Smartphone Displays Explained - IPS vs. Amoled !

What's the most important component of a Smartphone ? Well, different people may have different answers for this question. Some may say it's the SOC inside as it's executing all the required logical processes. Some may say it's the Firmware as it's giving all the required instructions to the SOC. So, there'll be many more answers coming our way and actually there's no perfect answer to this. But all I can say is that, a Smartphone needs all the essential componants to function properly. If one of the essential componants are missing from a smartphone, it'll fail to function.

But, can you survive with a Smartphone that has all the components but, doesn't comes with a Display ? Defininitely not as, the Display is the main connection between the User & the System of the Smartphone. It's 2017 and today we use our Smartphones Display to do or I may say, to interact with almost all of our Daily Virtual Stuff right ? So, I can't say that the Display is the most important componant of our smartphones but, it's definitely one of the Vital Essentials that a smartphone must have.

So, you have definitely heard about two types of Displays that can be found in your Smartphone & in almost every smartphone out there. These are known as IPS & Amoled Displays. So, what are these things ? Well, in this article let me explain what these things are & how they work. I'll focus more at how these things work as that'll be a more interesting for you guys. So without wasting more time, let's come to the actual topic now.

So, what is IPS Display then ? IPS stands for "In Plane Switching" & it is a type of LCD display that has much better Viewing Angles & Color Accuracy compared to the older TN (Twisted Nematic) panels. Now just like any traditional LCD display, IPS also uses the Liquid Crystal technology. So, in this case Liquid Crystals are hit by a backlight (in this case LED backlight) to produce various colors on top of the screen.

Now, IPS has it's own advantages & disadvantages. The main advantages include previously mentioned points as Better Viewing Angles & Color Accuracy over the TN panels. In general IPS displays are much brighter & currently can go all upto 2000 nits of brightness.

In the main downsides, we do see higher Power Consumption & also, Black color levels are never even near to perfect as there's a white backlighting behind the panel itself. So, Blacks look soft with a whitish glow on top of it. So, what's the solution then ? Well, AMOLED displays have solved these problems a lot. So, let's talk about the AMOLED technonology next.  

As you can guess, the name AMOLED comes from OLED that stands for "Organic Light Emitting Diode". How ever, "AMOLED stands for Active Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diode". This Active Matrix system result in much better screen response times compared to a older & more traditional Passive Matrix system. Now, the working process of OLED or AMOLED displays are completely different from the IPS Displays. In this case there is no backlighting behind the panel. So, from where is the Light coming from then ? Well, in this case all the indivisual pixels have their indivisual lights. So, to show colors on the screen those pixels lit up as required.

The main advantages with AMOLED Displays include far better Color Accuracy (Nearly 97% of Adobe RGB & Over 100 % sRGB color spaces) compared to IPS ones. Blacks are also perfect as to show a perticular area dark, the perticular pixels on that area need to be turned off. So, when there is no light at all, that becomes a perfect Darkness or perfect Black if you want to call that.

Now, you probably have heard about Super AMOLED Displays as well. So, this is a step up or a minor upgrade to the AMOLED technology where by removing a touch sensitive layer, the panel & the screen can be placed much closer. This leaves almost no gaps & that omitted layer gets integrated directly into the screen itself. It reflects way less sunlight compared to a normal AMOLED Display so, in direct sunlight Super AMOLED provides a way better viewing experience. It's not a huge deal though, it's more like a minor improvement over the normal AMOLED Displays.

The main downside of the AMOLED technology is that, Screenburns are pretty common with these kind of panels. So, sometimes you may notice permanent burned colors in a perticular segemnt of the screen. Also, The brightness levels are not as high as the IPS panels. The max brightness that was achieved with an OLED panel till now was around 1000 nits.

Now, Display types are not always the most vital form factor of a Display though. A good 1440P IPS Display with higher PPI count & a brighter Display can perform better than a same size entry level 1080P AMOLED Display in terms of overall viewing experience. For better color accuracy though, AMOLEDs have the lead everytime.

So, that's kinda it. I hope I was able to clear your doubts on the current Smartphone Display Technologies. If you have any other questions, feel free to let me know in the comments section below & I'll catch you with more fresh content really soon.