Windows Phone nearly doubles share in US after Nokia Lumia 900 debut on AT&T

I don't care what other people think but the Nokia Lumia 900 is gorgeous :evillaugh :yumyum:

 

That's correct. But as RR has deduced, I only wanted the screenshot feature for a clean grab of a screen displaying the result of a bug in the browser -- the lack of which led me to use my crappy phone camera to photograph the phone instead.

 

The marketing hype is a bit much here. The physics doesn't match up under the brightest conditions.

Not a convincing video at all, IR. First it is not direct sunlight, being on the London Eye, it is would considered heavy shade, with outdoor sunlight.

Secondly, with the video camera exposure set for the screen, such that the white background is overexposed...is stacking the deck. Plus the reflection of the camera holder is clearly seen...not gone at all.

The physics isn't right. The brightness output for the iPhone 4 is 541 cd/m^2; the Lumia 900 is only 395 cd/m^2. The higher the number, the brighter the screen.

For heavy shade the contrast is better, due to the clearback screen, but not the brightness. And for the next three levels of brightness, the comparison is a wash, simply because there is not enought light from the screen.

Tablet and Smartphone Displays Under Bright Ambient Lighting Shoot-Out Compare the brightest conditions. But remember that these are mostly contrast images, not brightness.

Saying it is 'very legible' is not realistic at all. Unless you have a matte anti reflective screen on your iPhones

 

No I'm not kidding you. I've been to the London Eye last month. A tinted glass enclosed ferris wheel.

Look at second 31 on the video. The background white struts are overexposed meaning the recording camera exposure is set for the lumia screen. His hand is shaded too so it's not direct sunlight. And there is not zero reflection from the lumia screen.
The reflection is still quite annoying.

That is marketing hype to claim zero reflection and very legible in direct sunlight. Look at the link above and the photos in it. numbers are numbers.



Marketing hype is also saying a matte anti reflection screen doesn't reduce the retina screen resolution. It does significantly. It also reduces screen brightness.

Also when the YouTube poster apologizes for the video cause he was 'stuck editing on a Mac ' well you know where he is coming from.

I'm NOT saying the lumia screen is not an improvement in lowering screen reflection. It's has the reflection of regular glass(4%), not zero. But it is fighting against a lower value of brightness too and cannot compete (like all screens) against direct sunlight as some say.


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From my personal experience I would have to disagree with you on the Samsung, neither the Captivate nor the Focus Flash had the same legibility as the Lumia in bright day light. I have never compared it to a retina screen but a co-worker had admired the deep blacks and the legibility of the screen from our window offices in bright daylight, compared to his 4s.

 

Curious. Do you remember if you had that problem before using ROMs created by PG? I had that problem too, but only with OS files (including flashable versions of "stock" ROMs) created by PG, never on stock or with a wildchild ROM.

Sent from my HTC PH39100 using Tapatalk 2

 

I am not exactly sure, but I seem to remember noticing it within the first couple of days prior to doing anything to it.

Sent from my Lumia 900 using Board Express

 

You misunderstoond my point Charlyee. And Displaymate reports

A little more balanced review:

Nokia Lumia 900 Review
Microsoft and Nokia's flagship smartphone has arrived

by James Pikover APRIL 30, 2012

Nokia Lumia 900 Review - IGN

Highlights
The best Windows Phone experience.
Beautiful but low-res and dim display.
Uncomfortably large form factor.

Windows Phone 7 is something of a treat. We liked it on the Lumia 800, and certainly enjoy the style and simplicity of the operating system more than what both iOS and Android have to offer. It’s more lively, more thoughtful, and in many ways, more human. And the Lumia 900 is the epitome of the platform.

The Lumia 900 is the flagship WP7 smartphone for both companies, as well as AT&T in the US. This trio of massive corporations has gone all-in with the device, and it pays off. While very similar to the 800 in terms of specs, the 900 is bolder in every regard. It has a larger 4.3” beautiful ClearBlack AMOLED display, a newer, faster Snapdragon S2 processor, and it’s the first WP7 phone with LTE.

WP7 runs marvelously on the 900. Microsoft’s mobile OS has always been as smooth as Apple’s iOS, and on Nokia’s latest it’s just as quick. The display is vibrant, and far better than any other smartphone that uses OLED screen technology. It gets very bright, but in direct sunlight the screen is almost impossible to read. Colors are slightly oversaturated, and color and light contrast are both excellent; it’s a pleasure to view pictures and video on the 900, more than any competing smartphone. WP7 still doesn’t support flash, so those videos are limited to user-uploaded video or HTML5 video like YouTube.


