very old pixel display screens supplier

Flat-panel displays are thin panels of glass or plastic used for electronically displaying text, images, or video. Liquid crystal displays (LCD), OLED (organic light emitting diode) and microLED displays are not quite the same; since LCD uses a liquid crystal that reacts to an electric current blocking light or allowing it to pass through the panel, whereas OLED/microLED displays consist of electroluminescent organic/inorganic materials that generate light when a current is passed through the material. LCD, OLED and microLED displays are driven using LTPS, IGZO, LTPO, and A-Si TFT transistor technologies as their backplane using ITO to supply current to the transistors and in turn to the liquid crystal or electroluminescent material. Segment and passive OLED and LCD displays do not use a backplane but use indium tin oxide (ITO), a transparent conductive material, to pass current to the electroluminescent material or liquid crystal. In LCDs, there is an even layer of liquid crystal throughout the panel whereas an OLED display has the electroluminescent material only where it is meant to light up. OLEDs, LCDs and microLEDs can be made flexible and transparent, but LCDs require a backlight because they cannot emit light on their own like OLEDs and microLEDs.

Liquid-crystal display (or LCD) is a thin, flat panel used for electronically displaying information such as text, images, and moving pictures. They are usually made of glass but they can also be made out of plastic. Some manufacturers make transparent LCD panels and special sequential color segment LCDs that have higher than usual refresh rates and an RGB backlight. The backlight is synchronized with the display so that the colors will show up as needed. The list of LCD manufacturers:

Organic light emitting diode (or OLED displays) is a thin, flat panel made of glass or plastic used for electronically displaying information such as text, images, and moving pictures. OLED panels can also take the shape of a light panel, where red, green and blue light emitting materials are stacked to create a white light panel. OLED displays can also be made transparent and/or flexible and these transparent panels are available on the market and are widely used in smartphones with under-display optical fingerprint sensors. LCD and OLED displays are available in different shapes, the most prominent of which is a circular display, which is used in smartwatches. The list of OLED display manufacturers:

MicroLED displays is an emerging flat-panel display technology consisting of arrays of microscopic LEDs forming the individual pixel elements. Like OLED, microLED offers infinite contrast ratio, but unlike OLED, microLED is immune to screen burn-in, and consumes less power while having higher light output, as it uses LEDs instead of organic electroluminescent materials, The list of MicroLED display manufacturers:

Sony produces and sells commercial MicroLED displays called CLEDIS (Crystal-LED Integrated Displays, also called Canvas-LED) in small quantities.video walls.

2015, sold to giantplus and tce photomasks, gen 3 still operated by giantplus, gen 4 line sold to giantplus, equipment sold and line demolished, remainder operated by tce

"Samsung Display has halted local Gen-8 LCD lines: sources". THE ELEC, Korea Electronics Industry Media. August 16, 2019. Archived from the original on April 3, 2020. Retrieved December 18, 2019.

"Business Place Information – Global Operation | SAMSUNG DISPLAY". www.samsungdisplay.com. Archived from the original on 2018-03-26. Retrieved 2018-04-01.

"Samsung Display Considering Halting Some LCD Production Lines". 비즈니스코리아 - BusinessKorea. August 16, 2019. Archived from the original on April 5, 2020. Retrieved December 19, 2019.

Herald, The Korea (July 6, 2016). "Samsung Display accelerates transition from LCD to OLED". www.koreaherald.com. Archived from the original on April 1, 2018. Retrieved April 1, 2018.

Byeonghwa, Yeon. "Business Place Information – Global Operation – SAMSUNG DISPLAY". Samsungdisplay.com. Archived from the original on 2018-03-26. Retrieved 2018-04-01.

www.etnews.com (30 June 2017). "Samsung Display to Construct World"s Biggest OLED Plant". Archived from the original on 2019-06-09. Retrieved 2019-06-09.

However, the Pixels are not particularly known for their cutting-edge hardware — instead, they like to employ software to differentiate themselves, through useful optimizations and nifty features. For displays, the software side is typically limited to calibration and subjective accommodations, so this is where we expect Google to shine in.

Last year, Google sourced their Pixel 3 display from LG while sourcing the Pixel 3 XL display from Samsung. Google continues the same panel sourcing this year, putting an LG display on the Pixel 4 while the Pixel 4 XL is equipped with a Samsung display. Unfortunately, neither phones are using current-generation OLED panels — the Samsung display on the Pixel 4 XL is the same one found on the OnePlus 7 Pro, which is a last-gen Samsung panel, and the Pixel 4 is using the same panel found on the Huawei Mate 30 Pro, which pales in comparison to Samsung"s latest display panels. Samsung"s current-generation display panels promote a new blue emitter material and an improvement in power efficiency and display brightness. Neither Pixel 4 device sees these benefits.

The two sizes also have different display pixel densities: the Pixel 4 has a pixel density of 444 pixels per inch (FHD+), while the larger Pixel 4 XL is sharper at 537 pixels per inch (QHD+). To my eyes, this difference is noticeable when viewing text. While the Google Pixel 4 does appear structurally sharp, I can sometimes make out red and green colors fringed next to text due to the OLED PenTile pixel arrangement. On the other hand, the Google Pixel 4 XL appears perfectly sharp, and I cannot make out color fringing no matter how close I am to the display. However, for most people, the lower resolution on the smaller Pixel 4 should not be an issue.

Google implemented a new dynamic display white balance system in the Pixel 4, called AmbientEQ, which uses the new RGB ambient light sensor to change the white balance of the display closer to the color temperature of the surrounding light. The goal of the feature is to make the display appear more like a naturally-reflective surface, like a piece of paper. The reason for this is that our perception of any given color changes depending on the color temperature of our surrounding environment. For example, the color of white on your smartphone may look significantly colder when viewed under warm, dim ambient lighting of some hipster restaurant. Changing the white balance of your display closer to that of the ambient lighting can help make your phone display appear more "natural" and easy on the eyes, as well as help it appear more consistent between different lighting conditions. The feature is a parallel to Apple"s True Tone feature. However, Google"s AmbientEQ is much more subtle than True Tone, and in my opinion, it is not nearly as effective as True Tone. AmbientEQ is limited between 6300 K and 7450 K display color temperatures, which is much more narrow than True Tone"s range. Google has also previously implemented AmbientEQ in their Home Hub display (now Nest Hub), and it works much better on that than it does on the Pixel 4. Fortunately, we are able to change the behavior of AmbientEQ and shape it to be more responsive to ambient lighting.

