iPhone 3GS vs. iPhone 4 - high resolution video comparison

Watch in HD. A picture is worth a thousand words; how much is a video worth? With my $12 webcam locked and loaded, I take this up close and personal shot of two $300 iPhones showing the vast difference the new screen on the iPhone 4 makes.

You'll be able to tell which one is which for sure (we'll see just how well YouTube processes it in the end), but just in case you need a little help, the 3GS is the one shown first, then the iPhone 4.

The things I notice right away:

1) Text is crisp.
2) The screen door effect is gone, so everything on the screen appears solid.
3) The screen is flush with the glass once again (this was an oldie but goodie, throwback to the original iPhone where the glass was also stuck to the screen)
4) The screen is the deepest black I've ever seen on a screen, OLED included

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• iphone 3gs
• iphone 4
• high resolution
• retina display
• iphone 3g screen
• electronics
• howto

[SuperNova923]

Wow awesome video. Could you do another one of your gaming tests on the iPhone 4 to see how good the battery life is. I still have iPhone 3GS do you think its worth the upgrade?

[flurffmeister]

@SuperNova923 Battery life testing is forthcoming! I do believe it is a fantastic upgrade from the 3GS. It's faster, feels more solid, the gorgeous screen beats anything else out there and anything for the near future...and the cameras just totally rock.

They should have saved "magical and revolutionary" for the iPhone 4 instead of the iPad.

[sccerstr09]

Amazing video! I could really tell a difference! How did you get your camera that close?

[flurffmeister]

@sccerstr09 A small box with the webcam pointed down in my typical birds eye fashion. It turns out the webcam (RF-WEB2C) is really good at autofocus macro shots. Now if only the framerate were higher, it'd be perfect.

[pabloenis]

i was impressed by the first one, but then came the iphone 4! ^^ amazing!

[flurffmeister]

@pabloenis Totally! The 3GS is nothing to sneeze at, for sure, but the v4 roxors the boxor.

[1AHMAD1MAS]

The difference in screen resolution can be clearly seen on the contacts icon, iPhone 4 has more clear alphabets on it, gotta have it!

[Ashtiany2]

iPhone 4 is not OLED. It's SLCD.

[flurffmeister]

@stanjerd no, the iPhone 4 uses micro SIM, so it came with a different card and they switched my AT&T account over to that SIM card in the Apple store. The SIM card in my old iPhone got deactivated (hence "No Service")

[stanjerd]

wow heaps better....did you put your old sim card in the new phone?