The first thing I noticed about the Nexus One (and the Droid, for that matter) was the display. After seeing 320×480 being the standard pixel dimensions on a smartphone for so long, devices that have as many pixels on the short side as other devices have on the long side stand out. The Nexus One has a 480×800 display and a resolution of approximately 252 pixels per inch. In contrast, the iPhone has a density of 163 ppi. The purpose of this post is to show a comparison of what that really means visually, as I feel most tech sites have not shown the detail that this deserves.
Here’s the disclaimer: I did my best to fairly show the differences between the screens of a Nexus One and an iPhone. Both phones were set to maximum brightness and were indirectly lit in an attempt to avoid glare. The Nexus One has a much greater tendency to reflect light than the iPhone. The camera (Canon 7D) was set to output to JPG because I didn’t want to subconsciously favor one display over the other when processing from RAW. The full-sized images are around 7MB each, so I created a resized version (1024×683 from 5184×3456) and, in some cases, a detailed version. The detailed version is a crop from the original image with no resizing. I just took two 512×683 crops and put them together. I didn’t label them because the Nexus One is always on the left and the iPhone is always on the right. Images embedded in this post are 400 pixels wide and link to the larger versions.
Home Screen
The iPhone’s home screen looks rather bland compared to the Nexus One. The icons are fairly similar, though you can see that the Nexus One icons are smaller and varying shapes (some iPhone 3rd party icons are different shapes, but transparency is not properly handled by the iPhone OS, so these only look transparent with a black background).
The Web – New York Times
For most people, the web browser will be the most used feature of a smartphone. These photos illustrate the difference that a higher resolution makes. Though the displays are close to the same physical size, small fonts are unreadable on the iPhone. I recommend viewing the full sized version of the detailed photo.
The Web – Image
Both phones are browsing a photo on Flickr, but you can see that the iPhone can’t display the full image at its native size (note that the Nexus One is actually zoomed in a bit on the image because the image is only 500px wide). The difference in the shadows is probably the most noticeable part of this comparison. The Nexus One appears to display oranges a bit brighter than it should. The iPhone loses detail in darker parts of the photo.
Maps – Satellite View
Though both displays a very usable, the Nexus One looks particularly crisp compared to the iPhone here.
Maps – Traffic View
I had a particularly challenging time getting these views to be zoomed identically across both displays, so don’t put too much emphasis on these. I did notice that the iPhone didn’t report construction on its maps application, but the overall data was basically the same. Again, the Nexus One appears much sharper.
PDF
Though you’re unlikely to read significant amounts on either phone, this PDF comparison shows the advantages of a higher pixel density. This also makes me question the recently-unveiled iPad as a serious reading device (its long side is only 1024 pixels, 224 more than the Nexus One, despite being much larger).
Apps – TV.com
As you can see, the TV.com app has a different interface on iPhone OS vs. Android. The Android version is able to show a lot more data at one time, though part of that is due to not needing a static menu on screen. During video playback, the actual video doesn’t take up the full width on the Nexus One. Here, you can see the greater range of colors on the Nexus One, particularly in the detailed photo. I also noticed that the iPhone’s black was a bit blue and not as dark as the Nexus One’s black. The Nexus One picked up a bit of glare but was still very usable.
Final Thoughts
One thing that really stood out during this test was how much more the Nexus One screen shows, and I don’t just mean in pixel count. Since Android has support for more than one button, applications do not have to waste screen space by displaying a menu. In most cases, that means displaying an extra row worth of information.
The Nexus One definitely has a more significant problem with glare, but it also has much darker blacks. It is a little over saturated around orange colors, though not significantly so. The iPhone screen does a good job of diffusing light, but the blacks never look fully black. The colors seem well balanced with less range, but the lower resolution really hurts the iPhone when it is next to the Nexus One.
