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Comment by moron | Hacker News Reader

I was surprised to see they're still using the goofy PenTile display stuff. The device is the display, you can't skimp on that.

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Apple advertises their retina display with "you can't see any pixels". The S3 nearly has the same ppi (306 vs. 320), yet people complain about how they are somehow able to distinguish the subpixels? Something does not add up here.

You're not comparing the same pixels, one is a true pixel out of 3 subpixels, one is out of 2 subpixels. Thus higher subpixel density. You could see the colour difference.

Why are people assuming PenTile is a bad thing? Is there something I'm missing? I assumed there was a method to their madness. Isn't Samsung still the same company that makes Apple's retina displays?

From what I've read so far, the PenTile technology is used to achieve a brighter screen at lower power consumption with a minuscule loss of precision.

> Isn't Samsung still the same company that makes Apple's retina displays?

LG makes displays for the iPhone and older iPads. The "retina" display for the new iPad is produced by Samsung.

One isn't skimping when one can't reach a given resolution any other way. Seriously, PenTile gives you the ability to reach higher effective (as measured) resolution for a given number of subpixels. Simply stated, for a given number of subpixels, it is ALWAYS better to use PenTile.

Full Disclosure: I'm the CEO of Nouvoyance, the company that develops PenTile.

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