Why curved smartphone screens massively increase image quality, daylight readability

Believe it or not, the curved screen on the Samsung Galaxy Round smartphone isn’t just a marketing gimmick: The curvature actually causes a series of optical effects that result in improved contrast, color accuracy, readability, and overall image quality — especially under ambient light that usually makes smartphone screens almost unreadable, such as daylight or fluorescent office lighting.

This new information about curved displays comes from Raymond Soneira, who is one of the few authorities on display technology, image quality, and color calibration. From thestory on his site, it sounds like Samsung gave him a Galaxy Note 3, the Galaxy Round (which is the Note 3 but with a curved display), and a standalone, free-standing OLED display from the Round (which he could bend and flex to his heart’s content). While he hasn’t yet produced his usual slew of images and graphs, it’s clear that he’s very surprised by the massive gain in image quality afforded by the curved display.

Read more

Motorola and Google unveil upgradeable modular smartphone platform

Remember that technologicallyutopian future with modular, upgradeable smartphones that I envisioned back in August? It turns out that Motorola has had the same idea. Called Project Ara, Motorola’s R&D department is working on an “open hardware platform for creating highly modular smartphones,” with the aim of doing for hardware what Android has done for software. If an open, modular smartphone ecosystem can be realized, it could do wonders for innovation, massively drive down development timelines and total cost of ownership, and finally allow you to do whatever you want with your smartphone, rather than being constrained by draconian measures imposed by carriers and device makers.
Read more

LG challenges Samsung with the G Flex curved screen smartphone

It looks like LG and Samsung are at it again. Both companies were vying for our attention at CES 2013 with simultaneous "world's first" curved OLED television announcements. LG consistently led in the race to the consumer space, and looked liked being first to move the screen format onto smartphones with the announcement earlier this month of its plans to mass produce flexible OLED phone displays. Samsung had other ideas, however, and the Galaxy Round was launched just a few days later. LG has now caught up with the forthcoming release of its slightly larger G Flex smartphone, featuring a curved display that follows the contour of the face.
Read more