Vodafone blog

Here’s a brief run-down of the most popular display types and what it means to you.

To the casual observer the screen on one smartphone to the next may not seem any different at all but once you dig a little deeper there are vast differences.

The display in your smartphone can have a huge impact on the way you use your phone and just how much you get out of it.

TFT LCD

Thin Film Transistor Liquid Crystal Display or TFT LCD is at its core the same type of display that you see in most computer monitors and LCD TV’s.

TFT LCD’s is one of the best LCD types for image quality and response time. 

In comparison to some of the other display types, TFT is likely to consume more power.

IPS LCD

In Plane Switching Liquid Crystal Display or IPS LCD is the technology used in the ever-popular Apple iPhone 4.

In Plane Switching allows for a wider viewing angle and improved viewing in direct sunlight, one of the main fallbacks of traditional LCD screens.

Combined with Apple’s Retina display which improves the pixel density IPS LCD are crisper than conventional TFT LCD’s.

AMOLED/Super AMOLED/Super AMOLED Plus

Stands for Active Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diode or simply AMOLED, it does not require a backlight and hence have a much higher contrast ratio in comparison to other displays.

This allows for deeper more realistic blacks when viewing images and videos.

AMOLED screens have thin layers between the glass, touch and actual display layers. This can cause poor performance when viewing the handset in direct sunlight.

One of the major advantages of AMOLED displays is they consume less power than LCD displays.

Super AMOLED attempts to improve this issue by reducing the space between the layers of the display.

Super AMOLED Plus has improved pixel density allowing for a crisper, clearer display. They are also brighter and thinner than Super AMOLED displays.

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Image source: Plasma.com, Marcel Pataek and OLED-Display.net