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Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by CountSessine on Monday October 10, 2016 @01:30AM (#12675238)
I really hope it doesn't turn out to be fatal for them but I also hope it breaks the Samsung monopoly over Android and let brands like LG, HTC shine.

OLED displays are so good they still sell themselves, and Samsung is the only handset maker that seems to be committed to the technology. I doubt this will change much.

Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by acchow on Monday October 10, 2016 @02:26AM (#12675400)
What's so great about OLEDs? They consume much more energy and don't produce the most accurate colors.
Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by CountSessine on Monday October 10, 2016 @04:30AM (#12675824)
They only consume more energy when displaying white. They consume very little energy when displaying black.

OLED displays have a very wide color gamut. If you have source material that was tuned to it, there's really nothing like it. To get a similar gamut with LCD you need a quantum dot backlight. Samsung devices all have a screen mode where they constrain their gamut to sRGB for more accurate colors, though.

In terms of color accuracy, they've consistently been the best around, when set to limit their gamut to sRGB. This (http://www.displaymate.com/Galaxy_Note7_ShootOut_1.htm) site has test results for most recentish smartphones and tablets and declared the Note 7's display to be "the best performing Smartphone Display that we have ever tested." Every Samsung device with an OLED display released in the last few years has achieved this.

And of course the contrast ratio is much better than LCD. In terms of display quality, provided the phone can be set to sRGB mode, OLED is as good or better than LCD in every metric. And this doesn't even touch on all of the novel uses a display that uses no power when displaying black can be put to - for example, Samsung devices can typically display the time or notifications in white-on-black on the display persistently when the screen is otherwise 'off'. With OLED, only the pixels that are active are drawing power.

The only problem with OLED has been blue pixel decay. I have an OLED display in both my tablet and my phone and I'm a heavy user, and I haven't noticed any change in the 2 years I've owned them though.

Really, it's just a better technology. It's shameful that everyone has allowed Samsung to maintain a lock on it. I really wish I didn't have to buy Samsung devices to get this fantastic technology.

Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by vamur on Monday October 10, 2016 @09:22AM (#12676909)
One issue with Samsung AMOLEDs I've noticed is the PWM effect - you can see it in any review of a Samsung phone where the phone is not on max brightness. The PWM effect can cause headache for people who are susceptible to the flicker.
Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by CountSessine on Monday October 10, 2016 @01:52PM (#12678679)
Wow - I didn't know that. This is probably the same group of people who had problems with MEMS displays.
Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by rayiner on Monday October 10, 2016 @09:34AM (#12676968)
> They only consume more energy when displaying black.

So just the entire Internet?

Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by CountSessine on Monday October 10, 2016 @01:47PM (#12678645)
:-) It's ok - just cultivate an interest in all things emo/goth/death-metal and OLED is perfect.

Seriously though, from the above linked article,

While LCDs remain more power efficient for images with mostly full screen white content (like all text screens on a white background, for example), OLEDs are more power efficient for typical mixed image content because they are emissive displays so their power varies with the Average Picture Level (average Brightness) of the image content over the entire screen. For OLEDs, Black pixels and sub-pixels don’t use any power so screens with Black backgrounds are very power efficient for OLEDs. For LCDs the display power is fixed and independent of image content. Currently, OLED displays are more power efficient than LCDs for Average Pictures Levels of 65 percent or less, and LCDs are more power efficient for Average Picture Levels above 65 percent. Since both technologies are continuing to improve their power efficiencies, the crossover will continue to change with time.

At peak brightness with a pure white screen, the iPhone 7's screen draws 1.08 watts, whereas the Galaxy Note 7's draws 1.8 watts. So if you keep your phone at peak brightness, I guess that's one metric where LCD beats OLED.

Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by Inconel on Monday October 10, 2016 @03:05AM (#12675543)
I'm fairly sure the new OLED displays from Samsung can produce extremely accurate colors. I don't remember exactly where I read so, perhaps AnandTech, but I believe the Samsung displays were considered some of the most accurate smartphone displays prior to the new iPhones.

I should note that for some reason it seems like most smartphone manufacturers, basically everyone aside from Apple, way oversaturate their displays, this is especially true in the case of Samsung. Even the Nexus 6P display looked horrendous to me out of the box. Fortunately there is a setting in the developer options to enable sRGB mode which makes a huge difference.

Regarding power consumption, I think OLED mostly loses out on efficiency when generating white backgrounds, but I'm not sure how much of a battery hit this causes in normal use scenarios.

As to what's so great about OLED, for me, as someone who frequently uses their phone in relatively low light situations, I absolutely love the deep blacks and the fact that when I have the phone on low brightness using a dark theme it barely produces any ambient light. On that note, Google seriously needs to introduce a system wide dark theme. I don't have an iPhone but I'm really interested to see if/when Apple adopts OLED whether they redesign iOS to take advantage of it. I know many people dislike the bright white UI of iOS and Android.

Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by CountSessine on Monday October 10, 2016 @04:58AM (#12675933)
I absolutely love the deep blacks and the fact that when I have the phone on low brightness using a dark theme it barely produces any ambient light

Yup - completely agree. When I got my Tab S, I knew that the exynos 5420 was grossly inferior to the a8x in the Air 2, but I wanted my tablet for watching videos in bed at night.

