Overview of Screen Materials

With the popularity of mobile phone color screens, the choice of screen material has become increasingly crucial. The differences in color screens of mobile phones mainly stem from differences in LCD quality and research and development technology, leading to the emergence of several major screen materials, including TFT, TFD, UFB, STN, and OLED. Usually, the more colors that can be displayed, the more complex images can be presented on the phone, and the levels of the screen are also richer.

TFT-LCD characteristics

TFT-LCD liquid crystal display screen, also known as thin-film transistor type liquid crystal display screen, is known as the "true color" display technology. Its uniqueness lies in equipping each pixel with a semiconductor switch, allowing each pixel to be directly controlled through point pulses, thereby achieving higher reaction speed and color accuracy. Therefore, TFT LCD displays not only have excellent brightness and high contrast, but also have a strong sense of hierarchy and bright colors. Despite its drawbacks of high power consumption and high cost, TFT LCD technology still drives the rapid development of mobile phone color screens. Nowadays, many new generation color screen phones support displays of up to 65536 colors or even 160000 colors, which undoubtedly demonstrates the significant advantages of TFT LCD in color richness and contrast.

IPS Technology Improvement

In addition, IPS technology is also worth mentioning. This technology is not a new screen material, but an improvement of LCD technology developed by Hitachi in Japan. By changing the arrangement of TFT liquid crystal molecules, IPS screens not only have a larger viewing angle, but also almost no ripples appear when pressed, resulting in higher color reproduction and more realistic images. It is worth mentioning that IPS displays perform well in handling highlight issues. After the transistor on a regular display screen burns out, it will produce bright spots, while IPS screens can transform it into dark spots without light, thus avoiding interference during viewing. Therefore, when choosing a screen, IPS screen is undoubtedly a recommended choice.

Advantages of AMOLED

AMOLED， Active Matrix/Organic Light Emitting Diode is an active matrix organic light-emitting diode that has the ability to emit light autonomously. It inherits many advantages of OLED, such as fast response, high contrast, wide viewing angle, and lightweight features. In addition, due to the inherent luminescence of AMOLED, its power consumption is only 60% of that of traditional screens, making it very suitable for use in mobile phone screens. When displaying dark colors, its luminous brightness is low, further saving energy.

At present, Samsung is a leading enterprise in AMOLED technology and holds the core technology. With numerous inherent advantages, AMOLED is expected to dominate the screen market in the future. However, due to production capacity limitations, Samsung is unable to meet the needs of all customers. For example, the iPhone 4 was originally planned to use an AMOLED screen, but ultimately switched to an IPS screen due to insufficient production capacity.

Enhancement of Super AMOLED

On the other hand, Super AMOLED, as an upgraded version of AMOLED, further optimizes the screen structure. It removes the touch sensitive panel in the middle and integrates touch functionality directly onto the AMOLED display layer, making touch more sensitive and color rendering more vibrant. In addition, the design of the native touch panel also improves the transparency of the screen, making the display effect more outstanding. Therefore, Super AMOLED surpasses traditional AMOLED screens in terms of touch sensitivity and display performance.

It is worth mentioning that Super AMOLED technology also incorporates two touch technologies, oncoll and incell. Among them, the oncell technology embeds the touch panel function between the color filter substrate and the polarizing plate, simplifying the production process. Although the production yield of incell technology still needs to be improved, its design concept of directly integrating touch panel functions into LCD pixels undoubtedly brings more possibilities for future screen technology.

Comparison of different materials

Compared with TFT screens, AMOLED has the characteristics of faster response speed, higher contrast, wider viewing angle, and thinner and lighter. In addition, due to the inherent luminescence of AMOLED screens, their power consumption is only 60% of that of TFT screens, making them very suitable for use in mobile phone screens. With the continuous maturity of AMOLED technology, we have reason to believe that it will be widely used in more mobile phones.

In the comparison of various screen materials, STN screen was the main component of early color screens, initially only able to display 256 colors. Although it can display 4096 or even 65536 colors after technological improvements, the common STN screens on the market still mainly use 256 colors. The advantages of STN screens are low cost and low energy consumption.

TFT screens are known for their excellent brightness, contrast, and layering, as well as vibrant colors, but their drawbacks are high power consumption and relatively high cost.

The UFB screen is designed specifically for mobile phones and PDAs, featuring ultra-thin and high brightness, capable of displaying 65536 colors, and a resolution of up to 128 × 160. Its special grating design reduces pixel spacing, thereby improving image quality. The UFB screen combines the advantages of STN and TFT, with lower power consumption than TFT and a price comparable to STN.