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DisplayMate Says iPhone 12 Pro Max Has Best Smartphone Display It's Ever Tested

MacRumors said:


DisplayMate today published its in-depth analysis of the iPhone 12 Pro Max's Super Retina XDR display, with the device earning a "Best Smartphone Display Award" and highest-ever display performance grade of A+...

Read the full DisplayMate article for in-depth analysis of the iPhone 12 Pro Max's display and the methodology behind its testing.

Article Link: DisplayMate Says iPhone 12 Pro Max Has Best Smartphone Display It's Ever Tested
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The headline is wrong. So is the conclusion drawn by the author. Funnily enough, this isn't the first time MR has made the same mistake. DisplayMate is definitely not saying the 12PM has the best smartphone display it's ever tested. It is saying the 12PM has qualified for and received the A+ rating, which is it's highest performance grade.

The linked DisplayMate article explains this pretty plainly.
Relevant excerpts:
And to get a DisplayMate A+ Display Performance Rating the Average Absolute Color Accuracy and the Average Absolute Color Accuracy Shifts with Average Picture Level APL must All be less than 1.0 JNCD, and the Largest Color Errors must All be less than 3.0 JNCD​
​
As a Result the iPhone 12 Pro Max display meets all of the criteria and requirements for a DisplayMate A+ Grade, earning DisplayMate’s Highest Overall Display Assessment Rating and Highest Display Performance Grade of A+.​

The iPhone 12 Pro Max joins the very select Top Tier of Smartphone Displays which all provide Close to Text Book Perfect Calibration Accuracy and Performance that is Visually Indistinguishable From Perfect, so they all received and maintain Concurrent DisplayMate Best Smartphone Display Awards. All are Excellent State-of-the-Art Displays, each is better in some Display Performance Categories, but None are Best in All the Display Performance Categories. Note that measured numerical display performance differences that are Visually Indistinguishable are equivalent.​

tl;dr The iPhone 12 Pro Max received the highest rating that DisplayMate gives: A+
 
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After my settling for color filters on my second 11 Pro Max, I'm just not feeling confident about these reviews when I see so many photos of these yellow 12 series devices.
 
11 Pro Max has a better screen to my eyes. I have them side by side right now. The whites are actually white on that display.
 
69Mustang said:
The headline is wrong. So is the conclusion drawn by the author. Funnily enough, this isn't the first time MR has made the same mistake. DisplayMate is definitely not saying the 12PM has the best smartphone display it's ever tested. It is saying the 12PM has qualified for and received the A+ rating, which is it's highest performance grade.

The linked DisplayMate article explains this pretty plainly.
Relevant excerpts:
And to get a DisplayMate A+ Display Performance Rating the Average Absolute Color Accuracy and the Average Absolute Color Accuracy Shifts with Average Picture Level APL must All be less than 1.0 JNCD, and the Largest Color Errors must All be less than 3.0 JNCD​
​
As a Result the iPhone 12 Pro Max display meets all of the criteria and requirements for a DisplayMate A+ Grade, earning DisplayMate’s Highest Overall Display Assessment Rating and Highest Display Performance Grade of A+.​

The iPhone 12 Pro Max joins the very select Top Tier of Smartphone Displays which all provide Close to Text Book Perfect Calibration Accuracy and Performance that is Visually Indistinguishable From Perfect, so they all received and maintain Concurrent DisplayMate Best Smartphone Display Awards. All are Excellent State-of-the-Art Displays, each is better in some Display Performance Categories, but None are Best in All the Display Performance Categories. Note that measured numerical display performance differences that are Visually Indistinguishable are equivalent.​

tl;dr The iPhone 12 Pro Max received the highest rating that DisplayMate gives: A+
Click to expand...
Evidence of obvious Macrumors bias. They won't cover the yellow screen issue either.
 
djoliverm said:
It's a fantastic display but they really need to fix the raised black issue, as it absolutely negates the whole point of OLED in dim situations (iPhone 12 Pro Max here). Apollo (reddit app) has an excellent pure OLED theme and now at zero brightness at night the whole screen shows that full grey uniformity like an LED screen. If you bring the brightness just below the sun from control center you will get that green-grey hue (it goes away once you hit zero brightness). Save a pure black image and view it in photos full screen and you'll see this clearly in a dark room at any brightness below 40% or so.

Because this seems to affect all iPhone 12s, I'm hoping this is a software issue that will be addressed in iOS 14.3, but it's just astonishing that it shipped this way when my iPhone XS Max was able to turn off pixels perfectly fine at low brightness.
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Agree. My 12 Pro is bad at zero percent brightness as well as forty percent. It is baffling to me these shipped like this and I hope to heavens it’s not a hardware issue but I’m starting to think it is.

Also, paid or not I couldn’t care less! The numbers speak for themselves. Show me a brighter phone with a 100% APL that has control over that brightness at any time? There isn’t one. Galaxy phones indoors are capped at 400 nits until you go outdoors with the ambient light sensor activated.
 
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cocky jeremy said:
Wait. Your "proof" that Apple does something is that Google does it? Not sure you know how evidence works.
Click to expand...
themanofsteeel said:
A DisplayMate review is completely irrelevant. Apple pays DisplayMate for a glowing review. I know this for a fact considering I worked at Google and we paid DisplayMate for a positive review on Pixel.
Click to expand...
It's not exactly proof, but it would certainly question the integrity of the reviewer, and it makes you wonder when phones are rated as having the best screens.

Also, while I don't doubt that either company significantly compensates reviewers in one way or another, it seems like a stretch to suggest that they would directly pay for a positive review. l'm confident that Displaymate knows not to bite the hands...
 
