About that amazing Nexus One display…

If you still feel that your Nexus One is the king of crop as far as smartphone displays are concerned, you may not want to read this. (Spoiler alert: N1 display isn’t so hot!) Care for more info? Right, cheerio then.

Looking at the picture above, one can easily see the difference between the top (iPhone 3GS) and bottom (N1) displays — the latter looks like junk. It looks like junk if you know what you’re looking for that is. That striping non-sense is called banding, and it’s a good indicator of screen quality and color depth. Ironically, the N1 display which is so highly regarded for it’s amazing eye popping color reproduction is actually displaying nothing more than 16-bit color. The iPhone 3GS as well as many other smartphone use 32-bit. As a result, color intensity levels (and more specifically, image quality) suffer.

Oh there’s more. (Told you not to read this if you’ve got a soft spot for the N1). Besides the missing color depth, sub-pixel rendering, and below average brightness. Above all else however, it’s worth mentioning that to most users, the added pizazz that has wowed you so far were likely chosen by Google over such things as touchscreen accuracy and outdoor performance.

Even still, the once almighty N1 just became a little less almighty. Why is it that ’till this day, no one can seem to build a quality, spec beast of a smartphone without screwing some feature(s) over?

For a much more detailed account of the exact issues with the N1 (and subsequent murdering of your so far near flawless opinion), stop on by DisplayMate and soak it all in.

Gizmodo > DisplayMate