone’s and not oversaturated like the Behold II and Nexus One. The color isn’t as accurate as the Droid’s, but it did show that it’s capable of displaying 24-bit color. Its level of backlight clouding was the second highest, next to the iPhone, but it produced the least amount of diffuse reflection of any phone.

Apple iPhone 3GS

The Apple iPhone 3GS achieved the highest brightness of any of the five phones we tested. Unfortunately, this resulted in it having the highest black level as well. This translated into a disappointingly low contrast ratio. The iPhone 3GS showed no evidence of false contouring and is capable of displaying 24-bit color. Reflection on sunny days is only a problem at extreme angles. It doesn’t have some of the glaring color problems that plagued the Nexus One, but its profuse backlight clouding means many of its colors look washed out.

HTC Nexus One by Google

The Nexus One achieved an incredible contrast ratio, afforded by its extremely low black level. This low black level is a result of HTC and Google’s decision to go with an OLED-based screen, instead of a traditional, LED-based screen. However, instead of delivering accurate, natural colors, the Nexus One oversaturates them, resulting in glaring color tint problems and inaccurate color reproduction. For example, red could possibly be confused with orange on the Nexus One. Also, false contouring is apparent in the Mars photo, lending evidence to a lack of 24-bit color support, and the phone’s extreme outdoor reflectance makes it difficult to operate on sunny days. Though some may prefer the screen’s ability to make colors pop in games and its high contrast ratio, don’t expect any natural color reproduction.

Samsung Behold II

The Samsung Behold II is the second OLED-based phone in our roundup. Not surprisingly, we saw not evidence of clouding when viewing a black screen in a completely dark room. Unfortunately, it continues the OLED trend set by the Nexus One: it has disappointing performance. Plagued by various color inaccuracies, oversaturation, color tint problems, and an inability to legibly display gray and white text on a black background, the Behold II had a terrible time trying to keep up with its competitors. Even its incredible, OLED-afforded contrast ratio couldn’t save it. Overall, the Behold II had the worst performance of the five phones we tested.

How we tested

We measured each display’s brightness, black level, and contrast ratio using the CS-200 and test patterns provided by DisplayMate. All phones were tested at their maximum brightness with full battery charges. All readings were conducted in a completely dark room.

“At least/At most” explanation:  True black can be represented as 0 candelas per square meter (cd/M2). Thanks to their OLED screens, the Nexus One and Behold II’s black levels were so low, the Konica Minolta CS-200 ChromaMeter wasn’t equipped to detect them. According to its specs, the CS-200 can only see black-level measurements as low as 0.005 candelas per square meter (cd/m2). Using simple logic, we can infer that both phones achieved, at most, a 0.0049 cd/m2 black level. Using more-sophisticated equipment, the guys at DisplayMate got a black-level reading of 0.0035 cd/m2 for the Nexus One. Given that our tested maximum brightness for the Nexus One was 225 cd/m2, we can hypothesize a contrast ratio of at least 46,000:1 and possibly more than 65,000:1 using DisplayMate’s black-level results for the Nexus One and 63,000:1 for the Behold II.

Test patterns All test pattern tests were conducted in a completely dark room.

White-level saturation: This test includes a number of rectangular blocks on a bright, white background. Peak white is represented by the block labeled 255. The closer a screen gets to displaying 255, the less likely it’ll be to not show certain colors when viewing a really bright screen.

Color scales: Tests the display’s ability to show 25 distinct intensity levels for each of the 10 primary colors, from black to peak brightness. A perfect showing would have each color with 25 distinct steps.

Color tracking: This screen tests the LCD’s ability to display the grayscale uniformly and accurately without any color tint problems.

RGBW smooth color ramp: This an excellent test for determining whether the LCD can display 24-bit color. If the scale is smooth, without visible “steps,” the display should be capable of 24-bit color. If not, it’s likely limited to 16-bit or possibly 18-bit color.

Fonts: We tested black, gray, and white fonts on different combinations of black, gray, and white backgrounds. Depending on how the phone handles things, certain combinations may affect the text’s legibility. Most of the phones had little problem displaying text, but the Behold II had an egregious white text on black problem.

<Displaymate Mobile’s white-level saturation test.

Real-world tests

Coca-Cola photo: A high-quality picture of a coke can can be used to test how close the phone can come to reproducing colors from the real world. We used a real coke can as reference. Though the Droid achieved the closest color approximation of the can, the Nexus One’s and Behold II’s cans looked more orange than red.

Mars photo: We used a picture of a sunset on Mars to test the display’s real-world false contouring threshold. The sky should appear to smoothly transition in color. If visible steps are noticeable, the phone has a false contouring problem. The Behold II and Nexus One had the most egregious offenses; the Palm Pre Plus’ sky looked nearly perfect.

