Planning to buy a smartphone?
Can't decide which model?
Perhaps we'll go through one of the major aspect here to help you narrow down, the screen. It's almost certain nowadays that your only connection with the world in this era is your phone display. So it makes sense that you would like a phone with a display that you will be "in love" with. Not forgetting that smartphones these days do cost some substantial hard-earned money!
Two existing mainstream technologies for smartphone displays are LCD and OLED. Their advanced variants in those gadgets are IPS-LCD, such as in Apple’s iPhone 4, and Super AMOLED, such as in the Samsung Galaxy S.
LCD has been around since 1972 and is a technology that is very mature, without much production and supply issues.
On the other hand, OLED is a very much new technology having its first commercial device in early 2000s. A lot of the companies that were producing OLED screens, such as Sony, or Toshiba, have currently shelved their R&D and production plans due to cost-cutting and global economic situations. Thus Samsung is becoming the OLED industry market leader. The Koreans hold 98% of the world’s Active Matrix OLED (AMOLED) market in 2010.
On paper, OLED has all the advantages to get you excited, when compared to LCD:
Low power consumption
Brighter
Higher contrast ratio
High and stable color gamut
Faster response times
Wider viewing angles
Wider operational temperatures
You would ask: "It's so good, why are not all cellphones fitted with it? "
Apart from cost and supply issues, well, what most reviews did not show is mostly summed up in the chart below....
What the chart above says is, if your smartphone activities involve a lot of white background, a phone with OLED screen might have shorter battery life than one with LCD.
Other shortcomings that are specific to Samsung Galaxy S Super AMOLED is the picture appears less sharp, especially when reading text, because the PenTile OLEDs have only 2 sub-pixels per pixel, instead of the 3 that are used in most displays. The Super AMOLED also exhibits a blueish tint when showing white.
All in all, if you admire videos and photos with true blacks and high contrast during playback on smartphone and would not mind the shorter battery life, then AMOLED / Super AMOLED is what you would want !
Lastly, watch the video after the jump to gauge for yourself, the amazing true blacks of Samsung Galaxy S AMOLED vs. iPhone 4 Retina screen.
Other shortcomings that are specific to Samsung Galaxy S Super AMOLED is the picture appears less sharp, especially when reading text, because the PenTile OLEDs have only 2 sub-pixels per pixel, instead of the 3 that are used in most displays. The Super AMOLED also exhibits a blueish tint when showing white.
All in all, if you admire videos and photos with true blacks and high contrast during playback on smartphone and would not mind the shorter battery life, then AMOLED / Super AMOLED is what you would want !
Lastly, watch the video after the jump to gauge for yourself, the amazing true blacks of Samsung Galaxy S AMOLED vs. iPhone 4 Retina screen.
