I primarily use the 770 as an ebook reader, with some duty as a web browser. All the reviews have dealt primarily with the form factor, increased performance, speed, etc. but almost none of them have touched on the screen quality.

Both are high resolution screens, but the 770 had the shimmering "rainbow" effect and a relatively low viewing angle, both of which combined to make it hard on the eyes in dim or dark environments, such as reading an e-book in bed.

Taking a chance that the 800 was improved, I went to CompUSA and bought one, and I can report the following for those who are sensitive to screen quality:

Backlight quality is slightly better, with some bleed and theater-curtain effect on the right hand side but--

The screen is a massive improvement over the 770. Contrast is way up, whites and blacks look very much better, saturation is very much improved.

The grainy rainbow pattern is greatly diminished and almost impossible to detect. Overall, the screen is VERY smooth, free of false color, and the viewing angle has increased substantially, so close-up reading will not result in metamerism or color shifts, with blacks going "gray" etc.

Subjectively, the screen quality went from a 6.5 to a solid 9+. It is an awesome, beautiful screen.

i think your 770 screen was bad because i can not relate to anything you said about it.

I also just got mine from CompUSA, despite the employees total ignorance. Two people told me it wasn't in stock!! The screen is a huge improvement, although difficult to tell unless you hold te 770 and 800 side by side.

On the other hand, while the screen is much improved, the buttons are complete crap. Whoever designed the buttons for the n800 should be fired. I mean that quite seriously. They are that bad.

What's so bad about them? Construction? or placement? Because if you say placement it's a matter of opinion. If you say construction...I would probably agree and I haven't seen/held/played with an 800 yet, I honestly think there will NEVER be anything like the 770 in terms of construction.

My screen wasn't bad-- I've seen several 770s, several at work, and a few family members had them. They all had the same traits-- and if you didn't notice it, it was only because you didn't have anything to compare it to, or are not as sensitive to those types of things because they all exhibited those shortcomings.

The two or three 800s I have seen now are all vast improvements and the screen itself is obviously a different (better) unit.

I for one came from a Fujitsu-Siemens VGA Pocket PC and immediately noticed the screen was massively inferior on the 770. The best PPC screens totally blows it out of the water - there is absolutely zero speckle/moire-effect on those VGA screens, white is absolutely solid white. In the end, I found the 770 too impractical for what I wanted to do with it, and screen quality definitely factored in. I'm pleased to hear the N800 is an improvment... though this and other things about the N800 may now make me reevaluate getting one (dammit, my poor aching wallet. )

I use mine for mostly the same thing, that and listening to netcasts. I never noticed the "rainbow" effect. The limited viewing angle was a bonus in my book, because it made it harder for others to make out what you were doing / reading / surfing. Yes I've used it on the lowest power setting, with limited light, and never found a problem reading in bed. It was about the same as my palm, better actually, because the back light could be turned down further.

I've compaired my 770 to my notebooks, and its about the same. Close enough that I can't see much difference.

Actually the brightness can go a bit lower with patched kernel
http://fanoush.webpark.cz/maemo/#backlight
but even this I (or better said my SO lying next to me) still consider too bright at night in bed, my palm T2 can go even lower. However it can be solved in FBreader by setting background color to grey to make it darker.

I usually used my palm Tungston E at it's lowest setting as a flashlight. The 770 failed in that regard, unless it was on full.