iPhones Expected to Have OLED Displays Starting in 2018

[HiRez]

I think the LCD on the iPad Pro is fantastic. This is coming from a Pioneer Kuro owner

I also am the happy owner of a Kuro. The latest iPhone screens are great in high lighting, but still not as good as OLED in the dark. Black levels are still too high, especially light text on black background (it doesn't help that Apple changed the iBooks background from black to dark gray in iOS9 though).

 

[AppleScruff1]

I'm waiting for the day when they drop the numbers and just call it iPhone.

Or maybe they'll call it the Apple Phone.

 

[iapplelove]

Or maybe they'll call it the Apple Phone.

Possibly but it will take a monumental decision to take the i out of iPhone.

 

[Aston441]

They said they are looking to fix those problems which is why it wouldn't be till 2018. Regardless, if the screen lasts 10 years instead of 20 it's pretty irrelevant in a phone. Do keep in mind I have no idea what the life times of each technology is. I'm simply saying if it last the life of the device it really doesn't matter.

10 years? Lol. Even the newest OLED displays will have visible burn in if left on continuously for 10 days. Go to a cell phone store and have a look.

I LOVE being able to leave my screen on all the time. It's the major advantage iPhone has over most Android phones.

 

[Pman17]

Cool! My Next Next phone. Or if I decide to do a one year program, my Next Next Next phone.

 

[Aston441]

Yeah. It will be replaced with the over-saturated blue tint common on Samsung phones.

Until after a year and the display begins turning a sickly yellow brown, as they all do. I've been hearing about how perfection in OLED is almost here, for ten straight years. It is BS.

 

[Aston441]

I suspect the cost of the high quality display on the 6s+ is much higher than Apple likes, and they are looking toward OLED as a way to get that cost down.

I don't know of a better display on earth than the 6s plus. Is there one?

 

[xmichaelp]

I'm content with LCD. But if they move to OLED on one product I want them to do it with all. It would be annoying having an OLED iPhone and LCD MacBook.

 

[ArmCortexA8]

The flickering is absolutely terrible on most AMOLED phone displays. See (

)

I personally cannot stand the Samsung phone displays that I have seen.

Then there is the whole pentile thing which may or may not apply to the iPhone. I have a Galaxy Tab S 8.4 which has a 359 DPI pentile display. But the actual effective DPI is 33% lower, and there is a strange graininess to the display. It is an inferior display to the iPad in terms of resolution and usability.

Not really sure what to make of this news..

Pentile is the No Frills versions, RGB is always better as it has its own subpixels and does not share them, which creates better colour, however AMOLED can also show a blue / purple haze when viewed from the different angles.

 

[ksuyen]

I'm content with LCD. But if they move to OLED on one product I want them to do it with all. It would be annoying having an OLED iPhone and LCD MacBook.

We currently have OLED AppleWatch.

 

[Jess13]

stupid question i ask now. On iPhone 6/plus. isnt it LED ?

I use iPhone 5, but get my iPhone 6s next month The Apple website says it is LED backlit.

 

[ArmCortexA8]

That's my main gripe with current OLED panels. To me, the image looks cartoonish, with unnaturally oversaturated colors. But if this report is true, Apple has plenty of time to work out the kinks. I wouldn't be surprised if the switch was the result of their Apple Watch experiences, especially the animated backgrounds that would simply suck too much power on an iPhone. Also, OLED would make it possible to use an iPhone in nightstand mode. Currently, that's impossible because even at its dimmest, the iPhone display puts out too much light in a dark room.

Yes most people say the colours no matter what it's display don't look naturally - more artificially enhanced but if you look at the same thing with the human eye you noticed world's of difference. As far as I know samsung's oled panels are locked as far as saturation goes, as I don't believe you can even adjust it in any way to even come close to say lcd - it's basically all or nothing. It may be an inherent feature of the technology where you cannot tweak it. As my previous post indicated, anything with a white background on oled will drain power pretty quickly. The major advantage of oled is no backlight so the display can be thinner.

