The screen of your smartphone is in front of your eyes and right under your fingertips for the majority of your day. You check it for messages or phone calls every few minutes or so, and play with it for hours during your free time. Should something bad happen to it, your day will never be complete. This would be the moment for you to find an expert in screen repair so that you can have it back up and running in no time.
A lot of people depend on their smartphones. It can help you organize your schedules or just plain give you some diversion in the form of entertaining games, and these can truly kill time. But how much do you know about display technology? Here are essential terms you should know of which can help you better understand how your phone works.
Panel Type
Two main panel technologies rule the roost when it comes to smartphones, and these are LCD and OLED. The former has a variety of implementations: Twisted nematic or TN, vertical alignment or VA, and in-plane switching or IPS. The main difference between them is how each pixel shifts between different colors. Among the three, IPS is considered the best as it provides the best viewing angles. It is also one that is fitted in most phones today, even the entry-level ones. If your screen’s colors look a bit off when you view it from the sides, you most probably have one that has a VA or a TN panel.
If you are able to splurge on a flagship phone, there is a chance that it has an organic light-emitting diode or OLED panel. Unlike LCD, which requires a backlight to illuminate what the panel is displaying, each pixel in an OLED also emits light. This makes them physically thinner, and they produce the deepest blacks.
Backlight
You already know that OLEDs do not require a backlight, but LCDs do. Liquid crystal displays at their core is a transparent panel. By itself, you would be hard-pressed to see anything going on with it. This is why you need a light behind it, so it can act as a barrier that will let certain colors pass through, and this will make up the image that will be displayed on your screen. Imagine shining a flashlight behind a thin blanket, and you are pretty much near to understanding to how it works.
A backlight array is made up of rows of light-emitting diodes, usually placed on the screen’s borders. You would need a material to scatter that through the whole panel, and that is the job given to the diffuser. It is a thin layer of translucent plastic that spreads the light out evenly through the whole screen.
Resolution and Pixel Density
Resolution is the number of pixels that a panel can display. Pixel density, on the other hand, takes the physical size of the screen into consideration. It refers to how many pixels there are in an area of the screen, usually measured as pixels per inch. The higher the PPI, the finer the details you can see on screen. Low PPI will give you a noticeably pixelated or blocky image.
Color Temperature
The standard for displaying colors is by mixing red, green, and blue values. Color temperature is more dependent on the blue levels above anything else. Lower levels are considered warm and make the overall image look yellowish. Higher blue levels would produce more accurate white tones.
If you are just talking about the smartphone screen, you can say that it is already packed with technology. Knowing some of the surrounding basics makes you understand what makes them look good. When you need to buy a new phone, this knowledge will help you make an informed decision.