Because of it’s relatively low pixel density of 217ppi, reading text from the web browser can be problematic. Viewing full web pages produces tiny, illegible text, and the low screen resolution and pixel density forces users to constantly zoom in to read, no matter what the case. Without zooming in, text is blocky and often unreadable. Small fonts ruin the internet browsing experience, and neither the phone nor OS do anything to remedy this.

Nokia’s physical design of the Lumia 900 blatantly contrasts the plethora of Android phones available. It’s thick at 11.5mm, has no expandable memory, no removable battery, has sharp corners and can actually stand upright. Like the iPhone, the speaker is on the bottom of the phone, as opposed to the back, and the power/standby button is smack in the middle of the right side instead of near or on the top. And it only comes in 16GB models.

Combine that with a unibody polycarbonate plastic shell (that comes in four colors: blue, black, white, and soon, magenta), and you get a uniquely large, stylish in a quirky way, and somewhat limited design to boot. But as unique as the 900 is, how it feels in the hand is…confusing. The phone itself is very large, as wide as the larger Samsung Galaxy Nexus, yet with a much smaller display, and thicker. It isn’t always comfortable to hold in one hand, is too big to hold for long periods, and the back is too slippery to grip at times. But if your hand gets damp from holding it or just from moisture in the air, the humidity actually makes it easier to securely grasp.

And while the sharp corners help make the Lumia more recognizable, they aren’t ergonomic. Because of the very solid build of the 900, the corners feel more like a self-defense feature than inspired design.

“
The Lumia 900 is, without a doubt, an excellent handset.

As the first Windows phone with LTE, the Lumia 900 had excellent download speeds of 14-16Mbps, and 4G (HSPA+) speeds of 8Mbps around Los Angeles. Call quality is excellent, with very clear incoming and outgoing audio. The speakerphone is loud but not overwhelming. Use of the hotspot is also painless and works very well on the 900.

Battery life was an issue with the Lumia 800, but the 900 comes with a significantly larger 1830mAh battery. In benchmarks it performs almost as well as the iPhone 4S, but in real-world use I’ve found that it actually lasts longer under moderate to heavy use. This is likely due to the larger battery and an equally conservative use of processing power. The Lumia 900 will last a full day of use, but it doesn’t last as long for phone calls as it does for app use or web browsing. For hotspot use it will last between 3-4 hours per charge, depending on internet use.

Camera quality is very good. The Lumia 900 features an 8MP f/2.2 shooter that records 1080p video, and it takes good pictures with high color contrast and detailed night photos. It isn’t as sharp as other cameras like the iPhone 4S or Samsung Galaxy S II, and because of the phone’s size it’s very easy to accidentally shake the camera when shooting, producing blurry photos. The front-facing 1.3MP camera is also surprisingly good, great for individual shots and for 720p video chat.

WP7 is really an excellent operating system, as Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak recently stated in an interview. Nokia and Microsoft, however, haven’t pulled out all the stops with the Lumia 900. It’s a large and questionably comfortable phone for its screen size, and a display resolution considered on the mid- to low-end of the smartphone spectrum. Even then, it has the most beautiful screen of any smartphone today. The Lumia 900 is, without a doubt, an excellent handset, but it’s also one that may not outlive its two-year contract. Then again, for just $50, two years may be worth it.

 

I don't think Nokia claims anywhere "zero reflection", but as you yourself pointed out, the 4% reflection of the Lumia is best-in-class among phones, enjoying a 40% improvement over Apple's iPhone:

http://forums.wirelessadvisor.com/w...ses-biggest-launch-ever-lumia.html#post569437

Have you forgotten your own words VF?

 

Strange that you are quick to point out your dislike of the Lumia screen. Personally when I played with one in a store, it handled the glare of the overhead fluorescent lights quite admirably, much better than my Motorola (with 12% reflection).

Since the Lumia's 4% reflection is "annoying" to you, your iPhones 7% reflection must be "completely intolerable" then!

 

Thank you RR, for showing that my argument has been consistent throughout. I've tried to be very careful not to make this a Lumia vs iPhone 4 debate, but have stuck to the precision of engineering concepts about screen technology.