Game: We used Fastlane Lite on the iPhone 3GS, Asphalt 5 Free on the Pre Plus, and Raging Thunder Lite on the Nexus One, Behold II, and Droid, to evaluate each phone’s color performance in a fast-moving game. The Nexus One and Behold II saw oversaturated colors; the Droid’s colors were pinpoint accurate.

Diffuse reflectance: Some screens are more reflective than others, but what matters most is how reflective they are under extreme conditions; you don’t get more extreme than a sunny day in San Francisco.The Pre Plus won this fight, with the iPhone coming in second.

It’s never too late to revisit two smartphones with some of the hottest hardware specs on the market. iFixit’s side-by-side breakdown of the internals of the Google Nexus One and Apple iPhone 3GS makes a compelling cost and feature argument for the Nexus One.

iFixit’s CEO Kyle Wiens sums it up nicely: “The Nexus One deserves more attention. Its hardware is really quite impressive, and yet no one seems to be buying it!” he said in a note sent out Thursday morning. (Though CNET’s Tom Krazit makes the case here that it’s not quite that simple.)

On the downside, if something goes awry internally, the Nexus One is up against a formidable infrastructure of Apple stores. “Our biggest beef with the Nexus One? There isn’t a parts supply chain for it yet, meaning all repairs have to go through HTC’s overpriced mail-in service,” Wiens said.

And a quick look at the silicon inside these phones shows how utterly absent Intel is in this space. In short, Samsung rules.

What follows below are two graphics excerpts from iFixit’s teardown.

In the second graphic, note that much of the primary silicon is from Samsung. Even in the Nexus One with its Qualcomm Snapdragon chip, both the flash and RAM memory is supplied by Samsung.

For people who often bump up against ‘Out of Stock’ signs when they manage to find a store selling a coveted item, Google’s Product Search feature may be the solution for them. Owners of iPhone, Palm webOS phones or Android-run handsets can now hit Google Product Search to find out if items they wish to purchase are in stock at nearby participating retailers.

The official Google Mobile blogspot states that Best Buy, Williams-Sonoma, Sears, Pottery Barn and West Elm are listed among the participating retailers in Product Search. When the user looks up a particular item on Product Search, blue dots will appear in search results denoting availability of that item.

The adjacent ‘In stock nearby’ link can be tapped to navigate to the concerned retailers page and find out if the product is ‘In Stock’ or has been tagged with ‘Limited Availability’. If My Location is enabled or the user manually enters his location, he will be provided with information on the distance between the store and his location.

iPhone, Palm webOS and Android handset owners across the U.S. can avail of this new feature by visiting Google.com and selecting ‘Shopping’ from the ‘more’ link. Or ‘Shopping results’ may also be found on Universal Search results on the website.

Opera Mobile 10 beta 3

For smarter browsing

Download Opera Mobileversion 10.0 beta 3

NEW IN OPERA MOBILE 10 BETA 3

Get the best Internet experience on your smartphone. To download Opera Mobile directly, simply visit m.opera.com/mobile using your phone’s default Web browser.

Opera Link

Synchronize your bookmarks and Speed Dial between your mobile phone and desktop computer.

Faster browsing

Opera Mobile 10 beta is faster at rendering pages, zooming, panning and almost everything else you do with a browser. And pages load up to 50% faster than the previous version.

Speed Dial

Get to your favorite Web page with just one click, with a set of visual bookmarks that appear when you open a new tab. To add a new page, simply click on an empty Speed Dial slot.

Tabbed browsing

Browse several Web sites at the same time. Check your email in one window, Facebook in another, and Twitter in a third, all while easily jumping from one tab to another.

———————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————–

More features

Opera Turbo

Opera’s servers compress Web pages up to 70%, greatly reducing the cost of browsing.

Touchscreen & keypad

The user interface has been optimized for both touchscreen and keypad-style mobile phones.

Typing less, browsing more

Save time with Web address auto-completion, password manager and inline editing.

Web standards

Opera 10 is based on the latest Opera browser engine so your favorite Web sites work as they do on a your computer.

Rich Web content

Browse Web applications sites like Facebook and Gmail, and enjoy the rich interaction.

Opera Dragonfly

Connect your mobile phone to your PC and debug Web applications remotely. Read more here.

Adaptive zoom

In just a few clicks easily pan and zoom into your desired content.

Privacy

Be in control of your privacy. Manage your passwords, history, cookies, and cache.

Saving pages and images

Save Web pages and images for later offline viewing.

See full list of features.

Not on a smartphone?

Check out the Opera Mini mobile browser. Opera Mini gives you a full Web experience for almost any phone.

Mobile operator or OEM?

With over 120 million shipped installations since 2004, Opera Mobile is the proven solution for full Web browsing on mobile devices. To learn more, please visit ourbusiness solutions page.