I was right; the 5420 is execrable and makes web browsing very painful compared to the Air 2 (my kids have Air 2's). But the display is so much better than the Air 2's in every way you'd care to mention or measure. It's unbeatable for its intended purpose.

<sigh>

Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by Inconel on Monday October 10, 2016 @05:12AM (#12675973)
Bedtime browsing is indeed a huge advantage. I can finally browse HN in bed without pissing off the person trying to sleep next to me. Now Google just needs to get serious about system wide dark themes, as well as dark themes for stock apps, and I'll be happy.

I'm sure with the large screen on a tablet this is even more of a benefit.

Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by fakename123 on Monday October 10, 2016 @05:39AM (#12676057)
I found the app Twilight (similar to f.lux on the desktop) to be very useful. And it doesn't require root.
Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by vardump on Monday October 10, 2016 @02:51AM (#12675482)
Properly calibrated OLEDs look at least a lot better to my eye than any LCDs. Much deeper blacks and more pure colors that go past what an LCD can reproduce.
Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by paulcole on Monday October 10, 2016 @01:41AM (#12675277)
You mean except for 12 or 24 months from now when the OLED iPhone is announced.
Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by Uupis on Monday October 10, 2016 @02:15AM (#12675372)
With the strong push for color _quality_ (please excuse my lack of a better term) on iOS devices lately, I find the OLED-equipped iPhone rumors a bit confounding.

Last I recall they looked a bit off. Nice, but a bit off. That said, my experience with OLED screens is a bit dated, so maybe the color reproduction has improved.

Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by B1FF_PSUVM on Monday October 10, 2016 @03:10AM (#12675558)
I expect paulcole is right ...

I was recently in the market for a phone, and considering an iPhone SE. But unfortunately I've got hooked on Lumia OLEDs, so I'm taking one last cheap hit from the rapidly cooling MS pipe while Apple gets that duck lined up ;-)

Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by pawadu on Monday October 10, 2016 @06:47AM (#12676278)
Have a cheap "Lumia OLED" myself. There was nothing unfortunate about thay buy. Great display, pretty good phone overall, and the money I saved went to a new tablet.

Also, I now have an excuse to not install the stupid apps friends and family and random guy at the bus stop recommend.

Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by usaphp on Monday October 10, 2016 @02:38AM (#12675446)
Isn't "burn in" a big drawback for OLED screens?
Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by LeifCarrotson on Monday October 10, 2016 @09:05AM (#12676825)
Anecdotally, my Moto X 2014 hasn't suffered anyburn-in, even on the taskbar or buttons, and I haven't heard other owners even commenting on it. Also, I haven't taken any measures to reduce it. I just love it for the near-zero brightness available through my Twilight/Flux app, no problems checking notifications in the dark!
Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by Inconel on Monday October 10, 2016 @02:51AM (#12675484)
From what I've read online the newer generation Samsung displays, those from say the last 1-2 years, have supposedly made big strides in dealing with "burn in". Apparently it's much less of an issue now, although still more common than LCD. Also, if I understand correctly, OLED doesn't actually suffer from "burn in" like LCD does, instead it's more "burn out" as the pixels, particularly the blue ones, degrade faster than other colors.

For what it's worth I have a Nexus 6P which uses a Samsung display and I haven't noticed any burn in yet, although I'm probably a very moderate user so that's not really saying much.

Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by B1FF_PSUVM on Monday October 10, 2016 @03:03AM (#12675534)
The Lumia 925 from 2013 had a gorgeous OLED display, and no burn-in or ghosting problems that I noticed for a couple of years.

They did take care of shifting the (beautiful, built-in) nightstand clock screen a bit around, I think.

(Adjustable color reproduction, you could go for "vivid" if you wanted, normal was fine.)

Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by Inconel on Monday October 10, 2016 @03:12AM (#12675566)
I had no idea the Lumia clock screen did that, it's a simple but brilliant solution to mitigate the problem. I'd love to see more work go into subtly shifting persistent UI elements around to avoid the issue. In particular I'd like to see the navigation keys and status bar on Android adopt something like that. I wonder if the UI elements would even need to shift locations or if it would be enough to shift colors so it isn't one particular color that degrades unevenly.
Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by jshevek on Monday October 10, 2016 @12:29PM (#12678084)
Not in my experience. Years ago I had one device that did get burn in, but it faded over a couple of weeks back to a perfectly normal screen.
Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by usaphp on Monday October 10, 2016 @01:21PM (#12678475)
You just said that you had a device that got burn in and yet at the same time you are saying that it's not a problem. Waiting couple weeks to get burn in disappear does not sound like a "no problem" thing
Re:US carriers halt Samsung Note 7 sales and replacements by jshevek on Monday October 10, 2016 @07:30PM (#12680632)
Yes, burn in is not a problem. I've owned many OLED devices, and the only one to get any kind of burn in used older technology. It happened when I changed the settings so the screen would stay on when plugged in. It was barely visible. It went away quickly. All this FUD about burn-in seems like just a boogeyman created by a ill-informed people, expecially in 2016.