Anti-glare technology humans used to use on smartphones

BlackBerry and Nokia each use special screen technologies to help users see content clearly in sunlight. Later companies also offered many solutions, but they mainly reduced glare and did not make the screen rough like the iPhone Duo. In my opinion, the later anti-glare layer is better and the screen brightness has increased significantly, so it is not necessary to equip smartphone screens with anti-glare technology. Or maybe they don't have such technology.

BlackBerry uses a special type of LCD to still see content well when exposed to sunlight

Those of you who used the first BlackBerry, especially the 7290, will remember that the more sunlight it exposed, the brighter and clearer it became. At that time, I thought BlackBerry used an E-Ink screen, but in fact it was still a normal LCD screen with backlight. The special thing is that the backlight layer that BlackBerry uses is only ½ backlight and the remaining ½ is reflective material. So when it's dark, the backlight lights up so you can see the content, and when it's bright, ½ of the reflective material will light up the screen so you can see the content. However, the display quality behind the screen is poor because it has few colors and mainly displays text content. At that time, BlackBerry also aimed at email, messages, notifications, keyboards, working... so that was enough.

BlackBerry 7290 has screen technology so that the more you expose it to the sun, the clearer it becomes.

The BlackBerry 8700 is also equipped with similar technology on a more advanced screen.

BlackBerry 9900 with a more colorful screen, still clear in sunlight.

Nokia with Clear Black Display technology

Those who use Nokia phones can experience another anti-glare technology that is much superior to other smartphones. This technology Nokia calls Clear Black Display is equipped on original Nokia devices such as E7, At that time, I was crazy about Lumia products for this reason. Regarding Clear Black Diskplay technology, the picture below explains it most clearly:

ClearBlack Display (CBD) is an optical layer Nokia launched in 2010. It attaches a polarizing filter between the touch glass layer and the AMOLED/LCD panel. Glare light is polarized, reflects off the screen, changes direction and is blocked, so it does not enter human eyes, causing no glare or glare. The light or image coming out from the background panel still reaches the eyes normally. The result is deeper blacks, higher contrast, easy to read in sunlight without having to maximize brightness — like polarized sunglasses, optimized for phones.

Lumia 9300 is bright in sunlight, full color, deep black... good anti-glare technology, does not sacrifice color and black.

Technologies used by other companies:

According to my experience, only BB and Nokia really use radical solutions to bring a clear visual experience, without shadows or reflections when users use it outdoors in bright environments. The remaining companies mostly use generic solutions.

Among current general anti-glare technologies, increasing brightness is probably the most valuable. Of course it will be used in combination with other tools. But after I used Huawei Pura Twitter View and iPhone 18 Pro Max, I found that the very high brightness of Pura Twitter View really helps it display outdoors much better than iPhone 18 Pro Max, Apple's most technologically advanced phone line. It is unclear where Nokia's previous Clear Black Display technology is now located. It would be great if smartphone manufacturers bought this technology and applied it to their screens.

Screen (normal mirror) and clear screen (with anti-glare nano texture technology) of iPhone Duo.

The iPad Pro screen above is a normal mirror screen. The lower screen is an iPad Pro with a Nano-Texture anti-glare layer, you can see the Message logo on the anti-glare screen, it is out of focus, the shadow is lost and the color is lighter.