Titanium: More on the new Display

The new 15.2-inch display in the TiBook is believed to manufactured by Apple partner Samsung, as is the 128 MB RAM module that came in my 400 MHz model. You will recall that Apple invested US$100M in Samsung Electronics last summer.

A couple of notes about the new display: first, there is an interesting note on the top section of the PowerBook G4 box that reads “The backlight lamp in this product contains mercury. Dispose of properly.” Hmmm. Interesting, no? Could this be the origin of the “Mercury” code name? The Titanium is the first PowerBook to ship with a Mercury display.

click for a larger image

The quality and consistency of the display is excellent and what’s even more amazing is the extended viewing angle that the new Samsung display allows. Previous TFT screens would often disappear if you changed your viewing angle from center to either side – difficult when giving ad hoc presentations with more than three or four people around your PB. The new Samsung mercury display (lower case “m”) is visible at even the extreme edges providing nearly 180 degrees of viewing! Something I have never seen in a PowerBook!

Apple and Samsung have also made great strides in improving visibility of the display in sunlight. I was using my new TiBook while editor Ty-Bone drove us out to Montgomeryville, PA to pick up another PB and the screen was surprisingly easy to read, even though it was a sunny day. Hats off to the engineers on that one!

LCD test 1.0.1 showed no dead or stuck pixels, at least that I could notice.

The honeymoon continues…