How 'Super AMOLED' Displays Work [Displays]

Some tablets and smartphones ship with an AMOLED display. Newer ones are shipping with a "Super AMOLED" display. What so super about it, and what does all this alphabet soup even mean?

The short version is that a Super AMOLED touchscreen display integrates touch sensors with the glass surface panel, eliminating at least one layer of glass and with it, a layer of air. That's what makes Super AMOLED super. Only Samsung makes it.

Super AMOLED schematic from Samsung

I said "at least one layer of glass" because AMOLED itself eliminates at least one layer in a display. The current Galaxy Tab, for example, uses a TFT-LCD (Thin-Film Transistor Liquid Crystal Display) screen. Until very recently, TFT-LCD has been the state of the art in thin color displays and is still the only cost-effective option in the vast majority of displays larger than a smartphone screen.

TFT-LCD has approximately four layers: a backlight, a TFT color filter, a touch-sensor panel, and an outer glass screen. AMOLED (Active-Matrix Organic Light-Emitting Diode) eliminates the separate backlight. AMOLED, however, is known for having problems with glare and readability in direct sunlight, even relative to average LCD screens. By minimizing the number of reflective surfaces and power necessary to achieve vivid color, Super AMOLED was designed in part to address this.

Samsung introduced Super AMOLED to commercial devices this year with the Samsung Wave, which ran their own Bada OS. The Android-powered Samsung Galaxy series of smartphones made the displays popular, and it's since appeared on Samsung's Windows Phone 7 handsets as well.

There are other advanced color technologies in the market, all of them super, and all of them extra-expensive: Super LCD recently joined Super IPS and Advanced Super View. But only Super AMOLED has really captured the popular imagination.

A 7-inch Android tablet with an AMOLED display would probably be a serious advance over its current LCD screen. But if it's "just" AMOLED, something about it would just seem … less than super.

Wired.com has been expanding the hive mind with technology, science and geek culture news since 1995.

Firefox 4 Beta 7 Is Nearly Complete and Much Speedier [Video]

Windows/Mac/Linux: Firefox 4 Beta 7 is out, and it's an impressive preview of the final release. Mozilla has let loose the JaegerMonkey engine, enabled hardware graphics acceleration on Windows and Mac, and integrated Sync and the awesome Panorama/"Tab Candy".

Mozilla says their JaegerMonkey compiler, combined with their other improvements, leaves Firefox 4 with a seriously impressive engine for rendering web pages and interpreting webapps and games. Their chart of three benchmark tests, including their own, shows what looks like some serious improvements, at least over their previous releases (and we can't wait to put them to the test):

In a demonstration video, Team Firefox makes the case more clear for how JavaScript performance can speed along tomorrow's webapps:

Firefox 4 Beta 7 Is Nearly Complete and Much Speedier

In addition to the raw code and horsepower additions, Mozilla also notes the inclusion of hardware-based graphics acceleration in this beta, along with more obvious integration of previous experiments like Sync, Pannorama, and App Tabs.

Firefox 4 Beta 7 is a free download for Windows, Mac, and Linux systems. Download it, give it a spin, and tell us what you think of the new browser and its liquored-up simian core.

Fasten Your Seatbelts – Firefox 4 Beta adds new JavaScript power and faster graphics [The Mozilla Blog]

Crazy Android Keyboard App 8pen is Now Free [Android Apps]

Crazy Android Keyboard App 8pen is Now Free A week of sales in Android's Market at $1.50 either went so well for 8pen that they could afford to give it away for free...or it was their only option due to lack of downloads.

I had a very brief play with it last week after I ran into Gizmodo reader Adrian on the train. Tracing various figure-8s on his Hero's screen wasn't the most intuitive way to type, I felt—and in fact, I struggled to string a single word together. Maybe a longer stab at it would've been more successful—some of you downloaded it last week and seemed to like it, but most said they would'nt replace Swype or SwiftKey with it.

Anyway, it's now free (and includes a long list of updates such as voice input, dictionary support and themes), so if you were hemming and hawing over paying a buck fifty (or 99p) for the app, have a go and let us know in the comments below. It works on any Android phone running 1.6 or higher. [8pen via Phandroid via EuroDroid]

Can a PC Be Upgraded Forever? [PCs]

This little aluminum computer has one big goal: To be the last PC you will ever need. That's what the manufacturer claims: The Xi3 Modular's three boards will allow you to upgrade it forever. Maybe. I just like the color.

The tiny Xi3 Modular has one board with two AMD Athlon 64 processors and the RAM, while two I/O boards handle all connectivity and input/output requirements. They say that, by changing these boards you can "upgrade this computer forever" to save money and resources. Nice intentions, Captain Planet, but many computer manufacturers have tried the same approach only to discover that their modular technology always gets outdated, rendering their whole upgrade strategy into a broken pencil: Pointless.

Still, it's a nice little computer which is designed to be mounted anywhere. It comes with dual display support with 1080p DVI, VGA, HDMI, LVDS and DP output, plus 6 USB and 2 SATA Ports, Xi3p and PCIe, and it's available in limited quantities for $849. [XI3 via BusinessWire]

Open source Kinect camera driver now available for download

This is a little confusing, but it looks like there's another Kinect driver out in the wild, and this one is actually available for download. The folks at NUI Group, who posted results first, are working on an SDK and Windows driver for all the capabilities of the device, which they plan to release as open source once their $10k donation fund is filled up. Meanwhile, hacker Hector Martin has performed a quick and dirty hack of his own (three hours into the European launch, no less) and has released his results and code into the wild. Sure, pulling data from the IR and RGB cameras and displaying it is a lot different than actually making sense of it, but if you're just looking for a way to plug your Kinect into your computer and squeeze some fun visuals out of it (and you're smart enough to deal with some pretty raw code), it looks like Hector is your man of the hour. Peep his video proof after the break.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Continue reading Open source Kinect camera driver now available for download

Open source Kinect camera driver now available for download originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 10 Nov 2010 12:50:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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