One underappreciated aspect of the LG panel in the Pixel 4 is its viewing angles — LG OLEDs have the least color shift on any mobile OLED. Together with AmbientEQ and the Pixels" flat display, the viewing angles really help improve their laminated "papery" appearance since the display doesn"t change colors at different angles. However, I do wish the Pixel 4 had a higher-resolution display, which would further improve the paper illusion.

The viewing angles on the Pixel 4 XL can tint slightly blue at moderate angles. However, it is on-par with the best on Samsung"s latest displays, which hasn"t changed much in the past few generations. I"m interested in knowing if the difference in viewing angles between the two vendors lies within the cavity design of the emitters or with the polarizer stack.

And lastly, Google"s headling new feature for the Pixel 4 is its 90Hz "Smooth Display." Higher refresh rates promote significant improvements in UI fluidity and touch response, and they are looking to become a bigger trend next year in the mobile market. However, no mobile OLED currently supports a variable refresh rate, and I think it is a mistake to implement a higher refresh rate system until variable refresh rate panels become available. For now, high refresh rate mobile OLEDs use discrete display modes for different refresh rates and use software to switch between higher and lower refresh rate display modes to conserve battery. The different display modes each require their own calibration tables, and they"re not likely to perfectly match with each other. These imperfections may be noticed when the display switches from one display mode to another, and Google"s software engineers have acknowledged this as a limitation of this software-based dynamic refresh rate system.

To obtain quantitative color data from the display, we stage device-specific input test patterns to the handset and measure the display’s resulting emission using an X-Rite i1Pro 2 spectrophotometer. The test patterns and device settings we use are corrected for various display characteristics and potential software implementations that can alter our desired measurements.We primarily measure the grayscale at an average pixel level (APL) of 50% with a pattern size of 50% of the display to closely resemble a constant average relative luminance of 50% for a given white point. We derive the display gamma using a least-squares fit on the slope of the luminance readings in log-log space. The grayscale readings are taken at 100%, 64%, 36%, 16%, and 4% magnitude of the maximum display luminance, and averaged to achieve a single reading that is indicative of the overall appearance of the display. These values roughly correlate to the appearance of 100%, 80%, 60%, 40%, and 20% of the brightness of the display, respectively.We now use the color difference metric Δ

normally considers luminance (intensity) error in its computation, since luminance is a necessary component to completely describe color. However, since the human visual system interprets chromaticity and luminance separately, we hold our tests patterns at a constant luminance and do not include the luminance (I/intensity) error in our

values. Furthermore, it is helpful to separate the two errors when assessing a display’s performance because, just like with our visual system, they pertain to different issues with the display. This way we can more thoroughly analyze and understand the performance of a display.Our color targets are based on the ICTCP/ITP color space, which is more perceptually-uniform than the CIE 1976 UCS with improved hue-linearity. Our targets are spaced out roughly even throughout the ITP color space at a reference 100 cd/m2 white level, and colors at 100%, 75%, 50%, and 25% saturation. The colors are measured at 100%, 64%, 36%, 16%, and 4% panel backlight level to assess the color accuracy throughout the display"s intensity range. For OLED displays, these colors are measured at max brightness at the appropriate backlight intensity. This is because OLED displays primarily use P.W.M. to adjust brightness, and even further by lowering current proportions, which is equivalent to rendering at a lower intensity.Δ

, and a PQ signal level of 58% for all its patterns. HDR P3 patterns are spaced out evenly with P3 primaries, a white level of 1,000 cd/m2, and a PQ signal level of 75% for all its patterns. All HDR patterns are tested at an HDR-average 20% APL with a 20% display size window.

The Google Pixel 4 has three different display profiles: Adaptive, Natural, and Boosted. All three profiles share the same white point, the same transfer characteristics, and they all support Android"s color management system.

The Adaptive profile is the default display profile of the Google Pixel 4. It is a color saturation-expanding profile that has increased vibrancy in reds and greens compared to standard sRGB. More precisely, red colors are measured to be about 10% more saturated, while greens are about 20% more saturated. Reds are also shifted slightly orange, while greens appear just a touch yellower. Blue colors receive no boost in saturation, but the adjusted primaries result in slightly lighter blue tones. It targets a standard 2.20 gamma and a D67 (6700 K) white point, like the other two profiles.

On previous Pixel devices, the Adaptive profile did not support color management, but with the Pixel 4, Google has updated the Adaptive profile to support it. The new Adaptive profile now uses Display P3 as its composition color space, instead of sRGB remapped to a wider gamut. This allows the Adaptive profile to finally be consistent between different Pixel displays, and consistent in white point with the Natural and Boosted display profiles. For previous Pixel generations, this was not the case. As a result, both the Google Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL now have visually-identical Adaptive profiles, and the Natural and Adaptive profiles share white points. For color-managed content, the Adaptive profile maintains its rendering intent and renders the color-managed content with increased vibrancy. However, the Adaptive profile clips at P3 primaries, and it will clip high-saturation P3 content.

The Natural profile is the accurate display profile that follows industry standards (although internally targeting a D67 white point). This is the profile to use to get the most accurate colors out of the Google Pixel 4 display.

The Boosted profile is similar to the Natural profile, but it provides a slight boost in total color saturation. Google says that we perceive colors as less vibrant on smaller screens, like phones, which is their basis for the inclusion of this profile.

The Pixel devices have historically been unimpressive when it comes to display brightness. This year is no different. While every other major smartphone maker has made their OLEDs significantly brighter, Google has shown little-to-no progress. Google did manage to increase its newest phones" brightness this year, from about 400 nits up to 450 nits, but it still leaves them as some of the dimmest flagship smartphones in recent years.

The reason Google is so far behind is that they are refusing to incorporate a higher-power brightness state for their system brightness. Furthermore, Google is using last-generation display panels that cannot compete in power efficiency or in rated brightness with Samsung"s latest panels. What"s interesting is that Google has had a higher brightness mode within their phones, which they can tap into during HDR playback (or with root). But for reasons likely related to battery, Google does not allow their phones to use this extra brightness for normal use. Higher brightness modes do require significantly more power to drive — an 800-nit peak brightness state drains significantly more power than twice that of a 400-nit brightness state — but if the competition is able to support higher brightness levels and maintain better battery life than the Pixel devices, then Google is severely falling behind in both departments.

When enabling high brightness mode within the Pixel 4s", their displays approach acceptable levels of brightness. At 600 nits, this ranks the Google Pixel 4 displays competitively with last years" OLEDs in brightness. But in 2019, 600 nits is about the baseline for every major smartphone company, while the best are pushing 800 nits (100% APL). These are simply the limits of Google"s outdated panels, as the same panels found in the Huawei Mate 30 Pro and the OnePlus 7 Pro push the same brightness levels — except those phones actually push those brightness levels in normal use.

