Database Users

SAMOLED Screen, Colors and you.

Been searching for a while trying to find some info on the color depth on the Super AMOLED screens on the Galaxy S line.
Reason being, I have to be very wary of what wallpapers I use on my phone, because many end up looking very bad. You see distinct lines in various gradients as if the color depth of the screen is just very low.
It's a little disconcerting, and confusing, given how great these screens are supposed to be.
For example, there is a new wallpaper Android Central (posted just the other day) featuring their new logo/mascot. The wallpapers looks fine on my LCD monitor on my computer, but when I put them on my phone, I see lines in the background gradient that shouldn't be there. It doesn't seem like the screen can render those 'in-between' colors.
Anyone have any insight on this? Is it in fact the screen? Are other phones like this too?
I did read something about the fact that Android 2.1 maxes at 16bit color but 2.2 remedies this limitation, but I'm not sure if this is accurate, applicable to the situation, or even true.
Thanks in advance.

Download the Acquarium free live wallpaper in the market. The colors look amazing on my phone. There's also the Avatar movie, in the bright scenes the colors really "pop".

Let's hope froyo adds that feature, I've noticed it too on some colors, but its a minor annoyance, I'm sure if android supported larger screen resolution like gingerbread will have, samsung would have put a 1280x720 screen in there. Maybe the S2
Sent from my SXY-T959

As a photographer I put several of my Hi Res works on my Phone. I did not even downsize them and just moved them to the phone so they would not be downsized automatically. I found the Gallery displays them perfectly, all be it with a slight over saturation. But the depth is great, really really good. I have used it as a mini portfolio, its that good.
However if I make any of them a wallpaper the phone dummies the shot way down and I loose sharpness, pixel depth, contrast, even that over saturation I spoke of. Its seems to me the shots are forced down to a "good" wallpaper size to not drain resources maybe? If a large hi res photo is not down sampled in small increments a little at a time it looses a ton of quality. But should not shots made for wallpaper from the market work well too? Maybe the Vibrant dummies all shots down for the wallpaper since all screen sizes are different?
Now if I could only get the Gallery to stop hanging on start up after the Ji6 update...ugh

It could be the stock gallery app that is ****ing up the wallpapers. I recommend using an app called "Wallpaper Set & Save" which allows you to set any size wallpaper without ****ing up the quality. Zedge is another great app with tons of dope wallpapers and doesn't destroy the resolutions of your wallpapers.

SeanFloyd said:
It could be the stock gallery app that is ****ing up the wallpapers. I recommend using an app called "Wallpaper Set & Save" which allows you to set any size wallpaper without ****ing up the quality. Zedge is another great app with tons of dope wallpapers and doesn't destroy the resolutions of your wallpapers.
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Cool! apps like that I was not even aware of. thanks.
I just tried Photoshop Express app for Android to set a Hi Res pic to wallpaper. Fail. It down graded it substantially, It must use the crappy internal phone method also. Gonna check out the recommended apps thanks.

galaxy s II display contrast

Hello.
Anyone else noticed that the display is lower quality than sgs ?
I mean in terms of gamma.
I am a photographer and I was amazed how good the contrast and brightness f the first galaxy was, however this one seems to have way too big contrast, making everythig that is dark much darker, giving a fake and strange appearence.
Also the auto brightness in general is lower than sgs.
Does somebody know if it can be tweaked through a kernel recompile, like sharpness and color in voodoo ?

Go to options-->display-->uncheck automatical screen power adjustme(don't know the exact english term, got it in dutch). I bet it is this again...
Let me know... you're not the first one.

No, it's not that but thanks
It's the actual gamma of the driver I think
However I did notice there is now a "background effects" that can adjust saturation and hue so there is access to the drivers. Maybe a bunch of new effects added there like "classic gamma, normal saturation..."

