When you buy a new smartphone, what do you look for? Camera, RAM, internal storage and many other settings. One thing that many clients 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 far more important than the screen resolution 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 on smartphones today:
- LCD screen
- AMOLED screen
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.
In the IPS, polarized lights are used. Two color filters are also used in IPS Display, horizontal and vertical filter. This polarized light then passes 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 as the pixels are close together. But the drawback of IPS is that all pixels are backlit no matter if the device is turned on. Even if it’s black, which affects 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 its name says, AMOLED has an active matrix of OLEDs. When an electrical current passes through these OLEDs, they generate light. Now these OLED pixels are integrated with the transistor array and this transistor works as a switch to control the individual pixels. This is what helps devices make the decision to turn individual pixels on and off.
Now let us 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 LCD. Also, colors on AMOLED look much better than LCD due to the naturally higher saturation.
If power consumption is considered, AMOLED consumes less power compared to LCD. This is because in LCD all the backlight is on, while AMOLED produces all the 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 will not see weird shapes on your screen but sadly this is not the case with AMOLED.
So which one is better? I would say LCD might be a better option but there is nothing special about it whereas on the other hand AMOLED is moving forward and Super AMOLED has excellent color and brightness levels to match LCD.
So good quality AMOLED screens are a better choice and LCDs get the job done too.