Version: 1.0 (iPhone OS 3.0 Tested)

$1.99

Developer: United Soft Media Verlag GmbH

Age rating: 4+

Compatibility: Compatible with iPhone and iPod touch (2nd generation).

Requires iPhone OS 2.2.1 or later.

Filed Under: Games

DESCRIPTION

PLAY ONE OF THE WORLD’s MOST SUCCESSFUL BOARD GAMES!

Millions of players worldwide have either played Reiner Knizia’s award winning game in the original board game format, or have played on one of the online sites in the 5 years since launch of the board game. But the iPhone version could be the best yet …….by far! The high res screen of the iPhone perfectly suits the colours of the game, and the iPhone’s super-intuitive controls make it so easy to place those tiles!

INGENIOUS is HOURS of SHEER FUN.
The already addictive nature of the Ingenious board game is greatly enhanced on the iPhone, giving the user a really exciting- and graphically stimulating-experience every time. Build lines of colour tiles, try and block your opponent, and remember that the winner isn’t necessarily the player with the highest scores in only a few colours!
You must excel in all your colours.

EASY ACCESS:
The rules are really easy to learn and a comprehensive tutorial will introduce you to the game. Within minutes you’ll be playing effortlessly, even as a first time player of the game.

MUSIC WHILE YOU PLAY.
Just choose your favourite artist or songs from the music iPod on your phone. And choose a different graphic background to suit your mood.

YOU’LL NEED STRATEGY to beat the AI opponents. But you have a choice of easy, medium or hard (as well as the option to play against the clock if you wish). You choose! And the app will record your best scores and best performances. There is room for up to 3 different player profiles.

PLAY TOURNAMENTS if you are feeling competitive. You can also choose to play against the clock in some of the rounds.

PLAY the SOLITAIRE game: This is a seriously satisfying feature of the iPhone version! Instead of playing against opponents you use all your skills to create a really high score.

Extremely challenging board game gets port to iPhone

by Meghann Myers, Macworld.com

Ingenious may be the perfect name for this puzzle game from developer United Soft Media Verlag, because you pretty much have to be a genius to master it.

Don’t let the pretty shapes and charming images fool you, this is one tough game.

This surprisingly addictive and challenging puzzle games is difficult to master but easy to enjoy. While the tiles-based gameplay may remind players of Dominoes, the focus on color matching indicates this is definitely a puzzle game.

Based on earlier iterations of Ingenious as a board and then computer game, you play on an octagonal game board, which you fill up with tiles made up of two small octagons with colorful shapes on them.

The game starts with a single tile in each corner of the board, and it’s your job to use one of your six tiles to make the longest chain of a single color possible. The point system isn’t completely intuitive, but the tutorial is very helpful, and it makes more sense the more you play.

You want to keep your color ratio up, meaning that while you’re trying to make a long blue chain, you can’t neglect the rest of the colors, because that will drag your points down. After each turn the game replenishes your tiles and if you’re out of tiles in your lowest color, it will offer to deal you a whole new set of tiles.

Beyond these basic rules, Ingenious has near-endless gameplay combinations. There are three basic modes of play: single game, tournament, and solitaire.

Single game allows you to choose your difficulty and set a timer. You can also decide whether you want to play against the computer or a friend next to you, by passing the phone back and forth.

Tournament is the most versatile, with plenty of unlockable content: start at Beginner and work up to Genius. Within each difficulty, there are four levels, also unlockable. Even the first round is tough—but not so tough that I didn’t want to keep going back until I beat it.

Solitaire is the simplest mode, letting you practice your skills with no opponent, just in pursuit of a high score.

Basically, there are hours of playability in this game thanks to all of the mode, difficulty, stage, and time limit combinations, as well as the time you spend mastering the unique format. If you’re into puzzle games and brainteasers, this is the game for you.

[Meghann Myers is an editorial intern for Macworld.]

Speaking with ClickZ last week, AdMob’s VP of advertising sales, Tony Nethercutt, said the company was beginning to see Google’s Android operating system attacking the dominance of Apple devices across its network. Supporting that comment, the company’s recent monthly metrics reports suggest the Android operating system is growing its share of U.S. smartphone ad requests, largely at the expense of the iPhone.

In January, iPhone devices accounted for 47 percent of ad requests across the AdMob network. That represents growth of a single percentage point from December 2009, but a significant dip compared with the 55 percent share achieved in November.

By contrast, the share of handsets running Android was up three percentage points during January, accounting for 39 percent of requests from smartphones overall. Between November and January, Android’s overall share of requests grew by 12 percentage points.

However, this data does not include requests from iPod Touch devices, since they do not include phone functionality. In January, iPod Touch devices accounted for 20.8 percent of all ad requests across AdMob’s network, compared with the 23 percent accrued by the iPhone. That data suggests the iPhone OS — on which both the iPod and iPhone run — ultimately accounts for a far greater portion of ad requests when compared with the Android OS.

