Display issue - White looks gray??

Lumia92101

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I was not expecting any disappointment with the 920 screen, but my whites look very gray compared to the iPhone 4S. I attached a photo showing the 4S and 920 displaying the same screenshot side-by-side. The sharpness of the photo is terrible (sorry!), but it reproduces the color difference accurately between the two screens. The white is white on the 4S screen, but it looks very gray on the 920 screen. The 920's brightness is on HIGH and auto adjust is OFF. Anyone else not happy with their screen? Do you think there is something wrong with mine as everyone else has been amazed by the screen quality?

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Kredrian

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I did not notice it until I read this post, but possibly there might be a bit of a tone on mine. Its very subtle though.
 

z06tim

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I don't care for the screen either. Mine gets horribly dark if I look at it from an angle. My Focus S looked great at an angle.
 

dogfish54

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I wonder if it has to do with the polarizing layers (clearblack) ... improving visibility in sunlight but darkening it a little??
 

Calot

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LCD screens sometimes have different 'tones' or 'hues'.

If you crank the brightness to the max it becomes much less apparent. It only shows with whites or light colors.

It plagues all kinds of LCD screens, apparently.

Here is a picture of two iPhones side by side. One has the yellow tint, the other one doesnt.

If you can make an exchange, I recommend you do.
 

z06tim

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I wonder if it has to do with the polarizing layers (clearblack) ... improving visibility in sunlight but darkening it a little??

I'm pretty sure it is the clearblack that causes the angles to look bad. I wish they didn't use that. Kinda wanting the 8x now since it's the only other windows 8 phone out in the US. I really want the Ativ S so I can get my amoled blacks back though.
 

tissotti

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I'm pretty sure it is the clearblack that causes the angles to look bad. I wish they didn't use that. Kinda wanting the 8x now since it's the only other windows 8 phone out in the US. I really want the Ativ S so I can get my amoled blacks back though.

Actually Clear black is supposed to do the exact opposite. Neither does that happen with all of the other Nokia Clear Black phones i own (N9, Lumia 800, 808 PureView).

I'm pretty sure it is the clearblack that causes the angles to look bad. I wish they didn't use that. Kinda wanting the 8x now since it's the only other windows 8 phone out in the US. I really want the Ativ S so I can get my amoled blacks back though.

8X has got less of a deep blacks than Lumia 920.
 

vlad0

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The clear black display on my 808 looks fine from an angle.. in fact, it looks better than my iphone 5.

Another interesting thing I've noticed is that if you are wearing polarized sunglasses and you look at both phones, the iphone 5 goes really dark if you flip the phone in horizontal mode, making it almost impossible to take a photograph for example, and it goes back to normal in portrait mode. The clear black doesn't do that for some reason..
 

TexasLabRat

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The clear black display on my 808 looks fine from an angle.. in fact, it looks better than my iphone 5.

Another interesting thing I've noticed is that if you are wearing polarized sunglasses and you look at both phones, the iphone 5 goes really dark if you flip the phone in horizontal mode, making it almost impossible to take a photograph for example, and it goes back to normal in portrait mode. The clear black doesn't do that for some reason..

I'm sure you've seen it, but for reference here is the explanation on how it works:

Nokia ClearBlack Display (CBD)

I believe the difference between ClearBlack and "other" polarization anti-glare solutions is the innovative use of circular and linear polarizers in addition to leveraging the property of reflection to change the "handedness" of the circular polarization. I've taken a long, hard look at the explanation document that Nokia put out and the only way I can explain the results is that they left out a layer of quarter-wave film from the diagram. From what I can ascertain, if there were an additional quarter-wave film on top of the "stack" and closest to the user's eyes...then the light being emitted from the display would emerge circularly polarized and thus the perceived intensity while wearing linearly polarized sunglasses would be independent of the rotation angle. This would form a "Homogeneous Circular Polarizer" by basically sandwiching a linear polarizer between two quarter-wave plates. As shown in the diagram, the light would seem to be emitted as linearly polarized and thus would suffer the issues you cite with the iphone. Since that's not the case, I have to assume that there is indeed a missing circular polarizing element at work in the real thing versus the diagram.

It would be an interesting experiment to look at a ClearBlack display with polarized 3D movie glasses. If my theory is correct, one eye should be able to see the display and the other should not.
 
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ZombieBacchus

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Yup. My whites are kind of gray too. When I compare it to my Titan it becomes more obvious. I went to the ATT store today and the display model also showed whites as a little gray so perhaps this is normal?

If someone has a 920 that has really white whites can they post a screenshot please?
 

socialcarpet

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The only thing I've noticed is that the colors don't have quite the same "pop" they did on my 900 and the blacks aren't that deep inky black.

I miss that, but it's certainly an acceptable trade off for the much higher resolution which makes everything look great.

I don't have an iPhone to compare the whites too, but they seem bright and white to me.
 

VagrantWade

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The only thing I've noticed is that the colors don't have quite the same "pop" they did on my 900 and the blacks aren't that deep inky black.

I miss that, but it's certainly an acceptable trade off for the much higher resolution which makes everything look great.

I don't have an iPhone to compare the whites too, but they seem bright and white to me.

Well the 900 was AMOLED. So of course the blacks were blacker. I'm not really a fan of the inky AMOLED blacks personally.
 

jd195

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My display looks fine so far. Been using the auto-brightness mostly, since it seems to go dimmer than the low setting at night (which I like). Tried opening Office on the highest manual brightness and it looked very crisp and bright.
 

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