 

[ArmCortexA8]

You do realize that the display image can be tweaked to reduce the saturation, right? OLEDs can be configured to look identical to an LCD display, since they have a wider color gamut and thus can "emulate" the look of a display with a lower gamut. OLEDs do have their flaws, but this isn't one in the hands of competent engineers. I doubt Apple would release a phone with a lousy looking display. Having a wider color gamut is a good thing; you can display a wider variety of images authentically.

Of course technology matures over but remember LCD has had many revisions and fine tuning compared to oled which is not that old. As far as I know virtually any Samsung phone used an AMOLED display does not allow tweaking or changes to settings to try to get the panel to display similar to LCD, however this maybe an inherent flaw in oled and just one of those things you either accept or reject. There's also OLED and AMOLED - quite big differences. RGB is the better version of OLED, instead of Pentile displays. I wouldn't be surprised if Apple magically make the oled display show just as good if not better than the current LCD displays - either via tweaked hardware or software algorithms, as there is no backlight with oled so that means backlight units are not longer part of the equation.

 

[ArmCortexA8]

I have my doubts that Apple will go to AMOLED touchscreens unless they can get guarantees of long battery life per charge and display longevity. A more likely possibility is IGZO LCD displays to keep the touchscreen reasonably thin.

Yes I remember a couple of years ago hearing about Sharp IGZO displays which are apparently even better than OLED again - found this interesting article: http://news.oled-display.net/why-igzo-oled/

 

[ArmCortexA8]

The S6EDGE have a blue kinda tint from the side angels :O

Yep and it's inherent in current AMOLED displays - always appears off angle - referred to as colour shift.

 

[groovyd]

I'm waiting for the day when they drop the numbers and just call it iPhone.

i'm thinking they will start calling it applePhone soon

 

[69Mustang]

Yes most people say the colours no matter what it's display don't look naturally - more artificially enhanced but if you look at the same thing with the human eye you noticed world's of difference. As far as I know samsung's oled panels are locked as far as saturation goes, as I don't believe you can even adjust it in any way to even come close to say lcd - it's basically all or nothing. It may be an inherent feature of the technology where you cannot tweak it. As my previous post indicated, anything with a white background on oled will drain power pretty quickly. The major advantage of oled is no backlight so the display can be thinner.

You did qualify your statement with "As far as I know..." and that was a smart move. Simply put, you're wrong. Not you, but multiple people in this thread are quoting old OLED info as if it's still relevant today. Samsung phones come with 4 distinctly different display modes for color. Used to be 5, but Dynamic was incorporated into Adaptive.
-Adaptive mode (default) - oversaturated by up to 133% (The 133% oversaturation used to be Dynamic.) This is the mode everyone comments on in these threads. Adaptive mode changes the colors based on factors like content, ambient lighting, etc.
-AMOLED Photo - uses Adobe RGB Color Gamut instead of Standard sRBG/Rec. 709 Color Gamut.
-AMOLED Cinema - enhances colors to match theater type of experience. Severely oversaturated colors. Almost cartoonish imo, but weirdly enough I have a buddy with red/green color blindness who swears by this mode.
-Basic mode - uses Standard sRBG. Most accurate colors; 101% to Standard sRBG. That's the highest color accuracy rating on a smartphone.

The Samsung screen was judged to be the best overall screen on any smartphone (iPhone judged to be the best LCD screen). "So… The Galaxy S6 matches the Galaxy Note 4 in overall display excellence and record performance and joins it as the Best Performing Smartphone Display that we have ever tested." - Displaymate

The battery drain on primarily white backgrounds has also been improved by 20% over the S5 even though it's pushing 2x the pixels. Both Lollipop and Marshmallow are primarily white and the phones run fine on them.

With Apple's control of hardware and software, and the improvements in OLED technology, there's no telling what they could do with this tech by 2018.

 

[5105973]

The flickering is absolutely terrible on most AMOLED phone displays. See (

)

I personally cannot stand the Samsung phone displays that I have seen.

Then there is the whole pentile thing which may or may not apply to the iPhone. I have a Galaxy Tab S 8.4 which has a 359 DPI pentile display. But the actual effective DPI is 33% lower, and there is a strange graininess to the display. It is an inferior display to the iPad in terms of resolution and usability.

