When you buy a new smartphone, what do you look for? Camera, RAM, internal storage and many other settings. One thing that many customers ignore is Display. And some of them who consider the screen when buying, only check the resolution. What they forget is that the type of screen technology is much more important than the resolution of the screen itself.
So in this article, I will not only explain the technology used behind the screens, but also what is the best option for you.
So there are two screens you’ll see today on smartphones:
- LCD screen
- AMOLED display
1. LCD screen:
LCD comes in two types: IPS and TFT. The most used is IPS. It stands for In-Plane Switching. You’d find IPS screens on most iPhones.
Polarized lights are used in the IPS. Two color filters are also used in IPS Display, horizontal and vertical filter. This polarized light is then passed through these filters to control brightness and also to turn each pixel on and off. For each pixel, there is a use of 2 transistors. You’ll see better sharpness and clarity in IPS since the pixels are close together. But the drawback of IPS is that all pixels are backlit regardless of whether the device is turned on. Even if it is black, which affects the contrast and blackness. Also, the viewing angles are not good in IPS compared to AMOLED.
2. AMOLED screen:
AMOLED stands for Active Matrix Organic LED. As the name says, AMOLED has an active matrix of OLED. When an electrical current is passed through these OLEDs, they generate light. Now these OLED pixels are integrated with the transistor matrix and this transistor works like a switch to control the individual pixels. This is what helps devices make the decision to turn individual pixels on and off.
Now let’s compare both and see which one is better.
Since AMOLED produces light from individual pixels, the brightness level on the screen is lower compared to LCD. But in Super AMOLED, which was seen in Samsung’s Galaxy S5, it can produce the same level of brightness as the LCD screen. Also, colors on AMOLED look much better than on LCD due to the naturally higher saturation.
If power consumption is considered, AMOLED consumes less power as compared to LCD. This is because on LCD all backlight is on, while AMOLED produces all light, one black pixel is off and consumes less power.
Another advantage of LCD over AMOLED is that you don’t have to worry about burn-in on your screen. AMOLED still struggles with this issue but on LCD you can leave any image no matter how long and you won’t see weird shapes on your screen but sadly this is not the case with AMOLED.
So which one is better? I’d say LCD might be a better option but it’s nothing special while on the other hand AMOLED is moving forward and Super AMOLED has great color and brightness levels to match LCD.
Therefore, good quality AMOLED displays are a better option and LCDs do the job as well.
