use smartphone lcd as tft display pricelist

Thanks for the display technology development, we have a lot of display choices for our smartphones, media players, TVs, laptops, tablets, digital cameras, and other such gadgets. The most display technologies we hear are LCD, TFT, OLED, LED, QLED, QNED, MicroLED, Mini LED etc. The following, we will focus on two of the most popular display technologies in the market: TFT Displays and Super AMOLED Displays.

TFT means Thin-Film Transistor. TFT is the variant of Liquid Crystal Displays (LCDs). There are several types of TFT displays: TN (Twisted Nematic) based TFT display, IPS (In-Plane Switching) displays. As the former can’t compete with Super AMOLED in display quality, we will mainly focus on using IPS TFT displays.

OLED means Organic Light-Emitting Diode. There are also several types of OLED, PMOLED (Passive Matrix Organic Light-Emitting Diode) and AMOLED (Active Matrix Organic Light-Emitting Diode). It is the same reason that PMOLED can’t compete with IPS TFT displays. We pick the best in OLED displays: Super AMOLED to compete with the LCD best: IPS TFT Display.

If you have any questions about Orient Display displays and touch panels. Please feel free to contact: Sales Inquiries, Customer Service or Technical Support.

TFT and LCD are two different types of electronic displays used in computers, TVs, and smartphones. However, they are not as different as you might think. Let’s start with what those abbreviations mean.

A key weakness of TFT panels is that they do not have wide viewing angles, so they are better suited to displays that require you to view head-on. This can be a good or a bad thing, depending on your needs. For example, the narrower viewing angles mean people sitting or standing around you are less likely to be able to snoop on what you are doing on your mobile phone.

TFT panels are cheaper to manufacture, but they also consume much more power than regular LCD panels. Lastly, they have poorer sunlight visibility. You will find TFT displays on feature phones, smart feature phones, and low-end Android phones.

LCD: This is an abbreviation for “liquid crystal display”. It is a flat panel display with wider viewing angles compared to TFT. They also have lower power consumption and so deliver much better battery life than their TFT counterparts.

In summary, while TFT panels have some distinct advantages, they fall short in other areas and so their use have been limited to low end phones, from feature phones to entry-level Android phones. Plastic feels inferior to touch than glass, which means that TFT screens don’t get to feature much on mid-range and premium devices.

As we see improvements to TFT technology, we will see them deployed on higher end devices over time. In 2022, Samsung used TFT displays in its mid-range Galaxy A13 and Galaxy A23. Perhaps those improvements are happening already.

For now, LCD is the most widely used display type in modern smartphones. At the very top end, we have premium flagships using OLED and AMOLED displays.

TFT displays are higher quality components than regular LCD displays. TFT displays are sharper, brighter, and refresh better than LCD panels. However, they have weaknesses that make them unsuitable for higher end phones.

AMOLED panels have all the benefits of OLED screens, which means they are better than LCD panels. They are expensive though, and so are used in high-end smartphones only.

These are improved versions of AMOLED screens and were developed by Samsung. They are also thinner. The name explains it: think of Super AMOLED as AMOLED on steroids.

Founder of MobilityArena. Yomi’s journey in mobile started in 2001. Besides obsessing over mobile phones, he also started creating WAP sites (early mobile-friendly websites created with WML). He began writing about phones in 2004 and has been at it since then. He has owned over 200 devices, from Symbian, Palm, PocketPC/Windows Mobile, BlackBerry/BB10, webOS, Windows Phone, Firefox, Ubuntu Touch, to Android, iOS, and KaiOS operating systems.Share This Article

There’s nothing more annoying than having to work on a mobile phone that has a cracked screen. Forget the unsightly scar, trying to make sense of what you’re looking at or reading is a real nuisance. It doesn’t matter how hard you try to keep your phone free of damage, sometime or the other, misfortune is bound to strike. That’s the thing about gadgets like this - as tough as they seem, sometimes, even the slightest drop can cause major damage. You cannot undo something like this, but what you can do is save yourself the trouble of buying a brand new phone. You’ll find a cheaper alternative in mobile displays.

For every phone model, there are more than a couple of mobile displays to choose from. When it comes to the display type of these mobile accessories, the popular ones are haptic/tactile touchscreen, IPS LCD, LCD, super AMOLED, and TFT LCD mobile displays. These displays are pretty easy to replace - position the film on your phone’s screen until you’re satisfied with the placing, before gently peeling the layer off.

Planning a road trip with your family? We assume things are going to get pretty tiring once everyone has gotten over the initial excitement of the whole adventure. Well, just because you’re locked in a car, it doesn’t mean you have to cage yourself to feelings of boredom. May be you can get social online or watch a couple of funny clips on your phone. And in a situation like this, mobile displays that double as stands prove to be really useful. Some of these displays feature a 3D video enlarged screen that’s also foldable. The foldable handle of these screens allow you to place your mobile phone at a comfortable angle so your eyes are not irritated, and you can make the most of the whole experience. Compact in size, many of these mobile displays are designed to fit different models of smartphones; like iPhones or mobile phones from brands like Samsung, Nokia, and Micromax.

