One of the main selling points of the N85, besides it being the multimedia powerhouse with a decent battery, is its 2.6 inch OLED display. I’ve heard a lot about the advantages of these, especially in terms of contrast and power consumption, and although I didn’t have the N85 long enough during the Nseries launch to test its battery life , I was able to check the display advantages.
What I can say, in my non tech-savvy vocabulary, is that everything on the screen looks more “real”. The difference is like comparing viewing the world with your eyes or through white-tinted glass. Colors on the OLED look more popping, more realistic, and the one thing I noticed is that everything has more dimension to it. For example the perspective effect that we see on the border of highlight rectangles looks more 3D than I have ever seen it on LCD screens.
In order to give you a taste of the OLED, I decided to take a picture with the N85′s camera and display it on the N85 as well as the N81. The reason I chose the N81 is because it was the only handset around me with a 2.6″ screen, the same size of the N85, other handsets had either 2.4″ or 2.8″. I know that screen size doesn’t matter but I was trying to eliminate as much variables as possible, to improve the comparison’s quality. [Edit: as many commenters pointed out, the N81 has a 2.4" screen and not a 2.6" one, my bad, I always confuse this]. I only had time to take one picture and display it on the N85. I also sent it over bluetooth to the N81 and displayed it there as well.
Below you will find the image that the N85 took and which was used for the comparison, as well as how both the N85 and N81 displayed it on their screen. [Click on the images for the full versions. Disclaimer: I am not responsible for any fainting, sweating, heart-attack, tachycardia or any other symptoms that might result of you viewing these images : it's a symbian fan's dream, ain't it? ]
Image taken with the N85
Image displayed on the N81 (LCD – top) and the N85 (OLED – bottom)
Close up of the image displayed on the N85
Now I would like to point the fact that you are seeing the N85′s screen through your own LCD computer (which distorts the quality), which means that the OLED is even better than what you see now. But to prove to you the power of OLED, compare how the image itself (first picture) looks on your computer and how you see it displayed on the N85 (2nd and 3rd picture). As you see the colors and quality are almost the same, which means that OLED showed the image just like it is, whereas on the N81 8GB the colors look “white-tinted”.
So does OLED make a difference? Yes, even if it doesn’t improve battery life, the display’s vividness is enough to make me scream “I want more OLED handsets, Nokia, please”. What do you say?
