Apple takes home SID awards for iPad, iPhone 4 displays
updated 12:45 pm EDT, Tue May 17, 2011
iPhone 4 includes several advances, group says
Two Apple screens have won Gold awards as part of the Society for Information Display's Display of the Year Awards. Taking home the event's titular Gold prize is the Retina Display on the iPhone 4, which has four times the pixel density of earlier iPhones and provides better viewing angles than most LCDs by way of IPS technology. The display in fact has several technical advancements, the Society elaborates.
These include a customized LTPS TFT backplane with organic passivation and optimized pixel design, as well as auto-adjusting brightness based on an ambient light sensor. Special IPS compensation polarizer technology contributes to 800:1 contrast and consistent color, the latter of which is also 8-bit. The display uses a thin driver IC with a small footprint, and what SID describes as "patent-pending mechanical integration."
The iPad's display has grabbed a Gold award for Display Application of the Year. While not as sharp as the iPhone 4's Retina Display, it also exploits IPS to offer accurate color at multiple viewing angles. The display is moreover present on an extremely thin tablet, with a battery capable of up to 10 hours of Wi-Fi Internet access, SID notes.
The only Gold not claimed by Apple is for the Display Component of the Year. That title belongs to E Ink Triton, a color e-paper technology. Most e-readers -- like the Kindle and the Kobo -- continue to use black-and-white e-paper, owing to the relative newness of color and its current costs.