From HTC, Nokia, Apple, Sony, and Samsung, to Ample Wings, Stylus, Aptroid, and Online for Good, online shopping is your destination for the latest and the best models of mobile displays. This is also the only shopping medium that allows you to check out products, compare their prices in India, and read up a couple of reviews so you can make an informed buying decision.

The world of smartphones has been busy for the past few months. There have been numerous revolutionary launches with groundbreaking innovations that have the capacity to change the course of the smartphone industry. But the most important attribute of a smartphone is the display, which has been the focus for all prominent players in the mobile phone industry this year.

Samsung came up with its unique 18:5:9 AMOLED display for the Galaxy S8. LG picked up its old trusted IPS LCD unit for the G6’s display. These display units have been familiar to the usual Indian smartphone buyer. Honor, on the other hand, has just unveiled the new Honor 8 Pro for the Indian market that ships with an LTPS LCD display. This has led to wonder how exactly is this technology different from the existing ones and what benefits does it give Honor to craft its flagship smartphone with. Well, let’s find out.

The LCD technology brought in the era of thin displays to screens, making the smartphone possible in the current world. LCD displays are power efficient and work on the principle of blocking light. The liquid crystal in the display unit uses some kind of a backlight, generally a LED backlight or a reflector, to make the picture visible to the viewer. There are two kinds of LCD units – passive matrix LCD that requires more power and the superior active matrix LCD unit, known to people as Thin Film Transistor (TFT) that draws less power.

The early LCD technology couldn’t maintain the colour for wide angle viewing, which led to the development of the In-Plane Switching (IPS) LCD panel. IPS panel arranges and switches the orientation of the liquid crystal molecules of standard LCD display between the glass substrates. This helps it to enhance viewing angles and improve colour reproduction as well. IPS LCD technology is responsible for accelerating the growth of the smartphone market and is the go-to display technology for prominent manufacturers.

The standard LCD display uses amorphous Silicon as the liquid for the display unit as it can be assembled into complex high-current driver circuits. This though restricts the display resolution and adds to overall device temperatures. Therefore, development of the technology led to replacing the amorphous Silicon with Polycrystalline Silicon, which boosted the screen resolution and maintains low temperatures. The larger and more uniform grains of polysilicon allow faster electron movement, resulting in higher resolution and higher refresh rates. It also was found to be cheaper to manufacture due to lower cost of certain key substrates. Therefore, the Low-Temperature PolySilicon (LTPS) LCD screen helps provide larger pixel densities, lower power consumption that standard LCD and controlled temperature ranges.

The AMOLED display technology is in a completely different league. It doesn’t bother with any liquid mechanism or complex grid structures. The panel uses an array of tiny LEDs placed on TFT modules. These LEDs have an organic construction that directly emits light and minimises its loss by eradicating certain filters. Since LEDs are physically different units, they can be asked to switch on and off as per the requirement of the display to form a picture. This is known as the Active Matrix system. Hence, an Active Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diode (AMOLED) display can produce deeper blacks by switching off individual LED pixels, resulting in high contrast pictures.

The honest answer is that it depends on the requirement of the user. If you want accurate colours from your display while wanting it to retain its vibrancy for a longer period of time, then any of the two LCD screens are the ideal choice. LTPS LCD display can provide higher picture resolution but deteriorates faster than standard IPS LCD display over time.

An AMOLED display will provide high contrast pictures any time but it too has the tendency to deteriorate faster than LCD panels. Therefore, if you are after greater picture quality, choose LTPS LCD or else settle for AMOLED for a vivid contrast picture experience.

Smartphone display is the main thing a user sees when buying a new mobile device. This is because the display screen happens to interact with the software and do various things. However, the display screen has evolved and today humans have reached the milestone of making flexible screens. There are quite a lot of display types used in mobile phones.

TFT LCDs are supposedly the most common type of display units found in mobile devices. TFT LCD gives you good image quality and higher resolutions compared to earlier generation LCD displays however, in narrow viewing angles and in direct light or sunlight there’s poor visibility.

IPS LCDs are the next level of TFT LCD displays providing wider viewing angles and lower power consumption which leads to much-improved battery life. IPS-LCDs obviously are costlier than normal TFT LCD and hence located only on higher-end smartphones. A higher resolution (640 x 960 pixels) of IPS LCD is found n Apple iPhone 4 which is called Retina Display because of its brilliant picture quality.

