LCD vs AMOLED vs pOLED vs gOLED Display and Comparison

credits - LG

Displays are one of the most significant selling points of a smartphone these days. With various display types present in the market, It might be confusing for people who don't know the technicalities and precise differences between these big-name displays, like AMOLED, Super-AMOLED, P-OLED G-OLED, LCD-IPS, And more. But don't worry, Here is a Noob-friendly guide for those Who are not sure what kind of display they should go with.
So, let's start with the difference between LCDs and OLEDs.

OLED v/s LCD

Generally, Phones come with Either LCD displays or OLED displays, other names like IPS displays or AMOLED displays, or P-OLED displays are just the subtypes of these two technologies named LCD and OLED.

LCDs or (Liquid Crystal Displays) are comparatively older display technology that uses a backlight to light up the screen and then passes that light through different layers of color filter and liquid crystals to produce colors that we see on our display. The light emitted by the backlight gets polarised and then transferred into a crystal element that adjusts its angle depending on the voltage that is passed through it and then the light passes through a color filter then it gets grouped into pixels to produce the final display.

There exist two types of LCD displays -

1. TFT LCD displays
2. IPS LCD displays

we'll talk about these two, one by one. First, let's talk about TFT displays.

TFT stands for Thin-Film Transistors, these panels can hold back some pixels while using other pixels which makes it very power efficient. TFT panels have capacitors and transistors that play a very important part in making sure that the display uses less amount of power while not going out of operation. These panels are cheaper in production and easy to maintain as well as have a longer lifespan.

Now, coming to IPS panels, IPS stands for In-Plane Switching. You can understand IPS displays as the more advanced version of TFT LCD displays that offer better viewing angles, more vibrant colors, widespread use cases, and lower response time. IPS displays have response time as low as 0.3 ms whereas TFT panels have a response time of around 10ms which is a very drastic difference.

So, which one is better? IPS or TFT? well, here the clear winner would be IPS panels as they work on a newer technology thus providing, better viewing angles, more vibrant colors, and lower response time.
OLED stands for Organic Light-Emitting Diodes. These panels are actually based on a more advanced technology that instead of using a panel to produce light and passing it through different filters, It has very small independent diodes or in simple terms, very small independent bulbs that can produce their own light in RGB. And OLEDs have a very thin layer of organic compound in the display that help in sending the light in the desired direction. Display paned made using OLED technologies have lower production costs and have slightly better refresh rates when compared to AMOLED panels which is a type of OLED display panel.

There are quite a few types of OLED displays -

credits - paidfreedroid

1. AMOLED & super AMOLED
2. P-OLED

Let's talk about all these one by one.

AMOLED displays are basically OLED displays with a thin layer of transistors inside and are made using Active Matrix technology that derives its name as well. These are more power-efficient than OLEDs. The main feature of this panel is that it can control each and every pixel independently, which means it can easily turn off the pixels from the areas of the screen that represent the black color thus giving the true-black experience, and that's exactly how it saves energy as well. A variant of AMOLED displays called Super-AMOLED display panel is exclusive to Samsung, as it is a patented technology of Samsung that implements a pen-tile matrix system that uses subpixels to produce even vibrant displays with a very thin touch panel and HDR compatibility.

P-OLEDs or Plastic Organic Light-Emitting Diodes are just a normal OLED display but with a Plastic substrate, which gives them some flexibility. P-OLEDs are comparatively thinner than normal OLED display that uses glass as their substrate.

What's this Substrate thing, you might ask.
Display Substrate refers to a material that forms the necessary basis for display manufacturing.
to further understand it, here is a graphical representation of the structure of displays.

credits - Samsung

Now that we know the basics of how different display technologies work, and what their advantages and disadvantages are, To conclude, Displays using the OLED technology are generally better than LCD displays when it comes to mobile phones screens. as they are power efficient as well as have better viewing angles and color production.

This concludes today's article. Stay tuned for more tech-related news and updates. Find us on Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube as well. We will be back with more interesting technology-related articles, until then STAY SAFE!

Also read:-

Android 13 Beta 2 : All New Changes & Improvements

Chrome OS flex - Give a New Life To Your Old PC & Laptop Easily

Install Custom ROM on Your Phone and Give It a Completely New Look & Unleash its Raw Performance