I came from the captivate, and ran just about every rom that was out there. One of the ubiquitous mods was the color fix. I noticed when I first booted the SGS2 up, the color was off (in relation to my expectations) sure enough in display settings there was an option to change it. Without looking I believe it's called "cinema", which perfectly returned that color richness I loved.
Sent from my GT-I9100 using XDA Premium App

there is something wrong with auto brightness , it doesnt work very well , but its not true that SGS 2 has a lower quality display than sgs , Super AMOLED Plus displays are an upgrade to Super AMOLED. They use a real-stripe subpixel matrix and not pentile - and so has 50% more sub-pixels. The PPI is a bit larger but Samsung will soon make them at much higher resolutions. Super AMOLED Plus displays are also thinner, brighter and use 18% less energy than the older Super AMOLED displays.

Banding

Banding, otherwise known as contouring, is a digital artifact common to images, displays or apps of 16bit(thousands of colours) or less.
Gradient image
Viewing the 24bit image in the above link will not show banding on a 24bit display(3 x 8bit channels of R, G & B millions of colours) if viewed in a 24bit app.
If 32 distinct bands are seen, possibly with every 1/3 band being a green shade, then the screen or the image viewing application is not 24bit capable.
Viewing 16bit or lower resolution gradient images on your screen will also show banding.
The Android browser shows banding with this image while the Dolphin HD browser does not.
In short, the SGNote has a 24bit display, which will show banding if viewing 16bit or lower images or using a 16bit or lower viewing application.
More on screen bits

Im noticing lots of banding in lots of different apps :-/

Same here, also happens with Google apps like the Market. Not sure what we can do about it anybody has suggestions?

Bigmille said:
Same here, also happens with Google apps like the Market. Not sure what we can do about it anybody has suggestions?
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At least it is not the Note's display hardware that is the issue.
ICS may upgrade some Android OS apps to 24bit.

Thank You for this
This proves that Apps that display banding simply aren't rendering at 24bit.
I was leaning towards there being an issue with the screen as this problem was not noticeable on my previous android devices.
This clarifies everything.
Thanks.

qazzi76 said:
This proves that Apps that display banding simply aren't rendering at 24bit.
I was leaning towards there being an issue with the screen as this problem was not noticeable on my previous android devices.
This clarifies everything.
Thanks.
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Click to collapse
You are welcome.
It bugged me too, until I got to the bottom of it.
Trust your eyes, the screen is glorious.

I too don't believe the hardware to be the issue. I suspect it's more to do with having a device with a smallish screen and a large 1280x800 resolution. Higher res images and videos look amazing. If the image is quite compressed (i.e. lossy) then the higher resolution screen will show this more than a low resolution screen. Garbage in, garbage out comes to mind. We need all apps and videos and images to be high resolution 24bit minimum to make the most of our amazing screen .

paulshields said:
I too don't believe the hardware to be the issue. I suspect it's more to do with having a device with a smallish screen and a large 1280x800 resolution. Higher res images and videos look amazing. If the image is quite compressed (i.e. lossy) then the higher resolution screen will show this more than a low resolution screen. Garbage in, garbage out comes to mind. We need all apps and videos and images to be high resolution 24bit minimum to make the most of our amazing screen .
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Excellent. I will put it in a drawer for a year or so then. Hopefully by then there will be some video I can watch.

seepage said:
Excellent. I will put it in a drawer for a year or so then. Hopefully by then there will be some video I can watch.
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ha ha . Listen, think of it like this. You've probably got a high resolution monitor attached to your computer. Do you prefer watching videos at 420p and lower or 720p and higher? No doubt the answer is higher resolution to match your monitor.
What Samsung has done is squeeze in a screen with similar resolution to a 13" laptop, but in a 5.3" mobile device! So we're going to come across lots of images and videos aimed at 'normal' mobile devices, which won't look so great on our high-res screen. To make the most of the screen you can copy 720p or 1080p high profile videos to your sdcard, and they will look incredible on playback, but they will also be large and it's a slow process, and if the video is long then it'll also hit the limitation with FAT max file sizes. Those issues aren't the fault of the screen though. It's simple really. If you want to make the most of the screen density then you have to provide it with good quality source material suitable for a high resolution screen.