Capacitive touchscreen technology happens to have a layer of glass laced with a transparent conductor (like indium tin oxide). When touched by the human body (finger), an interruption is created in the screens electrostatic field (which is measurable as a change in capacitance) and this, in turn, is detected by the phone’s processor or chip and which in turn will instruct the phone’s operating system to trigger an event or action accordingly.

This happens to be the newest technology in for displays of mobiles and monitors. As far as the OLED tech is concerned you will find an organic material which is placed between two conducting sheets (an anode and a cathode), which are also put between a glass top plate (seal) and a glass-bottom plate (substrate). The time an n electric pulse passes or is applied between the two conducting sheets, electro-luminescent light is produced directly from the organic material sandwiched between.

AMOLED is a different type of OLED displays for mobiles and are fast gaining popularity in the top-end smartphone segment. AMOLED screens can show us many things that we are present on OLED display like brilliant color reproduction, lightweight, good battery life, proper brightness, etc.

Super AMOLED displays take upon the AMOLED displays and is primarily developed by Samsung. Super AMOLED is constructed with touch sensors placed on the display itself, as opposed to creating a separate touch-sensitive layer (as in capacitive touch screen). This makes it the thinnest display technology on the market. Super AMOLED displays are currently only present in Samsung devices but more phones could use the technology in the future.

When we purchase a new smartphone we go through a list of specifications that includes the processor, software, cameras, display type, battery, etc. The display of the smartphone is something which has always been a concern for people. And smartphone technology has advanced so much in the past decade that you get several display technology options to choose from.

Today, a smartphone is not just a means to send and receive calls and texts. It has become a general necessity, so choosing the right technology should be your main priority. Coming back to displays, as we said there are plenty of display types available right now.

Two of the main contenders for display technologies that are widely available are AMOLED and LCD. Here in this article, we will be comprising AMOLED vs LCD and find out which one is better for you.

Starting with the AMOLED first, it is a part of the OLED display technology but with some more advanced features. To completely know about it must understand its all three components. The first one is LED, “Light Emitting Diode”. Then we have “O” which stands for organic and makes the OLED.

It actually means that organic material is placed with two conductors in each LED, which helps to produce the light. And the “AM” in AMOLED means Active Matrix, it has the capability to increase the quality of a pixel.

The AMOLED display is similar to the OLED in various factors like high brightness and sharpness, better battery life, colour reproduction, etc. AMOLED display also has a thin film transistor, “TFT” that is attached to each LED with a capacitor.

TFT helps to operate all the pixels in an AMOLED display. This display might have a lot of positives but there are a few negatives too let’s point both of them out.

It comes with individual LEDs so, the pixels can be turned on and off individually. This will show you true black colours, as the pixels on the black part of the image will be turned off.

A major issue with these displays is of burning of pixels. After showing a specific image or colour for a longer period of time, the pixel can get burned. And if there is a problem with a single pixel it will affect the entire display.

Low outdoor visibility, usually the AMOLED Displays are quote not bright in direct sunlight and outdoor readability could be a problem for some devices but average screen brightness.

The LCD stands for “Liquid Crystal Display”, and this display produces colours a lot differently than AMOLED. LCD display uses a dedicated backlight for the light source rather than using individual LED components.

The LCD displays function pretty simply, a series of thin films, transparent mirrors, and some white LED lights that distributes lights across the back of the display.

As we have mentioned, an LCD display always requires a backlight and also a colour filter. The backlight must have to pass through a thin film transistor matrix and a polarizer. So, when you see it, the whole screen will be lit and only a fraction of light gets through. This is the key difference comparing AMOLED vs LCD and this is what differentiates these two display technologies.

The LCD displays are cheaper compared to the AMOLED as there is only one source of light which makes it easier to produce. Most budget smartphones also use LCD displays.

LCD displays have bright whites, the backlight emits lots of light through pixels which makes it easy to read in outdoors. It also shows the “Accurate True to Life” colours, which means it has the colours that reflect the objects of the real world more accurately than others.

LCDs also offer the best viewing angle. Although it may depend on the smartphone you have. But most high-quality LCD displays support great viewing angles without any colour distortion or colour shifting.

The LCD displays can never show the deep blacks like AMOLED. Due to the single backlight, it always has to illuminate the screen making it impossible to show the deep blacks.

The LCDs are also thicker than other displays because of the backlight as it needs more volume. So, LCD smartphones are mostly thicker than AMOLED ones.

Both of these display technologies have their own Pros and Cons. Taking them aside everything ends up with the user preferences as people might have different preferences among different colours and contrast profiles. However, a few factors might help you to decide which one fits perfectly for you.

Let’s start with the pricing. Most AMOLED display smartphones always cost more than an LCD smartphone. Although the trend is changing a bit. But still, if you want to get a good quality AMOLED display you have to go for the flagship devices.

