101 Of Smartphone Screens: IPS, OGS, 1080p, Retina Display And More

What’s the first thing you look at when buying a new phone? We may not want to admit it and we do read into the specs eventually, but the glistening, bright new screen filled with possibilities is what gets most of our attention, at least at first.

Of, course there is not simple black and white here. Tastes differ and while some are looking for a humongous display for all their media, others feel happier with a smaller screen, easily operated with one hand.

There is more to the issue than size. When reading into screen specifications, you may across quite a lot of detail, abbreviations and numbers. You may already know about them or choose to not read into them – whatever the case, you may enjoy learning a bit more about you screen and here’s what we have here. We have rounded up several common screen specifics for your reference.

Types Of Smartphone Screens

• The numbers

When looking at smartphone screen specification, you will see few common numerals, pointing to the resolution of the screen.

1080p, also known as “full HD”, is one of the most popular high-definition resolutions for screens, measuring 1920 by 1080 pixels.

1080p displays are quite common on high-end smartphones and do come with great image quality. They are more suited for larger screens when the difference would be more prominent, but a number of smaller screen smartphones also come with this type of resolution to impress the potential buyers with image quality. As an example, for a 5 inch phone, a display with 1920×1080 would mean an astonishing density of 440 ppi (pixels per inch).

720p is known as lower high definition with 1,280 by 720 pixels and is commonly featured on smaller screens.

With this said, however, a great number of users would actually not be able to tell the difference between full HD and lower HD. Even with 20/20 vision, the difference seems to be hard to distinguish, especially on smaller screens. At the same time, a full HD screen would make for more user interface elements on the screen, which is a factor to consider in web browsing.

• The names

Together with commonly used numeric definitions above, you will also spot brand-specific names for screen, like the ones used by Apple, Samsung and other prominent manufacturers.

Retina display – is a proprietary name for the screen on Apple devices, coming with a 1,136×640 pixel resolution.

HD Super AMOLED – Samsung’s name for its smartphones’ displays, which make use of OLED technology. OLED screens are known as brighter options, compared to LCD ones, as well as demonstrate better battery-saving features.

PureMotion HD + – a 1,280×768-pixel display with various properties. The name belongs to Nokia.

Clear Black – Nokia again. It’s the name for an antiglare filter used in Nokia’s screens.

Other common screen specifications that you will often see and that are not brand related also describe the technology used in screen manufacturing.

IPS – is a type of LCD screens, made in a special way to allow for a clearer image and a wider viewing angle.

OGS, or one glass solution, is a touchscreen technology that reduced the thickness of the display, by removing one of the layers found in traditional capacitive touchscreens.

Surely, there is much more to a smartphone screen than the common notions above. A combination of various features will influence your display’s brightness, clarity, smoothness, glare protection and more. Read carefully into your screen’s specifications to make an informed decision.