Why do almost all flagship smartphones have an OLED display?
As we all know display is the most important thing that a user interact with while using a smartphone. The OEMs(Original Equipment Manufacturer) have to make sure that the displays on their smartphone should stand out from the competition.
What’s an OLED Display?
The term OLED is an abbreviation for organic light-emitting diode. This kind of display works without a backlight as each LED emits its own light.
How do OLEDs compares to LCDs? (Is it better or worse?)
- LCDs (Liquid-crystal displays) are cheaper to manufacture as compared to OLEDs. This is the main reason why most of the mid-range and budget smartphones come with a LCD.
- OLEDs offer deep black levels and better contrast. This is because instead of a backlit display (in case of LCDs), in an OLED each and every LED lights up on its own. In other words, whenever we need to show black on the display, the LEDs wont light up in that region giving deep black levels.
- Due to the reason mentioned above, OLEDs are less power hungry and helps saving battery life.
- Who doesn’t love Always On Display (a feature found in Samsung and One Plus smartphones that lets you show important information like time and recent notifications on the screen even when the phone is on standby). That’s possible due to OLEDs.
- OLEDs also offers better picture quality and response times as compared to an LCD.
Due to all the advantages an OLED has over LCD, it forces the manufacturers to use an OLED displays on their smartphones. Apple’s iPhone was one of the late adopters of this technology and now it is rumoured that all the 3 iPhones (as compared to 2 before) in 2020 will have an OLED display. Well that’s a great news of all the apple fans out there.
Samsung are the leaders when it comes to manufacturing OLED displays. This is the reason why major brands like Apple and One Plus buy displays for their flagships from Samsung.
Samsung and Apple might be greatest competitors in the smartphone market but the more iPhones Apple sells the more its gonna profit Samsung.
In the future we will be seeing more and more smartphones coming out with an organic LED display even at the mid-range and budget segment and that’s a win-win for the consumers. In my personal opinion OLEDs gonna rule the smartphone world as they are bright, energy efficient, has high contrast levels and are flexible which means that they can easily be used for a foldable smartphones as well.