As a company that focuses its phone marketing and identity on their camera, Google would benefit its campaign by having a brighter screen. This can help the camera experience by improving the accuracy of the viewfinder. The composition of a photo is a key factor of a good picture, which is aided primarily by what you see in the viewfinder. Google implemented Live HDR+ in the Pixel 4 viewfinder so that what you see before you take a picture looks closer to the picture that is captured and processed. However, during daylight shots, the viewfinder can look washed out if the display can"t get bright enough to accurately reproduce the scene. This is one of the key advantages of the optical viewfinders in SLRs, which shows the scene at the brightness and contrast that your eye would see. One other way that phone makers can improve their camera viewfinders is by using an absolute HDR viewfinder in the camera app, which would map the camera viewfinder on the phone display to the same absolute brightness as the scene.

Last year, the DDIC in the Pixel 3 XL was adjusted to limit its brightness at lower emission levels (APL) to that of full-screen white (100% APL). While this may seem like a crippling move, it"s actually a necessary step for OLEDs so that they can have a consistent gamma calibration. The LG panel in the smaller Pixel 3 had a variable brightness response to APL, and it had an inaccurate and dramatically variant gamma range. Now with the new LG panel in the Pixel 4, it too has its lower emission brightness limited, so it should have significant improvements in gamma calibration. The Samsung panel in the Pixel 4 XL panel continues to retain this characteristic.

Pixel phone displays have also been historically poor at grayscale consistency, often taking on a tint for darker colors and at lower display brightness. The calibration process at the factory can only fix so much, and can even make it worse. A display with a consistent grayscale can typically be attributed to tight OLED production tolerances and a mature fabrication process at the display manufacturing line. Google has a reputation for not providing the best quality control in their phones" hardware, and for good reasons. The main offender has been the LG panels that Google has been using in their phones, and this year it"s a similar story. Google uses an LG panel for the smaller Pixel 4, and while it is a clear improvement over previous generations, it still shows a higher spread in its grayscale compared to some Samsung panels. The Google Pixel 4 XL uses a Samsung panel and clearly shows superior grayscale consistency in our plots above. Compared to the iPhone 11 Pro"s impeccable grayscale plots, however, there is still room for improvement.

Since the Pixel 4s" panels do not have a true variable refresh rate, Google uses separate display modes with different display timings for 60Hz and 90Hz (which is normal for any non-variable refresh rate display). This results in different display characteristics for the two modes, and individual calibration tables are necessary for both modes to appear similar. However, a perfect calibration is pretty much unattainable at mass production. For OLEDs, calibration missteps and signal drift/variance are very noticeable for dark shades at low signal levels, similar to increased camera noise in low light. In the Google Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL, the differences in calibration of the two refresh rates are evident in their darker shades. For both phones, the 90Hz display mode is tinted more green-cyan than in its 60Hz display mode. The difference is most noticeable at low brightness for dark colors, being the most severe between 10-20 nits. This variance is the reason for Google"s difficulties with implementing their auto-switching Smooth Display system. Note that Google is not the only OEM with this issue; differences in calibration are also present between the different refresh rate modes in other high refresh rate OLED panels, like OnePlus" latest phones, or the ROG Phone II.

One area where Google has usually excelled in is color accuracy. Their phones have been competitive in color accuracy every year, and Google manages to continue this trend in 2019. Our testbench for color accuracy consists of 37 constant-luminance points at five different stimulus levels, over the display"s brightness range. Most colors in images and films are within 15–40% intensity, while colors in app/web design & UI commonly consist of tones above 50% intensity, so it is important to measure colors at all stimulus levels. The new ΔETP color difference metric improves on these lower-stimulus readings, which we now use to assess the total color accuracy of a display.

Both our Google Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL units have white points that are remarkably accurate to the D65 standard. Our Google Pixel 4 average white points measure at 6586 K (ΔETP = 1.3), while our Pixel 4 XL measures more accurately at 6477 K (ΔETP = 0.4). Although I would like to rave about how accurate these white points are, Google is internally targeting a white point of D67 (6700 K), so I can"t say that they hit their mark. However, I"d like to note that a D67 white point for OLEDs may actually be more accurate than targeting D65, since modern OLEDs are subject to metameric failure (due to narrow spectral band primaries from wide color expansion), and appear warmer than an LCD or a CRT at the same spectral power distribution.1 2 Because of this, I actually wish more OEMs would target this white point for OLED displays. Also, most of them tend to ship with white points warmer than their target, anyway.

Some previous Pixel devices, while being accurate chromatically, exhibited contrast issues and darker colors than standard. This was a common issue with all OLED panels up until the Samsung Galaxy S9, which was the first smartphone display to control its brightness-APL response. Google fixed this on the Pixel 3 XL, but the LG panel on the Pixel 3 still had the issue. With the new LG panel on the Pixel 4, Google has also improved its brightness-APL response, and now both the Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL have excellent total color accuracy. Both displays have an average ΔETP lower than 3.0 for sRGB andDisplay P3, with small maximum errors. However, when considering luminance error, we see that the smaller Google Pixel 4 does seem to have additional issues in color lightness beyond gamma. Although the contrast on the smaller Google Pixel 4 is quite accurate, some colors still appear slightly darker than expected, particularly within the red color mixtures and blues. This could be caused by its white point creeping towards magenta, away from green which makes up most of the luminance in RGB color mixtures. It is still a clear improvement over the Pixel 3, and these lightness issues should not be noticed by most since it is below our reference threshold (ΔEI = -2.8)

On the Samsung display in the Pixel 4 XL, Google is showing industry-leading total accuracy, exhibiting the lowest color errors I"ve seen on any of the latest smartphones in our thorough testbench. The Pixel 4 XL measures an average total color accuracy ΔEITP of 1.7, which is a noticeable leap ahead of other 2019 flagships. For maximum intensity colors, the Pixel 4 XL shows color accuracy performance that rivals and even outperforms many professional reference monitors, with an average ΔETP of 0.9, which is under our visual threshold (ΔETP < 1).

While the displays on the iPhone 11 Pro and the Galaxy Note10 are still currently best-in-class, they share two flaws: both have warmer white points than standard, and both exhibit oversaturation at lower intensities [iPhone 11 Pro, Galaxy Note10]. Most display reviews don"t cover lower-stimulus colors (DisplayMate only tests max-brightness & max-intensity test colors), and most display reviews use the older ΔE2000 color error metric, which under-reports lower-intensity colors because the metric assumes visual adaptation to a specific white level. Thus, the older ΔE2000 metric is not as effective for content with lower picture levels (most films; colors in dark mode apps) or for HDR color accuracy assessment. The Google Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL do show slight undersaturation at lower color intensities, but overall maintain great accuracy at all intensities.

