We bet you must have heard the term AMOLED Display innumerable times these days, especially if you’re in the research phase of buying a new smartphone. Display types have become one of the most crucial factors nowadays in the smartphone technology development arena. From manufacturers to the consumers, all take into account the display of a smartphone as one of the top criteria for determining the quality of user experience it provides.
With more and more smartphone brands opting to equip their latest smartphone models with AMOLED and Super AMOLED displays, we thought you might want to know what it actually means in the first place. Hence we are sharing all we know about what an AMOLED display is, its benefits and disadvantages, its comparison with other types of display tech and which display is better for our eyes.
Read also: Poco X4 Pro 5G with 120Hz Super AMOLED display launched in India
What is an AMOLED Display?
Starting with the AMOLED full form, it stands for Active Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diodes and is a type of display technology used in smartphones and even in smartwatches, laptops and PC monitors these days. To understand its functionality in making our screen viewing experience better, one would have to first know a little bit about OLED.
In a conventional LED display, the LEDs are used to simply back-light the front-facing LCD panel that produces colours and controls the brightness of the screen. OLEDs take this to the next level. They generate the LED lights by applying current to a different kind of semi-conductive material, the organic compounds, that micromanage colour control pixel by pixel, resulting in producing a very fine colour and light control as well as extreme contrast ratios.
Of course, AMOLED takes the OLED process one step even further. It puts an enhanced ‘active matrix’ layer of Thin-Film Transistors (TFTs) that gives greater control over the light emitted by OLEDs, again, pixel-by-pixel.
Now coming to the latest technology in town, as Samsung describes, Super AMOLED displays are AMOLED displays with integrated touch function. Instead of having a layer that recognizes touch on top of the screen, the layer is integrated into the screen itself.
Benefits of an AMOLED Display
- Due to the illumination control on an individual pixel level, the colour range hence reproduced is much wider and truer. A finer colour range makes the colours of objects displayed closer to what the human eye sees naturally, giving a more life-like experience to the user than an LED display would do.
- Due to the colour range being wide, the contrast ratio provided is also greater.
- It is said to limit the energy drain, especially while displaying dark scenes like in PC games.
- AMOLED displays have comparatively thinner and lighter construction and provide wider viewing angles.
- They do not require back-lighting and have a much faster response time as compared to the traditional LCDs.
Read also: Oppo Watch Free smartwatch with AMOLED display with touch support launched in India
Disadvantages of an AMOLED Display
- One of its biggest disadvantages is that its display quality degrades with time. As explained very nicely by Lenovo, this is because the organic compounds used in lighting the OLED displays tend to lose their illuminating capabilities faster than the inorganic compounds in LED-LCD displays.
- AMOLED displays are more prone to screen burn-in, owing to the overuse of some OLEDs due to the pixel-by-pixel illumination process.
- AMOLED displays are costly as compared to other display technologies.
- You cannot see an AMOLED display screen under direct sunlight.
AMOLED vs LED vs LCD: Which Display is Better For Eyes?
The constant tussle between AMOLED vs LED vs LCD display is never-ending. Each one has its own pros and cons. However, when it comes to the question of which one is better for the eyes, it is important to understand first what actually harms them. Digital devices emit ‘blue light’ that is the main culprit here for all kinds of eye problems caused due to prolonged screen time. This especially has an even more significant impact in the case of smartphones, since the distance between our eyes and smartphone screens can be quite less.
All the different types of displays discussed above do their job, and for that matter, do it quite well. However, more than the technology, it is this blue light, in addition to the brightness levels that you are exposed to, which needs to be tackled in order to protect your eyesight.
What is recommended is to activate the blue light filter that is provided in some smartphones, and avoid using high brightness levels as much as possible to avoid eye strains. In case your smartphone does not provide the blue light filter option, there are even anti-glare glasses available in the market that are specially designed to protect your eyesight from digital eye strain.
In case there are any other ways you know of, which can be used to protect our eyes from getting damaged from prolonged screen time, let us know in the comments section below. We would also love to hear which one of the display types mentioned above do you prefer to use.
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