Love them or hate them – not many are in the middle – Samsung’s Super AMOLED displays have dazzled us for many years now. Samsung picked that technology over the LCD and have continually improved it over the years, not only between Galaxy S models, but also between the Galaxy Note series – each model that comes out has some improvement over the other. In fact, when the newest Galaxy S5 was released with Full HD, DisplayMate unequivocally called it, “…the best…display that we have ever tested and are now challenging and even exceeding the performance of the best LCDs.”
With Samsung’s new AMOLED Quad HD (QHD) 2560 x 1440 resolution display, our source wondered how this AMOLED technology holds up with the higher resolution display so they put it through some grueling tests. They first and foremost, do not share our view that more is better – while they said that they could see a difference between the Full HD vs the QHD, they do not find it to be significant and feel that the PPI (Pixels-Per-Inch) race, “needs to be stopped here.” They cite that the minor improvements are hard to justify with the potential battery life issues, as well as concentrating on pixel density over other display attributes. Color accuracy is much more important than pixel density…why can’t we have both?
While some websites are highly critical of the original Galaxy S5’s ‘green tint,” even our source had to admit that, “Samsung sets a new record for color accuracy…” In the White Point test, where closer to 6504K is better – the original Galaxy S5 received a 6541 and the QHD Galaxy S5 received a score of 6429. In the Grayscale Accuracy test, the Galaxy S5 QHD received their best score of 3.2955, beating out the second placed iPhone 5c with 3.5182. They still feel there are some excessive green in the color balance, however they praised its contrast – it was so dark that in a completely dark room, they could not “tell whether the screen has turned off when displaying an all-black image.”
In the test for Saturation Accuracy, The Galaxy S5 QHD was second only to the iPhone 5c, but more importantly, was leaps ahead of the original Galaxy S5. A more rigorous test, the GMB ColorChecker, and once again is bested only by the iPhone 5c – “easily setting a record amongst Android OEMs.” So while the differences in resolution are not earth shattering, the improvements made in the screen technology are very significant and other manufacturers may have to look to Samsung for their future displays or develop their own non-LCD technology. Please hook up with us on our Google+ Page and let us know your feelings concerning the Full HD vs the QHD debate and also the on going AMOLED vs LCD technology…as always, we would love to hear from you.