Display contrast and gamma tend to be regarded as the most important factors in an accurate display. Since Google sources their displays from two different vendors, there"s bound to be differences between them. The most important differences are usually found within their gamma scales, and the gamma behavior between the Google Pixel 4 and Pixel 4 XL panels are actually quite different.

The Pixel 4 XL"s gamma calibration is a little troubling. At maximum brightness, the Google Pixel 4 XL display contrast is pretty much perfect — it"s a completely straight 2.20 gamma power. However, as display brightness reduces, the Pixel 4 XL"s gamma changes. Around 50% brightness (~200 nits), the Pixel 4 XL"s gamma scale is no longer straight and sees a steep decline in dark shades. At about 70 nits, the Pixel 4 XL seemingly takes on a different display calibration with a jagged gamma that approximates a high 2.43 gamma power. Colors below 10% intensity, which covers a large portion of the shadows in images, are so dark that they are pretty much clipped. At medium-to-low display brightness, the contrast in the Pixel 4 XL is a slight regression from the Pixel 3 XL, except that Google has fixed the gross miscalibration present in the Pixel 3 XL at minimum brightness. I can"t help but think that Google has focused primarily on making the max brightness gamma accurate to gain a high mark from DisplayMate, whose testbench only measures gamma at max brightness. Not only in gamma, but in color accuracy as well. This is similar to the Galaxy S10 and Galaxy Note10 (Snapdragon) where only max brightness has a straight 2.20 gamma power, and it gets progressively worse at lower display brightness.

There also seems to be a bug exclusive to the Google Pixel 4 XL which results in jarring display calibration. From my testing, the Pixel 4 XL applies the wrong gamma calibration when waking the display up with 90Hz enabled and Always-On Display disabled. Both the 90Hz and the AOD modes have their own display calibrations, and the Pixel 4 XL gets confused somewhere in figuring out what display calibration to apply when waking up the display. The bug isn"t too noticeable above 50% brightness, but it does still slightly affect the white point and display saturation. The issue becomes increasingly severe at lower brightness, shooting the display gamma through the roof at minimum brightness and substantially clipping color tones.

On the other hand, the smaller Google Pixel 4 has fantastically calibrated display contrast, which can be partially accredited to its fixed brightness response to APL. It has an impressively low variance for its upper display brightness range, ranging just between a 2.21 and a 2.23 straight gamma power. For lower brightness levels, the Google Pixel 4 lifts its shadows, which results in a lower display gamma. This is both a blessing and a curse, as the Google Pixel 4 shows exemplary OLED near-black rendering at the cost of reduced image contrast at lower display brightness. The Google Pixel 4 is the first Android OLED display I have seen to be capable of rendering its first 8-bit depth intensity (1/255, #010101), and its near-black rendering capabilities remain excellent down to its minimum brightness where it can still render 2.4%-intensity (6/255) gray. Only the iPhones have been capable of doing this on a mobile OLED, up until now. The iPhone OLEDs, too, lift shadows at the dim end for better near-black rendering; it"s currently a necessary trade-off to keep image fidelity viable in dark viewing conditions. However, at minimum brightness, the Apple iPhones and the OnePlus 7 Pro are still superior in black clipping than the Google Pixel 4.

This is a surprising development since the LG panel in the Pixel 2 XL was notorious for abnormally-high black clipping. The Pixel 3 also had an LG panel, and it showed improvements in black clipping, but it was still noticeably higher than that of typical Samsung panels. I only expected a marginal improvement with the LG panel on the Pixel 4, but I"m actually quite shocked by how much the LG panel improved this time around.

While HDR content on smartphones is typically still limited to just Netflix and some short films on YouTube, it"s always fun to see the bleeding-edge capabilities of our little pocket computers. Supporting good HDR10 accuracy now could add a nice layer of future-proofing for the eventual proliferation of HDR content — though whether it"s the HDR10 standard that"ll be dominant is yet to be seen. I only managed to have time to test HDR10 in the Google Pixel 4 XL (and only 8-bit intervals), and it does just okay.

At a peak brightness of 600 nits, the Google Pixel 4 XL does meet the HDR standard brightness of at least 540 nits for OLEDs. But compared to the 1200+ nits claimed on the Galaxy Note10 and the iPhone 11 Pro, the highlights on the Pixel 4 XL seem dim. Furthermore, the Google Pixel 4 XL seems to remarkably undertrack the lower 15% of its signal range, rendering those critical dark scenes much darker than intended. It does provide a smooth roll-off into its peak brightness though, instead of just clipping.

Moving forward, the excellence of the Google Pixel 4 XL"s color accuracy extends on to its HDR Rec. 709 accuracy. Although it is not reference-level, a ΔETP of 3.4 is still very good. However, most HDR10 content extends up to DCI-P3, which is much more demanding to accurately reproduce. The standard for HDR DCI-P3 is typically a nominal white level of 1000 nits, and the Pixel 4 XL is not even capable of getting that bright. So as expected, the Pixel 4 XL cannot cover a good chunk of the HDR DCI-P3 gamut, and it breaks down at reproducing the higher inner color mixtures (orange, pink, and purple).

This year, Google closed the gap between the two displays more than ever before. Their calibrations match up much more evenly, but now they both have individual characteristics that prevent one display from being the clear superior. Although the Pixel 4 XL may have colors that measure more accurately, I"m hard-pressed to see the difference at these scales. Furthermore, I believe that contrast is the most important factor in an accurate image, and the Pixel 4 consistently performs better than the Pixel 4 XL throughout its brightness range. The Pixel 4 also has excellent shadow rendering that rivals the iPhones", and I"m a consumer of a lot of content where this matters. However, the grayscale inconsistencies are noticeable and annoying, and it puts me off the Pixel 4 seeing different gray UI elements with different tints. Luckily, my Pixel 4 had excellent display uniformity for dark gray, but I"ve already seen many posts regarding regional screen tints. And this leads into the display lottery, which I"m certain will still be a big issue for the LG panel on the Pixel 4 this year.

Consumers paying $800+ should not be worrying about something like a dim display or a lottery in 2019, but that seems to be a recurring theme for Pixel devices

And as expected, my biggest gripe with both displays is their poor brightness. I live in California — a bright display is an absolute must during the summer. I also typically keep my phone on a car mount while I"m driving, and I"ve found all Pixel phones to be pretty poor for this because of their brightness. A bright screen is just an overall much better experience outdoors, and there"s no use for the best calibration in the world if you have difficulties seeing it in the first place. It would also improve the camera experience, which seems to be Google"s main selling point. Sure, its brightness may not be an issue for others depending on what they expect from their phone, but that doesn"t invalidate the issue for the many that see it as such.

