Google - Page 7

Reports start to emerge about an upcoming Google phone that will be the first one to use their Android 4 (Ice Cream Sandwich) OS. Interestingly, these report say that the display will be a "Super AMOLED HD" (that's the first time we heard that description). Some say that this large display will support 720p HD video (1280x720). This is a very high resolution for a mobile phone - perhaps there is some mix-up between this device and a new tablet from Google?

Google Nexus S

If Google are indeed working on a new phone or tablet device, surely more details will emerge, and we'll keep you updated on that mysterious Super AMOLED HD display!

Google has released the new Android v2.3 (Gingerbread). One of the updates is a new user interface (UI) - which seems to use more blacks. There are reports that this is so intentionally to take advantage of AMOLED displays (who consume no power on black pixels).

Google Nexus-S

This is not really surprising. It seems that AMOLED is slowly taking over the high-end smartphone market (and Google themselves chose an AMOLED for the Nexus-S phone. Or at least in some versions). Come July 2011, when Samsung's new Gen-5.5 plant (with 10X the capacity of their current plant) begins to produce AMOLEDs - and we're sure to see much more Android phones with AMOLEDs.

Google announced that the Nexus S will be available in Russia in February 2011 - but with an LCD (super-clear LCD) instead of a Super-AMOLED. It's likely that they are doing this because of the shortage in AMOLED displays. Google will probably use Super-AMOLED in some countries (like the US) and LCD in others.

Both displays offer pretty much the same performance, but it seems that Super-AMOLED is still the display of choice for Samsung.

Google has officially announced the Nexus-S (the successor to the Nexus-One). This Android v2.3 (Gingerbread) phone is made by Samsung and has a 4" Super-AMOLED contour display - which means that the glass is curved, this is not a flexible OLED. Other features include triband HSPA, 5mp camera, NFC, 16GB of on-board storage, a gyroscope and a 1Ghz Cortex A8 processor. Check out this photo showing the curved display:

The Nexus S will be available on December 16th in the US. It'll cost $199 with a T-Mobile contract or $529 unlocked. Check out this nice video from Google introducing the phone:

There are some reports that the Google Nexus-S phone will have a 4" curved OLED display : a flexible OLED made by Samsung (the whole phone is actually made by Samsung, based around the same hardware as the Galaxy-S phone). This is very interesting...

DisplayMate has perform extensive testing of LCD, IPS-LCD in Apple's iPhone 4, AMOLED (in Google's Nexus-One phone) and the Super-AMOLED as used in Samsung's Galaxy S phones. The bottom line is that the Super-AMOLED and IPS-LCD are both great displays, but they say that the iPhone's display is the ultimate winner.

The IPS-LCD is brighter, has higher pixel density and consumes less power. The Super-AMOLED is better in sunlight (less glare) and has much better contrast ratio - blacks are really blacks. The colors on the Super-AMOLED are oversaturated, while the colors on the IPS-LCD are undersaturated. Interestingly, a 'plain' LCD as used by the Motorola Droid has the best picture quality and accuracy.

A google employee (Jeff Sharkey) has posted an interesting post - testing how using different color filters in Android (on the Google Nexus One) to test the OLED's battery life. He use SurfaceFlinger (Android's low-level window composer) and created several options: from red-only to full-color.

Using just red halves the power consumption, and using red+green results in 25% better consumption. Jeff shares his patch online , so you can download and see for yourself. The phone remains usable, so this is an interesting way to save power... Jeff also posted a short video showing how the phone behaves using the different filters:

Here's an interesting comparison, a Pixel-Qi transflective LCD technology (with a touch layer) against the Google Nexus-One AMOLED display. The Pixel-Qi behaves much better than the AMOLED display... It'll be interesting to see how it compares to the new Super-AMOLED displays.

Google announced that they'll stop selling the Nexus-One phone. The N1 was only available online, and didn't get any real carrier support. Google will eventually stop selling handsets online and instead promote "a variety of Android phones available globally."

Google Nexus One

There are reports that Google sold only 135,000 Nexus One phones in the 74 days since it started shipping. You may ask why 74 days - it's the time it took Apple to sell 1 million first generation iPhones. Motorola sold 1.05 million Droid phones in the same time frame.

They say that this is a disappointment for Google, but we have to remember that the phone is only available online and only for T-Mobile (although that is now changed). Also Google is a company that has a lot of patience and hopefully they'll continue support and development of their phones.