Not really sure what to make of this news..

Flicker is a huge problem for those of us with chronic migraine. It's a trigger. I did not notice flicker in the Samsungs I tested but I did feel a bit of eye strain after just a short amount of time I tried them.

 

[ArmCortexA8]

You did qualify your statement with "As far as I know..." and that was a smart move. Simply put, you're wrong. Not you, but multiple people in this thread are quoting old OLED info as if it's still relevant today. Samsung phones come with 4 distinctly different display modes for color. Used to be 5, but Dynamic was incorporated into Adaptive.
-Adaptive mode (default) - oversaturated by up to 133% (The 133% oversaturation used to be Dynamic.) This is the mode everyone comments on in these threads. Adaptive mode changes the colors based on factors like content, ambient lighting, etc.
-AMOLED Photo - uses Adobe RGB Color Gamut instead of Standard sRBG/Rec. 709 Color Gamut.
-AMOLED Cinema - enhances colors to match theater type of experience. Severely oversaturated colors. Almost cartoonish imo, but weirdly enough I have a buddy with red/green color blindness who swears by this mode.
-Basic mode - uses Standard sRBG. Most accurate colors; 101% to Standard sRBG. That's the highest color accuracy rating on a smartphone.

The Samsung screen was judged to be the best overall screen on any smartphone (iPhone judged to be the best LCD screen). "So… The Galaxy S6 matches the Galaxy Note 4 in overall display excellence and record performance and joins it as the Best Performing Smartphone Display that we have ever tested." - Displaymate

The battery drain on primarily white backgrounds has also been improved by 20% over the S5 even though it's pushing 2x the pixels. Both Lollipop and Marshmallow are primarily white and the phones run fine on them.

With Apple's control of hardware and software, and the improvements in OLED technology, there's no telling what they could do with this tech by 2018.

I haven't used a Samsung Galaxy since the S2 so was not sure of these settings.

 

[69Mustang]

I haven't used a Samsung Galaxy since the S2 so was not sure of these settings.

S2. Isn't that sort of like commenting on the display of current iPads having only experienced the original iPad mini? Based on your multiple posts, I mistakenly assumed your opinions were about current tech. I had an S2 as well and it's orders of magnitude from current tech, whether AMOLED or LCD. I would think it would be a little difficult to give an informed opinion without sufficient info. I know it's not the "be all, end all" but Displaymate seems to give fairly objective and highly technical reviews of displays of all types. It's a decent resource if that's something that interests you.

 

[maxsix]

Apple may have wisely chosen to back away from risky innovation. Instead taking the comfy safe road of gradual, incremental, conservative refinement. Staying safe from direct comparison, this approach will serve Apple well.

As such there's no chance of a significant setback, and only Apples biggest supporters will notice they're no longer willing to take the risks needed to lead. The payoff will be comforting to the shareholders.

Small conservative refinements will turn Apple into a more mainstream, predictable company for the long haul.

 

[CmdrLaForge]

What does a shorter lifespan actually mean? How many hours. I see many tv already offer oled.

 

[Misaki]

I don't want OLED. My 6S plus screen is good enough and I prefer the longer lifespan.

Yes. The iPhone has been using IPS screens since the beginning. Switching to OLED seems like either a cost-cutting measure for a cheaper phone or another attempt to make the screen thinner. OLED's "wear out" much faster than IPS screens. IPS is worse for your eyes. OLED uses more power for bright colors while IPS uses the same amount of power regardless of the image.

Like the general gist of it is that OLED is more colorful due to higher color saturation, not necessarily higher quality. It might be viable as an alternative to TN LED, but it's certainly not an IPS replacement except under "daylight" which is one specific situation that mobile phones are more frequently used under.

 

[Neodym]

Note to myself: Buy an iPhone in 2017 and avoid 1st gen OLED-iPhone in 2018.

 

[anshuvorty]

If this rumor is true, I might just hold out until the iPhone 8 comes out in 2018. The amoled displays on various Android look better to my untrained than the LCD-based iPhone screens. I am just averse to the overall concept of Android so an iPhone with OLED is the perfect combination of screen technology and mobile OS that I have been looking forward to.