The colors are also very sharp and vibrant with the AMOLED displays. And they look much better than any LCD display. The brightness is something where LCDs stood ahead of the AMOLED display. So using an LCD display outdoors gives much better results.

The last thing is battery consumption, and there is no one near the AMOLED displays in terms of battery. As of now, all smartphones feature a Dark Mode and most of the apps and UI are dark black with a black background. This dark UI on smartphones doesn’t require any other light, it gives the AMOLED displays a boost in battery performance.

Looking at all these factors and comparing AMOLED vs LCD displays, the AMOLED displays are certainly better than the LCDs. Also, the big display OEMs, like Samsung and LG are focusing more the OLED technologies for their future projects. So, it makes sense to look out for AMOLED displays. That being said, if we see further enhancements in the LCD technology in terms of battery efficiency and more, there is no point to cancel them at this moment.

The world of smartphones has been busy for the past few months. There have been numerous revolutionary launches with groundbreaking innovations that have the capacity to change the course of the smartphone industry. But the most important attribute of a smartphone is the display, which has been the focus for all prominent players in the mobile phone industry this year.

Samsung came up with its unique 18:5:9 AMOLED display for the Galaxy S8. LG picked up its old trusted IPS LCD unit for the G6’s display. These display units have been familiar to the usual Indian smartphone buyer. Honor, on the other hand, has just unveiled the new Honor 8 Pro for the Indian market that ships with an LTPS LCD display. This has led to wonder how exactly is this technology different from the existing ones and what benefits does it give Honor to craft its flagship smartphone with. Well, let’s find out.

The LCD technology brought in the era of thin displays to screens, making the smartphone possible in the current world. LCD displays are power efficient and work on the principle of blocking light. The liquid crystal in the display unit uses some kind of a backlight, generally a LED backlight or a reflector, to make the picture visible to the viewer. There are two kinds of LCD units – passive matrix LCD that requires more power and the superior active matrix LCD unit, known to people as Thin Film Transistor (TFT) that draws less power.

The early LCD technology couldn’t maintain the colour for wide angle viewing, which led to the development of the In-Plane Switching (IPS) LCD panel. IPS panel arranges and switches the orientation of the liquid crystal molecules of standard LCD display between the glass substrates. This helps it to enhance viewing angles and improve colour reproduction as well. IPS LCD technology is responsible for accelerating the growth of the smartphone market and is the go-to display technology for prominent manufacturers.

The standard LCD display uses amorphous Silicon as the liquid for the display unit as it can be assembled into complex high-current driver circuits. This though restricts the display resolution and adds to overall device temperatures. Therefore, development of the technology led to replacing the amorphous Silicon with Polycrystalline Silicon, which boosted the screen resolution and maintains low temperatures. The larger and more uniform grains of polysilicon allow faster electron movement, resulting in higher resolution and higher refresh rates. It also was found to be cheaper to manufacture due to lower cost of certain key substrates. Therefore, the Low-Temperature PolySilicon (LTPS) LCD screen helps provide larger pixel densities, lower power consumption that standard LCD and controlled temperature ranges.

The AMOLED display technology is in a completely different league. It doesn’t bother with any liquid mechanism or complex grid structures. The panel uses an array of tiny LEDs placed on TFT modules. These LEDs have an organic construction that directly emits light and minimises its loss by eradicating certain filters. Since LEDs are physically different units, they can be asked to switch on and off as per the requirement of the display to form a picture. This is known as the Active Matrix system. Hence, an Active Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diode (AMOLED) display can produce deeper blacks by switching off individual LED pixels, resulting in high contrast pictures.

The honest answer is that it depends on the requirement of the user. If you want accurate colours from your display while wanting it to retain its vibrancy for a longer period of time, then any of the two LCD screens are the ideal choice. LTPS LCD display can provide higher picture resolution but deteriorates faster than standard IPS LCD display over time.

An AMOLED display will provide high contrast pictures any time but it too has the tendency to deteriorate faster than LCD panels. Therefore, if you are after greater picture quality, choose LTPS LCD or else settle for AMOLED for a vivid contrast picture experience.

Smartphone display is the main thing a user sees when buying a new mobile device. This is because the display screen happens to interact with the software and do various things. However, the display screen has evolved and today humans have reached the milestone of making flexible screens. There are quite a lot of display types used in mobile phones.

TFT LCDs are supposedly the most common type of display units found in mobile devices. TFT LCD gives you good image quality and higher resolutions compared to earlier generation LCD displays however, in narrow viewing angles and in direct light or sunlight there’s poor visibility.

IPS LCDs are the next level of TFT LCD displays providing wider viewing angles and lower power consumption which leads to much-improved battery life. IPS-LCDs obviously are costlier than normal TFT LCD and hence located only on higher-end smartphones. A higher resolution (640 x 960 pixels) of IPS LCD is found n Apple iPhone 4 which is called Retina Display because of its brilliant picture quality.

