Virtual Reality has certainly become a hot topic over the past year or so, and 2016 has been described as “the Year of VR” a lot lately, and for good reason. With mobile options like the Gear VR from Samsung becoming more accessible and desktop options like the HTC Vive getting more titles, there’s a lot going on in the world of VR these days. Last week, during Google I/O 2016, Google announce their VR plans as well, dubbed Daydream the new platform will give smartphones better overall quality and a new platform to get hold of new apps and games. One thing is key however, for any virtual reality platform to be great, and that’s the display.
As virtual reality headsets essentially split a display into two smaller displays which then pass through the two lenses, pixels are important for VR. The Quad HD displays, with resolutions of 2560 x 1440, in the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy Note 5 line of devices are what make the Gear VR so crisp, but even at such high resolutions there are visible pixels and the overall image isn’t all that smooth. That’s because a VR headset is essentially putting that display mere inches away from your eyes, so you’re bound to see more pixels than if it were at arm’s length. Samsung might have a solution for this problem on the horizon however, as they’ve recently demoed a 4K, that’s 3840 x 2160, display at 5.5-inches designed for VR experiences. Samsung were showing off the new prototype display during Display Week in San Francisco, and while there are whispers that this is their next-generation display, it seemed to have lower frame rates, so this might need some more work yet. Still, a 5.5-inch 4K display would be a real big selling point for a Galaxy S8 device next year.
Samsung is an industry leader in display technology, and they had other tech to show off as well, such as their new Bio Blue technology. This new tech would display just 6% of the nasty blue light when display blue colors on screen, compared to 32% with an AMOLED display. These new display technologies will no doubt prove useful in future generations of Samsung’s hardware, but for now we’re going to have to wait and see just what Samsung will do next.