Buying a phone is becoming harder and harder these days. There are so many different options on smartphones that it is hard to keep up with all the latest technology. The screens on these devices are easily the most important part of modern day devices. There are several different technologies behind these screens: AMOLED, LCD, IPS, or TFT and i will explain what some of these terms mean and explain the differences.

These days, mobile display technology is firmly split into two camps, the AMOLED and LCD crowds and you really only have these two choices of screens when you are buying a smartphone or tablet. Both are based on quite different underlying technologies, and many of you probably can’t tell the difference between the two screen types, but both technologies have inherent strengths and weaknesses. LCD has been around for a while now, but AMOLED phones are gaining popularity thanks to Samsung, Meizu and other manufacturers. There isn’t a clear winner at this point in time, so here’s a look at both.

Let’s find out if really there’s a noticeable difference between these two display technologies, if there is what sort of differences we can expect, and if the company marketing hype is to be believed.

AMOLED:
General Explanation: AMOLED stands for Active-Matrix Organic Light-Emitting Diode, but you can think of this as “the super colorful screen”. AMOLED technology is widely used for smartphones because of their gorgeous color reproduction abilities and very deep blacks. These screens don’t need a backlight, as each pixel is able to produce its own light when it needs to. This makes blacks look amazing when viewing a picture or video, because the pixels do not have a to provide light at all, rather than LCD displays where the backlight bleeds through and you get a dark grey color where there should be black.

Technical Explanation: AMOLED, although to be a little broader we should probably start with a little background about OLED technology in general. It’s hidden in the name, but the key component in these display types is a Light Emitting Diode (LED). Electronics hobbyists will no doubt have played around with these little lights before, but in a display panel these are shrunk down dramatically and arranged in red, green and blue clusters to create an individual pixel that can reproduce white light and various colors. The arrangement of these subpixels can alter the performance of the displays slightly.

The O part in OLED stands for organic. Simply put, there are a series of thin organic material films placed between two conductors in each LED, which is then used to produce light when a current is applied.

Finally, the AM part in AMOLED stands in for Active Matrix, rather than a passive matrix technology. This tells us how each little OLED is controlled. In a passive matrix, a complex grid system is used to control individual pixels, where integrated circuits control a charge sent down each column or row. But this is rather slow and can be imprecise. Active Matrix systems attach a thin film transistor (TFT) and capacitor to each LED. This way, when a row and column is activated to access a pixel, the capacitor at the correct pixel can retain its charge in between refresh cycles, allowing for faster and more precise control.

One other term you will encounter is Super AMOLED, which is Samsung’s marketing term for a display that incorporates the capacitive touchscreen right into the display, instead of it being a separate layer on top of the display. This makes the display thinner.

The major benefits from OLED type displays comes from the high level of control that can be exerted over each pixel. Pixels can be switched completely off, allowing for deep blacks and a high contrast ratio. Being able to dim and turn off individual pixels also saves on power. The lack of other layers on top of the LEDs means that the maximum amount of light reaches the display surface, resulting in brighter images with better viewing angles.

The use of LEDs also means that these displays can be very thin, making them ideal for mobile devices. Furthermore, the lack of a rigid backlight and innovations in flexible plastic substrates has already produced early generation flexible OLED based displays, which are very promising for wearables and creating new form factors for other gadgets.

Pros: Viewing angles tend to look better on AMOLED displays as there's no backlight leaking. Contrast ratios are also much better. When viewing your phone in the dark, you won’t even be able to tell that your phone is on, if for example, a video goes to a black scene. This allows the phone to save power when using dark-themed apps or if you use a dark wallpaper.

Cons: AMOLED displays do have their drawbacks however, as they are more expensive to produce, and are not as sharp as LCD displays when looking up close. This is because AMOLED uses a different subpixel arrangement than LCD displays do, which makes individual pixels more noticeable. AMOLED displays are not better at handling white screens, as a result the white's appear a bit Yellowish.

LCD:
General Explanation: LCD stands for Liquid Crystal Displays. These are commonly used on televisions, computer monitors and more, but continues to advance further every year. These displays offer the most realistic colors you can find on a screen, but they won’t offer as great of contrast ratio as you would find on an AMOLED screen (deep blacks, brighter colors). LCD panels require an extra layer of glass than AMOLED displays, and use a backlight for brightness, which can lead to light bleeds leaking through the display or awkward looking viewing angles.