OnePlus, a company much smaller than Google, was able to secure next-gen panels from Samsung that gets just as bright as the Galaxy Note10 and the iPhone 11 Pro, and they released the OnePlus 7T at about the same time as the Pixel 4. The iPhone 11 Pro, which is the phone that Google is trying to directly compete with, was released earlier than the Pixel 4 with Samsung"s latest panels. Google should have definitely been able to do the same had they actually made an honest effort in using the best parts that they can. It feels as if Google really prides itself on finding workarounds for hardware "bottlenecks," but sometimes it just seems like it"s to a fault — and in those cases, they should just use better hardware.

Pixel Density 314 red subpixels per inch 444 green subpixels per inch 314 blue subpixels per inch 380 red subpixels per inch 537 green subpixels per inch 380 blue subpixels per inch

Distance for Pixel Acuity Distances for just-resolvable pixels with 20/20 vision. Typical smartphone viewing distance is about 12 inches <10.9 inches for full-color image <7.7 inches for achromatic image <9.1 inches for full-color image <6.4 inches for achromatic image

Black Clipping Threshold Signal levels to be clipped black <0.4% @ max brightness <1.2% @ 10 nits <2.4% @ min brightness <0.8% @ max brightness <3.5% @ 10 nits <4.3% @ min brightness

Color DifferenceΔETP values above 10 are apparent ΔETP values below 3.0 appear accurate ΔETP values below 1.0 are indistinguishable from perfect sRGB: Average ΔETP = 2.5 ± 2.1 Maximum ΔETP = 13.3 Very accurate

For Google"s flagship in 2020, the company had decidedly stepped back from the ultra-premium category of smartphones, which usually costs customers north of $1,000 USD. It seems that Google"s current mantra insists that it doesn"t require bleeding-edge hardware to create a helpful handset. But whether or not the Google Pixel 5 can be competitive with other company"s flagships is its own point of discussion that we covered in our full review. I"m here to just talk about the single most expensive piece of hardware in modern phones: the display.

The Google Pixel 5 immediately stands out from its predecessors in an unanticipated way: It actually takes on a modern display form factor, with an edge-to-edge display with truly uniform bezels, about 4 mm for each side, which is uncommon for Android phones. Google continues to use a flexible OLED substrate for its flagship, which can be made thinner and be made to have better viewing angles and polarization characteristics compared to the rigid OLED that they use in their mid-range Pixel a-lineup. The thinness of the flexible OLED also increases optical clarity by bringing the emissive pixels closer to the cover glass (thus closer to your fingertips), which helps the screen appear more paper-like and inky. Most modern flagship OLEDs have been made of a flexible substrate for the past couple of years, but it is important to make this distinction since its optical advantage does not show up in current display measurements. Additionally, the front camera cut-out on the Google Pixel 5 appears flush with the display, while the camera on the Pixel 4a appears slightly raised compared to the screen with a noticeable silver ring around the component.

The Pixel 5"s 6-inch display size may lead some to believe that this is a plus-sized device, but it is very much still a relatively-compact device. The body of the Google Pixel 5 is actually about the same size as all of its smaller-sized predecessors. Where most of the increase in display size comes from is in the reduction of bezel along the vertical axis. Compared to the Pixel 2 XL, which also has a 6-inch display, the Pixel 5 does feel much smaller. In terms of screen resolution, the Google Pixel 5 contains 2340×1080 pixels, or about 432 pixels per inch. Past Pixels usually covered about 440 pixels per inch for the smaller variants, so this slight reduction in pixel density shouldn"t be noticeable compared to them. However, there are occurrences where I can notice color fringing when viewing the display closer-up, so a slightly higher screen resolution would be appreciated. I"m partial to Apple"s objective of targeting a specific pixel density instead (about 460 pixels per inch) and using a pixel resolution that satisfies it while maximizing pixel fill factor for optimal display power efficiency.

The display panel is sourced solely from Samsung Display, and the hardware seems to have been slightly upgraded from last year"s to accommodate a higher peak brightness. However, the display driver IC remains the same as that of the Pixel 4 XL"s (s6e3hc2), and the display panel itself seems to be an older-generation Samsung OLED. This puts the Google Pixel 5 behind other flagships that use Samsung"s newer generation of OLED in terms of peak output and power efficiency, but it should give Google a chance to refine their display in other areas, which I explore later on. In any case, a polished display with little-to-no drawbacks will yield a better user experience than a display with slightly more output but with notable flaws. In my experience, I have observed that Samsung Display"s newer OLEDs run into much more quality control issues than previous generations, so perhaps Google"s decision to skip this generation can be viewed as a positive.

To obtain quantitative color data from the display, I stage device-specific input test patterns to the Google Pixel 5 and measure the display’s resulting emission using an X-Rite i1Display Pro metered by an X-Rite i1Pro 2 spectrophotometer in its high-resolution 3.3nm mode. The test patterns and device settings I use are corrected for various display characteristics and potential software implementations that may alter my desired measurements. My measurements are typically done with display-related options disabled unless mentioned otherwise.I use

patterns), correlating to an average pixel level of about 42%, to measure the transfer function and grayscale precision. It"s important to measure emissive displays not only with constant average pixel level but also with constant power patterns since their output is dependent on the average display luminance. Additionally, a constant average pixel level does not inherently mean constant power; the patterns I use satisfy both. I use a higher average pixel level closer to 50% to capture a midpoint between both the lower pixel levels and the many apps and webpages with white backgrounds that are higher in pixel level.I use the latest color difference metric Δ

normally considers luminance (intensity) error in its computation, since luminance is a necessary component to completely describe color. However, since the human visual system interprets chromaticity and luminance separately, I hold our test patterns at a constant luminance and do not include the luminance (I/intensity) error in our Δ

values. Furthermore, it is helpful to separate the two errors when assessing a display’s performance because, just like with our visual system, they pertain to different issues with the display. This way, we can more thoroughly analyze and understand the performance of a display.Our color targets are based on the ITP color space, which is more perceptually-uniform than the CIE 1976 UCS with much better hue-linearity. Our targets are spaced out roughly even throughout the ITP color space at a reference 100 cd/m

white level, and colors at 100%, 75%, 50%, and 25% saturation. Colors are measured at 73% stimulus, which corresponds to about 50% magnitude in luminance assuming a gamma power of 2.20.Contrast, grayscale, and color accuracy are tested throughout the display"s brightness range. The brightness increments are spaced evenly between the maximum and minimum display brightness in PQ-space. Charts and graphs are also plotted in PQ-space (if applicable) for proper representation of the actual perception of brightness.Δ

× the magnitude of ΔE00 values for the same color difference. A measured color error ΔETP of 1.0 denotes the smallest value for a just-noticeable-difference for the measured color, while the metric assumes the most critically-adapted state for the observer so as not to under-predict color errors. A color error ΔETP less than 3.0 is an acceptable level of accuracy for a reference display (suggested from ITU-R BT.2124 Annex 4.2), and a ΔETP value greater than 8.0 can be noticeable at a glance, which I"ve tested empirically.