Do you think that its just software? No hardware? Do you think that ICS will fix this?
I came from dell streak and its realy hard to watch on note specialy on dark scene.
even opening xda app it has banding problems

rockysiccion said:
Do you think that its just software? No hardware? Do you think that ICS will fix this?
I came from dell streak and its realy hard to watch on note specialy on dark scene.
even opening xda app it has banding problems
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It's definitely not a hardware issue because the screen is definitely 24bit colour. It displays well in the right app. You could swap apps for those that handle higher bit images. If you use Dolphin HD, possibly other browsers, webpages are seen in 24bit, if they are 24bit images. I don't know but there must be alternative picture viewing apps. Dice Player is a high res video viewer. As for system graphics, they don't look so bad to me. For games etc, it means living with banding until the maker upgrades? This is always the case on computers.
Be thankful Samsung have not rorted us.
Apple has ripped off it's customers many times selling lo-res screens as high res:
"Apple has received a new class action complaint alleging the MacBook
does not support millions of colors, but rather 16 bit color, which is
dithered to approximate millions of colors."
Date: Fri, 18 May 2007 16:37:17 -0500

I don't have a Note yet, but can somebody try with QuickPic, it has an option in it's settings to force decode in 32bit mode.
That could clarify if it is a software or hardware problem...

paulshields said:
ha ha . Listen, think of it like this. You've probably got a high resolution monitor attached to your computer. Do you prefer watching videos at 420p and lower or 720p and higher? No doubt the answer is higher resolution to match your monitor.
What Samsung has done is squeeze in a screen with similar resolution to a 13" laptop, but in a 5.3" mobile device! So we're going to come across lots of images and videos aimed at 'normal' mobile devices, which won't look so great on our high-res screen. To make the most of the screen you can copy 720p or 1080p high profile videos to your sdcard, and they will look incredible on playback, but they will also be large and it's a slow process, and if the video is long then it'll also hit the limitation with FAT max file sizes. Those issues aren't the fault of the screen though. It's simple really. If you want to make the most of the screen density then you have to provide it with good quality source material suitable for a high resolution screen.
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The video and photographs shot with the phone's own camera have the same problems as other video and pictures. Surely they should display OK.

Some Android apps only render in 16bit
seepage said:
The video and photographs shot with the phone's own camera have the same problems as other video and pictures. Surely they should display OK.
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Click to collapse
The phone has a 24bit 16 million colour display.
Some apps, including the picture viewing gallery app do not display 24bit colour in the 24bit quality they were made. See here

Thanks, Xaddict, this all makes sense regarding 24- versus 16-bit rendering.
Still, shouldn't intelligent/adaptive codecs be able to bridge the chasm by re-rendering 16-bit source material into some sort of "interleaved" or "inferred" gradual gradation or gradient... a codec to "smooth" the blend, if you will.
It's a codec issue, isn't it?
I wonder if Samsung or ICS will solve this first, if ever...

It feels like the Note has the same display like the first Desire (Amoled) that I've owned.

Its been said that this is a software problem, I've never seen this fixed with a 3rd party custom ROM since the Galaxy S1 days. Even 'x' ROM still shows color banding.

Found a solution for the wallpaper. Install MultiPicture live wallpaper (free from market) Go into it's settings and select "Color depth", then select "True color (24-bit). If the image you selected and used is 24bit, there will be no banding in your wallpaper. Hope this helped, cheers

Depending on the wallpaper you'ed still see massive banding.

EarlZ said:
Depending on the wallpaper you'ed still see massive banding.
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It's not a software problem.
If anything, it's a low quality image being viewed on a 24bit screen problem.

Low Saturation and Contrast?

Bought the 10...love the way it runs but I bought it to show my photography work on (would use an ipad but I really detest the ios software).
The entire screen seems to be washed out overall with weak black levels and reds in particular are low saturation.
Sharp as a tack for sure....is it just mine? I see such conflicting reports in reviews although I am seeing more now about low saturation and contrast.
Very frustrating....unless someone out there knows some way of calibrating this display which I haven't found?

you are right
i am also a photographer (Canon 5D MkII)
i have watched some photos now(got my N10 yesterday) and as you said the screen is sharp as hell
i have never seen this amount of details with my DSLR photos.
im also doing hardware calibration and i see whats wrong right away and i have also tested it...the problem is that the gamma is to low.
The N10 has a Gamma Level around 1.4 - 1.5 where it should be 2.2!
(yeah that should make some attention hehe)
thats a fact and thats why we have washed out colors and bad contrast
but the good thing is that even at that low gamma we have a decent picture quality with good black levels!
i dont think the black levels on my device is washed out
it shouldnt be this good with this crappy gamma but it is
thats amazing and that tells that this is a quality screen above normal.
with correct gamma at 2.2 this screen will rock for sure.
so lets wait for some kernel guru to make some gamma adjustments
i have said i before that im willing to pay that person that makes gamma adjustment possible for the N10s.

