The armour state (its health) shown on screen is based on the maximum armour health possible which is diamond, it should be based on the current equipped armour maximum (relative).
On the screenshots I wear almost full health leather armour, yet the armour health bar is not even half filled... this leads to confusion on the actual armour health which the bar is supposed to show.
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Even more, it's a misunderstanding of what the armor bar is telling you. The armor bar does not indicate how much /durability/ your armour has remaining, but how much /damage reduction/ your current armour is providing. Those are different things, and independent. So a full suit of leather gives a total damage reduction of about 24%, from memory, whereas full diamond armour gives 80% reduction. But a full suit of diamond amrour with one use left per piece does still provide 80% protection until it has been used up.
Yes, the wording was bad, I was indeed referring to the durability. It just seemed odd that in one screen I got about 30-40% of "damage reduction" and the other gave me 90+% "durability"... It's true that the damage reduction stat is interesting, but it might just as well be in the wiki since it's constant.
This is not a bug, but a feature request, please post it in http://www.minecraftforum.net/forum/1-suggestions/