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iPhone X Does anyone prefer a great LCD screen over OLED?

Hieveryone

Hieveryone

macrumors 603
Original poster
Apr 11, 2014
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I have the iPhone X and I just feel colors seem too saturated at times. Like, its too much color if that makes sense. Green grass is soooo GREEN, like super green sometimes. Just as an example.
 
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I have the iPhone X, and used it for a year. I loved the OLED color schemes, and the rich colors. But I went back to the LCD screen and "upgraded" to an iPhone 8 because I was getting headaches from the OLED pulsing thing. But after going to back LCD's my headaches have stopped.
 
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acocke said:
I have the iPhone X, and used it for a year. I loved the OLED color schemes, and the rich colors. But I went back to the LCD screen and "upgraded" to an iPhone 8 because I was getting headaches from the OLED pulsing thing. But after going to back LCD's my headaches have stopped.
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i’ve heard true tone on helps? is that true?
 
acocke said:
I read that also, but it did not help for me. I left true tone on all the time when I used the X and I still had the headaches. It may help for other people though, just not for me.
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i had a headache this morning. do you think it’s from the iphone X?

Like how often do they happen?
 
If apple goes full OLED with all their phones that will be concerning if it’s going to give everyone headaches.
 
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Having owned OLED phones from other manufacturers (in one case a broadly similar spec to the iPhone X) I still prefer an RGB LCD given the choice. Apple's 5.5" Retina HD screens are probably the nicest I have seen on a handset for my preferences. I don't like the effect PenTile makes, even at 450ppi. Perhaps pushing density even higher might ultimately make it disappear, but that's going to be a big drain on system resources.
 
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Hieveryone said:
i had a headache this morning. do you think it’s from the iphone X?

Like how often do they happen?
Click to expand...

I'm no doctor so I'm not saying much lol but you could do an experiment and use a LCD phone for a couple of days and see if your eyes and head feel better if you are having a discomfort since you got your OLED phone.

For me I woke up almost daily with a form of eye strain, to mild to medium headaches. But using my LCD iPhones my eyes are thanking me.
 
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Its strange, Samsung and other manufactures have been using OLED displays for years and I never once heard anyone mention PWM. Now that apple has OLED displays all these posts about people getting headaches are popping up.
 
coney718 said:
Its strange, Samsung and other manufactures have been using OLED displays for years and I never once heard anyone mention PWM. Now that apple has OLED displays all these posts about people getting headaches are popping up.
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Because there are far more special, sensitive snowflakes in Apple’s customer base that are used to having everyone listen when they whine about how hard their first world life is.

I’ll also point out the fact that the device is blamed and an entire type of well established screen technology is derided before anyone even suggests that the amount of time someone spends staring at a tiny screen could cause a headache.

Nah. Let’s just skip right to “NO I’M SENSITIVE AND A VICTIM TOO”.
 
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Disconnect_00 said:
Because there are far more special, sensitive snowflakes in Apple’s customer base that are used to having everyone listen when they whine about how hard their first world life is.

I’ll also point out the fact that the device is blamed and an entire type of well established screen technology is derided before anyone even suggests that the amount of time someone spends staring at a tiny screen could cause a headache.

Nah. Let’s just skip right to “NO I’M SENSITIVE AND A VICTIM TOO”.
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I agree with this to some degree. But PWM flicker and sensitivity is not new at all. It's just that so many more people are using OLED iPhones now, it is bound to pop up among some users. This goes back years to when the first "flicker free" gaming (or other) computer monitors were released and isn't just an OLED problem. Apple has used flicker free LCD for quite some time until OLED, so again, not surprising that some people are affected. Each manufacturer uses a different PWM frequency. So it makes sense that those who can use an S9 or a Pixel just fine can't use an iPhone X.

Google search Samsung S7 PWM flicker. There were custom kernels being worked on to eliminate it back then. People were complaining about it back then.

I hate hate hate PWM. It doesn't cause any issue for me but I am able to perceive it sometimes when using my phone in dark rooms.

That said, I'll take an excellent LCD any day over OLED. I care more about bright whites than infinite contrast. Constant current dimming is just flat out better than PWM. If the XR had a 1080p display I'd sell my XS without hesitation. Same thing on the Android side. If the Pixel Lite (leaks say it'll be LCD) is any good and doesn't use PWM I'll sell my Pixel 3 XL without hesitation.
 
I prefer LCD purely because it doesn't have the burn-in problems of AMOLED. I don't have to baby it.
 
Hieveryone said:
I have the iPhone X and I just feel colors seem too saturated at times. Like, its too much color if that makes sense. Green grass is soooo GREEN, like super green sometimes. Just as an example.
Click to expand...
There are reasons why someone might prefer one to the other, as people are pointing out, but color accuracy probably isn’t one of them. The idea that OLED is more saturated doesn’t have anything to do with the technology, it comes from Samsung shipping with an over saturated profile enabled by default followed by constant repetition that their OLED colors “really pop”.

If you look at Display Mate testing, both the OLED and LCD displays from Apple are extremely color accurate, to the point your eye can’t really notice a difference. (The unit of measure for color calibration is, in fact, jnd, the just noticeable difference.)

The Samsung displays are also very accurate if you bother to enable the right color profile, but there’s a pretty strong following of people who like the over saturated look because they always want “MOAR EXPERIENCE!!!”
 
I had the X for a year and the XS Max for about a month, and I still cannot tell the difference between Apple's LCD displays and their OLED displays to be honest. They both look as washed out and dull to me.
 
Hieveryone said:
I have the iPhone X and I just feel colors seem too saturated at times. Like, its too much color if that makes sense. Green grass is soooo GREEN, like super green sometimes. Just as an example.
Click to expand...
I like the lcd compared to the oled. Oled looks too warm for me. Even when I turn off True Tone.
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bigjnyc said:
I had the X for a year and the XS Max for about a month, and I still cannot tell the difference between Apple's LCD displays and their OLED displays to be honest. They both look as washed out and dull to me.
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If you put an lcd and oled side by side there’s differences in the hue, Warm vs cool, even with True Tone turned off.
 
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1rottenapple said:
I like the lcd compared to the oled. Oled looks too warm for me. Even when I turn off True Tone.
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If you put an lcd and oled side by side there’s differences in the hue, Warm vs cool, even with True Tone turned off.
Click to expand...

Trust me I've tried and I can't see the difference at all... Except when looking at a true black screen obviously.
 
I think each has their own strengths.
I LOVE the OLED screen on the iPhone XS Max. The colors are excellent and not oversaturated like Samsung phones.

I also have a 2018 iPad Pro and I love the quality of that LCD screen. The ProMotion on it is just amazing. I'll give up OLED in exchange for that ProMotion. Although, I wish they could do ProMotion on OLED because I hate seeing the washed out/faded looking blacks of the iPad's display.
 
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