iPhone 5 displays outperforms Galaxy S3

A good scientific review by DisplayMate.

Link is here. http://www.displaymate.com/Smartphone_ShootOut_2.htmDisplay

Partial summary:


The iPhone 5 Display:
It’s still a Retina Display with 326 Pixels Per Inch PPI and with a Resolution of 1136x640 pixels. We were hoping for 1280x720, which is Standard High Definition HD, but presumably that will be for the iPhone 6. That’s not a disappointment, just a wish list… Based on our extensive Lab measurements the iPhone 5 has a true state-of-the-art display – it’s not perfect and there is plenty of room for improvements (and competitors) but it’s the best Smartphone display we have tested to date.

We’ll examine the iPhone 5 display in detail below, but here are the Highlights: it is the Brightest Smartphone we have tested in the Shoot-Out series, it has one of the lowest screen Reflectance values we have ever measured, it has the highest Contrast Rating for High Ambient Light for any Mobile device we have ever tested, and it’s Color Gamut and Factory Calibration are second only to the new iPad. What are the downsides? The White Point is still somewhat too blue like most Smartphones, and at Maximum Brightness it has a shorter Running Time than the iPhone 4, which is not surprising since it has a larger screen and a larger Color Gamut but roughly the same capacity battery.


The Galaxy S III Display:
Samsung also features their displays when marketing Smartphones, but they have taken a very different approach – they are using Samsung’s own OLED displays, a new and rapidly evolving display technology that is very different from LCDs, with its own particular set of advantages and disadvantages. It’s a new technology that attracts early adopters, but it has not yet been refined to the same degree as LCDs, which have been mainstream for over 20 years. It’s clear that OLEDs in the near future will do to LCDs what LCDs did to CRTs, but we are not there yet… So OLEDs have a number of rough spots that show up clearly in our objective Lab testing.

We’ll examine the OLED Galaxy S III display in detail below, but here are the Highlights: the Brightness is about half of the iPhone 5 due to power limits from the lower power efficiency of OLEDs and concerns regarding premature OLED aging. The Color Gamut is not only much larger than the Standard Color Gamut, which leads to distorted and exaggerated colors, but the Color Gamut is quite lopsided, with Green being a lot more saturated than Red or Blue, which adds a Green color caste to many images. Samsung has not bothered to correct or calibrate their display colors to bring them into closer agreement with the Standard sRGB / Rec.709 Color Gamut, so many images appear over saturated and gaudy. Running Time on battery is less than the iPhone 5 due to the lower power efficiency of OLEDs, even given that the Galaxy S III has a much larger battery capacity and much lower Brightness.

The Galaxy S III has a PenTile OLED display, which has only half of the number of Red and Blue sub-pixels as in standard RGB displays, like those on the iPhones. The eye’s resolution for color image detail is lower, so this works well for photographic and video image content, but NOT for computer generated colored text and fine graphics because it produces visible pixelation, moiré, and other very visible artifacts, so a PenTile display is not as sharp as its pixel Resolution and PPI would indicate. PenTile technology does have advantages in manufacturing, aging and cost. For a more detailed analysis see our Samsung Galaxy S OLED Display Technology Shoot-Out.

cynics said:

We've already argued over this review.

MODS, can we rename this section to "iOS versus"?

People just come here to justify their purchases anyway.

Click to expand...

Ah you really are a cynic.

There is some really good and useful measurements in the article to read. Apple doesn't win all the time.

mib1800 said:

Synthetic indicators comparison doesnt mean much in real life. Just like ip5 has a higher browsermark than S3 but actual in webpage load the S3 seems to have the upper hand (see the page load with flash plugin disabled).

http://www.phonearena.com/news/Web-...vs-Galaxy-S-III-vs-One-X-vs-Lumia-900_id35164

I believe 8 out of 10 people you ask will prefer the high contrast and vivid color of the S3 amoled screen than the iph5. The backlit ip5 LCD makes the screen more washed out (worse when you turn up the brightness). Add to the fact, the ip5 screen is so tiny compared to S3.

Click to expand...

Photo metric science is based on accurate replication of real life as seen by the human eye, and recreated with electronic displays. So no, I don't think most would agree with your assumption.

Stuntman06 said:

Conrast ratio is where the SGS3 screen beats the iP5 by a lot. The article does mention that this is not an important factor due to most people do not use it in conditions where this matters. When I first saw that comment, I wasn't sure how to take it. I was wondering if he downplayed this aspect where the SGS3 kills the iPhones because he did not want to highlight advantages of the SGS3 or if in fact it was true that phones are not used in such lighting conditions.

Personally, I use my phone indoors most of the time. I rarely ever use it in the sun. I can see that the iP5 will be better in the sun because its maximum brightness is much higher than on the SGS3. For me personally, I would rarely need my screen to be brighter than the maximum brightness on the SGS3. I use it indoors most of the time. For me, the contrast ratio will likely matter more because of my mostly indoor use.

Click to expand...

I was confused by the contrast ratio and contrast rating too. But I understand what he means. The S3 OLED have very,very deep blacks. But when used even in indoor room lighting , the average phone surface glass reflection (of room lighting) of 4-6% swamps those deep blacks and places the two displays on similar footing. But since LCD screens have superior brightness (2x), they have the 'contrast rating' advantage. Where the OLED wins is reading in bed with the lights off, in the dark.