Hi everyone,
A newbie here
1. I am neither an Apple sheep nor an android troll.
2. I have worked with video and photography professionally before, although more so from the position of a director than a colorist/editor.
That being said, I am quite sensitive when it comes to display color accuracy and am really good at spotting the differences between top-quality, well-calibrated displays and average to crap screens.
Ok then, here’s the thing (a fact) that I have come to realize having thoroughly tested and compared dozens of iPhone X, 11 pro, 12 and 13 units (all models): my own ones, my friends’ ones, the official Apple stores’ ones and those found at authorized resellers. None of these were second-hand, refurbished or in any way modified iPhones.
Fact: all the iPhones following the excellent X series have had worse screens than their predecessors. The truth being that with XS and 11 pros you could still get a decent panel on your iPhone (almost as good as the X’s had); however, starting with iPhone 12 the display quality, color accuracy and crushed blacks have gone from bad to truly terrible. Display uniformity has been a relatively stable issue throughout the lines and just within what one would expect from an OLED.
Let me elaborate though.
Apple took extreme care in producing their first ever OLED iPhones with the X line. There were few if any compromises made at the time when it came to delivering a premium, top-quality product to their customers. What you got for the super high price back then was an excellent, premium feeling and looking phone equipped with some near perfect OLED panels ( some of the best I’ve ever seen on a phone, to this date actually). The materials used to produce those panels were of the highest quality and so was the calibration/color accuracy and the deep, yet NOT CRUSHED blacks they displayed. The contrast wasn’t as high as the later lines would have, but you got excellent color accuracy (truly excellent for an OLED screen this size) deep blacks that at the same time displayed plenty of visible detail in the dark areas of your photos videos and movies.
What happened with the subsequent lines and especially the 12 and 13 generations is that:
a) apparently cheaper materials have been used for the production of the panels which now suffer from worse direct and off angle brightness (auto-brightness on), much more noticeable (usually green) color tints of various degrees of ugliness, much worse whites and increasingly more crushed blacks that make tons of detail vanish from our photos, videos and movies
b) the ever higher contrast ratios promoted with each new generation in an attempt to deliver better outdoor brightness and even more overblown HDR experience was not achieved only through this “better“ display technology (undoubtedly the displays CAN get brighter, no arguing there, but at what cost?), but also by crushing the blacks of our displays, thus making our photos and videos look more contrasty (fooling your average customer into believing they’re getting a better display) while depriving us of the fine detail hidden in their darker areas. Individual units are affected to a different degree but they ALL exhibit the same problem
c) color accuracy has been steadily getting worse since the X line with the newest models displaying lots of colors inaccurately and at the same time getting android-ugly oversaturated at those higher brightness levels, giving an impression of a cheap android phone (which would be fine if that’s what you paid for ofc, only it’s up to five times more expensive with these phones, so you’d naturally expect better, right?)
Do not be fooled by the higher brightness these displays can achieve for they are overall worse screens than their predecessors!
The HDR video already looks ugly overblown in most cases and the SDR videos are often too dim, with crushed blacks and showing inaccurate, unnatural colors (again individual units are more or less affected).
Often, even the best of the new generations’ units show a slight green tint sneaking its way into all the colors displayed on your screen.
By far the biggest issue I have had and the one I really can’t live with is how the blacks got crushed on these new phones perhaps also in an attempt to fool the customers into believing they’re getting yet better contrast ratios with their new overpriced devices. This is happening on phones that should come equipped with premium quality panels of corresponding high-quality color accuracy and the ability to distinguish between pure black and nearly black, and the darker shades of gray.
Yes, at first glance the crushed blacks create an impression of excellent contrast, but you’ll soon realize that the photos, movies and videos you’re used to looking at on higher-quality displays all look off.
Indeed, darker areas in all kinds of movies (especially noticeable in dark scenes) become huge blobs of pure black. This is probably because of the bad/amateurish/rushed display calibration (namely the setting of the display’s black point) but also due to the cheaper and lower quality panels used in the production of the new 12 and 13 lines.
As for the color accuracy this may or may not be a big deal to many people. Especially if you’ve never experienced consuming media on top-quality, well-calibrated displays, your brain simply has no memory of the correct colors for a movie, video or a photo and so you might easily accept the more inaccurate colors of the new iPhones as what these media are supposed to look like.
With the crushed blacks though it’s much more obvious and immediately noticeable.
Without comparing your current iPhone to my excellent good-ol’ X that has the perfect black point and color accuracy here’s a small test for everyone to check if their display’s blacks are getting crushed. And trust me, if you own an iPhone 12 or 13 they are.
Look carefully at the gif being played below the text on this website:
www.drycreekphoto.com
My iPhone X is displaying a difference between the pure black and near black at levels 2 and 3. On all the iPhones 12 and 13 I’ve tested the levels at which you can distinguish between the different shades of gray were much higher with a clear difference from pure black being noticeable at levels 6-9. That means the blacks are severely crushed on these displays and your movies and photos will show lots of black areas without any detail visible within. That’s because all the shades of gray below a certain level are simply displayed as pure black instead of their actual color thus crushing all the fine detail that would normally be visible in those dark areas of your UI, photos, videos, movies.
