I see the new iPhone 3G display has a warmer and more reasonable color temperature of ~6900 Kelvin (K) instead of the original iPhone’s ~8300K. Thank goodness. The original device was way too cool, and much cooler than any natural or common artificial lighting. Daylight averages 5000K and interior lighting averages somewhere around 3500K. I wish all digital devices were in the 4000-5000K range. If they were, the viewing experience across devices would be easier on the eye and color matching would be improved.
I think the reports of the firmware update changing the color temp are misinformed as it is unlikely that such an update would make that change. The new color temp is surely due to the new backlite light source hardware which, in an industry-wide trend, are moving to warmer color temps to get closer to natural daylight. The super cool, blueish LCDs that have been so prevalent over the past 5 years will hopefully become a thing of the past. Warmer displays are critical for print-to-screen matching and more accurate color viewing
Here’s a quick test: compare the whites on your iPhone (or any other phone) and compare that to a white piece of paper. It’s important that they be reasonably close for fairly accurate color viewing and print to screen matching. The iPhone 3G does this better than the devices before it and when combined with Safari’s color managed browser, the color quality is stunningly good, even without display calibration. And no, there aren’t any iPhone display calibrators yet and I’d say they are unlikely to come with the quality being so good out of the box.
Another fun test is to look at a photo of yourself (from your website, facebook, whatever) on an iPhone and other phones. The differences between an ATT iPhone and a Sprint Treo for example are amazingly different. This tests not only test 1) the quality of the display, but also 2) the browsers ability to manage color and 3) the network’s compression levels effect upon the images.
I say don’t worry about these silly reviews that complain about display yellowing. The new display may be yellow relative to the old display but the old was just too blue relative to any ambient light that we live in.
The word from this very demanding and picky user is that the color and image quality on the new iPhone is shockingly good and otherwise unsurpassed for a handheld device.