In other words, game developers aren’t writing display drivers. They are writing a game at X by Y resolution. The display firmware will take care of changing the subpixel intensities.

So, yeah, 3D games at 1280×720 on the GN will likely not perform that well as there are 2.4x the pixels as the SGX540 was driving on the old Galaxy S.

If the manufacturer is cramming as many as many sub-pixels into a display as possible, then aranging them into a PenTile Matrix will provide a better display quality then an RGB configuration.

If the manufacturer is using a PenTile Matrix as an excuse to reduce the number of sub-pixles required and cost, the result will be a lower quality display.

Google and Samsung seem to be doing the first option.

I think I just talked myself into preferring PenTile Technology, as long as used to improve resolution and not reduce cost.

If the displays are the same dimensions and the same number of sub-pixles (not resolution), the PenTile will have the advantage.

I would have been pissed if the Galaxy Nexus was a 4.65in 480×800 PenTile but, at this size, the 720p PenTile display should look awesome.

that’s the only consideration I have left to make – I do not really want to wait until March (at the earliest) for the Galaxy S III – I don’t expect that any phone is going to come out with a true RGB 720p screen up until that point.

I’ve heard that because the Galaxy Note is 800p (or because the Galaxy Nexus is 720p), the pen-tile technology drawbacks aren’t nearly as pronounced as they were on screens with lower resolutions.

I also have yet to read anything written by anyone who has actually held the Note that states contrary to the display being something to marvel at.

Thanks.

As for your argument about text, that naturally depends upon the size of the font. If an ‘I’ is one pixel wide you’re screwed no matter what screen you’re using. At 300+ DPI you’ll have a pretty hard time telling if it’s a letter on your screen or an oddly rectangular spec of dust. That said, I would say that if your phone OS insists on using fully saturated primary color backgrounds text legibility is the least of your concerns!

However, you’re correct in one regard: white rectangles on black backgrounds do have a jagged transition to them on PenTile displays, but this is something that will get better with higher resolution displays, in the same way that 1st generation 1024×768 15″ displays had almost-visible red, green and blue vertical stripes when displaying solid white.

It may be the same number of subpixels as the iPhone “retina” display but it has 50% more green elements, which means for equal physical size your eye will be able to see finer detail. Anyone that understands image compression theory (hello JPEG) knows that to a human eye green is about as important as red and blue combined, which is why JPEG compression* immediately strips a third of the information in a picture by halving the data devoted to red and blue. This is not at all unlike what PenTile displays do by omitting half the red and blue elements.

Taken to the extreme, if you could only see green wouldn’t it make a lot more sense to make screens with 3 times the resolution using the same manufacturing technology by only using green elements? Well PenTile goes a partial step in that direction by admitting that we’re human and have human eyes with human eye limitations and that we kinda suck at seeing red and blue. Our eyes are made of meat; they aren’t engineered cameras equally sensitive to red, green and blue.

*This isn’t exactly what it does as there’s a lot more crazy hoops that JPEG jumps through, but it’s close enough for this level of discussion as it fundamentally does exploit
this concept.

Side note, people have the concepts of “reference design” and “flagship” confused…

The nexus is googles ICS reference handset.. the gs2 is still the flagship of Samsung’s line. I’m fairly sure only the nexus 1 was the only instance of the.reference handset also being the mfrs flagship.