Some common terms you will find associated with LCD displays are TFT and IPS. TFT stands for Thin Film Transistor, which makes the wiring of LCD screens more efficient by reducing the number of electrodes per pixel. One benefit of TFT displays is an improved image quality over standard LCD screens. Another popular LCD technology is In-Plane Switching, or IPS, which improves upon TFT by offering much wider viewing angles and color reproduction on LCD screens. IPS screens are able to achieve this by keeping all the liquid crystals parallel to the screen.

Technical Explanation: LCD or Liquid Crystal Display reproduces colors quite differently to AMOLED. Rather than using individual light emitting components, LCD displays rely on a backlight as the sole light source. Although multiple backlights can be used across a display to help save on power consumption, but this is more of a requirement in larger TVs.

Scientifically speaking, there’s no individual white light wavelength. White light is a mixture of all other visible colors in the spectrum. Therefore, LCD backlights have to create a pseudo white light as efficiently as possible, which can then be filtered into different colors in the liquid crystal element. Most LCDs rely on a blue LED backlight which is filtered through a yellow phosphor coating, producing a pseudo white light.

The really complicated part comes next, as light is then polarised and passed through a crystal element. The crystal can be twisted to varying degrees depending on the voltage applied to it, which adjusts the angle of the polarized light. The light then passes through a second polarized filter that is offset by 90 degrees compared with the first, which will attenuate the light based on its angle. Finally, a red, green, or blue color filter is applied to this light, and these sub-pixels are grouped into pixels to adjust colors across the display.

All combined, this allows a LCD display to control the amount of RGB light reaching the surface by culling a backlight, rather than producing colored light in each pixel. Just like AMOLED, LCD displays can either be active or passive matrix devices, and you’ll often see active TFT LCD displays in mobile phones.

Pros: LCD displays are better at producing natural and more realistic colors and handling white screens as well, so they appear less “yellow” than AMOLED screens. LCD displays are cheaper and are used in most of the devices currently.

Cons: Contrast Ratios in LCD displays doesn't appear as much good as AMOLED displays. In LCD displays, you wll notice the backlight even when viewing dark images. The viewing angle's are also not as great as AMOLED displays as you would notice  a backlight leaking through.

While buying a smartphone, which display type would you opt for?

Buying a phone is becoming harder and harder these days. There are so many different options on smartphones that it is hard to keep up with all the latest technology. The screens on these devices are easily the most important part of modern day devices. There are several different technologies behind these screens: AMOLED, LCD, IPS, or TFT and i will explain what some of these terms mean and explain the differences.

These days, mobile display technology is firmly split into two camps, the AMOLED and LCD crowds and you really only have these two choices of screens when you are buying a smartphone or tablet. Both are based on quite different underlying technologies, and many of you probably can’t tell the difference between the two screen types, but both technologies have inherent strengths and weaknesses. LCD has been around for a while now, but AMOLED phones are gaining popularity thanks to Samsung, Meizu and other manufacturers. There isn’t a clear winner at this point in time, so here’s a look at both.

Let’s find out if really there’s a noticeable difference between these two display technologies, if there is what sort of differences we can expect, and if the company marketing hype is to be believed.

AMOLED:
General Explanation: AMOLED stands for Active-Matrix Organic Light-Emitting Diode, but you can think of this as “the super colorful screen”. AMOLED technology is widely used for smartphones because of their gorgeous color reproduction abilities and very deep blacks. These screens don’t need a backlight, as each pixel is able to produce its own light when it needs to. This makes blacks look amazing when viewing a picture or video, because the pixels do not have a to provide light at all, rather than LCD displays where the backlight bleeds through and you get a dark grey color where there should be black.

Technical Explanation: AMOLED, although to be a little broader we should probably start with a little background about OLED technology in general. It’s hidden in the name, but the key component in these display types is a Light Emitting Diode (LED). Electronics hobbyists will no doubt have played around with these little lights before, but in a display panel these are shrunk down dramatically and arranged in red, green and blue clusters to create an individual pixel that can reproduce white light and various colors. The arrangement of these subpixels can alter the performance of the displays slightly.

The O part in OLED stands for organic. Simply put, there are a series of thin organic material films placed between two conductors in each LED, which is then used to produce light when a current is applied.

