AMOLED vs LCD: What’s the difference

Mobile display technology is currently divided into two camps, AMOLED display and LCD display. There is also OLED mobile display technology but it is the same as AMOLED essentially. AMOLED displays and LCD displays are based on completely different technological foundations,which makes lots of manufacturers promote many kinds of different advantages depending on the type of displays. Smartphone manufacturers are increasingly choosing AMOLED displays, with LCD displays mainly is used in lower-priced phones.

AMOLED

First, let's get started with OLED technology.
The key component of both OLED and AMOLED displays is the light-emitting diode (LED). No doubt electronics fans love to play with these such little lights, but on a display panel, these lights are normally dramatically scaled down and arranged into clusters of red, green, and blue to create a display that can display white and a variety of colors.

The arrangement of these sub-pixels slightly changes the display’s performance . For example, a pixel-by-pixel layout compared to a strip-by-strip layout that will result in higher image clarity, but  a shorter pixel life will be existed due to the smaller pixel size. The O part in OLED stands for organic. In short, a series of thin films of organic material are placed between two conductors of each LED, which are then used to emit light when an electric current is applied.
Finally, the AM part in AMOLED stands for active matrix not a passive matrix technology. This tells us how each little OLED is controlled. In a passive matrix, a complex grid system is used to control individual pixels, with an integrated circuit controlling the charge sent down each column or row. But this is slow and can be inaccurate. An active matrix system connects a thin-film transistor (TFT) and a capacitor to each LED. This way, when the row and column are activated to access the pixel, the capacitor at the correct pixel can retain its charge between refresh cycles, reach a faster and more precise control.

In addition, you may hear about Super AMOLED, which is Samsung's marketing term for displays that integrate a capacitive touch screen directly into the display, rather than as a separate layer on top of the display. This gets a thinner displays.
The main advantage of OLED-type displays is that the each pixel can be controlled . Pixels can be turned off completely,not only resulting in deep blacks and high contrast.but also can dim and turn off individual pixels to save power and produce deep blacks. If you want a display that is capable of playing HDR content, this one is the way to go. The lack of additional layers on top of the LED means that the maximum amount of light reaches the display surface, resulting in a bright image with better viewing angles.

The rise of curved screens and foldable phones

OLED technology is the main driving force behind the development of curved displays and the latest foldable smartphones.
The use of LEDs and minimal substrates means that these displays can be very thin. What’s more, the lack of a rigid backlight and innovations in flexible plastic substrates have made flexible OLED displays possible. Flexible displays were initially very promising for wearable devices. Nowadays, high-end smartphones are also starting to use flexible OLED displays. Even if we don’t know how many times this AMOLED screen can be bent back and forth before this period...
Foldable smartphones based on Flexible OLED display technology include Samsung Galaxy Z Flip, Motorola Razr and Huawei Mate XS.

Advantages

Thinner and more flexible than LCD displays
Faster refresh rates
No display size restrictions
Higher contrast ratio
Uses less power when displaying darker colors
Disadvantages
No backlight, so it doesn't display well in direct sunlight
Uses more power when displaying brighter colors
Uses organic materials, so has a shorter lifespan

LCD

LCD stands for Liquid Crystal Display, its reproduces colors completely differently than AMOLED. Rather than using separate light-emitting components, LCD displays rely on a backlight as the sole light source. While multiple backlights can be used on a display to assist in saving power, this is more necessary in larger televisions.
Scientifically speaking, there is no single wavelength of white light. White light is a mixture of all the other visible colors in the spectrum. Therefore, LCD backlights must produce as high a pseudo-white light as possible, which can then be filtered into different colors in the liquid crystal element. Most LCDs rely on a blue LED backlight that is filtered through a yellow phosphor coating, producing pseudo-white light.

Next comes the really complicated part, the light is then polarized and passed through a crystal element. The crystal can be twisted to different degrees depending on the voltage applied to the crystal, adjusting the angle of the polarized light. The light then passes through a second polarizing filter that is offset by 90 degrees compared to the first, which will attenuate the light depending on its angle. Finally, a red, green, or blue color filter is applied to this light, and these sub-pixels are grouped into pixels to adjust the color of the entire display.
Combined, this allows LCD displays to control the amount of RGB light that reaches the surface by selecting the backlight, rather than producing colored light in each pixel. Like AMOLED, LCD displays exist as active or passive matrix devices, and you'll often see active TFT LCD displays in mobile phones.

Two main types of LCD displays used in smartphones

.TFT LCD: Very popular in smartphones, offers better image quality than previous generation LCD displays, but ends up consuming a lot of power, thus reducing battery backup.
.IPS LCD: Relatively expensive, so usually only used on high-end devices, offers better viewing angles and consumes less power than TFT LCD displays.

Advantages

 Displays better in direct sunlight
 Consistent power consumption, regardless of display color.
Disadvantages
 Blacks tend to appear gray, lack contrast
 Relatively low image quality

Super AMOLED vs LCD

This wide variation in the way light is produced makes a big difference to the user experience. Color gamut is often the most talked about between the two display types, with AMOLED offering a wider range of color options than LCD, making images appear more vivid.
OLED displays have extra green and blue saturation because they tend to be the most powerful colors in the subpixel arrangement, and very little green is needed for white light. Some observers find that this extra saturation produces results that look somewhat unnatural. LCDs generally tend to overcompensate for reds further, while greens are more muted. Despite not having such a wide color gamut, LCD displays can often come very close to the standard FBG color gamut configuration used by image and video media.

A detailed inspection of actual smartphone displays shows that color gamuts can vary quite a bit, even between displays of the same type. the image above shows that even though the Samsung Galaxy S10 Plus, Huawei P30 Pro, and LG V40 share OLED displays, they produce very different color gamut profiles.
Color accuracy is also another notable difference, especially when it comes to whites. A previous test of some of the best Android smartphones showed that OLED-based displays produced very accurate results, while LCD displays produced a bluish tint. However, this isn't surprising considering that LCD displays are based on filtered blue backlights.

As we mentioned before, the lack of a backlight and filter layer also makes OLEDs much heavier than LCDs. LCD displays often suffer from light bleeding and low contrast because the backlight doesn't turn off even when a pixel is considered black, while OLEDs can simply turn off their pixels. LCD's filter layer also inherently blocks some light, and viewing angles are reduced compared to OLEDs.
One of the downsides to AMOLED is that different LEDs have different lifespans.
This means that individual RBG light components will eventually degrade at slightly different rates. Aside from the dreaded but relatively rare phenomenon of burn-in, the color balance of OLED displays can drift very slightly over time, while LED's single backlight means color balance remains more consistent across the entire display.

Conclusion

LCD has been around for a while now, while AMOLED is currently the new kid on the block. AMOLED is essentially an OLED and a better version of OLED, so there is no question as to which one is better. The real question arises when comparing LCD vs AMOLED. Which one is better than the other, as they both seem to have their own pros and cons. Honestly, in our opinion, AMOLED beats LCD displays any day. It offers better image quality, faster refresh rates, higher contrast, higher brightness, higher resolution, better viewing angles, and it is also more flexible and lightweight.
Its only major drawback is the display that is annoying in direct sunlight, which has also been addressed by the recently released Super AMOLED displays. So, it is not a question of which is better, but more of a question of how much worse. We hope that you don’t have to ignore the type of display the next time you look at a smartphone, but take it into consideration while making a better choice.