Capacitive touchscreen technology happens to have a layer of glass laced with a transparent conductor (like indium tin oxide). When touched by the human body (finger), an interruption is created in the screens electrostatic field (which is measurable as a change in capacitance) and this, in turn, is detected by the phone’s processor or chip and which in turn will instruct the phone’s operating system to trigger an event or action accordingly.

This happens to be the newest technology in for displays of mobiles and monitors. As far as the OLED tech is concerned you will find an organic material which is placed between two conducting sheets (an anode and a cathode), which are also put between a glass top plate (seal) and a glass-bottom plate (substrate). The time an n electric pulse passes or is applied between the two conducting sheets, electro-luminescent light is produced directly from the organic material sandwiched between.

AMOLED is a different type of OLED displays for mobiles and are fast gaining popularity in the top-end smartphone segment. AMOLED screens can show us many things that we are present on OLED display like brilliant color reproduction, lightweight, good battery life, proper brightness, etc.

Super AMOLED displays take upon the AMOLED displays and is primarily developed by Samsung. Super AMOLED is constructed with touch sensors placed on the display itself, as opposed to creating a separate touch-sensitive layer (as in capacitive touch screen). This makes it the thinnest display technology on the market. Super AMOLED displays are currently only present in Samsung devices but more phones could use the technology in the future.

When we purchase a new smartphone we go through a list of specifications that includes the processor, software, cameras, display type, battery, etc. The display of the smartphone is something which has always been a concern for people. And smartphone technology has advanced so much in the past decade that you get several display technology options to choose from.

Today, a smartphone is not just a means to send and receive calls and texts. It has become a general necessity, so choosing the right technology should be your main priority. Coming back to displays, as we said there are plenty of display types available right now.

Two of the main contenders for display technologies that are widely available are AMOLED and LCD. Here in this article, we will be comprising AMOLED vs LCD and find out which one is better for you.

Starting with the AMOLED first, it is a part of the OLED display technology but with some more advanced features. To completely know about it must understand its all three components. The first one is LED, “Light Emitting Diode”. Then we have “O” which stands for organic and makes the OLED.

It actually means that organic material is placed with two conductors in each LED, which helps to produce the light. And the “AM” in AMOLED means Active Matrix, it has the capability to increase the quality of a pixel.

The AMOLED display is similar to the OLED in various factors like high brightness and sharpness, better battery life, colour reproduction, etc. AMOLED display also has a thin film transistor, “TFT” that is attached to each LED with a capacitor.

TFT helps to operate all the pixels in an AMOLED display. This display might have a lot of positives but there are a few negatives too let’s point both of them out.

It comes with individual LEDs so, the pixels can be turned on and off individually. This will show you true black colours, as the pixels on the black part of the image will be turned off.

A major issue with these displays is of burning of pixels. After showing a specific image or colour for a longer period of time, the pixel can get burned. And if there is a problem with a single pixel it will affect the entire display.

Low outdoor visibility, usually the AMOLED Displays are quote not bright in direct sunlight and outdoor readability could be a problem for some devices but average screen brightness.

The LCD stands for “Liquid Crystal Display”, and this display produces colours a lot differently than AMOLED. LCD display uses a dedicated backlight for the light source rather than using individual LED components.

The LCD displays function pretty simply, a series of thin films, transparent mirrors, and some white LED lights that distributes lights across the back of the display.

As we have mentioned, an LCD display always requires a backlight and also a colour filter. The backlight must have to pass through a thin film transistor matrix and a polarizer. So, when you see it, the whole screen will be lit and only a fraction of light gets through. This is the key difference comparing AMOLED vs LCD and this is what differentiates these two display technologies.

The LCD displays are cheaper compared to the AMOLED as there is only one source of light which makes it easier to produce. Most budget smartphones also use LCD displays.

LCD displays have bright whites, the backlight emits lots of light through pixels which makes it easy to read in outdoors. It also shows the “Accurate True to Life” colours, which means it has the colours that reflect the objects of the real world more accurately than others.

LCDs also offer the best viewing angle. Although it may depend on the smartphone you have. But most high-quality LCD displays support great viewing angles without any colour distortion or colour shifting.

The LCD displays can never show the deep blacks like AMOLED. Due to the single backlight, it always has to illuminate the screen making it impossible to show the deep blacks.

The LCDs are also thicker than other displays because of the backlight as it needs more volume. So, LCD smartphones are mostly thicker than AMOLED ones.

Both of these display technologies have their own Pros and Cons. Taking them aside everything ends up with the user preferences as people might have different preferences among different colours and contrast profiles. However, a few factors might help you to decide which one fits perfectly for you.

