The Nokia N85 and OLED not the Holy Grail, it seems

[slitchfield]

I have been playing with the Nokia N85 (prototype) and present some more thoughts on the new OLED screen technology used. How does it perform outdoors, specifically in sunlight? Could this be the Achilles Heel of the technology and how big a problem is it? Your thoughts welcomed if you've used a device with an OLED display.

Read on in the full article.

I read/seen somewhere Nokia mentioning both the N96 and N85 will be released in October. The N96 started shipping in September... I wonder if Nokia is using delaying tactics with the n85. I can see n85 being the phone of choice over the n96. Perhaps they are pushing the n96 for early adopters or those who can't wait anymore...

I see OLED pluses far outweigh the minuses. It doesn't even look that bad in the photo... I can still make out what's on the screen. I hope Nokia starts using OLED in all their new N and E series.

An N95 screen isn't all that great in bright sunlight anyway. No great loss.

i was expecting the first fact (direct sunlight), but not, the second one ('always on' power-save clock). doesn't that noticeably reduce standby time? can we call it now 'power-waste' screen?
i mean it's not like with LCD, where *literally* no power is used if the back-light is not on.

also, is it customizable? i guess it would already help if it at least could be inverted (so that only the numbers are visible, not the useless background stripe).

will be a pain for camera phones.

what with camera phones lenses scratching due to not having a cover and now a screen that can't be viewed with sun shining on it we are loosing options here quickly!

[Tzer2]

what with camera phones lenses scratching due to not having a cover and now a screen that can't be viewed with sun shining on it we are loosing options here quickly!

There are still lots of cameraphones with lens covers, the N79 for example.

But as Steve pointed out in an earlier article, a few scratches on (or near) the surface of the lens don't actually make a noticeable difference to picture quality.

Common sense means you'd think scratches would appear on photos, but when objects get so close to the lens they no longer become visible. The main danger of scratches and dirt on the lens is that the picture becomes too dark overall.

[Hardeep1singh]

What are these horrible reflective coloured lines on the display? white colour looks more like a rainbow.

[slitchfield]

@Hardeep: relax, they're just a by product of having to photograph something with grid lines/pixels and then resample down the photos later to fit in the article. Moire fringes? Something like that.

The reality of the N85 screen is stunning.

[stuclark]

No screen is going to be perfect everywhere and I generally think the n85 is going to prove to be an immensely popular handset. However, I feel you're being overly cruel to the 8510 - in comparible conditions (based on your photos) my 8510 performs as well as the n85 and only slightly worse than my n95.

After reading your article, i was surprised to see your comment that the screensaver is lit at all times. Hey! thats _exactly_ how OLEDs work, by lighting pixels up so that one can see what is being showed by the device. If the pixels are not lit, technically (in the OLED domain) there is no information to show!!

So it's not surprising that the sceensaver has to be lit. It is a necessity!!

Kaizer

That picture with the sunlit screen looks exactly like my N95-8GB when sunlit.
To be honest i never understood what people are talking about when they say that some screens are readable in sunlight. I can never see anything on any screen under those circumstances.

-sc

[neilhoskins]

I recently bought a thing called an X-Gauge for the dashboard of our Smart. It uses a monochrome OLED display and I noticed the other day that it's perfectly readable in direct sunlight. So I don't think it's necessarily a fundamental problem with the technology, just the N85's implementation of it.

Tzer2,

Scratched lenses work at their worst shooing into the sun - as Steve's article showed. The N85 screen works worst when being viewed with sun behind you. If a phone with a screen like the N85 and no lens cover then the usefulness of the camera would be reduced - shooting would only be at an optimum when the light is from the side and as we all know taking photos is generally better with the light behind. Whether this will affect sales, I doubt it, but this is a genuine point.

As camera phones increase in quality people rely on them more and more - I would like to see people able to capture nice images.... Dismiss my point if you want but people will take less photos or have poorer quality images - like it or not that's the truth. It's hard to judge composition or focus when you can't see the screen.

Everything has a trade off and it often seems that people just ignore something if it does not fit in with what gadget they want to buy next.

[slitchfield]

In answer to scarcow, here's the N95 in more or less identical full sun. If anything, the sun's brighter today than when I took the N85 one...

So yes, there IS a difference here between the different technologies...

Well, my 5700's screen remains perfectly readable even in bright sunlight. I live in india and we have sunlight all day. I will still buy N85 as i spend more time indoor and colours look stunning on N85. I really liked that cat picture when comparison was done between N85, N95, N95 8gb. N85 wins clearly.
One more question- how much will be the life of N85's AM OLED screen? Is it blue, green or red?

Ketan