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Aria in sunlight?

M

mvz2

Lurker
Can folks report their take on how the display fares in direct sunlight? I'd be very interested to hear.
 
how direct? like your reflecting the sun off the screen in your eyes? cause then I just cant see period :p

hehe well if you mean its not reflecting in your eyes then its pretty good I can still use the keyboard and run apps/see what they are doing. obviously the screen washes out a bit, but its still readable.

MUCH better then my friends nexus one (which to me is pretty much unreadable in direct sunlight).
 
The aria has an LCD screen. I was using my phone while walking out of the gym today, it was pretty much unviewable. I put my phone away until I was indoors again. As that article above shows, pretty much all the displays suck horribly in the sunlight. AMOLED just happens to be the worse out of the bunch.
 
Thanks for the feedback so far. I'd still be interested to hear more takes on it. Or links to photo or video comparisons. I'm interested in getting an android phone, but I'm worried that in terms of outdoor display legibility, everything may be be a step backward from my old school Nokia E72 (with transreflective display). Although 90% of my phone use in indoors, I currently use my E72 on my motorcycle for sat-nav. It works great for that. However, there's not much shade sitting up on the handlebars...
 
The display inside is fantastic. Considering how low the resolution is compared to the other Droids I was looking at, I was expecting it to be very pixilated but it's very crisp and very bright.

Outside... not so much. As soon as I brought it outside the screen was very washed out and dim-appearing. Also, all your fingerprints are suddenly visible so the phone looks very dirty and you will probably have to wipe the phone on your shirt if you plan on sharing anything with anyone else.

Not disappointing though. It's pretty much what I expected.
 
The camera is almost useless outside as the screen, which is the viewfinder, is also almost useless. Found that out today =(
 
It looks like you would expect. It's usable. If you had to make a call, or text someone real quick, it's fine. It looks dimmer, yes, but most screens do. I mean, what phone (or any device for that matter) has a screen that works well outside? The only thing I can thing of is giant LED billboards and signs at stadiums.
 
wxjoe said:
It looks like you would expect. It's usable. If you had to make a call, or text someone real quick, it's fine. It looks dimmer, yes, but most screens do. I mean, what phone (or any device for that matter) has a screen that works well outside? The only thing I can thing of is giant LED billboards and signs at stadiums.
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Never had a problem seeing my Audiovox 5600 screen outside. Almost any digital camera where the screen is the viewfinder is perfectly visible outside. Every laptop I've had has been pretty decently visible in direct sunlight.

The main problem here is that 95% of the command prompts come from touching the screen, smudging the hell out of it. Even if you clean the screen and then go to take a pic, and decide to switch to video, you need to swipe the screen and then tap, giving it fresh fingerprints.

As a phone, it's usable outside. As a camera it's very limited.

btw I know you weren't responding to me but I just wanted to make sure the op realized that this phone does in fact suffer a bit more than your average screen outside. Not just because it's touchscreen though, by it's design it's just sub-average.
 
Jofaba said:
The camera is almost useless outside as the screen, which is the viewfinder, is also almost useless. Found that out today =(
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Oh this is discouraging. How about just using the phone for emails and texts outside in the sunlight? Is it visible?
 
he must have his screen brightness turned down... or have a defective screen... or very smudgy fingers. I find its perfectly fine outside, yes the screen becomes more difficult to see but its still easy to make things out. I can still type emails and snap pics outside on a bright clear 98 degree day (picnic yesterday).
 
Cronis said:
he must have his screen brightness turned down... or have a defective screen... or very smudgy fingers. I find its perfectly fine outside, yes the screen becomes more difficult to see but its still easy to make things out. I can still type emails and snap pics outside on a bright clear 98 degree day (picnic yesterday).
Click to expand...

I'm willing to concede that I made a tech mistake, especially if it means being wrong means I can improve the quality of my phone. So... how exactly do you increase the brightness? The only official option I see is "automatic brightness".
 
Jofaba said:
I'm willing to concede that I made a tech mistake, especially if it means being wrong means I can improve the quality of my phone. So... how exactly do you increase the brightness? The only official option I see is "automatic brightness".
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quickest way is to use the power manage widget supplied... you can turn your brightness up or down with that i think. can also manage wifi bluetooth etc using the widget
 
Well look-y that. I have the "useful switchers" installed and it has screen brightness, but doesn't appear to work. That widget does though, and wow! Will give the cam another "shot" today :P
 
Jofaba said:
I'm willing to concede that I made a tech mistake, especially if it means being wrong means I can improve the quality of my phone. So... how exactly do you increase the brightness? The only official option I see is "automatic brightness".
Click to expand...
Uncheck auto brightness, It will allow you adjust the level. If outdoors slide it to full brightness.

I like the "quick settings" app in the market. When it's installed and opened the brightness is the first thing on the setting list when you press it it ask if you want to turn auto off so you can adjust. To set it back to auto when using the quick setting app you have to go to settings that came factory


Turned all the way up if is ok for text and emails while outdoors. Seems about the same as the moto droid to me.

Useable outdoors, but not great even with brightness turned up, is what i would say
 
Okay I have some results to share:

Phone: Completely Usable as a phone
Internet/Email: Usable with some angle/shielding
Camera: Almost completely useless. ALMOST. With some novel play with angles and shadows you can get a decent enough preview. But don't expect to be doing any nature shots; just close up target specific shooting.

edit: lol crazy! you posted just as i was. I am not responding at all to your post. Haven't even read the whole thing yet!

edit2: Check out page 3 of http://androidforums.com/htc-droid-eris/99181-camera-360-better-picture-quality.html

I am researching (and writing an unofficial manual for) the 360 pro camera program. I'm going to be doing a lot of experimenting with this camera in the days/weeks to come. I'll be updating in that thread since that's where it started.

Don't get the wrong idea. I'm not beating this camera's performance. Just the screen.
 
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