BlackBerry operating system RIM OS, and Microsoft’s Windows Mobile OS both experienced a decline in their share of ad requests, month-over-month.

clickz.com

Now that the iPhone 3G S is officially behind us, let me be the first–or at least one of the first–to announce the countdown to the next new iPhone. If history is any indication, it should show up right around this time in 2010.Interestingly, even though the 3G S is technically Apple’s third-generation iPhone, some tech pundits were expecting the iPhone 3G S to be called the iPhone 4G. But you could also argue that the iPhone 3G S is more like the iPhone 3.5G, which doesn’t have the greatest ring.

There’s also a chance that in between the iPhone 3G S and iPhone 4G (or whatever it’s called), we might see a totally new branch of iPhone, something akin to an iPhone Mini or Lite.

I’m not sure Apple needs to answer to the smaller form factor of the Palm Pre, but there are some people out there who think the iPhone’s just a tad too big. And there are some people who want a physical keyboard, but don’t count on Apple slipping in a slide-out keyboard anytime soon.

Gizmodo and other blogs posted this concept art for the iPhone 4G before Apple announced the 3G S.

All that said, I do think next year’s iPhone will feature a new design that also includes a new screen. Some mock-ups floating around have suggested the aluminum unibody design of the new MacBooks. That’s possible, but so are a host of other innovative industrial designs.

 The point is, the next go-round, it’s probably not enough to just stick with upgraded internal components. Some significant cosmetic changes will be required to differentiate the generations and more easily entice upgrades by existing iPod owners. And I’m not talking matte vs. shiny finish.

Ultimately, however, it’s what’s inside that counts and consumers are always wanting faster, more powerful smartphones with more memory that somehow manage to be more energy-efficient and offer better battery life. There’s already talk of the next iPhone having a dual-core processor and better graphics chips that can deliver higher video resolutions and better still images when taking pictures (read Brooke Crothers’ story on new ARM chips here).

The question is whether Apple can continue to increase battery life at the same time. In fact, one big reason a lot of people are interested in upgrading from the 3G to the 3G S is because of the improved battery life.

 Beyond the hardware, there are still features concerns to address (everybody has their wishlist) and more importantly, carrier and pricing plan issues. Someday, some other carrier, perhaps Verizon, which is preparing to build out a 4G network, will get the iPhone. And someone, maybe Apple, will declare that iPhone the iPhone 4G. Or maybe it’ll just be the 3G V. All I know is that come this time next year, we’ll most likely be seeing a new iPhone. And it will be here before you know it.

reviews, cnet

Posted by Philip Elmer-DeWitt

What smartphone click rates tell use about the people who own them

Android users are mostly guys. iPod touch owners are overwhelmingly young. And people who carry iPhones are way more likely to lust after an iPad.

Those are a few of differences that emerged from a opt-in survey of 963 smartphone and iPod touch owners conducted in February by AdMob, the mobile advertising company that Google snapped up in November for $750 million.

In a report issued Thursday morning, AdMob highlights six differences between owners of devices running Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone OS, Google’s (GOOG) Android OS and Palm’s (PALM) WebOS, each nicely illustrated with a color-coded bar chart. See below.

1. Guys and Droids. Maybe it’s the appeal of open source; maybe it was the whiff of homophobiain those Motorola Droid ads. For whatever reason, 73% of Android users are male, compared with 58% of webOS users, 57% of iPhone users and 54% iPod touch users.

2. Kids with iPods.  The iPod touch is a hit with the student crowd, which make sense given that Apple hands them out for free with the purchase of a Mac in its back-to-school promos. Based on the survey, 78% of iPod touch users are younger than 25, compared with 25% of iPhone users and 24% of Android and webOS users.

3. Bring on the apps. iPod touch users love their applications — especially the free ones. They download an average of 12 apps a month, 37% more apps than iPhone and Android users. They also spend a lot more time using them: 100 minutes a day, 25% more time than iPhone and Android users.

4. Paying the piper. When it comes to paid apps, iPhone users lead the pack. Half of them buy at least one paid app a month, compared with 21% of Android users, 24% of webOS users and 35% of iPod touch users.

5. Happy campers. Smartphone owners tend to favor their own brand, but some favor it more than others. 91% of iPhone users and 88% of iPod touch users would recommend their device, compared with 84% of Android users and 69% of webOS users. webOS users are nearly three and a half times more likely to not recommend their device than iPhone OS users.

6. Kindle vs. iPad. Steve Jobs may have been on to something when suggested last month that there was a ready market for the iPad in the 75 million people who already own iPhones or iPod touches. In the AdMob survey, 16% of iPhone users said they intend to purchase an iPad, compared with 11% of webOS users and only 6% of Android users. Android owners tended to favor — or perhaps they already owned — Amazon’s (AMZN) Kindle.