I do agree with you that the Motorola has one of the 'worst in class' screen reflections, compared to Nokia and Apple. How did that happen? Motorola has been making phones much longer than Apple?

What is strange is your trying to turn this into a Apple debate again. So lets stick to engineering okay? And thank you for providing me with the soapbox.

Yes, I have praised the Lumia for it reduced 4% screen reflection reduction. Nokia doesn't have to claim or hype much of anything...3rd party articles are doing the misleading PR for them. But I did find this on Nokia Conversations (that is official? and from 2010]:

" If you look at a body of water on a sunny day without a pair of polarising glasses, it’s really hard to see anything below the surface, but with the glasses on, the reflections are eliminated and you can see underneath the surface. In the same way, without ClearBlack display, you see the reflections on the phone’s screen, but with it you see the image on the screen. "

So what is ClearBlack display? – Nokia Conversations : the official Nokia blog

So 1) the reflections are not eliminated, as implied, and 2) the reflections are not on the surface of the glass, as in the body of water comparison. Unfortunately, this lay example is going viral on the web.

And btw, the reduction to 4% can be easily achieved by gluing the gorilla glass to the LCD screen, thereby reducing the back reflection reduced by the ClearBlack technology. Why it is not done in all cases, I'm not really certain.

RR, you should know from RF engineering that the human response to the intensity of sound and light is 1) logarithmic, not linear and 2) that the minimum threshold for human detection of a sound/light change is 3dB or a factor of 2 increase or 50% decrease.

So when you get a hearing test, they don't bother making an increase of less than 3dB...you will not hear it. - Another way of looking at it: if I shine a light of 1000watts in your face and increase it to 2000watts...you will just barely be able to notice the change. Remember the sales hype of buying a 150 watt receiver over a 100 watt one? Side by side, there is a difference to be measured electronically, but the human ear cannot make that distinction - a rule of nature known for about 100 years.

So if the Lumia is a 40% reduction in reflection (4% vs the iPhone's 7% - your comparsion ), that would be barely discernible by the human eye. Something we learned in high school, but easily forgotten.

Oh, and it gets worse. The screen technology used by Nokia (AMOLED) gives true blacks, but not such great whites and lower brightness. Remember those one way mirrors on police shows? It has to be darker in the witness room, so the criminal only sees his reflection. Lights on, and his reflection (still there) is overcome by the light in the witness room. - So the generally black display of the Nokia---actually can make the reflection more obvious - compared to having a generally white screen background. Check it out yourself. Hold a piece of glass up and place dark and then white paper behind it...the black paper will make the reflection more obvious.

I checked out the 4% reflection of room lights from the Lumia 900 vs my iPhone 4S (not hyping the iPhone, but it was the only phone I had that I know has 7% reflection) in the ATT store. I can barely tell the intensity difference of the overhead lights---as the physics should be.

So, sure 4% is better than 7%...and that is the way to go. But held side by side, it is a barely discernible difference by the human eye. And 4 or 7% reflection of direct sun is a LOT of light power (the 1000watt vs 2000 watt bulb concept), and 'annoying' as I said, but this is not much difference between the two...as the Displaymate science data (posted by Charlee) show very clearly for 'direct bright sunshine'.

So I just saying what is going viral about this change is blown out of proportion. If anything that YouTube video that Irish Rose posted should convince everyone to think (dare I say reflect) a bit about what is posted, and be careful not to over convince yourself what your are really seeing. A reality check is needed for everyone.

Just the facts...no one-upmanship of one phone over another implied. As posted in the review article above...the Lumia is a nice phone- but the lack of precision in describing the results of the 'clearblack' technology is annoying to me. - just as is saying that the Retina technology is independent of viewing distance, which it is not...but most people, don't have eye resolutions at mobile phone viewing distances to tell the difference.

 

Would that be because this is a metric where the iPhone doesn't shine...or dare I say does shine....in comparison to Nokia?

Motorola doesn't make glass. Nor does Apple or Nokia. Samsung is the leader in today's phone market making 90% of the worlds phone screens (if memory serves me right), but Apple uses Sharp for some reason.