You are correct...gamma is definitely too low.
As far as washed out reds go, I suppose I could process specifically for display on this tablet but that's a pain in the butt.
I wish the darned ipad wasn't such a restrictive ecosystem for the software. The colors rock on the ipad unfortunately but it's just too darned restrictive.

jfenton57 said:
You are correct...gamma is definitely too low.
As far as washed out reds go, I suppose I could process specifically for display on this tablet but that's a pain in the butt.
I wish the darned ipad wasn't such a restrictive ecosystem for the software. The colors rock on the ipad unfortunately but it's just too darned restrictive.
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im waiting for a i1 Display Pro colormeter
when i get it i will do a hardware calibration.
but i have checked some stuff already and i think that the colors is right for its low gamma.
also the brightness for the colors seems the same for Red/Green/Blue and thats a good thing
also the contrast and black level is reference.
i also think the color temp is close to 6500k
that means that the grayscale is correct.
so the only thing that messes up this display is the low gamma.
(or wrong gamma curve/line)
you have some tests here that you can do without a colormeter,if you want to check it out
http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/
also you can download the AVSHD 709 Patterns here.
http://www.avsforum.com/t/948496/avs-hd-709-blu-ray-mp4-calibration
just copy the mp4 files to your N10 and run them.
one note that i can see is that it seems that the gamma is higher at the lower shades
it seems to be around 1.8 there
that could explain why we dont have completely washed out blacks.
but what you want is a plain straight gamma line at 2.2
the N10 seems to have a hill shaped line starting high at lower shades and lower around maximum white.

I have tested the N10 with a Pantone "hocky puck" and can confirm the observations posted above. As compared to overly saturated profiles most normal users are used to, it's no wonder many see the N10 as flat and dull. My N7 is horrible, not only flat but had a color temp that was blueish green.
Much of my publicly displayed work for general web based consumption, has the saturation pumped up farther then I like, but my "fans" (sarc) seem to enjoy my photographs when contrast and saturation is pushed high. Ironically, my over saturated photographs look good to me on the low gamma N10, lol.
Either way, most all of us would benefit from being able to adjust our N10s. As many of you know this is best done at the kernel level and the master of sound and color Samsung kernels is SuperCurio and his project Voodoo. I have heard hearsay that he is working on kernel code and color profiles that can support adjustments for the N10, but I have yet to confirm this myself.
As usual we are given hardware that needs code improvements to be fully realized and that seems to always be done by the development community. It will taken time but I am confident we'll get there to some degree soon.

As far as I could tell there is no gamma correction in the kernel because the Nexus 10 uses a new display port interface thats in the Exynos 5. Most devices I've seen have at least a static gamma table in the kernel but that doesn't appear to be true for the Nexus 10.
Sent from my Nexus 10 using Tapatalk HD

12paq said:
I have heard hearsay that he is working on kernel code and color profiles that can support adjustments for the N10, but I have yet to confirm this myself.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
give him my money!
that sounds great
post in this thread if you hear more about it!
as i said in other threads i will pay around 50$ for the person that makes gamma adjustment possible for the N10.
btw: hockey puck?
are you serious ?

Color saturation & accuracy

If you're colorblind, please disregard this thread. Rate this thread to express how you deem the color saturation and accuracy of the Nokia 7 Plus's display. A higher rating indicates that you think that color accuracy is very high and saturation is excellent.
Then, drop a comment if you have anything to add!

