If you place the latest smartphones side by side the first thing you'll probably notice is that all their displays dazzle—but why? Image quality can be difficult to express but there is a way to measure it. To evaluate and help you understand the strengths and weaknesses of various displays, we powered up our luminance and chromaticity meters and recruited the help of Dr. Raymond Soneira and his DisplayMate display test and evaluation suite.
We compared the Apple iPhone 4, Motorola Droid X, HTC Droid Incredible and HTC EVO in terms of brightness, contrast, color depth, and color accuracy. Then we picked an overall winner for best smartphone screen.
These top smartphones use three different screen technologies. The Droid X and HTC EVO use traditional TFT LCDs, like you'll find on most phones. TFT LCDs can give very different results if they're tuned differently, though. The iPhone's screen is an IPS LCD, a variant on TFT LCD where the molecules of liquid crystal are parallel to the panels as opposed to perpendicular. The Droid Incredible is AMOLED. Each display technology has its different advantages and disadvantages. AMOLED could one day replace LCD because it offers superior contrast, but it's still expensive to manufacture and is not nearly as bright as LCDs.
There's another screen technology coming. The upcoming Samsung Galaxy S phones use Super AMOLED, which supposedly reduces the reflectivity of AMOLED and increases the apparent brightness. We haven't gotten much time with any of those phones yet, but we're looking forward to it.
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