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When i got the iphone 7 the screen was yellow, everyone was telling me its because this is how a screen should be and the screen prior used on iphones were "too blue" and not natural. Any way by time I no longer notice its yellow. I guess its just getting used to thing.(or the glue dried🤣)
 
Jetcat3 said:
Agree. My 12 Pro is bad at zero percent brightness as well as forty percent. It is baffling to me these shipped like this and I hope to heavens it’s not a hardware issue but I’m starting to think it is.

Also, paid or not I couldn’t care less! The numbers speak for themselves. Show me a brighter phone with a 100% APL that has control over that brightness at any time? There isn’t one. Galaxy phones indoors are capped at 400 nits until you go outdoors with the ambient light sensor activated.
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I'm inclined to think that it's a software issue as all 12 models seem to suffer from the same thing and I believe they're from different suppliers. Also, it seems that when you reboot, the Apple logo initially shows perfectly fine with the blacks around it turned off, and then it transitions to this black LED look with the pixels on. So fingers crossed it's some software bug and is not inherent to the hardware itself (I mean what on earth could have changed this year in the panels that would force this change from a hardware perspective?).
 
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Lazy said:
More than once with past iPhone models some screens had a yellow tint immediately after they were manufactured. I’m pretty sure Apple even addressed this, saying some of the glue needed to fully cure and then the yellow would go away in a short while. I believe that was indeed the case.
Click to expand...

The drying glue reason is the most ridiculous thing I've heard. These phones have been manufactured and sitting in storage for months before they are released, plenty of time for glue to dry. I'm pretty sure they would dry the glue before packaging them as well.
 
UK-MacAddict said:
The drying glue reason is the most ridiculous thing I've heard. These phones have been manufactured and sitting in storage for months before they are released, plenty of time for glue to dry. I'm pretty sure they would dry the glue before packaging them as well.
Click to expand...
And they dont use glue...so...
 
themanofsteeel said:
A DisplayMate review is completely irrelevant. Apple pays DisplayMate for a glowing review. I know this for a fact considering I worked at Google and we paid DisplayMate for a positive review on Pixel.
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I think an important distinction needs to be made between “pay to write a good review” and “commission a study”
 
They should make these articles like TheOnion does at this point. Just update the dates every time a new phone is released, change the title to "New phone has the best screen we ever tested".
 
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I honestly don't see a difference when I compare the 12PM and 11PM side by side. They both look the same to me outside of the 12PM screen being a little warmer.
 
I know for a fact that displaymate were paid for this review by apple. Proof is they lied in the actual review:
1) Highest absolute colour accuracy was already awarded to Note 20 Ultra (0.5 JNCD) which is better than 0.9 JNCD for iPhone 12 Pro Max (lower is better, means lower error in colours displayed).
2) Highest Full Screen Brightness for OLED smartphones was already awarded to Note 20 Ultra. iPhone 12 Pro Max got 825nits for 100% apl where Note 20 got 1037 nits for 100% apl (higher is better, means higher brightness).
3) Lowest screen reflectance, again Note 20 had 4.4% screen reflectance and iPhone 12 Pro Max has 4.8% (again lower is better as it means less screen reflectance).
4) Smallest variation for viewing angles already belongs to Oneplus 8T (22% at 30 degrees) where iPhone 12 Pro Max got (27% at 30 degrees). Here again lower is better, as it means colours shift less at an angle.
5) Highest visible screen resolution was actually awarded to Note 20 Ultra 3K (3088 *1440) which is a higher resolution than the iPhone 12 Pro Max (2788*1284, which is even less than the industry standard of 1440p). Higher is better as it means more pixels and higher resolution.
6) Highest contrast ratio is not infinite, it is 2,000,000:1 contrast ratio (stated above in this article). All OLED is given 'infinite' contrast ratio, again this was already awarded to the Note 20 Ultra so cannot be given to iPhone 12 Pro Max as they did not break any record.
7) Highest full screen contrast rating in ambient light already belongs to Note 20 Ultra (236 for 100% apl), even Oneplus 8T got 184 for 100% apl. The iPhone 12 Pro Max got the lowest 172 at 100% apl. (Higher is better, as stated on displaymate's own website).

If they were going to make stuff up they should have done a better job. You can see for yourself everything I stated is true by visiting displaymate and looking at rating for these phones. I'll even help you with the links below:

iPhone 12 Pro Max:

Oneplus 8T:

Note 20 Ultra:


Kindly spread this message as far as you can to let people know how much rigged displaymate is, feel free to put it on social media or elsewhere to increase people's awareness to not fall for these tricks and to end the pay for play system smartphone manufacturers are using. You don't even need to quote me or link this to me you can just copy and paste the above to spread the message as far as it can go- before they change their numbers to hide the bribery!
 
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69Mustang said:
Forgive me, but it seems that all of you are more than willing to believe that Google paid DisplayMate, but draw the line at the belief that Apple did the same. Both rumors came from the same internet rando claiming to be a former Google employee. There's no proof of anything he said, but your "group-think" doubtfulness seems to start and stop with the Apple portion of the rumor.

What's more likely? 1. Dude's lying about one and not the other, or 2. it's all made up? If any of it was true, he have sourcing for his claim.

Otherwise, people could just make up anything. I know for a fact that Tim Cook eats human flesh because he belongs to the elite Nomnomnom cult. They wear blue furs and googley-eye masks while performing ritualized cannibalism. I used to be a butler for the group leader, Warren Buffet. I saw the list of membership one night when Warren got up to his eyeballs in cobra whiskey and ladyboy hookers. Tim Cook is a Nomnomnommer. FACTS. No one denies this.
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We aren't saying he's right about Google. We're saying, even if you assume Google pays, it doesn't mean anything at all for Apple. It's totally irrelevant.
 
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