[DoingIsLearning]

> If matte was so much better, wouldn't there be a market for matte overlays for smartphones?

If I put the query "antiglare matte protector" on ebay I get an offering of 49000 results of different matte screen covers for phones/tablets/laptops etc. Would that 'after purchase' offer exist if everyone loved the glossy screen experience, like you do?

[dTal]

Fair enough. I retract that sentence.

There is a tradeoff, to be sure. The same property that allows glossy screens to reject sunlight better - preservation of high angular frequency - causes a visible signal (reflections of objects). This signal is more easily disentangled from the image on the screen than a uniform raising of the noise floor, but some no doubt find it more distracting.