When you buy a new smartphone, what are you looking for? Camera, RAM, internal storage and many other settings. One thing that many customers ignore is the screen. And some of them who consider the screen when buying, just 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 am not only going to explain the technology used behind the screens, but also what is the best option for you.
So there are two screens that you will see on smartphones today:
- LCD screen
- AMOLED display
1. LCD screen:
The LCD screen comes in two types: IPS and TFT. The most used is IPS. It stands for In-Plane Switching. You will find IPS screens on most iPhones.
Polarized lights are used in IPS. There are also two color filters 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, 2 transistors are used. You will see better sharpness and clarity in IPS as the pixels are very close together. But the downside of IPS is that all the pixels are backlit no matter if the device is turned on. Even if it is black, which affects the contrast and darkness. 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 implies, AMOLED has an active OLED matrix. When an electrical current passes through these OLEDs, they generate light. Now these OLED pixels are integrated with the transistor matrix 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’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 the LCD screen. But in Super AMOLED, which was seen on Samsung’s Galaxy S5, it can produce the same level of brightness as the LCD screen. Also, AMOLED colors look much better than LCD colors due to naturally higher saturation.
When considering power consumption, AMOLED consumes less power compared to LCD screen. This is because on the LCD screen all the backlight is on, while AMOLED is producing all the light, one black pixel is off, which consumes less power.
Another advantage of LCD over AMOLED is that you don’t have to worry about screen wear and tear. AMOLED still struggles with this problem, but on the LCD you can leave any image no matter how long and you won’t see strange shapes on your screen, but this is unfortunately not the case with AMOLED.
So which one is better? I’d say the LCD might be a better option, but there’s nothing special about it, where on the other hand AMOLED is making headway and the Super AMOLED screen has excellent color and brightness levels to match the LCD.
So good quality AMOLED screens are a better option and the LCD screen gets the job done too.