All three color profiles share the same exact white point, which I measured at 6400 K for my Pixel 5. The tone mapping of the profiles is also identical, which targets the standard gamma power of 2.20. The only difference between the profiles is in the color primaries of their target color space:

The Adaptive profile, which is the default color profile for the Google Pixel 5, targets a color space with red and green primaries that extend past that of sRGB but are short of DCI-P3. Pure blues are similar between all three profiles, which all share the same sRGB-blue primary. The name of the profile is a misnomer in that there"s nothing "adaptive" about it. This naming may lead many users to believe that the profile switches color spaces depending on the content being viewed. However, this is not the case at all; the Adaptive profile is similar to the Vivid profile found in other Android phones, which just increases the color saturation for all generic content.

The Boosted profile is similar to the Natural profile but with slightly boosted colors for each color primary. Google says that the profile increases color saturation by 10% in every direction, although I haven"t actually measured how accurate this description is.

As an important note for users of the Pixel 2 and Pixel 3, the Saturated and Adaptive profiles of those phones have a cooler white point compared to the Adaptive profile found in the Pixel 4 and later. While the Saturated and Adaptive profiles of the Pixel 2 and Pixel 3 were calibrated to roughly a 7000 K white point, the Pixel 4 and later target the industry standard at 6500 K, which will appear warmer. Unfortunately, Google doesn"t provide an option to manually adjust the color temperature of the white point for those that prefer colder white points, but the silver lining is that humans can adapt to pretty much any white point, and there are benefits to being accustomed to the standard D65 white point over a colder one.

Google"s previous Pixel devices have generally underwhelmed when it came to peak display brightness. For many people, the maximum brightness of a display is one of the most important specs, if not the most important spec to look for in a display. After all, a phone is of no use if the display isn"t legible. In a world where smartphones are touting 700-800 nits of full-screen display brightness (at 100% APL), Google unleashed its flagship, the Pixel 4, which was only able to muster 450 nits. Thus, display brightness had become one of the banes of the Pixel line.

An update to the Pixel 4 series brought the devices closer to their competitors by finally implementing their display panels" high brightness modes. This boosted the peak full-screen brightness from 450 nits to 550-600 nits, which was still considered conservative for a flagship at the time it was released and mediocre by today"s standards. So, to be competitive with future devices, Google had some catching up to do.

Here, the term "average pixel level", or APL, is synonymous with the area of lit pixels on the display expressed as a percentage of the total display area. Emissive displays, like OLED, vary in brightness depending on the intensity and the area of pixels it emits. "Measured Luminance vs. Display Area" or "Measured Luminance vs. Window Size" would both be better-fitting names for the chart since the APL metric can entail many other circumstances, but APL has been colloquially used and is generally understood when discussing display brightness.

For the Pixel 5, Google brings modest improvements to the display brightness. At its 50% APL midpoint, I measured the Google Pixel 5 to peak at about 750 nits with auto-brightness (470 nits for manual max system brightness), which are values that are on par with its competitors in their calibrated color modes. However, at higher APLs, the Google Pixel 5 demonstrates inferior performance compared to the competition: At 80% APL, which is about the APL of light-themed apps, the Pixel 5 only outputs about 680 nits, whereas competitors can reach about 800 nits. This brightness performance for the Pixel 5 places it about halfway between the Pixel 4 and its competitors, which seems lackluster for a flagship smartphone in 2020. Minimum brightness measures white at 1.9 nits, which is the same as most competitors.

Despite the Google Pixel 5 still being behind others in maximum output, the good news is that I find that the brightness of this Pixel is finally bright enough for it to be decently legible under most sunny conditions. In circumstances where the display brightness wouldn"t be satisfactory, such as under direct California summer sunlight, then even the LG G7 ThinQ"s 1,000 nits will not suffice.

Nevertheless, extra brightness headroom is important for improving display tone mapping accuracy and consistency. Ultimately, a display is heavily restricted by its full-screen/100% APL brightness, which is 650 nits for the Google Pixel 5. A higher-brightness panel that can output 800 nits at 100% APL, like those found in other flagships, would allow a higher-precision calibration at 650 nits. We see that the peak brightness of the Google Pixel 5 varies significantly with on-screen APL, dropping in brightness as on-screen APL increases. Because of this, we can expect the tone mapping performance to also vary with on-screen APL; the inverse-proportional relationship of luminance vs. APL should mean picture contrast will increase with on-screen APL, which makes display calibration complicated at these brightness levels. Below high brightness mode, which ranges from 1.9 to 470 nits on the Pixel 5, Google keeps display luminance constant regardless of on-screen APL, which allows the company to calibrate the display with high precision. But at maximum brightness, Google tries to extract as much output from the panel at lower APLs at the cost of calibration consistency.

Finally, for Google"s sake in its camera and "helpful"-focused marketing campaign, a higher peak brightness would be indispensable in improving the accuracy of the camera viewfinder when capturing photos outdoors, and it would make the Pixel camera"s exposure and tone-map controls more useful.

I can"t overstate the importance of display tone mapping and contrast, along with actually assess it correctly—the advent of the Perceptual Quantizer gives us the best look at luminance measurements. I consider display tone mapping to be the most important aspect of a display, and a display with bad tone mapping absolutely ruins the experience for me. Bad tone mapping can result in crushed shadows, colors that are too dark, and/or a washed-out display. Luckily for me, all three profiles on the Google Pixel 5 share the same tone mapping, which makes evaluating this part simple. There is a slight difference between the tone mapping in the 90 Hz and 60 Hz modes, but most of the differences come from color hue, so I"ll only be covering 90 Hz below while I"ll cover 60 Hz in the next section.

We have a better depiction of the perceptual contrast and the display"s variation when viewing the tone mapping with PQ-scaled and normalized axes. PQ stands for Perceptual Quantizer, which is currently our best perceptually- linear mapping of the magnitude of luminance to the stimulus of perceived brightness for the human eye. The term "average display luminance", or ADL, refers to the average expected luminance over the total area of the display, expressed as a percentage of the maximum possible value, which is the luminance of full-screen white.