I need to say that color accuracy is not good. I had a Nexus 5X and a low cost Lenovo K5 before and both had problems maybe with blue and green but the Nokia 7 Plus has problems with ALL colors and with red. The picture is over saturated overall which makes already rich saturated pictures with people's skin look like ORANGE colored skin! I mean adding saturation to pictures is sometimes okay but not to all pictures especially when skin gets orangish/red!
Everything would not bother me if the Android dev team would allow color correction and/or saturation correction in Android. Instead they refuse to put this kind of fine granular color correction in their base Android and Nokia 7 plus has no option to change this (in my eyes) display error.
I could correct this issue a little (but not good) with the paid app screen balancer but it has many down sites (because it's a layer on top of all apps).
Please Nokia offer us more color correction options. As a photographer I feel a little insulted by oversaturated pictures and no option to change that. Maybe I will return this phone because a little better color accuracy is something I value highly.

Please ignore this message.
I mistook this thread to be the one for camera pictures (accuracy & saturation).
I think rating a camera based on one particular camera app (in above case - Nokia camera app), isn't totally fair.
If you would use Gcam mod, you will notice the difference in saturation & accuracy being delivered much better. Same hardware, different software.
I use the Gcam mod, and so far have observed rightly-saturated pics with a good balance of color temperatures (most of the times).
With Gcam Pixel3 Mod camera, I will easily vote the color saturation and accuracy at 90%.
Cheers,
Sony.

besony said:
I think rating a camera based on one particular camera app (in above case - Nokia camera app), isn't totally fair.
If you would use Gcam mod, you will notice the difference in saturation & accuracy being delivered much better. Same hardware, different software.
I use the Gcam mod, and so far have observed rightly-saturated pics with a good balance of color temperatures (most of the times).
With Gcam Pixel3 Mod camera, I will easily vote the color saturation and accuracy at 90%.
Cheers,
Sony.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This whole thread is about the display not the camera. Camera is a completely different topic.

therealmarv said:
This whole thread is about the display not the camera. Camera is a completely different topic.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I completely missed that part!
Apologies.

Any idea how I can desaturate the display? I mean, there is an sRGB slider in the dev options, but it doesn't do anything, and resets itself. The display, well is not decently calibrated.

Axe Homeless said:
Any idea how I can desaturate the display? I mean, there is an sRGB slider in the dev options, but it doesn't do anything, and resets itself. The display, well is not decently calibrated.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, also noticed this slider. It resets itself all the time and I also don't know if it does something because this reset is near instand.
Theoretical this app could be a good solution when the phone would be rootable (but apparently the bootloader can only be unlocked by paying to some strange guys):
https://labs.xda-developers.com/store/app/com.xda.sa2ration
Best would be if Nokia itself allows saturation slider in some settings app
The pro version of "screen balancer" in play store could also help but if you exaggerate you loose deep black levels
TL;DR no good solution currently.

Thanks for replying. That is a damn shame. Do we know if that is still not possible in the P Beta? Is there anybody who could test this?
Right now I'm not sure if I'll keep this phone, exactly for that reason, so I'm not really doing the flashing thing yet. Thanks again

Btw, I asked Nokia support about this, they said that currently there is no way, but they passed it on to the dev team, maybe they will include the option at some point.

besony said:
Please ignore this message.
I mistook this thread to be the one for camera pictures (accuracy & saturation).
I think rating a camera based on one particular camera app (in above case - Nokia camera app), isn't totally fair.
If you would use Gcam mod, you will notice the difference in saturation & accuracy being delivered much better. Same hardware, different software.
I use the Gcam mod, and so far have observed rightly-saturated pics with a good balance of color temperatures (most of the times).
With Gcam Pixel3 Mod camera, I will easily vote the color saturation and accuracy at 90%.
Cheers,
Sony.
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Click to collapse
Camera api 2 ON by default ? No need of custom recovery or root ?

The WiTcH Er said:
Camera api 2 ON by default ? No need of custom recovery or root ?
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Yes. It's on by default but the June update probably broke something and that's why Gcam isn't working.
Sent from my Nokia 7 plus using Tapatalk

K.khiladi said:
Yes. It's on by default but the June update probably broke something and that's why Gcam isn't working.
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Thank you. Is there option to hide navigation bar? And get navigation gesture? I did not find it.

The WiTcH Er said:
Thank you. Is there option to hide navigation bar? And get navigation gesture? I did not find it.
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That's not available in the system software but there's an app available that does that. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.xda.nobar
Sent from my Nokia 7 plus using Tapatalk