Let’s start with the pricing. Most AMOLED display smartphones always cost more than an LCD smartphone. Although the trend is changing a bit. But still, if you want to get a good quality AMOLED display you have to go for the flagship devices.

The colors are also very sharp and vibrant with the AMOLED displays. And they look much better than any LCD display. The brightness is something where LCDs stood ahead of the AMOLED display. So using an LCD display outdoors gives much better results.

The last thing is battery consumption, and there is no one near the AMOLED displays in terms of battery. As of now, all smartphones feature a Dark Mode and most of the apps and UI are dark black with a black background. This dark UI on smartphones doesn’t require any other light, it gives the AMOLED displays a boost in battery performance.

Looking at all these factors and comparing AMOLED vs LCD displays, the AMOLED displays are certainly better than the LCDs. Also, the big display OEMs, like Samsung and LG are focusing more the OLED technologies for their future projects. So, it makes sense to look out for AMOLED displays. That being said, if we see further enhancements in the LCD technology in terms of battery efficiency and more, there is no point to cancel them at this moment.

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In recent years, smartphone displays have developed far more acronyms than ever before with each different one featuring a different kind of technology. AMOLED, LCD, LED, IPS, TFT, PLS, LTPS, LTPO...the list continues to grow.

As if the different available technologies weren"t enough, component and smartphone manufacturers adopt more and more glorified names like "Super Retina XDR" and "Dynamic AMOLED", which end up increasing the potential for confusion among consumers. So let"s take a look at some of these terms used in smartphone specification sheets and decipher them.

There are many display types used in smartphones: LCD, OLED, AMOLED, Super AMOLED, TFT, IPS and a few others that are less frequently found on smartphones nowadays, like TFT-LCD. One of the most frequently found on mid-to-high range phones now is IPS-LCD. But what do these all mean?

LCD means Liquid Crystal Display, and its name refers to the array of liquid crystals illuminated by a backlight, and their ubiquity and relatively low cost make them a popular choice for smartphones and many other devices.

LCDs also tend to perform quite well in direct sunlight, as the entire display is illuminated from behind, but does suffer from potentially less accurate colour representation than displays that don"t require a backlight.

Within smartphones, you have both TFT and IPS displays. TFT stands for Thin Film Transistor, an advanced version of LCD that uses an active matrix (like the AM in AMOLED). Active matrix means that each pixel is attached to a transistor and capacitor individually.

The main advantage of TFT is its relatively low production cost and increased contrast when compared to traditional LCDs. The disadvantage of TFT LCDs is higher energy demands than some other LCDs, less impressive viewing angles and colour reproduction. It"s for these reasons, and falling costs of alternative options, that TFTs are not commonly used in smartphones anymore.Affiliate offer

IPS technology (In-Plane Switching) solves the problem that the first generation of LCD displays experience, which adopts the TN (Twisted Nematic) technique: where colour distortion occurs when you view the display from the side - an effect that continues to crop up on cheaper smartphones and tablets.

The PLS (Plane to Line Switching) standard uses an acronym that is very similar to that of IPS, and is it any wonder that its basic operation is also similar in nature? The technology, developed by Samsung Display, has the same characteristics as IPS displays - good colour reproduction and viewing angles, but a lower contrast level compared to OLED and LCD/VA displays.

According to Samsung Display, PLS panels have a lower production cost, higher brightness rates, and even superior viewing angles when compared to their rival, LG Display"s IPS panels. Ultimately, whether a PLS or IPS panel is used, it boils down to the choice of the component supplier.

This is a very common question after "LED" TVs were launched, with the short answer simply being LCD. The technology used in a LED display is liquid crystal, the difference being LEDs generating the backlight.

One of the highlights from TV makers at the CES 2021 tradeshow, mini-LED technology seemed far removed from mobile devices until Apple announced the 2021 iPad Pro. As the name implies, the technique is based on the miniaturization of the LEDs that form the backlight of the screen — which still uses an LCD panel.

Despite the improvement in terms of contrast (and potentially brightness) over traditional LCD/LED displays, LCD/mini-LEDs still divide the screen into brightness zones — over 2,500 in the case of the iPad and 2021 "QNED" TVs from LG — compared to dozens or hundreds of zones in previous-generation FALD (full-array local dimming) displays, on which the LEDs are behind the LCD panel instead of the edges.

However, for even greater contrast control, done individually at each point on the screen, it is necessary to go to panels equipped with microLED technologies – still cost-prohibitive in 2021 – or OLED, which until recently were manufactured on a large scale only in sizes for smartphones or televisions.Affiliate offer

AMOLED stands for Active Matrix Organic Light-Emitting Diode. While this may sound complicated it actually isn"t. We already encountered the active matrix in TFT LCD technology, and OLED is simply a term for another thin-film display technology.

