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Apples for Apples - pun realised but not necessarily intended - OLED is without doubt superior to LCD in almost every measurable way. However, it's a complicated subject and often comes down to individual applications and video processing. More involved than the actual physical panel.

I love the screen on my 6S Plus, but often find the black levels seriously lacking in zero/low light, as I would expect.

I'm eager for Apple to switch to OLED, but the wait is softened by the knowledge that, when they do, they won't drive it with video processing that's designed to impress the ill informed.
 
You do realize just how small of a sample from the overall population this forum is, correct? And not even all of that sample (this forum) is complaining of those issues. And even moreso, the kinds of people who lurk and post on technology forums are typically more picky than the average consumer. It's a fraction of a fraction of a fraction.

Besides, it's the internet. People are more compelled to post about complaints/problems than about how pleased they are. What you see is biased.

edit: Not saying that the problems others are claiming aren't real, just pointing out that it's very possible that only a very small number of users are experiencing problems or are unhappy with the screens on the 7.

And you left out one additional factor: there are people paid by their competitors to be on here posting negative information about Apple, whether true or not.
 
The Apple Watch is amoled. Do you find it to have a grainy screen door look? I do not, but in deliberately asking because you may see something I can't.

You can easily see the screen effect on the watch. See the pics at:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/watch-display-pixels-pentile.1894701/#post-21502967

Because of the way the watch is used it doesn't bother me as much.

I do own a Galaxy Tab S 8.4 which I bought because of the supposedly amazing 359 dpi display. It has the same issue with a sort of gritty opalescent look when showing white backgrounds. The new 9.7 ipad has a much better overall display to my eyes with a much sharper fine resolution on things such as small text. If you wanted to look at the math behind sub pixels for each pixel then the actual DPI of the Tab S 8.4 is pretty much the same as the ipad.

I'm just one of those people who are sensitive to Amoled I suppose. And then there is the whole flickering issue.
 



iphone-7-front-back.jpg
DisplayMate Technologies has declared iPhone 7 has the "best LCD display" it has ever tested, calling it "truly impressive" and a "major upgrade" over the iPhone 6 based on a series of advanced viewing tests and measurements.

iPhone 7 achieved the highest color accuracy, peak brightness, and contrast rating in bright light of any smartphone display, the highest contrast ratio of any IPS LCD display, and the lowest screen reflectance of any smartphone display.

Apple's latest flagship smartphone also has image contrast and intensity described as "visually indistinguishable from perfect," and the smallest color variation when viewing the screen at an angle of any smartphone display.

Color Accuracy and Power Efficiency

iPhone 7 has two color gamuts, including a new 26% larger DCI-P3 Wide Color Gamut, as found in 4K TVs, and a traditional, smaller sRGB / Rec.709 gamut. DisplayMate said both gamuts have been implemented with absolute color accuracy that is "visually indistinguishable from perfect," which is "truly impressive" and a "major competitive advantage" over other smartphones.

DisplayMate said the iPhone 7 has "the most color accurate display" that it has ever measured, adding that the smartphone's display is "very likely considerably better than any mobile display, monitor, TV, or UHD TV" that consumers have. In technical terms, the iPhone 7 has a "Just Noticeable Color Difference" (JNCD) rating of 1.1, which is the best result of any smartphone it has ever tested.

Despite having a much wider color gamut, the iPhone 7's display is 7% more power efficient than the iPhone 6's display.Brightness

The measured peak brightness for the iPhone 7 is 602 cd/m2 (nits), the highest of any smartphone DisplayMate has ever tested.

The measurement increases up to a record 705 nits when Automatic Brightness is turned on under brightly lit conditions.Contrast Ratio

DisplayMate said the iPhone 7 has a record-breaking contrast ratio among IPS LCD smartphone displays.iPhone 7 also has the highest contrast rating (137 to 160) in high ambient light of any smartphone.

Reflectance

DisplayMate said iPhone 7 has 4.4% screen reflectance, which is a record low among smartphones it has ever tested.

However, the iPhone 7 doesn't come close to the record low 1.7% screen reflectance of the 9.7-inch iPad Pro, which has a special anti-reflective coating.Viewing Angle

DisplayMate said the iPhone 7 has "excellent viewing angle performance" with no visually noticeable color shifts. The display had the smallest color variation when viewed at an angle, earning a JNCD rating of 2.1 or less.DisplayMate shared more in-depth analysis in its iPhone 7 vs. iPhone 6 display shootout.

Article Link: iPhone 7's 'Best LCD Display Ever' Marks 'Major Upgrade Over iPhone 6'
[doublepost=1474317020][/doublepost]How is the iPhone 7/7+ the brightes smartphone display ever when the Note 7 (also tested by Displaymate) checked in at over a 1000 nits?
 