Finally, the AM part in AMOLED stands in for Active Matrix, rather than a passive matrix technology. This tells us how each little OLED is controlled. In a passive matrix, a complex grid system is used to control individual pixels, where integrated circuits control a charge sent down each column or row. But this is rather slow and can be imprecise. Active Matrix systems attach a thin film transistor (TFT) and capacitor to each LED. This way, when a row and column is activated to access a pixel, the capacitor at the correct pixel can retain its charge in between refresh cycles, allowing for faster and more precise control.

One other term you will encounter is Super AMOLED, which is Samsung’s marketing term for a display that incorporates the capacitive touchscreen right into the display, instead of it being a separate layer on top of the display. This makes the display thinner.

The major benefits from OLED type displays comes from the high level of control that can be exerted over each pixel. Pixels can be switched completely off, allowing for deep blacks and a high contrast ratio. Being able to dim and turn off individual pixels also saves on power. The lack of other layers on top of the LEDs means that the maximum amount of light reaches the display surface, resulting in brighter images with better viewing angles.

The use of LEDs also means that these displays can be very thin, making them ideal for mobile devices. Furthermore, the lack of a rigid backlight and innovations in flexible plastic substrates has already produced early generation flexible OLED based displays, which are very promising for wearables and creating new form factors for other gadgets.

Pros: Viewing angles tend to look better on AMOLED displays as there's no backlight leaking. Contrast ratios are also much better. When viewing your phone in the dark, you won’t even be able to tell that your phone is on, if for example, a video goes to a black scene. This allows the phone to save power when using dark-themed apps or if you use a dark wallpaper.

Cons: AMOLED displays do have their drawbacks however, as they are more expensive to produce, and are not as sharp as LCD displays when looking up close. This is because AMOLED uses a different subpixel arrangement than LCD displays do, which makes individual pixels more noticeable. AMOLED displays are not better at handling white screens, as a result the white's appear a bit Yellowish.

LCD:
General Explanation: LCD stands for Liquid Crystal Displays. These are commonly used on televisions, computer monitors and more, but continues to advance further every year. These displays offer the most realistic colors you can find on a screen, but they won’t offer as great of contrast ratio as you would find on an AMOLED screen (deep blacks, brighter colors). LCD panels require an extra layer of glass than AMOLED displays, and use a backlight for brightness, which can lead to light bleeds leaking through the display or awkward looking viewing angles.

Some common terms you will find associated with LCD displays are TFT and IPS. TFT stands for Thin Film Transistor, which makes the wiring of LCD screens more efficient by reducing the number of electrodes per pixel. One benefit of TFT displays is an improved image quality over standard LCD screens. Another popular LCD technology is In-Plane Switching, or IPS, which improves upon TFT by offering much wider viewing angles and color reproduction on LCD screens. IPS screens are able to achieve this by keeping all the liquid crystals parallel to the screen.

Technical Explanation: LCD or Liquid Crystal Display reproduces colors quite differently to AMOLED. Rather than using individual light emitting components, LCD displays rely on a backlight as the sole light source. Although multiple backlights can be used across a display to help save on power consumption, but this is more of a requirement in larger TVs.

Scientifically speaking, there’s no individual white light wavelength. White light is a mixture of all other visible colors in the spectrum. Therefore, LCD backlights have to create a pseudo white light as efficiently as possible, which can then be filtered into different colors in the liquid crystal element. Most LCDs rely on a blue LED backlight which is filtered through a yellow phosphor coating, producing a pseudo white light.

The really complicated part comes next, as light is then polarised and passed through a crystal element. The crystal can be twisted to varying degrees depending on the voltage applied to it, which adjusts the angle of the polarized light. The light then passes through a second polarized filter that is offset by 90 degrees compared with the first, which will attenuate the light based on its angle. Finally, a red, green, or blue color filter is applied to this light, and these sub-pixels are grouped into pixels to adjust colors across the display.

All combined, this allows a LCD display to control the amount of RGB light reaching the surface by culling a backlight, rather than producing colored light in each pixel. Just like AMOLED, LCD displays can either be active or passive matrix devices, and you’ll often see active TFT LCD displays in mobile phones.

Pros: LCD displays are better at producing natural and more realistic colors and handling white screens as well, so they appear less “yellow” than AMOLED screens. LCD displays are cheaper and are used in most of the devices currently.

Cons: Contrast Ratios in LCD displays doesn't appear as much good as AMOLED displays. In LCD displays, you wll notice the backlight even when viewing dark images. The viewing angle's are also not as great as AMOLED displays as you would notice  a backlight leaking through.

While buying a smartphone, which display type would you opt for?