Faster and Better
Displays are devices that rely on electronics to refresh the image on the screen fast enough that raid changes in the image do not appear ‘jerky’, leave ‘trails’, or ‘smudges’. This is especially important when watching fast moving images, such as in gaming or sports, and in the past the electronics in most displays refreshed 60 times each second, which seems like it should be sufficient. However as the quality of images increases under 4K/UHD, those potential artifacts become more obvious, giving smartphone display designers the task of improving those types of images. In order to do so, some display producers have doubled the refresh rate so that the screen is completely redrawn twice as fast as before, at 120 Hz. This means that the movement of an object across the screen will be redrawn twice as many times as before, filling in the potential spaces that might have caused blur or other artifacts at 60 Hz.
This is an ideal solution in that it directly addresses the problem, however it does come with a negative. Since the electronics is now drawing the screen twice as often as before, it consumes more power, and in mobile devices this means it reduces the time between battery recharging. There are tricks that can help, such as ‘adaptive refresh’, which looks at the resolution of each image and adapts the refresh rate to that resolution, meaning that a higher resolution image would refresh at 120 Hz, while a lower resolution image, such as a static one or a news feed, would refresh at a much lower rate. By adapting to the image quality, the display can conserve power, rather than being at 120 Hz for all resolution images.
This is a big selling point for displays, especially smartphone displays, as increasing battery capacity (usually along with size) is a difficult function is compact smartphones, so any way in which a smartphone can increase the time before charging is a big plus to users. While 120 Hz refresh and adaptive displays are available from a number of smartphone brands, along with squeezing in bigger batteries, Apple has been particularly enamored with the idea of 120 Hz displays, and has employed then m in the iPhone 13 Pro and the Pro Max. While Apple did not detail test results, we have just seen the results of a test of the iPhone Pro Max as to how it would perform against other similar type phones as to battery life and the results are positive. Here are the top contenders according to Anandtech.com:
This is an ideal solution in that it directly addresses the problem, however it does come with a negative. Since the electronics is now drawing the screen twice as often as before, it consumes more power, and in mobile devices this means it reduces the time between battery recharging. There are tricks that can help, such as ‘adaptive refresh’, which looks at the resolution of each image and adapts the refresh rate to that resolution, meaning that a higher resolution image would refresh at 120 Hz, while a lower resolution image, such as a static one or a news feed, would refresh at a much lower rate. By adapting to the image quality, the display can conserve power, rather than being at 120 Hz for all resolution images.
This is a big selling point for displays, especially smartphone displays, as increasing battery capacity (usually along with size) is a difficult function is compact smartphones, so any way in which a smartphone can increase the time before charging is a big plus to users. While 120 Hz refresh and adaptive displays are available from a number of smartphone brands, along with squeezing in bigger batteries, Apple has been particularly enamored with the idea of 120 Hz displays, and has employed then m in the iPhone 13 Pro and the Pro Max. While Apple did not detail test results, we have just seen the results of a test of the iPhone Pro Max as to how it would perform against other similar type phones as to battery life and the results are positive. Here are the top contenders according to Anandtech.com:
All in, even with differences in battery size, it seems that Apple’s processor, which is responsible for sampling the images and setting the refresh rate, does a better job at power efficiency than others, and Apple will eventually convert all of its iPhone displays to LTPO backplane technology which will add to the display’s power efficiency, as Samsung has begun to do, but the Apple hardware, despite a 13.1% drop in battery life vs. operating only in the 60 Hz mode, has already offset much of the higher power draw.
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