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Galaxy s8

Each year, Samsung releases a new flagship display, and each twelvemonth, DisplayMate writes an evaluation of it using more charts, figures, and data points than yous find in your typical graduate thesis. Once again, the Galaxy S8 has gone nether the proverbial knife, and once once again information technology's emerged triumphant.

The S8 sets a number of records, including:

The largest native color gamut, at 113% of the DCI-P3 motility picture standard and 142% of the sRGB / Rec. 709 standard that most 1080p content uses (whether screens are correctly calibrated to sRGB is an entirely different question).

It offers the highest peak effulgence of any brandish, at one,020 nits, though yous can only hit this level with automatic effulgence enabled (the smartphone will non allow you to manually specify this level if you disable that mode, just it should make the brandish easier to read in bright daylight).

Its screen reflectance is excellent, at 4.5%, though one display (unspecified) appears to have narrowly edged information technology, at 4.4%.

The colour gamuts of the Milky way S8. The red Adaptive gamut is the Samsung default. Image by DisplayMate

The Galaxy S8 offers four color gamuts: Basic (sRGB), Photo (Adobe RGB), Cinema (DCI-P3, often used for 4K), and Adaptive (default, wide gamut). Adaptive is the option Samsung has typically used to make its displays "pop" compared with iPhones. According to DisplayMate, the Galaxy S8 actually offers a new "deep crimson" OLED that didn't exist in previous smartphones, and attributes the success of its Adaptive screen display mode at displaying color well to this new OLED.

Samsung and Apple have traded shots over the title of "best smartphone brandish" for years, though I believe DisplayMate has tended to give the reward to Samsung of late. Simply the fact that the almost recent S8 receives DisplayMate's first A+ award to-appointment likewise underscores how displays, like nigh aspects of smartphone technology, have improved to where it's getting difficult to observe new areas to measurably excel, beyond typical improvements in power efficiency.

Speaking of power efficiency, here's what DisplayMate has to say on that score:

Since 2013 the Display Power Efficiency of the Galaxy serial of Smartphones has improved by a very impressive 56%. This year the new OLED materials on the Galaxy S8 have improved optical and ability efficiency with its larger Native Color Gamut than on the Galaxy S7 (142% compared to 131% for sRGB / Rec.709).

While LCDs remain more power efficient for images with by and large full screen white content (similar 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 epitome content over the entire screen. For OLEDs, Black pixels and sub-pixels don't apply any power and so screens with Blackness or night backgrounds are very power efficient for OLEDs. For LCDs the display ability is fixed and independent of prototype content. Currently, OLED displays are more power efficient than LCDs for Average Pictures Levels of 65 percentage or less, and LCDs are more power efficient for Average Moving picture Levels above 65 percent. Since both technologies are continuing to ameliorate their power efficiencies, the crossover volition continue to change with time.

The Milky way S8 likewise has 4 user adaptable Performance Modes and 3 adjustable Power Saving Modes that reduce the Display Power by lowering the screen Brightness and setting the groundwork to Black, which can significantly reduce display power and more than double the running time on bombardment.

Here's the data from DisplayMate:

OLED-Comparison

Image by DisplayMate

Hither's how to interpret these results. The larger screen size (13.1-inch versus xi.i-inch) and higher brightness means that more absolute power is consumed by the Galaxy S8. Compared under normalized atmospheric condition, however, the two displays are equal both in terms of relative power efficiency at boilerplate display power and relative power efficiency. We tend to focus on brandish efficiency because information technology's such a major driver of overall battery life these days, and Galaxy S7 owners accept zippo to worry about if they're stepping up to an S8, at least non equally far as increased battery life drain from the display.

If rumors are true and Apple actually fields an OLED brandish for its upcoming iPhone 8, it would be the commencement time the two companies accept gone head-to-head on the display market place for years. That will exist an interesting comparison to see, though nosotros'd expect Samsung to accept a potential advantage given its long history of working with OLEDs in mobile displays.