Originally Posted By: Dignan
I wanted to make one last point about screens. Screen size is not as important to me as two other dimensions: bezel width and distance from the glass. The second factor, which I think Android manufacturers and Apple have only just recently fixed, is how far away from the glass the LCD is. This is especially noticeable on my Nexus One, where it looks like my screen is in a museum in a glass-encased exhibit. When I hold my phone at an angle with the screen on, it looks like nearly 2mm of depth from the glass. The 3GS is nowhere near as bad, but you can still see it.


This is just lamination; the first iPhone was laminated (LCM laminated to touch glass laminated to front glass). 3G and 3GS went to air gap - between the LCM and the touch panel, the touch was still laminated to the front glass. 4 and 4S are laminated again.

Lamination is more expensive, because if it fails you have to throw out a known good touch panel and LCM as well as the front glass, but it's thinner and looks waaaay nicer - the image appears to be on the front surface of the glass.

The actual distance from the pixels to the top of the front glass isn't really so different, it just looks it due to the refraction at each boundary.