Sony's White Magic screens stuck at 4 inches

Sony's White Magic screens stuck at 4 inches
Sony planning bigger White Magic screens

Sony has explained to TechRadar why its flagship White Magic screen technology was not used on the high end Sony Xperia S device.

The new display (found on the Sony Xperia P) uses a new method of pixel powering to allow much greater visibility in direct sunlight, and questions were raised over why the technology wasn't used in the flagship device.


A Sony spokesperson told us it was simply a limitation of size and the company's desire to preserve the user experience:

"We're always looking at how we can take our technology to the next level, but we can't use White Magic in a bigger screen just yet.

"We could physically use it [on the Xperia S], but basically the pixels too far apart [to offer the correct level of picture quality on a larger device]."

Beyond brightness

"We don't want to say we just have the brighter screen; we want to offer great pictures and great contrast to make content look great, and that's the thing were playing about with.

"However, we are investigating ways to improve the technology, as we always want to optimise for future products."

So it seems that while the likes of the Xperia S won't ever get the next generation of screen capabilities from the development team, we might be seeing HD versions of White Magic displays in the near future.

Gareth Beavis
Formerly Global Editor in Chief

Gareth has been part of the consumer technology world in a career spanning three decades. He started life as a staff writer on the fledgling TechRadar, and has grown with the site (primarily as phones, tablets and wearables editor) until becoming Global Editor in Chief in 2018. Gareth has written over 4,000 articles for TechRadar, has contributed expert insight to a number of other publications, chaired panels on zeitgeist technologies, presented at the Gadget Show Live as well as representing the brand on TV and radio for multiple channels including Sky, BBC, ITV and Al-Jazeera. Passionate about fitness, he can bore anyone rigid about stress management, sleep tracking, heart rate variance as well as bemoaning something about the latest iPhone, Galaxy or OLED TV.