Its probally because this was a one off device and nokia wanted to keep it as cheap as possible, cheap proc, pentile, cheap speakers, etc... I love my n9, but you can tell other than form factor, not as much love went into the hardware as a n8 or 808

Probably not because the Lumia 800 uses the same pentile screen. I don't know about the other Lumias, though.

I found a paper which kind of explains the physiology behind PenTile:

http://www.cvs.rochester.edu/william...da99nature.pdf

The original PenTile layout had five subpixels in a group (thus the name - penta-tile), and the results show why: the occurrence of "blue" cones is so much lower that using less of them makes sense. The low rate is also consistent.

For red and green receptors, their ratio seems highly variant so making a case for skimping on red subpixels seems more difficult.

Green has one advantage, it generates responses in all three types of receptors, so for pure brightness information, resolution would be the greatest here. This looks like a possibility to trade off color reproduction accuracy for brightness and perceived "crispness" (as opposed to actual high resolution), and this is what's probably done in AMOLED PenTile displays.

Oh yeah, there's one problem with the study: The sample size is pretty much completely ridiculous (two). This paper is from 1999, so maybe there just isn't any more recent, comprehensive research. I guess PenTile was driven foremost by cost considerations and previous experience from video compression.

I admit that I lack real insight on how perception of contrasts and colors interrelate so maybe there is an opportunity for enhanced subpixel layouts that I can't see. Right now I think whether PenTile is better or worse doesn't have many hard and fast arguments either way...

The Lumia 800 was a quick and dirty job to get a mainstream WP 7 phone on the market FAST.

My eyes don't care about the tech behind Pentile. It just looks rubbish and the colour inconsistencies and dancing and glowing text characters were the primary reason for me to ditch the N9 in disgust a couple of weeks after I got it. Yes I have checked other N9's.. Same or worse problems.

Nokia is infamous for insulting customers with bad screen tech. Try to find an N8 with a good (non purple tinted screen)

They just count on the majority of their users to not notice or be undemanding.

I think I have said this previously, the quality of the screen depends a lot on psycological/physiological differences between people.

I have a co-worker who cannot use amoled screens, whether pentile or RGB. He said of my previous E7 thet it strained his eyes and N9 is even worse, he claims that the colours flicker so bad it causes physical dicomfort.

For myself, I have no such problems, I find N9 screen easy to use and having nice, even colours.

I think there is similar thing with video projectors using DLP technology, some people claim that they see distracting rainbow effect on the device and others do not see that.

This. Although I haven't tested the E7, I generally couldn't agree more with your colleague.

I suggest R&D teams concerned with screen technology should focus more on humans and ergonomics rather than strictly on paper specs.

I think we can be 100% positive that the complaints about the Japan made N900 LCD display will be similar for most and rather containable.

-small characters when not zoomed due to high res screen with small screen diameter
-low colour rendition in sunlight
-blacks not beautiful

But non of those disadvantages of the N900 LCD are as aggressive in nature as the tyresome side effects experienced by some with Pentile.

Needless to say, I am going to keep my career as lab rat for Samsung AMOLED research as short as possible even though my friends phone will show a brighter screen in the desert.

But the whole point is, how many people find the displays pleasant to look at, and how mny distracting??

I am ready to bet on the ratio being lower than 1/20 on favour of people who see nothing wrong with AMOLED screens, there are just random few who feel that they are not good looking. (they are just so very loud in their opinions that it makes the issue look important...)

No it is the AMOLED that screams in loud capitals that it is the best solution because it has the brightest colours.

The 19/20 that accept this as truth are also the ones that settle with non-calibrated 200 USD monitors and turn their TV sets and camera's to high contrast high saturation.

The problem here is that bright colours win over image quality.



Good looking and continuously and comfortably usable for hours and hours are not the same.

For me, the absolute blacks are the defining feature of OLED. Of course, my N9 could use color calibration.

Man, how could anyone NOT notice the edge color striping when, say, looking at the task switcher with an app open?

Or the low-power mode clock?
Or anything white against a black area with the LCD in low-power mode?

The entire screen is tinted freaking green, setting color temperature to "Standard" accentuates this ("Vivid" hurts my eyes, so I avoid it)

While perfect blacks look really good on the display, the garbage color reproduction for UI elements (where you have large blocks of single colors, often contrasting) was a major turn-off when I first got my N9.

Man, that was nothing but a shaft for N9 users - Pentile screen, without the high PPI. It would've been much appreciated if they stuck a 1280x720 Pentile, or a non-Pentile 848x480 LED screen.