Now that Apple’s media event for the third-generation iPad is official for March 7, all eyes will be on the company to unveil a higher resolution display. But one thing that all tablets and smartphones continually have to fight is Mother Nature -- and specifically, that giant yellow ball we know as the Sun.

DisplayMate Technologies Corporation has just published two new articles which turn the spotlight quite literally on how our modern mobile devices fare in bright light. For their latest tests, DisplayMate president Dr. Ray Soneira pitted four tablets and four smartphones against bright ambient lighting to see which ones crack -- or rather, fade out -- under the pressure.

“Tablets and Smartphones are all used under a very wide range of ambient lighting conditions that are frequently much brighter than for other displays -- like laptops, desktops, and HDTVs,” Dr. Ray writes. “The screens reflect a considerable amount of the surrounding light, which washes out the images you are trying to see. The differences in display brightness and reflectance between models results in large differences in their screen readability, visibility and picture quality, especially under brighter ambient lighting. We demonstrate those differences visually by photographing them inside a laboratory Integrating Hemisphere using a powerful light source under a wide range of lighting levels.”

For the first shoot-out, DisplayMate chose four of the most popular tablets: Apple’s iPad 2 (shown above), Amazon’s Kindle Fire, Motorola’s Xoom and the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. While all of the tablets fared well at 0 lux (i.e., absolute darkness), things started to get interesting around 1,000 lux with bright indoor lighting, where the Kindle Fire and Xoom started to wash out. While the iPad 2 and Galaxy Tab 10.1 held their own even at 1,000 lux, all of the tablet displays were significantly degraded by 5,000 lux, representing a moderate overcast sky or direct sunlight in heavy shade.

On the smartphone front, Dr. Ray pitted the iPhone 4 against three Android handsets: The HTC Desire, Motorola Droid X and Samsung Galaxy S. The HTC and Moto phones started to wash out at only 1,000 lux, while the iPhone 4 and Samsung models maintained image quality even around 5,000 lux -- and even put in a valiant effort at 40,000 lux, the equivalent of indirect outdoor sunlight.

Not surprisingly, Apple’s iPhone 4 and iPad 2 came out on top, along with the Samsung Galaxy S and Galaxy Tab 10.1. The Kindle Fire, HTC and Motorola devices came in at the opposite end of the scale, with the HTC Desire dead last, with “by far the poorest performance.” The Amazon and Moto devices exhibited “noticeable diagonal crosshatch patterns from the touchscreen conductors.”

Now that the test results are in, is there any hope for improvement as new devices are released? DisplayMate Technologies says yes, with advanced scientific lab tests and analysis, including “advanced specular reflectance and diffuse reflectance spectral analysis of displays, cover glass, optical layers, and screen protectors.” Here’s hoping Apple has done their homework for the next iPad.

Be sure to follow the links above to read the full results for each shoot-out!

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