It amazes me how the Reality Distortion Field is strong. The Droid came with a 265 ppi screen and very few people cared (maybe http://xkcd.com/662 ). I googled around and could not find people taking pictures to compare the Droid screen with the iPhone 3GS screen.
(Also, I'd love to find reviews of critics about the "squared, industrial" design on the Droid and their opinions on the "squared, industrial" designed iPhone. But I digress.)
If anything, this seems to be how there's a void of real game-changing things on the iPhone 4, and yet bloggers and the writers who depend on Apple hype are working much harder to find anything to sell.
The panel used on the Droid is of the TN kind, so the viewing angle is nowhere near as good as the iPhone 4 -- the perspective difference between your left and right eye is also enough to make the screen appear different to each, which makes it harder to look at and resolve detail. The iPhones up until 4 are all like this, too, which is one of the reasons why the difference between them is so striking.
The Droid is a cheap plastic gizmo. Two of my friends have had theirs slowly break from everyday use. If you have to baby your gadget, it will never really break into the mainstream and make a difference.
I note elsewhere in the thread that high pixel density is something I feel Apple was forced into by their business model, then marketed very strongly as a must-have feature.
I've felt the same about their one-piece aluminium enclosures and their new unbreakable glass designs.
Again, durability is great, if it came for free then I'd take it, but you're going further and telling me that all the cameras, gameboys, walkmen, cell phones, PDAs, netbooks etc. that I ever owned were never "mainstream" because of some Apple marketing that doesn't even apply to the 100 million plus portable devices they themselves sold over the last few years. It just doesn't add up. There's nothing inherently wrong with plastic or rubber devices, Apple just doesn't like the associations. They'd rather have titanium that flakes off than plastic that didn't.
Nigh on indestructible plastic. Beige plastic at that. Which makes it a good example of the point that you don't need to accept Apple aesthetics to make durable and/or highly popular products.
No, I was pointing out that this wasn't something that was invented by Apple and revealed to the world last month and wasn't incompatible with plastic, a key component of basically all the portable devices I listed.
The post I responded to called a phone "cheap plastic" as if this was somehow unusual, and a fatal flaw, yet my iPhone has a plastic back and seems to be doing fine in durability and popularity.
The original iPhone (the 2g) was the most durable, but Apple went and changed the design after that to materials that were much less durable. I work in this area (within Apple) so I'm in a good position to judge.
I have the original iPhone 2g covered in dents and scratches (from the previous owner mainly, it's second hand) yet I know it's never gonna badly dent, and will never crack from regular drops and general wear and tear.
Incidentally, the iPhone 4g has benn drop tested, and the results aren't good. So much for Apple's much vaunted durability:
There's a difference between cheap plastic and durable plastic though. There are tons of different plastic grades. I usually think of the phrase "cheap plastic" referring to, y'know, cheap plastic.
"Cheap" in this instance was clearly meant pejoratively, not descriptively. Replacing it with "inexpensive", "economical" or "low-cost" doesn't really fit. Replacing it with "tacky", "trashy", "bum", "chintzy", "crummy", "punk" or similar from your thesaurus clearly fits the meaning intended.
And that's all premised on the fact that this plastic casing is even cheap, which we clearly don't actually know. How do we know they didn't try and get fancy with their material selection or manufacturing (like Apple often does) and then blow it (like Apple often does). Did the plastic in the G4 cube have cracks because it was "cheap"? Did the white MacBook suffer discoloration because the plastic was "cheap"? No, someone or something messed up and even with fancy engineers and fancy plastics it wasn't caught in time. Assuming the Droid even has such issues, I'd guess the same cause.
I never noticed the difference in perspective you are talking about, but still: what about the screen from the Nexus One? Same resolution as the Droid, ~250 ppi and AMOLED. Yeah, one can find "Oh, shiny!" articles about it, but no one wanted to turn that into a absolutely remarkable feature.
As for the Droid quality: I bought mine in November and it's still going. Dropped it a couple of times (what caused a tiny crack on the corner, can't even see it if I don't point it out) and the keyboard "right-alt" key forces me sometimes to press it twice. I wouldn't say that the phone will outlive me, but it is far from being a "cheap plastic gizmo".
I don't know; people were pretty excited about the AMOLED screen. The excitement was tempered, however, by the fact that it's useless in daylight. Also, people liked the industrial design of the Droid. Take this quote from Engadget's review: "an industrial design straight from a gadget enthusiast's fever-dream"; and this: "they've made a device which is truly lustworthy, even next to the best efforts of Apple, HTC, and Palm."
Speaking as a Nexus One owner, it's not quite useless, it's just harder to use. Froyo's automatic brightness adjustment makes it quite usable in direct sunlight, though it's obviously not going to compete with an LCD. However, the display is just beyond gorgeous, and given that I work very hard to stay _out_ of the sun, it's a great fit for me.
