I have not seen any detailed comments on how the outdoors screen visibilty is doing with the new firmware… Anyone?
I agree that the screen is a bit brighter with .29, however… I took my 4gb Clip outside today, and I really would not say that the issue is resolved. Still too much reflection to allow for easy use in bright conditions. Like many have said in this forum, I do not find this to be a big issue.
Personally, this goes in the category of things that I do not care much about in the context of the Clip. I wanted an ultracompact, great sounding player with lots of memory and a screen (which I use more in the context of loading files and at the gym).
Having said all that, I think it is fair to say that it was a usability mistake (although maybe not a marketing one, silver looks cool) to make the screen so reflective. My hope is that Sansa will abandon that coating from here on out; I don’t see how any amount of brightness enhancement could fix the problem.
I also didn’t notice any significant difference. I don’t have a 1/2GB to compare and I didn’t bother trying to A/B the old and new firmware. But I did check out the brightness after the update, and if it is brighter at all, it’s certainly not a big difference. Based on the earlier descriptions of the proposed fix, I kind of expected to crank it up and go “wow that’s bright!”, but it was more like “huh, I guess it’s brighter?”
So I think it is possible that the brightness fix didn’t make it in, or if it did, it didn’t turn out as expected. In any case, I don’t think the new FW is going to make any significant difference in full sunlight readability. For me it’s not an issue, but I expect others might be disappointed.
Even so, this is still a really fantasic FW update, so thank you Sandisk!
You may get a little more brightness at the MAX setting. Not all the OLEDs will show the same amount of improvement, but on average there is an improvement.