A newbie here
1. I am neither an Apple sheep nor an android troll.
2. I have worked with video and photography professionally before, although more so from the position of a director than a colorist/editor.
That being said, I am quite sensitive when it comes to display color accuracy and am really good at spotting the differences between top-quality, well-calibrated displays and average to crap screens.
Ok then, here’s the thing (a fact) that I have come to realize having thoroughly tested and compared dozens of iPhone X, 11 pro, 12 and 13 units (all models): my own ones, my friends’ ones, the official Apple stores’ ones and those found at authorized resellers. None of these were second-hand, refurbished or in any way modified iPhones.
Fact: all the iPhones following the excellent X series have had worse screens than their predecessors. The truth being that with XS and 11 pros you could still get a decent panel on your iPhone (almost as good as the X’s had); however, starting with iPhone 12 the display quality, color accuracy and crushed blacks have gone from bad to truly terrible. Display uniformity has been a relatively stable issue throughout the lines and just within what one would expect from an OLED.
Let me elaborate though.
Apple took extreme care in producing their first ever OLED iPhones with the X line. There were few if any compromises made at the time when it came to delivering a premium, top-quality product to their customers. What you got for the super high price back then was an excellent, premium feeling and looking phone equipped with some near perfect OLED panels ( some of the best I’ve ever seen on a phone, to this date actually). The materials used to produce those panels were of the highest quality and so was the calibration/color accuracy and the deep, yet NOT CRUSHED blacks they displayed. The contrast wasn’t as high as the later lines would have, but you got excellent color accuracy (truly excellent for an OLED screen this size) deep blacks that at the same time displayed plenty of visible detail in the dark areas of your photos videos and movies.
What happened with the subsequent lines and especially the 12 and 13 generations is that:
a) apparently cheaper materials have been used for the production of the panels which now suffer from worse direct and off angle brightness (auto-brightness on), much more noticeable (usually green) color tints of various degrees of ugliness, much worse whites and increasingly more crushed blacks that make tons of detail vanish from our photos, videos and movies
b) the ever higher contrast ratios promoted with each new generation in an attempt to deliver better outdoor brightness and even more overblown HDR experience was not achieved only through this “better“ display technology (undoubtedly the displays CAN get brighter, no arguing there, but at what cost?), but also by crushing the blacks of our displays, thus making our photos and videos look more contrasty (fooling your average customer into believing they’re getting a better display) while depriving us of the fine detail hidden in their darker areas. Individual units are affected to a different degree but they ALL exhibit the same problem
c) color accuracy has been steadily getting worse since the X line with the newest models displaying lots of colors inaccurately and at the same time getting android-ugly oversaturated at those higher brightness levels, giving an impression of a cheap android phone (which would be fine if that’s what you paid for ofc, only it’s up to five times more expensive with these phones, so you’d naturally expect better, right?)
Do not be fooled by the higher brightness these displays can achieve for they are overall worse screens than their predecessors!
The HDR video already looks ugly overblown in most cases and the SDR videos are often too dim, with crushed blacks and showing inaccurate, unnatural colors (again individual units are more or less affected).
Often, even the best of the new generations’ units show a slight green tint sneaking its way into all the colors displayed on your screen.
By far the biggest issue I have had and the one I really can’t live with is how the blacks got crushed on these new phones perhaps also in an attempt to fool the customers into believing they’re getting yet better contrast ratios with their new overpriced devices. This is happening on phones that should come equipped with premium quality panels of corresponding high-quality color accuracy and the ability to distinguish between pure black and nearly black, and the darker shades of gray.
Yes, at first glance the crushed blacks create an impression of excellent contrast, but you’ll soon realize that the photos, movies and videos you’re used to looking at on higher-quality displays all look off.
Indeed, darker areas in all kinds of movies (especially noticeable in dark scenes) become huge blobs of pure black. This is probably because of the bad/amateurish/rushed display calibration (namely the setting of the display’s black point) but also due to the cheaper and lower quality panels used in the production of the new 12 and 13 lines.
As for the color accuracy this may or may not be a big deal to many people. Especially if you’ve never experienced consuming media on top-quality, well-calibrated displays, your brain simply has no memory of the correct colors for a movie, video or a photo and so you might easily accept the more inaccurate colors of the new iPhones as what these media are supposed to look like.
With the crushed blacks though it’s much more obvious and immediately noticeable.
Without comparing your current iPhone to my excellent good-ol’ X that has the perfect black point and color accuracy here’s a small test for everyone to check if their display’s blacks are getting crushed. And trust me, if you own an iPhone 12 or 13 they are.
Look carefully at the gif being played below the text on this website:
Monitor Calibration Tests: Black Point
www.drycreekphoto.com
My iPhone X is displaying a difference between the pure black and near black at levels 2 and 3. On all the iPhones 12 and 13 I’ve tested the levels at which you can distinguish between the different shades of gray were much higher with a clear difference from pure black being noticeable at levels 6-9. That means the blacks are severely crushed on these displays and your movies and photos will show lots of black areas without any detail visible within. That’s because all the shades of gray below a certain level are simply displayed as pure black instead of their actual color thus crushing all the fine detail that would normally be visible in those dark areas of your UI, photos, videos, movies.
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