OLED is an organic material that, as the name implies, emits light when a current is passed through it. As opposed to LCD panels, which are back-lit, OLED displays are "always off" unless the individual pixels are electrified.

This means that OLED displays have much purer blacks and consume less energy when black or darker colours are displayed on-screen. However, lighter-coloured themes on AMOLED screens use considerably more power than an LCD using the same theme. OLED screens are also more expensive to produce than LCDs.

Because the black pixels are "off" in an OLED display, the contrast ratios are also higher compared to LCD screens. AMOLED displays have a very fast refresh rate too, but on the downside are not quite as visible in direct sunlight as backlit LCDs. Screen burn-in and diode degradation (because they are organic) are other factors to consider.Affiliate offer

OLED stands for Organic Light Emitting Diode. An OLED display is comprised of thin sheets of electroluminescent material, the main benefit of which is they produce their own light, and so don"t require a backlight, cutting down on energy requirements. OLED displays are more commonly referred to as AMOLED displays when used on smartphones or TVs.

As we"ve already covered, the AM part of AMOLED stands for Active Matrix, which is different from a Passive Matrix OLED (P-OLED), though these are less common in smartphones.

Super AMOLED is the name given by Samsung to its displays that used to only be found in high-end models but have now trickled down to more modestly specced devices. Like IPS LCDs, Super AMOLED improves upon the basic AMOLED premise by integrating the touch response layer into the display itself, rather than as an extra layer on top.

As a result, Super AMOLED displays handle sunlight better than AMOLED displays and also require less power. As the name implies, Super AMOLED is simply a better version of AMOLED. It"s not all just marketing bluster either: Samsung"s displays are regularly reviewed as some of the best around.

The latest evolution of the technology has been christened "Dynamic AMOLED". Samsung didn"t go into detail about what the term means, but highlighted that panels with such identification include HDR10+ certification that supports a wider range of contrast and colours, as well as blue light reduction for improved visual comfort.

In the same vein, the term "Fluid AMOLED" used by OnePlus on its most advanced devices basically highlights the high refresh rates employed, which results in more fluid animations on the screen.Affiliate offer

The technology debuted with the obscure Royole FlexPai, equipped with an OLED panel supplied by China"s BOE, and was then used in the Huawei Mate X (pictured above) and the Motorola Razr (2019), where both also sport BOE"s panel - and the Galaxy Flip and Fold lines, using the component supplied by Samsung Display.Affiliate offer

Resolution describes the number of individual pixels (or points) displayed on the screen and is usually presented for phones by the number of horizontal pixels — vertical when referring to TVs and monitors. More pixels on the same display allow for more detailed images and clearer text.

To make it easier to compare different models, brands usually adopt the same naming scheme made popular by the TV market with terms like HD, FullHD and UltraHD. But with phones adopting a wide range of different screen proportions, just knowing that is not enough to know the total pixels displayed on the screen.Common phone resolutions

But resolution in itself is not a good measure for image clarity, for that we need to consider the display size, resulting in the pixel density by area measured by DPI/PPI (dots/points per inch).Affiliate offer

Speaking of pixel density, this was one of Apple"s highlights back in 2010 during the launch of the iPhone 4. The company christened the LCD screen (LED, TFT, and IPS) used in the smartphone as "Retina Display", thanks to the high resolution of the panel used (960 by 640 pixels back then) in its 3.5-inch display.

The name coined by Apple"s marketing department is applied to screens which, according to the company, the human eye is unable to discern the individual pixels from a normal viewing distance. In the case of iPhones, the term was applied to displays with a pixel density that is greater than 300 ppi (dots per inch).

Since then, other manufacturers have followed suit, adopting panels with increasingly higher resolutions. While the iPhone 12 mini offers 476 dpi, models like Sony Xperia 1 boast a whopping 643 dpi.

With the iPhone 11 Pro, another term was introduced to the equation: "Super Retina XDR". Still using an OLED panel (that is supplied by Samsung Display or LG Display), the smartphone brings even higher specs in terms of contrast - with a 2,000,000:1 ratio and brightness level of 1,200 nits, which have been specially optimized for displaying content in HDR format.

As a kind of consolation prize for iPhone XR and iPhone 11 buyers, who continued relying on LCD panels, Apple classified the display used in the smartphones with a new term, "Liquid Retina". This was later applied also to the iPad Pro and iPad Air models, with the name defining screens that boast a high range and colour accuracy, at least based on the company"s standards.

Nit, or candela per square meter in the international system (cd/m²), is a unit of measurement of luminance, i.e. the intensity of light emitted. In the case of smartphone screens and monitors in general, such a value defines just how bright the display is - the higher the value, the more intense the light emitted by the screen.

The result is smoother animations on the phone, both during regular use and in games, compared to screens that have a 60 Hz refresh rate which remains the standard rate in the market when it comes to displays.