What you characterize as snark is rooted in anger, as evidenced by the fact that me being a photographer lends a point of view based on real life experience (rather than internet searches) that is relevant when it comes to photography, cameras, displays, etc. And that clearly bothers you.
Ha! I wish you would get over your anger fixation. I'm not, nor have I ever been, angered by anything you said. I fail to see anything to be angry about. FYI, the snark stems from humor in the fact that you've made multiple posts in this thread and in each one you've found it necessary to point out you're a photographer. I think we got it after the 2nd post stating you're a photographer. It reminded me of one of the forum members on my Mustang board. He did an axle swap from solid to IRS and for two straight weeks that's all he wanted to bring up. So no, it doesn't bother me; clearly or otherwise. Get that anger detection meter checked. It's failing you.

DCI-P3 is a wide color gamut, as is Adobe RGB. Is one better than the other? I guess it depends. I don't know the reason Apple made that choice, but I suspect it has to do with their view of the future being more about "film"/video - it is a standard for the film industry. An Adobe RGB panel could have been chosen just as well. There is no downside both having wide gamuts and convertible on output. The point is they're both much wider than sRGB, allowing colors to be viewed and processed that sRGB couldn't handle.
My google search already confirmed this to be true, not sure why you're repeating it. Is this like your "I'm a photographer" repetition thing? Please note, I never questioned if one was better than the other. I questioned your advocacy of DCI-P3 in quotes about photography when it's more about film/video and when anything shot on an iPhone 2K and under will revert to the sRGB. To be clear, it wasn't about DCI-P3. It was about you. I also asked if you had any relevant info, but in your haste to label me angry you must have missed that. So do you have anything relevant regarding the benefit of DCI-P3 on iPhone photography? I'm asking... for a friend.

"Am I a photographer? I fail to see the relevance."

It's relevant to me because I give more weight to people who speak from direct experience rather than internet searches. From your questions it appears you have little knowledge about P3 other than from a cursory internet search.

I have no problem with you not placing value on people who speak from direct experience. I'm certain google serves you well in tech forum conversations.

Ah, the good ole ad hominem attack. The last refuge of an ineffective argument. But hey, I'm all about learning something new. Perhaps you could provide me with some knowledge. In the interim, I'll be searching google just in case.
 
Ha! I wish you would get over your anger fixation. I'm not, nor have I ever been, angered by anything you said. I fail to see anything to be angry about. FYI, the snark stems from humor in the fact that you've made multiple posts in this thread and in each one you've found it necessary to point out you're a photographer. I think we got it after the 2nd post stating you're a photographer. It reminded me of one of the forum members on my Mustang board. He did an axle swap from solid to IRS and for two straight weeks that's all he wanted to bring up. So no, it doesn't bother me; clearly or otherwise. Get that anger detection meter checked. It's failing you.


My google search already confirmed this to be true, not sure why you're repeating it. Is this like your "I'm a photographer" repetition thing? Please note, I never questioned if one was better than the other. I questioned your advocacy of DCI-P3 in quotes about photography when it's more about film/video and when anything shot on an iPhone 2K and under will revert to the sRGB. To be clear, it wasn't about DCI-P3. It was about you. I also asked if you had any relevant info, but in your haste to label me angry you must have missed that. So do you have anything relevant regarding the benefit of DCI-P3 on iPhone photography? I'm asking... for a friend.



Ah, the good ole ad hominem attack. The last refuge of an ineffective argument. But hey, I'm all about learning something new. Perhaps you could provide me with some knowledge. In the interim, I'll be searching google just in case.

No. In my first post, which you rebutted with snark and anger, I never brought up DCI-P3. Nice try.

"I also asked if you had any relevant info, but in your haste to label me angry you must have missed that."

And I provided relevant info comparing Adobe RGB and P3, the tradeoffs, and the fact that both having wide color gamuts, they were both good. Guess you missed that.

While you're getting up to speed finding stuff on google, you might want to look up ad hominem.

When evaluating information, I'll always stick to putting much greater weight on information from people with direct relevant experience in the field over those whose sole experience on a subject is looking stuff up on google (that's not an attack on your character, btw - it's about how I choose to evaluate and weigh information). Especially when it comes to photography. So many people out there with loads of google "facts" and opinions, but with no work to show to demonstrate competency. Not surprised.
 
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I know all the analysts keep talking about OLED in the next iPhone, but I really hope Apple just skips it and knocks it out of the park with mLED, which is supposed to have even better contrast while using less energy. It would be great if they could introduce it in the iPad Pro or MacBook Pro first before they scale to iPhone production volume. Any time you switch a major new technology like that, you run into some kind of problem, so it's best to start small and get it right.
 
