Mobile Display Technologies

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Now a days mobile display technology is rapidly changing users want their mobile screen to be more sharp, more vivid more accurate in colours to increase their viewing experience. Companies are spending lots of money to the R&D of mobile display technology to give their users a next level of viewing experience on their mobile screens.

I am Sourav Patra introducing you to the amazing development of the mobile display technology featuring a wide discussion over the performance and visual experience of the mobile display technologies.

STN(Super-Twisted Nematic) LCD

I am sure that 90% of the people didn’t heard about this mobile display technology before, remember your 1st phone, people used to call them black and white display mobile phones. Yes some of them have a black and white display but most of them are not that is some of them they have a yellow-black display.

Different STN LCD Displays

A super-twisted nematic display (STN) is a type of monochrome passive-matrix liquid crystal display (LCD). This technology was invented at the Brown Boveri Research Center, Baden, Switzerland, in 1983.

Now the question comes how this display works, let me explain it to you most of you aware of the pixels, this display technology also have pixels which emits only one light so doing a combination that certain amount of pixels light up and the rest is off a picture can be created in the display.

Now come to the performance and visual experience part STN LCDs are less costly and more power efficient than TFT LCDs. STN displays have a lower image quality and slower response time than TFT displays. However, STN LCDs can be made purely reflective for viewing under direct sunlight.

CSTN ( Colour super-twisted nematic)LCD

It’s a colour form of passive-matrix liquid crystal display developed by Sharp Electronics. It uses Red, Green & Blue filters to display colours.

On Left STN&on Right CSTN

Now coming to the performance and visual experience parameters those are same as that of the STN LCDs but newer CSTN LCDs offer better response time of 100ms (TFT LCD displays gave 8ms or less)

TFT(Thin Film Transistor) LCD

It is one of the best display technologies giving good colour reproduction and quick response time. It is an active-matrix technology giving a transistor located next to each pixel, allowing the pixel to switch on or off individually. For example Samsung Galaxy Star Pro, HTC Desire 310 uses TFT LCD screens.

Talking about the performance and visual experience it has a faster response time and great colour contrast but it also consumes more power than the other display technologies. It is costly too.

IPS (In-plane switching) LCD

This is a quite new technology used in mobile devices. IPS LCDs are a little bit different from the TFT LCDs. In an IPS LCD there are two transistors located next to each pixel while in TFT there is only 1 transistor for each pixel and IPS displays requires a bit powerful backlight which gives the advantage of more accurate colour and wide viewing angel. For example Nokia Lumia devices use this display.

In the performance and visual section an IPS display delivers more accurate colour with wide viewing angle. But it has a downside also it consumes more power than a similar size of TFT display.

Retina Display

It is nothing but an IPS LCD display with higher resolution. It is a brand name or marketing technique by Apple that retina displays are those displays with higher pixel density that human eyes can’t identify each pixels from a standard viewing distance. For a mobile device Apple has decided that 326ppi (Pixels Per Inch) will do the work that human eyes can’t identify individual pixel.

Coming to the performance and visual experience as the pixel density is high so the texts, images looks sharper delivering a greater viewing experience.

AMOLED (Active Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diode)

High End mobile devices like Samsung Galaxy S4, Galaxy S5 uses this technology. This Display technology is developed by Samsung. Actually the parent technology is OLED, it has two subparts one is Passive-Matrix OLED another is AMOLED.

AMOLED has added advantages over its counterpart PMOLED in higher refresh rates and less power consumption. Samsung develops this technology for the mobile devices where power consumption is a critical factor to the battery life.

People may heard of Super AMOLED, Super AMOLED Advance, Super AMOLED PLUS etc. these are some of the marketing terms used by the mobile device manufacturers. Super AMOLED is a display with integrated digitizer and Samsung says that Super AMOLED reflects one-fifth as much sunlight compared to the first generation AMOLED.

Major advantage of OLED displays over the LCDs are they produce their own light where LCDs require a bright backlight.

Now entering into the conclusion section

Does the AMOLED performs as said or not?

Yes, it do it got a great colour reproduction with good colour saturation, wide viewing angels, better direct sunlight readability and consumes less amount of power than the other display technologies. The downside is its costly too that’s why only premium devices or high end devices comes with this display.

P-OLED (Plastic OLED)

As of now only one mobile device have the technology inside it that is LG G-Flex. This technology is putting an OLED screen on a very thin flexible plastic sheet. Lightweight and flexible are the key features of this display technology.

LG G-FLEX

Samsung is also developing this technology under the brand name of YOUM Flexible calling it Flexible OLED.

Flexible OLED by Samsung

It has all the advantages that a OLED display have that is great viewing angels, power efficient, sunlight readability, good colour saturation. In addition this is lightweight and bendable.

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