We've had a ton of touchscreen technology thrown at us in the past year -- hell, in the past several months. We've gone from LCD (liquid crystal display) to OLED (organic light-emitting diode) to AMOLED (active matrix OLED) to the brand-new Super AMOLED, which we saw debuted at Mobile World Congress in February.
Each has its merits. OLED and AMOLED have been notoriously not great outdoors, as well as hard to come by of late, leading to handset shortages. LCD is tried and true and more readily available, but can it stand up to the new Super AMOLED, which promises even better battery life and less reflectivity outdoors?
After the break, we perform an unscientific test: Find the best light show this side of Pink Floyd, plop it on the Evo 4G, Nexus One, Droid X and Samsung Captivate, and see what we can see.
OK, so like we said. This is pretty unscientific. But here's the methodology:
- Like we said, we wanted the best light show since Pink Floyd. And for that we turned to Nine Inch Nails' Lights in the Sky tour, which also happened to be professionally recorded in high definition. Find out more about that here.
- For file size sake, we used the version of "The Gift" rendered to iPod specs. (The full 3.5GB, 720p resolution file played just fine on the Samsung Captivate, but the Nexus One balked at it, and we didn't want to process the video any more than we had to.) What you see is the raw file.
- Plopped the video onto the Droid X, Nexus One, Captivate and Evo 4G, and played with the default video software.
- Synced the videos as best we could. Not our fault if you go into convulsions.
And now, the test. Find my "conclusions" below.
YouTube Link
Can't speak for everybody, but I'm on board with Super AMOLED. I know, I know. I've said before that I'm growing a little tired of all the screen technologies, and that I can live with LCD just as easily as I could AMOLED. And that's still true. But, dammit, the contrast with Super AMOLED is beautiful. Look at the reds, especially.
So is there really a winner? I dunno. Maybe. And certainly trying to judge a screen based on a video (especially since it got a tad fuzzy around the edges) isn't the best way to go about things. You'll want to see these for yourself.
Super AMOLED's pretty damn good. Not that I wouldn't buy the Evo 4G or Droid X because they don't have Super AMOLED. On the contrary, they're great phones. But if you're looking for another reason to check out the Galaxy S line of phones, I believe you've got one in Super AMOLED.

The Galaxy S20 FE is still the best Samsung phone you can buy
Samsung makes a lot of great phones, from $2,000 foldables to $200 budget options with massive batteries. These are the best Samsung phones you can buy in 2021.

LG leaving Android isn't good for anyone — except LG
At some point, throwing money into the sea will start to look like a bad idea and LG will just call it quits. I hate those kinds of days.

Hands-on: Hitman 3 for PSVR shows you can kill the old ways
Hitman comes to VR for the first time in Hitman 3 for PSVR. But this isn't just some little standalone game; it's the entirety of Hitman, Hitman 2, and Hitman 3, all playable in VR.

These Galaxy S21 Plus screen protectors will keep your display looking good
The Galaxy S21 family of devices has finally launched, which means its time to find some of the best accessories. After picking up a case, you're probably going to want to go ahead and snag a screen protector to provide some added protection over what Samsung has pre-installed on the device.