Is it a joke? Everybody reports dark displays with ugly yellow tint....

Generalize much... "everybody"? Any post that includes "every body" or "every time" warrants being dismissed.

Okay okay, all very nice, but how does it stack up against an OLED? This is what consumers want to know.

Actually many consumers don't know the difference between OLED and LCD. Further, the screen type will not be the determining factor in what "consumers" desire or select.
 
225691d1461675153t-how-bad-amoled-screen-burn-problem-13029548_1199958916680986_654565150368753890_o.jpg


Hope you can see it with your display. It's called OLED burn in.

Switching to OLED Displays for Next iPhone

Given the exceptional performance of the iPhone 7 LCD display, there will be many consumers, journalists, reviewers, and even manufacturers wondering if Apple will actually be switching to OLED iPhone displays in 2017, as has been widely reported...

LCDs are a great cutting edge high performance display technology for Tablets to TVs, but for handheld Smartphones, OLED displays provide a number of significant advantages over LCDs including: being much thinner, much lighter, with a much smaller bezel providing a near rimless design, they can be made flexible and into curved screens, plus they have a very fast response time, better viewing angles, and an always-on display mode. Many of the OLED performance advantages result from the fact that every single sub-pixel in an OLED display is individually directly powered, which results in better color accuracy, image contrast accuracy, and screen uniformity.

Because of their very flexible power management capabilities, OLEDs are not only more power efficient than LCDs for most image content, but they now deliver much higher peak Brightness than LCDs because of this. However, for mostly all white screen content LCDs are likely to remain brighter and more power efficient for a while. OLED displays are now manufactured on flexible substrates, which allows the screens to be curved and rounded like on the Galaxy Note7 and earlier Galaxy Edge and Galaxy Round displays.

Apple’s reported move to an OLED iPhone is simply a recognition of all of the above, particularly as more and more competing Smartphones will be coming with OLED displays.
 
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It's not a question of mattering - it's a question of whether the difference is perceptible. Since the entire purpose of color accuracy in a workflow output device (monitor, printer for proofing) is to allow humans to accurately gauge color while manipulating image data, any improvement beyond perceptibility does not increase the utility of the output device.

This could be said of any monitoring device, the output of a color printing press or microphone...

The reasons it matters to professionals are several. One is confidence in one's tools (and one's work). It's generally better to know you have gear that exceeds, rather than matches, the gear used by the average end user. If your goal is, "the best possible," "good enough" may not be a fruitful frame of mind. Another is cumulative errors/degradation/inaccuracy. Individual inaccuracies may be imperceptible, but the cumulative effect may not be. And, of course, "imperceptible" to the average beholder can be glaringly obvious to those who spend their days doing it.

Sure, there's also the placebo effect, Emperor's New Clothes and all that, but Apple tends to focus on features that users can detect, rather than numbers on spec sheets.

Yeah, there's always a point of diminishing returns (or overkill), but we're talking about under-$1,000 products here, not $100,000 speaker systems.
 
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Actually many consumers don't know the difference between OLED and LCD. Further, the screen type will not be the determining factor in what "consumers" desire or select.

wish somebody would have told SJ that back when he was all about the retina this and the retina that, retina, retina, retina. i know for a fact alot of the apple fanboys who really ate that stuff up lol...
 
I love how Apple apologists always are careful to proclaim a "good enough" threshold in specs that includes all of Apple's products.

Obviously devices are not always held at arm's length. Higher pixel density shows more detail which can be appreciated by closer inspection. Well, unless you're an old geezer in need of reading glasses....or an Apple fanboi.

I strongly disagree that someone saying Apple is better off focusing on things that have a greater impact on quality in lieu of trying to "improve" specs that bear little to no real world impact for most of us makes that person an "apple apologist". How about you just let other people decide for themselves which freatures are more important to them. And if you really want to get craxy, perhaps even respect their opinion rather than mock it.
 
It really is a shame the phone had explosion issues. In all seriousness, I prefer Apple but I still like to have stiff competition. By all other counts it seems like the Note 7 is a really great phone (I haven't used one yet).
Except for that XDA Developers review that complained of severe performance issues even compared to other less expensive Android phones.
 
Samsung display has higher resolution, lower typical power-consumption, wider color gamut (131% sRGB in wide-gamut mode vs 101% for iPhone 7, 100% of Adobe RGB vs no support on iPhone 7), physical flexibility (bendable, curvable), and as you said, better blacks. Other than that both displays are equally good :)

There's one more thing that gets dismissed too much - always-on display with AMOLED. You can display simple notifications,etc. with very little power use, as every subpixel is individually powered. While the Note 7 implementation of this feature is pretty good, I would love to see what Apple could do with it, IF it ever moves away from the LCDs...
 