Originally touted to be a "gimmick" in 2017, with the launch of the Razer Phone, the feature gained more and more momentum in due time, even with a corresponding decrease in battery life. In order to make the most of this feature, manufacturers began to adopt screens with variable refresh rates, which can be adjusted according to the content displayed - which is 24 fps in most movies, 30 or 60 fps in home video recordings, and so forth.

The same unit of measurement is used for the sampling rate. Although similar, the value here represents the number of times per second the screen is able to register touches. The higher the sample rate, the faster the smartphone registers such touches, which results in a faster response time.

To further muddy the alphabet soup that we"ve come across, you will also run into other less common terms that are often highlighted in promotional materials for smartphones.

TFT(Thin Film Transistor) - a type of LCD display that adopts a thin semiconductor layer deposited on the panel, which allows for active control of the colour intensity in each pixel, featuring a similar concept as that of active-matrix (AM) used in AMOLED displays. It is used in TN, IPS/PLS, VA/PVA/MVA panels, etc.

LTPS(Low Temperature PolySilicon) - a variation of the TFT that offers higher resolutions and lower power consumption compared to traditional TFT screens, based on a-Si (amorphous silicon) technology.

IGZO(Indium Gallium Zinc Oxide) - a semiconductor material used in TFT films, which also allows higher resolutions and lower power consumption, and sees action in different types of LCD screens (TN, IPS, VA) and OLED displays

LTPO(Low Temperature Polycrystaline Oxide) - a technology developed by Apple that can be used in both OLED and LCD displays, as it combines LTPS and IGZO techniques. The result? Lower power consumption. It has been used in the Apple Watch 4 and the Galaxy S21 Ultra.

LTPO allows the display to adjust its refresh rate, adapting dynamically to the content shown. Scrolling pages can trigger the fastest mode for a fluid viewing, while displaying a static image allows the phone to use a lower refresh rate, saving the battery.

Among televisions, the long-standing featured technology has always been miniLED - which consists of increasing the number of lighting zones in the backlight while still using an LCD panel. There are whispers going around that smartphones and smartwatches will be looking at incorporating microLED technology in their devices soon, with it being radically different from LCD/LED displays as it sports similar image characteristics to that of OLEDs.

A microLED display has one light-emitting diode for each subpixel of the screen - usually a set of red, green, and blue diodes for each dot. Chances are it will use a kind of inorganic material such as gallium nitride (GaN).

By adopting a self-emitting light technology, microLED displays do not require the use of a backlight, with each pixel being "turned off" individually. The result is impressive: your eyes see the same level of contrast as OLED displays, without suffering from the risk of image retention or burn-in of organic diodes.

On the other hand, the use of multiple diodes for each pixel poses a challenge in terms of component miniaturization. For example, a Full HD resolution has just over two million pixels (1,920 x 1,080 dots), which requires 6 million microscopic LEDs using a traditional RGB (red, green, and blue) structure.

This is one of the reasons that explain the adoption of such technology to date remains rather limited in scope. You will see them mainly in large screens of 75 to 150 inches only, which enable 4K resolution (3,840 x 2,160 resolution, which is close to 8.3 million pixels or 24.8 million RGB subpixels). This is a huge number of pixels to look at!

Another thing to be wary of is the price - at 170 million Korean won (about US$150,330 after conversion), that is certainly a lot of money to cough up for a 110-inch display.

Each technology has its own advantages and disadvantages but in recent years, OLED screens have gained prominence, especially with the adoption of the component in high-end flagship smartphones. It gained an even greater degree of popularity after the launch of the iPhone X, which cemented the position of OLED panels in the premium segment.

As previously stated, OLED/AMOLED screens have the advantage of a varied contrast level, resulting from individual brightness control for the pixels. Another result of this is the more realistic reproduction of black, as well as low power consumption when the screen shows off dark images - which has also helped to popularize dark modes on smartphones.

In addition, the organic diodes that give OLED screens their name can lose their ability to change their properties over time, and this happens when the same image is displayed for a long period of time. This problem is known as "burn-in", tends to manifest itself when higher brightness settings are applied for long periods of time.

While that is a very real possibility, it is not something that affects most users, who often confuse burn-in with a similar problem - image retention, which is temporary and usually resolves itself after a few minutes.

In the case of LCD displays, the main advantage lies in the low manufacturing cost, with dozens of players in the market offering competitive pricing and a high production volume. Some brands have taken advantage of this feature to prioritize certain features - such as a higher refresh rate - instead of adopting an OLED panel, such as the Xiaomi Mi 10T.

Latest Samsung Touch Screen Mobile Phones (Dec 2022): Phones like Samsung Galaxy A04e 128GB, Samsung Galaxy A04e and Samsung Galaxy A04e 64GB were launched in the last 30 days.