The tone mapping of the Pixel 5 targets the standard gamma power of 2.20 (except for in high brightness mode), which is a necessary baseline for accurate color tones and image contrast. And for the most part, we see that Google Pixel 5 does accurately track the 2.20 gamma power, with a few hitches.

First, the trace that stands out the most is the max-brightness tone map curve in red. We see that its tone mapping seems to render color tones significantly lighter than the standard 2.20 gamma power, so one may expect the Google Pixel 5 to appear too light and washed out at max brightness. However, the Pixel 5"s max brightness is only viewed during really bright conditions, and ambient lighting is directly related to the perceived contrast of a display. When the ambient lighting is much brighter than the display brightness, color tones on the display will appear relatively darker, so to compensate, the display can make color tones lighter to counteract the ambient lighting. This is the same principle as increasing the display brightness to make the display more legible; when you increase the display brightness, you increase the perceived contrast of the display. However, if the display has reached its peak brightness, the only other option is to increase the lightness of color tones, which is what the Pixel 5 is doing here. This tone map curve shows a good understanding of the concept of perceived contrast by Google, so this behavior deserves recognition. However, as mentioned in the previous Brightness section, the Google Pixel 5 is handicapped by its peak full-screen brightness, so it varies its luminance with APL to maximize content brightness. This results in the max-brightness tone map curve to become steeper and darker at higher APLs, such as in light-themed apps, which reduces the effectiveness of the lighter color tones.

Our 20% PQ-brightness tone map curve in pink, which is associated with a white level of about 10 nits, shows the Pixel 5 rendering colors too light across its entire grayscale. Unlike the tone map curve at max brightness, the behavior at this brightness is undesirable. In general, people keep their display brightness a relatively fixed difference brighter or dimmer than the brightness of their surroundings, and the two brightnesses are usually within the same ballpark. Therefore, the display tone mapping should be consistent throughout a display"s brightness range, with the exception of the extremities (max and minimum brightness), since the display might not be able to get bright or dim enough to satisfy the user"s preference.

At minimum brightness, the Pixel 5"s tone map curve (in blue) shows a response that tracks the gamma power of 2.20 very closely, and there"s a slight lift near black to ensure that the display doesn"t clip shadows. Typically, this would be great tone map behavior, but, opposite to the edge-case at maximum brightness, we have to consider that the brightness of the surrounding ambient light can be much dimmer than the white level of the Pixel 5"s minimum brightness (1.9 nits). A dark room in a house will typically have an illuminance below 0.1 lux, sometimes even under 0.01 lux for a room without any active light sources. Viewing a patch of white on a 1.9 nit display in these conditions is similar to viewing it on an 800-1000+ nit display in typical office lighting (~200 lux), which is uncomfortable and eye-searing for many people. This is why dark mode is pretty much mandatory for night-time viewing unless you hate your eyeballs. If the display is too bright compared to the ambient lighting and the display can"t get any dimmer, then the display should make color tones darker to compensate. But here with the Pixel 5"s minimum-brightness tone map curve, its 2.20 gamma power response may appear too light and washed out in dark environments. The ideal behavior would be to adapt the tone map curve to the ambient lighting, but so far there have been no phones that I know of that exhibit this behavior.

Besides these two issues, there"s one item that sets the Google Pixel 5 apart from most other displays: The Pixel 5"s OLED panel can render its first step gray (#010101) throughout its entire brightness range — in other words, zero black crush from the display — which is a feat that I"ve only measured iPhones to perform until now.

As an aside, it"s important to understand that correlated color temperature is not a reliable metric for gauging white point accuracy, as it"s only an ordinal estimate of how warm or how cold a light source appears; a 6300 K light source can be more accurate to the D65 illuminant than a 6400 K light source if, for example, the 6400 K light source receives too much contribution from green to appear colder. The color difference metric ΔETP between the measured white point and D65 along the daylight locus is currently the best indicator of white point accuracy.

Our Pixel 5 measures fantastically accurate with respect to its white point. Color error ΔETP measurements range from 0.5 to 1.2 throughout the Pixel 5"s brightness range, with an average correlated color temperature of 6400 K. This is accurate to the D65 standard and notably closer than some other flagships I"ve measured, which generally trend towards 6300 K in their calibrated display mode. The consistency of the Pixel 5"s white point measurement is also notably excellent.

What"s more impressive is that our Pixel 5 unit demonstrates a fairly tight grayscale calibration. From my measurements, the tint of all the grays reports a color error ΔETP less than 3.0 from the average color of gray for its respective display brightness. This is the case all throughout the Pixel 5"s brightness range. This means that, for any single given display brightness, our Pixel 5 unit showed no signs of different tints of grays, which would usually be most noticeable when viewing dark-themed apps with multiple layers in the interface. This feat is very rare among Android displays, including the displays of Samsung Galaxy flagships. Note that this doesn"t mean that the Google Pixel 5 has no tinting with respect to D65, just that the color of gray maintains the same tint for a given system brightness.

On that note, there is some gray tinting that may be noticeable between the different brightness settings. Our aggregated chart, which combines the grayscale plots throughout the Pixel 5"s brightness range, shows some spread in the darker tones between green and magenta that is outside the average region. We can see that the grayscale is tinted slightly green between 60% and 20% PQ-brightness, and this hue shift may be visible when adjusting to these brightness settings from other brightness settings. It"s not significant on our unit, and it"s much better than what I"ve seen from other displays, but it"s present and may vary in intensity depending on the manufacturing variance of your device.

What"s interesting is that the minimum-brightness grayscale calibration is absolutely outstanding — might I say, it"s perfectly calibrated, with color errors ΔETP and spread less than 1.0. I"m mentioning this since minimum-brightness calibration is usually the most difficult since we"re working against a lot of noise at signals this low; this was obviously a focus by Google, especially considering their previous Pixels lacked performance here. This feat, as well as the total lack of black clipping, puts the Pixel 5 in its own league (alongside the iPhone) when it comes to near-black tone rendering.

The Smooth Display feature of the Google Pixel 5 will switch from 90 Hz to 60 Hz when the display is static or when playing ≤60 FPS content. If the display brightness is below 25 nits (14/255 brightness setting), the Pixel 5 will stay fixed at 90 Hz. In high refresh rate displays, there can be noticeable differences in color calibration between the 60 Hz and the 90/120 Hz modes.

