Over at PCmag, they’ve been doing some Android testing and discovered something interesting.  Using a Motorola Droid as the testing device, Dr. Raymond Soneira of DisplayMate Technology Corporation tested Droid 2.0.01 and found that the picture gallery application  offered 24-bit color depth. So far so good. He then upgraded the same Droid to 2.1 and tested the gallery again. This time the gallery application downgraded images to 16-bit color depth.  Here is Google’s statement on the cause:
“The Gallery app in Android 2.0.1 is different from the Gallery app in Android 2.1. Google developed Gallery in Android 2.0.1, which uses 24-bit color rendered using 2Dtechnology. On the other hand, Cooliris created Gallery in Android 2.1, which uses 16-bit textures rendered using 3D technology. We don’t have anything specific to share at this time regarding the Gallery app in future versions.”
The good news is Cooliris is working on a fix for this, even though you likely never noticed a difference. To read more about the display testing and see some neat charts, head over to DisplayMate.
[Source PCMag, DisplayMate]
