If you like to keep on top of the latest display tech, you’re probably familiar with Ray Soneira’s exhaustive testing of the screens on the newest smartphones and other devices. His latest target is the Galaxy Note 8, and it turns out Samsung’s excellent phablet sports the best screen they’ve ever seen on a phone.
It shouldn’t come as that great of a surprise — OLED screens are the future, of course, and although early models were far from competitive, steady improvements have led to the tech leapfrogging traditional LCDs.
But don’t take my word for it. Look at that beautiful signature up top. And more importantly, Soneira’s article concludes:
It has many major and important state-of-the-art display performance enhancements, features and functions, with mobile OLED display technology now advancing faster than ever. The Galaxy Note8 is the most innovative and high performance Smartphone display that we have ever lab tested.
Of particular interest were the phone’s multiple calibrated display modes, all of which have as good or better color accuracy than the best screens out there — but have subtle or not-so-subtle differences in how they render an image. There’s also a user-adjustable white balance setting, which photographers and anyone sensitive to color temperature will appreciate.
The full rundown of new and improved features is worth reading, so take a few minutes to check out the state of the art.
An interesting thing to think about given the surpassing excellence of the Note 8 display is whether others — particularly Apple — can challenge them. If the iPhone is indeed going to go to OLED soon, it likely wouldn’t be able to claim anything but playing catch-up, though Apple has been spinning its catch-up moves pretty well over the last few years. But although its IPS LCDs are counted among the best in the world, it’s going to be a stretch for them to say they’re superior to the competition.
Right now, however, the main problem is there just aren’t enough of the high-quality OLED units to supply everyone who wants them, let alone Apple. So it’s a bit of a moot point for the present. 2018, however, may be a very interesting one for the display market.