The figures above switch between the 90 Hz plots and the 60 Hz plots above 25 nits, showing the color difference when the Google Pixel 5 switches into its 60 Hz display mode. We see a slight shift towards green for midtones and darker colors, but from my usage, the shift was barely visible. These differences are vastly less significant than what was seen on the Pixel 4/4 XL or the OnePlus 8 Pro. As always, manufacturing variances play a large role, and another Pixel 5 unit can have results much different than what we"ve measured on ours.

Google Pixel devices have typically performed quite well in color accuracy in their calibrated display mode, so I expected the Pixel 5 to have no issues with it. However, while the color accuracy on the Pixel 5 isn"t bad per se, I was surprised to see some of the errors that I"ve found.

Below 40% PQ-brightness, we start to see gamut and saturation compression, with the most problems around 20% PQ-brightness. Combined with the lighter tone mapping and contrast found at this point, the Google Pixel 5 does appear slightly more washed out at this display brightness. The issue isn"t as prevalent at minimum brightness, but the Pixel 5"s weak color rendering at 20% PQ-brightness is a disappointment.

At max brightness (high brightness mode), the Pixel 5 shows hue errors in reds and oranges, which can cause the appearance of skin tones to appear too red. High-saturation purples are also tinted far too blue. There"s a slight oversaturation across the gamut, but this is desirable behavior for high brightness mode to counteract some of the gamut compression caused by high ambient lighting.

Between 60% and 80% PQ-brightness (90–250 nits), which covers the display luminance range for reference viewing environments, the Pixel 5"s color accuracy is good with no noteworthy color errors.

The Pixel 5"s Display P3 color accuracy is fairly similar to its sRGB color accuracy, with similar color error characteristics, so it"s decent. There is still barely any non-HDR P3 content on Android, and Android cameras still capture colors in sRGB, so these measurements aren"t too useful at the moment. This may change in the future, so it"s still useful to have decent P3 accuracy for future-proofing.

The foundation of color reproduction begins with contrast, which, for HDR content, dominantly follows the ST.2084 PQ curve. And oh does the Pixel 5 perform: Its display follows the PQ curve with textbook precision, all the way up to its peak brightness, which is about 700 nits for HDR content. There"s also a tiny lift near black to ensure that blacks aren"t clipped. I really don"t have much else to say here about the Pixel 5"s HDR contrast response — just look at how cleanly it traces its target. This is measured at 20% APL with constant display power, and many higher-end consumer TVs don"t have PQ responses nearly this rigid (usually because they have much greater power limitations).

However, just like with all other Androids, HDR10 tone mapping is flawed. Even with proper 1K or 4K max-luminance metadata, Android ignores it and tone maps with a peak brightness roll-off up to 100% PQ signal level. HDR10 content maxes out at 1,000 nits, so the display shouldn"t be tone mapping past 1,000 nits, which is at 75% PQ signal level. At 75% PQ signal level, the Pixel 5 only outputs 560 nits, which means that 560 nits, and not 700 nits, is effectively the Pixel 5"s peak brightness for HDR10 content. All Androids seem to be affected by this issue, so Google is responsible for it.

DCI-P3 color accuracy on the Pixel 5 is fantastic, which is surprising to see since its normal Display P3 accuracy isn"t nearly as impressive. The average color error ΔETP across the entire DCI-P3 gamut is less than 3.0, which is acceptable performance for a reference display. There are only two points that I can nitpick, which are at 100% red and 100% blue, but these maximum errors are relatively minor.

Unfortunately, the Google Pixel 5 doesn"t support Dolby Vision, rather only HDR10 and HDR10+ (the latter of which currently seems like a dead standard). If a display"s HDR10 playback quality is good, then Dolby Vision"s omission wouldn"t be a big deal since Dolby Vision content provides an HDR10 base layer. But without Dolby Vision support, we"re stuck with Android"s incompetent HDR10 tone mapping.

The Google Pixel 5 has a very good display without state-of-the-art panel hardware, and it"s Google"s best display yet. That saying usually causes some eye rolls among readers, because why wouldn"t the latest flagship be the best? Many products can usually regress in some aspects over a revision. But in this case, Google has garnished its flagship with a great display with welcome improvements without making me think "what the hell?" at a deficiency.

I"ll take that back for a second: I do miss AmbientEQ, and I think that automatic display white balance is a great feature. However, I"m fully content to have a display without it so long as it has a D65 white point accuracy as accurate as on my Pixel 5, although I"m sure others may want an option to adjust the white balance.

Back to my point: From my time reviewing this phone, there hasn"t been one stand-out issue that made me wish I was using a different display. Matter of fact, the Google Pixel 5 has one of the least problematicdisplays I"ve used as of late. No harsh tinting of dark color tones, no bothersome flickering when switching refresh rates, no panel uniformity issues, no huge calibration missteps to scratch my head at (although there is the HDR10 tone mapping issue). The OnePlus 8 Pro, with its superior display hardware, is unusable for me due issues with all the above. I have very high sensitivity when it comes to panel blemishes; it"s possible I just got lucky, but the panel on my Pixel 5 is pristine and clean from imperfections.

I usually don"t talk about panel uniformity just due to the unreliability of extrapolating from one retail unit, but I felt the need to point it out since this year, almost all the phones I"ve reviewed have had panel imperfections. Google was the last OEM I was expecting to receive a perfect panel from. And from the black crush tragedy known as the Pixel 2 XL, the near-black performance of the Pixel 5 blew my mind. This was a very deliberate calibration shift and focus on shadow tone control from Google. The Google Pixel 4 (non-XL) gave us the first hint of this type of performance, but I was hesitant about its staying power since the Pixel 4 XL did not perform the same. I was worried that this might have just been a fluke of the Pixel 4"s LG panel versus the Pixel 4 XL"s Samsung panel, but seeing that it has improved and carried onto the Samsung display of the Pixel 5, which shares the same DDIC as the Pixel 4 XL, makes me confident that this is Google"s doing.

It seems like the general consensus of the Google Pixel 5 is that it"s a genuine refinement over previous Pixel phones. Google is doing the best they can with parts that they"re familiar with, and they continue to focus on aspects that constitute a practical smartphone. In the display department, the Pixel 5"s color tone performance has been refined to an extent that surpasses just about every other flagship. If Google"s factories are in your favor and your Pixel 5"s display performs similar to mine, then, despite not packing the latest Samsung panel, you have what I consider to be one of the most immaculate smartphone displays available. And according to XDA"s Adam Conway, you also get a stellar software experience, best-in-class camera software, and performance that defies its benchmark scores.

Distance for Pixel Acuity Distances for just-resolvable pixels with 20/20 vision. Typical smartphone viewing distance is about 12 inches<8.0 inches for full-color image

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