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Comment by naoru | Hacker News Reader

So it's a PenTile display [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PenTile_matrix_family

From what I've seen, PenTile appears to be mainly a cost-reduction trick that works well for displaying photographs and other images with gradual variations, but looks horrible for text and sharp, straight lines. A similar pattern has been used in cheap cameras for many years:

http://www.dansdata.com/images/cdv350/screenb560.jpg

The Apple Watch pixels are not in the traditional stripe pattern, but there's still 3 distinct subpixels for each pixel and they're arranged in a square pattern. The unequal subpixel sizes are due to OLED brightness fade; the blues wear out the fastest, while the reds last the longest:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OLED#Disadvantages

Don't the latest Samsung phones (S6) still use pentile? I don't think those look bad at all.

They look fine now because the resolution of the screen is so high. Previously you could definitely notice issues with it.

The unequal subpixel sizes are due to OLED brightness fade; the blues wear out the fastest, while the reds last the longest:

Does it vary the intensity as it ages? Otherwise, it seems like the displays would start out way too blue before eventually becoming "accurate". (And then going on to become too red, of course.)

Edit: Oh, or maybe having a bigger blue subpixel means they can run the blues with less intensity, thus extending their life?

Not really, it's still RGB, because you still have the same number of red, green and blue cells. PenTile has twice as much green pixels than red or blue (RGBG).

The blue pixels are twice as large as the green and red though. I've never seen anything like it, personally

It looks like they made the miniaturize the pixels to increase contrast and make more room for pressure detectors. However, since blue pixels can't be made as bright as the other colors they have to be bigger than the other pixels.

Has anyone actually confirmed that the display has physical strain/pressure sensors, or is Apple just using the diameter of the capacitive touch point as a faux-pressure calculation?

Yeah, I find the pressure sensitive API in Android is good enough, it just uses the diameter of the touch. It's good enough for varying my pen strokes in a sketching app.

I haven't tried a Note with a true pressure sensitive pen though.

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