The display is one of the most important features of our smartphones. As it is the principal way in which you interact with your device. A poor display means poor user experience. You can easily spot an under-performer between different displays if you are a tech geek. However, the differences between a good display and a truly excellent display are harder to discern. In this article, we are going to discuss Super Retina Display Vs Super AMOLED Display.
AMOLED Display
AMOLED stands for Active Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diode. Starting with LEDm, it is the same tech that we see in many appliances that shows the power is on with a little red light. A display takes this concept, shrinks it down, and arranges the LEDs in red, green and blue clusters to create an individual pixel.
The O (Organic) in this refers to a series of thin organic material films placed between two conductors in each LED. It produces light when current is applied.
The AM (Active Matrix) refers that it has an Active matrix rather than a passive matrix technology. The passive matrix uses a complex grid system to control individual pixels. This is rather slow and can be imprecise. Active Matrix includes thin film transistor (TFT) and capacitor to each sub-pixel (i.e. red, green or blue) LED. Which allows it to be faster and more precise control.
The pros and cons of AMOLED
Pros:
- Excellent viewing angles.
- It has better shock absorption and less risk breakage.
- The plastic substrate is thin and light.
- Potential for a very wide color gamut.
- Good Contrast, well suited for HDR
- Good energy efficiency and battery life.
Cons:
- AMOLED Displays are more expensive
- unoptimized yields affecting availability.
- Blue LEDs degrade faster than red or green, reducing the panel’s life cycle before a notable color shift.
What is Super AMOLED?
Super AMOLED is a marketing term from Samsung. It means a display that incorporates the capacitive touchscreen right in the display, instead of it being a separate layer on top of the display. This makes the display thinner.
Retina, Retina HD, and Super Retina displays
As Samsung has named Super AMOLED, Super Retina Display is a term by Apple. The term was first used for its smartphones with the launch of the iPhone 4. It offers slightly greater pixel density(over 300 ppi). The resolution keeps increasing with every new version of the display.
All Retina displays are LCD IPS displays. similar to what you will find on today’s devices and uses a backlight.The edge of the retina display over all other displays is its significantly higher resolution. Apple claims that the very high resolution of their display is beyond what most people’s eye is able to discriminate. This makes the image very fine.
Pros:
- Superior user experience compared to inferior displays
- Super Retina Display has Higher resolution and more display information
- Better display in outdoor lights or direct sunlight
- Reduced eyestrain due to clearer and sharper images
Cons:
- Retina display is expensive
- Consumers more power than AMOLED or TN screens
- Some apps and web contents are not optimized for a Retina display
Color accuracy and display resolution
AMOLED and Retina both can be used to build displays with 720p,1080p, Quad HD and 4K resolutions so there is not much difference when it comes to resolution but still Retina has an upper hand. If we talk about color accuracy blacks will be deeper and the contrast ratios higher on AMOLED displays. By which we can conclude that AMOLED has an upper hand in color accuracy.
Burn-in and image retention
When it comes to “burn-in” AMOLED has a big disadvantage. This is the name given to a problem where a display suffers from permanent discoloration across parts of the panel. You may notice This is the name given to a problem where a display suffers from permanent discoloration across parts of the panel.
Summary:
- Retina displays use an LCD while AMOLED displays used LEDs
- Super Retina Display tend to have a much higher resolution than AMOLED displays
- AMOLED displays provide better contrast than the retina display
- The AMOLED displays may have lower legibility under direct sunlight than the retina display
- AMOLED displays may be more power efficient than the retina display.
Conclusion
As now, you know all about AMOLED and Super Retina Display. Picking a winner can be hard as there are many factors to consider. One has better resolution others have better efficiency. All in all, it also depends on what kind of other component does your phone has. So just pick the handset you like as both the display are equally awesome.
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