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iPhone X Has the 'Most Innovative and High Performance' Smartphone Display Ever Tested (macrumors.com)
The display in the iPhone X is produced by Samsung and improved by Apple, says screen technology analysis firm DisplayMate. The company has released a display shoot-out for the iPhone X, praising Apple's technology in areas like the higher resolution OLED screen, automatic color management, viewing angle performance, and more. Mac Rumors reports: According to DisplayMate, the iPhone X has the "most innovative and high performance" smartphone display it has ever tested. DisplayMate also congratulated Samsung Display for "developing and manufacturing the outstanding OLED display hardware in the iPhone X." iPhone X matched or set new smartphone display records in the following categories: highest absolute color accuracy, highest full screen brightness for OLED smartphones, highest full screen contrast rating in ambient light, and highest contrast ratio. It also had the lowest screen reflectance and smallest brightness variation with a viewing angle. The iPhone X's 5.8-inch OLED display includes a taller height to width aspect ratio of 19.5:9, 22 percent larger than the 16:9 aspect ratio on previous iPhone models (and most other smartphones). Because of this DisplayMate noted that the iPhone X also has a new 2.5K higher resolution with 2436x1125 pixels and 458 pixels per inch. The iPhone X's display resolution provides "significantly higher image sharpness" than can be analyzed by a person with normal 20/20 vision at a 12-inch viewing distance. DisplayMate said this means that it's now "absolutely pointless" to increase the display resolution and pixels per inch of the iPhone any further, since there would be "no visual benefit" for users.
If it's that easy then why doesn't a Samsung phone have the the best smartphone display according to DisplayMate?
They have. For years, Samsung had the best display on its own phone. It just didn't made Slashdot headlines because it wasn't Apple.
The question is why you would post as an AC? But to counter to your point that's like saying Porsche can't compete against a broad and open market. They only makes sports cars and make themselves the most expensive choice. They should make more mini-vans for soccer moms. And to also counter your point it's not factually true. Can you get an iPhone cheaper than a Samsung or LG? Have you heard of the SE, 6, 6 Plus, 7, 7 Plus? I mean it's not like Apple doesn't have 8 models going from $350 to $999.
They constantly position themselves in a magical made-up segment, like that guy who shoots the wall of a barn then goes and draw the target around his bullet holes.
A made-up segment? They target the high end for computers and the phones cover a broad spectrum. So what? Why are you mad that Apple goes after a very specific market?
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Actually, it's because Samsung prefers to have a vibrant display over an accurate one. OLEDs are known for awesome saturated colors, and Samsung capitalizes heavily on that.
The problem is, if you go for that, while images "pop", they also get horribly inaccurate - reds can be too red, for example. Likewise, it's also often too blue. So Samsung may make the displays, but they don't really calibrate them on their devices. They pretty much exploit it to give you those super-saturated colors at the expense of color accuracy and gamut.
So a Samsung phone will "pop", but take a few photos and things look off. You can set them into sRGB mode, but then they look horrible.
Apple chose to make the Samsung display less saturated, and more accurate. Since OLEDs naturally have an increased color gamut, they enabled switching between sRGB and DCI-P3 gamuts, so you can have your wide HDR video gamuts but not sacrifice color accuracy.
Add to that decreased reflectance (i.e., how much glare), and color shift/color decrease as you increase viewing angle and those measures are what is being objectively measured. Samsung may very well have all those attributes, but their color inaccuracy is what killed them.
I would expect if you compared an iPhone X and an Samsung S8 together, the S8 screen will seem more "vibrant" and "pop" over the iPhone's screen. It'll be very pretty but super-saturated colors can make photos look unrealistic so a few photos will leave something to be desired.
And yes, Samsung has had OLED screens for years. The problem for Apple has always been availability - Samsung likely could not handle the volume of iPhone orders until this year - it takes time to ramp up, and the iPhone X will pretty much demand Samsung produce twice as many screens as they ever needed. (There aren't many manufacturers of OLED screen making equipment, and of them, they can only produce about 3 machines a year. Apple probably has had to purchase their entire output for several years running so Samsung would be able to even have the manufacturing capacity to make another 80+M screens a year, up from 80+M screens a year).