Types of Displays on Mobile Phone

The mobile phone display can be divided into three main categories:

• LCD Display
• LED Display
• Retina Display

1. LCD Display

LCD stands for Liquid Crystal Display. An LCD screen is divided into pixels that do not have light. These pixels or the screens that get light from another layer called backlight. If the backlight is off, we will not be able to see anything on the screen. The reason for the backlight is CCFL in LCD which stands for Cold Cathode Fluorescent Lamp.

There can be different types of LCD panels which are the follows:

TN Display

TN stands for Twisted Nematic Displays. These displays are generally used in computer industries or by gamers for a better gaming experience. The reason for widely using these types of displays is that they are too responsive and not costly.

Limitations

• The contrast ratio is very low.
• Color Production quality is also very low.
• Viewing angles and screen quality is also poor.

VA display

VA means Vertical Alignment displays. These kinds of displays have the quality between a TN display and an IPS display. These displays have better color production and better resolution than the TN display.

Limitations

• It is very slow in terms of responsiveness.

AFFS display

AFFS stands for Advanced Fringe Field Switching displays. These are the best displays under the LCD category. They have better resolution and color production than the IPS and TN displays. These displays are generally used in cockpits for better viewing angles.

Limitations

• Due to high resolution, they consume more power.

Now in mobile devices, we see the following types of LCD panels:

TFT LCD Panel

TFT means Thin Film Transistor. As the name suggests, in this display, each pixel is connected to a capacitor and transistor, and these are the most inexpensive LCDs. These displays are used in budget mobile phones, and these displays have a high contrast ratio. They are very cheap in terms of production.

Limitations

• Quality and viewing angles are poor.
• In sunlight, they do not perform well.

IPS LCD Panel

IPS stands for In-Place Switching display. These are the most popular and best display panels in the LCD category. They have better resolution, color contrast, and better viewing angles. They have the best visibility in the sunlight.

Limitations

• Due to high resolution, they consume more power.

SLCD panel

This is also an IPS LCD panel. But in normal IPS panels, there is a gap between external glass and touch sensors, but in this panel, this gap is negligible, so it feels very smooth to use. SLCD means Super LCD, and HTC has marketed this term.

2. LED Panels

LED stands for Light Emitting Diode displays. In the LCDs, we have discussed earlier that we use one light source to light the pixels and which is called CCFL (Cold Cathode Fluorescent Lamp). But in LED displays, we use LED bulbs to light the pixels.

Following are the advantages of LED

• It has the best viewing angles and better color reproduction than the other displays.
• Sunlight visibility is better, and the contrast level is also good.
• It consumes very less power than the other displays.
• Black colors are exact black colors in the LED, so the quality is very good.
• There are no limitations to the aspect ratio.

Disadvantage

• It is too costly to manufacture.

There are many types of LED displays, but generally, we know AMOLED and OLED displays are used in some flagship range mobile phones.

AMOLED Display

AMOLED means Active Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diode, which was developed by Samsung. In this display, each pixel has its own LED bulb to produce the color. Suppose there is black color in the video. The particular pixel will not turn on its light. So the black color will be represented by the turn-off state of the LED bulb, which makes it produce an actual black color. There is no requirement for the additional backlight to see the content. There exist its higher variant, which we call the super AMOLED display, which has a higher resolution than AMOLED. The super AMOLED display has no gap between the screen and the touch sensor, whereas AMOLED has a gap between the screen and the touch sensor.

OLED Display

OLED stands for Organic Light Emitting Diodes. It has a thin layer of organic compound between two conductors. When the current is applied, light emits, and they are more efficient than LCDs.

3. Retina Display

It is the same as the IPS LCD, but the Apple Company modified it slightly and trademarked their display as a Retina display. Only Apple phones can have a retina display.