17) The reflective screen works really well in direct sunlight. You lose colours, but you can always see what's on it, regardless of the lighting conditions.
The difference between a Nexus and a 3gs is way bigger than between a iphone 4 and a nexus. I remember telling lots of iPhone folks how much difference it made to have such high resolution on the N1 and they all said "meh ... it's good enough, who cares to have more?" Now it seems to be the only thing that matters ...
Another thing is that the number of pixels increases as the square of the ppi, so a 326 ppi screen has 51% more pixels than a 265 ppi screen. That's a bigger difference than a person might think from just comparing ppi.
I think the main reasons this is getting more press is because the resolution is over the ~300 ppi barrier that makes most eyes unable to resolve pixels.
The square design of the iPhone 4 is functional (try balancing a 3GS on its side to do a video call...), so whether you like the design or not it is a necessity.
Yes, precisely. I can't visually resolve pixels on my 42" 52 PPI TV at a normal viewing distance. I can't resolve pixels on my Nexus One at my normal operating distance unless I look really hard (252 PPI), but I tend to hold it ~12-18 inches away.
Of course, but the 10-12 inches they quote as normal operating distance is pretty reasonable as far as I'm concerned. So while clever marketing, I wouldn't call it false advertising.
Ding ding ding, we have a winner. Clever marketing. If you're wondering why people care so much, it's the MARKETING! I bet if I asked 10 non-geeks what a Nexus One was, at least half would have no idea what I'm talking about.
>I think the main reasons this is getting more press is because the resolution is over the ~300 ppi barrier that makes most eyes unable to resolve pixels.
Ugh. Tell me you don't actually believe that?
The resolution of the iPhone 4 was predetermined to simply pixel-double existing iPhone applications (no sloppy scaling or black-bordered apps for the legacy stockpile). It is only marginally denser than several Android phones, and is a big ball of WGAF wrapped in ridiculous market speak.
It's great that they increased the resolution to be more competitive with most other high end smartphones, but the retina stuff is such a stretch of nonsense.
Hey. You seem like a pretty smart guy. Throughout your comments on this thread, though, you've demonstrated a level of condescension, arrogance, and rudeness that is inappropriate for civil dialog between people (see also your comment elsewhere, "the ignorance is incredible"). Your intelligent input would be valued much more highly were you able to rephrase your commentary to show respect for others, even if you know they are wrong.
What indication do you have that this person is "pretty smart"? They are obviously blinded by Apple hate and spewing nonsense that's been rebutted in this thread.
A "pretty smart" person would be happy that iPhone has on-upped all the competitors. Does the GP think that e.g. Android is going to say "well darn, looks like they made something better. Time to quit"? Of course they will come out with something to compete. As someone said elsewhere in the thread: this is a win for us. We should be happy that iPhone is pushing the envelope just as we should be happy that they changed the game to begin with. You don't have to like them or use them to benefit from their technology.
>They are obviously blinded by Apple hate and spewing nonsense that's been rebutted in this thread.
Does this make you feel smart?
I don't hate Apple at all. What I do hate, however, is when reality is rewritten, North Korea style, to favor Apple's great stewardship. It is an incredible offense to anyone with any common sense or actual knowledge.
But hey, did you hear that the iPhone invented video calling? It's the first to do it right. Am I right?
>Does this make you feel smart? I don't hate Apple at all. What I do hate, however, is when reality is rewritten, North Korea style, to favor Apple's great stewardship.
A little disgusted actually. But the fact is reality hasn't been rewritten, as has been pointed out to you several times in this thread. It is obviously your own personal bias that is clouding your judgment. Either that or you have no idea what you're talking about.
>But hey, did you hear that the iPhone invented video calling? It's the first to do it right. Am I right?
No, the video calling part was mostly bogus. I would say it is completely false, except I'm not sure if the others have literally no setup in the optimal case (in this case, iphone 4 to iphone 4 with both on wifi connections).
> (Also, I'd love to find reviews of critics about the "squared, industrial" design on the Droid and their opinions on the "squared, industrial" designed iPhone. But I digress.)
I think you might be confusing an industrial look with industrial design. The latter is a practice, not a style.
The Droid has a more squared, industrial look. iPhone 4 has a more squared industrial design relative to its predecessors, but not so much an industrial look.
What amuses me is that before the iPhone 4, iPhone users insisted that the iPhone resolution is perfect and no higher resolution was necessary. Now suddenly they would never ever consider buying a phone with less resolution.
(Also, I'd love to find reviews of critics about the "squared, industrial" design on the Droid and their opinions on the "squared, industrial" designed iPhone. But I digress.)
If anything, this seems to be how there's a void of real game-changing things on the iPhone 4, and yet bloggers and the writers who depend on Apple hype are working much harder to find anything to sell.