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I've seen it in person. The color accuracy, brightness, etc. are improvements, yes. But after you see/use a 1440p display from any other high-end phones in the market today, it really makes you anticipate that much more for the next iPhone.

Not at all, quite the opposite in fact - Apple just shipped the highest-quality LCD of all time. There are competing display technologies, sure, but there's nothing to say that LCDs have peaked.

Interesting choice of words there. Who determines what is and isn't "perfect"? Seems more like a subjective point of view to me. Not to take away from the stunning display that they're touting, but I think essentially calling it perfect is a bit much.

When it comes to colour reproduction, they use calorimeters to measure the wavelengths of light produced against what is expected. A lot of work has been done on colour and how we perceive it.
[doublepost=1474320577][/doublepost]
There's one more thing that gets dismissed too much - always-on display with AMOLED. You can display simple notifications,etc. with very little power use, as every subpixel is individually powered. While the Note 7 implementation of this feature is pretty good, I would love to see what Apple could do with it, IF it ever moves away from the LCDs...

It gets dismissed so much because it isn't as large a benefit as it seems at first. In order for it to be a big power win, you need a display which is:

- Mostly black
- Most of the time
- With tiny amounts of useful content appearing sporadically

There may be some kiosk and bedside-clock applications where that makes sense, but your phone is usually either locked in your pocket or being actively used. You don't often leave it with the screen off for long periods of time where it's important to see the occasional small amount of content. It's just not a big deal.

If you want truly meaningful always-on display, have a look at e-paper.
 
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Yeah I've noticed that too. My 6s seems super bright and the whites are whiter. I read it might be something to an adhesive still drying but I thought I'd monitor it until I panicked

My iPhone 7's display is considerably warmer and less brighter than that of my 6S. The difference is very obvious when I hold both phones side by side. Is anyone else noticing this with their phone as well?
 
Your emotion detector is broken as it relates to anger. Take solace in the fact that it's 100% operational in snark detection.;) The snark stems from the fact that you keep reiterating you're a photographer as if it lends credence to your argument. It doesn't. Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't the DCI-P3 color gamut more about video content (4K and such) than photography? Isn't Adobe RGB more about photography? Afaik, the iP7 supports DCI-P3 and sRGB and uses color management to detect which color gamut to use based on what's being displayed. I haven't found any supporting information stating DCI-P3 will have any effect on photography. Maybe you have.

Am I a photographer? I fail to see the relevance. Either I am presenting factual information or not. Neither my profession nor avocation changes facts.

Not wanting to walk in to any arguments here, I thought I'd note that Phil Schiller on stage mentioned that the camera captures in wider colour than could be shown on the projector in the hall; he said that they look even more amazing on the iPhone's screen.

Wider colours are important, whether you're a professional photographer or not. I'm the kind of person who likes to notice the natural beauty in the world (it helps that I live in a very green city with lots of parks and lakes). Anyway, I often feel like I'm seeing an amazing scene but when I take a photo it doesn't look nearly as impressive at it was at the time. Lots of the reason for that is that the colours are not correct - the deep, swirling purply-red of the sunset, the screaming yellow leaves of a tree, etc. Those are the things that strike me IRL, and really they are what I want to capture as much as the objects in the scene.

I'm not a professional by any stretch, but I think lots of people have the same feeling. And better colour reproducing in that case gets a big thumbs-up from me!
 
Switching to OLED Displays for Next iPhone

Given the exceptional performance of the iPhone 7 LCD display, there will be many consumers, journalists, reviewers, and even manufacturers wondering if Apple will actually be switching to OLED iPhone displays in 2017, as has been widely reported...

LCDs are a great cutting edge high performance display technology for Tablets to TVs, but for handheld Smartphones, OLED displays provide a number of significant advantages over LCDs including: being much thinner, much lighter, with a much smaller bezel providing a near rimless design, they can be made flexible and into curved screens, plus they have a very fast response time, better viewing angles, and an always-on display mode. Many of the OLED performance advantages result from the fact that every single sub-pixel in an OLED display is individually directly powered, which results in better color accuracy, image contrast accuracy, and screen uniformity.

Because of their very flexible power management capabilities, OLEDs are not only more power efficient than LCDs for most image content, but they now deliver much higher peak Brightness than LCDs because of this. However, for mostly all white screen content LCDs are likely to remain brighter and more power efficient for a while. OLED displays are now manufactured on flexible substrates, which allows the screens to be curved and rounded like on the Galaxy Note7 and earlier Galaxy Edge and Galaxy Round displays.

Apple’s reported move to an OLED iPhone is simply a recognition of all of the above, particularly as more and more competing Smartphones will be coming with OLED displays.

Apple won't event use OLEDs, they will certainly go for microLED
 
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