I think Nokia is using the same simplistic marketing angle Apple uses, and if the video is going viral, then it looks like it's working for them

For me the first thing I noticed when picking up the Lumia, even without knowing any specs or "ClearBlack" stuff, was that the screen sucked me in and seemed different from any other screen I looked at, but I didn't know why. Now I do. To me the difference was very noticeable, but I'm coming from a screen with 12% reflection. Altho I have read alot of iPhone users (with 7% reflection) are also noticing the difference. So altho there is alot of science behind the numbers, I guess the final say is if you personally notice the difference or not.

In any case, the numbers are in favor of the Lumia when it comes to less reflection, and most people also notice the difference, so good for Nokia (via Samsung's screen technology). Let's hope more phones start using this or a similar technology, as I really don't like the glare on my "worst-in-class" phone, which is only 5% points away from your phone, which you say has no noticeable difference to the "best-in-class" screen only 3% points ahead ....so according to this logic I shouldn't notice a difference, yet I do

 

If you have some good engineering arguments,use them RR instead of making it personal and questioning my motivations? You respond too much like that when you don't have a good technical answer. It is not an attractive feature. Relax and take a deep breath. Enjoy life!

Corning makes the front glass for all of these smartphones today. Other vendors make the screens. But it is the mgfr's like Motorola that can interject on how it is put together...it is part of the specifications to the assembler. That is how the world works. And that is how Apple worked with vendors to produce the first successful use of glass (gorilla glass) screens on mobile phones instead of plastic.

 

I enjoy every day on this side of the dirt

I thought it was "clear" I wasn't talking about the glass, but what's going on behind it. AMOLED, which is mainly Samsung, which pretty much everyone is using, except Apple, as they like Sharp for some reason.

AMOLED - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sharp to supply technology to Hon Hai's China plant: Nikkei | Technology | Reuters

 

From an engineering viewpoint, you don't seem to understand how the whole things works. oh well, whatever.

 

You're right, I don't. Which is why I am on a forum where people can learn things

I am confused. Nokia says it's "CLearBlack AMOLED" display is responsible for the low reflection. AMOLED normally refers to the LCD "active" electrical part, not the "passive" glass part, correct? Yet, the picture doesn't seem to show any electrical part, only the glass part. So then the reflective-reducing part is some coating inside the glass? Or...?

 

'Nokia claims it’s new AMOLED with Clear Black Display trumps all other display technologies when it comes to visibility under direct sunlight.

Engadget has put up a side-by-side comparison between Nokia’s latest E7 with the iPhone 4 Retina Display and although we have some reservations on the accuracy of the camera’s ability to capture accurately what our eyes can under direct sunlight – taking into account polarisation and everything – but we’ll agree that there’s barely a discernible difference between the two display technologies.'

From Engadget. http://www.soyacincau.com/2010/09/15/cbd-vs-retina-display-under-direct-sunlight/



'You asked for it, so here it is: the iPhone 4's retina display versus a prototype Nokia E7 with new AMOLED Clear Black Display in direct sunlight. With both displays set to 100 percent brightness, we'd say that the EPD had a very very slight edge as it offered the best visibility under the most extreme viewing angles. Having said that, both are equally uncomfortable to use in intense sunlight, even as that's defined on a cloudless morning in London. Feast on the gallery below and video after the break to see the two under a variety of viewing angles.'

http://m.engadget.com/default/artic...deux-sunlight-ed/&category=classic&postPage=1

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Uh, I was mainly on my iPhone last week (out of the country), but looking at the link above (thanks for fixing it Charlyee), it goes to the Engadget article, but I don't see any video on my computer...I only see it on my iPhone.

So I don't know why that is, but I found the Youtube link and here it is. Comparing the ClearBlack Display (CBD) to an iPhone 4 ( 4.4% reflection vs 7.0% reflection). Both phones set at 100% screen brightness.


[video=youtube;yAA5Y_Wv03k]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAA5Y_Wv03k[/video]

 

Decided to start a separate thread on the iPhone 4S in direct sunshine. Hope that the cross link is okay.

http://forums.wirelessadvisor.com/a...hine-and-the-iphone-4s-screen.html#post570526

 

The Nokia Lumia is a highly successful phone and there is absolutely no surprises over how it managed to help windows phones as well. I've just tried the Lumia and its just a perfect makeup for the ageing Nokia. If only Nokia could have maintained the rich physical factor like that of Apple or Samsung phones, it would have worked wonders for the former leader in mobile phones. Nevertheless, it is also a wake up call for Windows phones.