From The Next iPhone To Galaxy S20 To OnePlus 8 Pro, 120Hz Screens Are About To Become The Industry Standard

Once upon a time, smartphone brands, most of which operated out of the U.S., Japan, and South Korea, had a relatively simply and straightforward phone release cycle. Each brand put out one or two phones a year—one in the spring, one in the fall.

Then Chinese brands crashed the scene and changed all the rules. They began pumping out more than two lines of phones a year—up to six or seven. Then they started releasing sequels to an existing phone after mere months (if Apple had operated at this Chinese pace, we’d be at the iPhone 42 by now).

Part of me wonders how much of this is sustainable—the market is bound to be overflooded, right? But part of me is also excited, because when companies and brands are forced to compete, we, the consumers, win.

The value we get from a smartphone today is so much better than what we got back when it was just Apple and Samsung running things. Chinese brands, in their efforts to compete, kept giving us more—and everyone else has had to follow suit.

The OnePlus 7 Pro garnered critical acclaim last June for its awesome 90Hz OLED screen with custom-built animations that made the 90-frames-per-second refresh rate flow smoother than any other mobile screen before. Once OnePlus set the bar that high, I knew other brands would follow suit. And before 2019 even ended, we got a budget sub-$350 phone with a 90Hz OLED screen.

This year, we’re upgrading to even faster 120Hz panels, which means even more fluid animations on par with gaming monitors—and it won’t just be Chinese brands. Samsung, whose market share globally outside of its home country and the U.S. have been ravaged by aggressive Chinese brands, is throwing everything but the kitchen sink at its upcoming flagship—the Galaxy S20.

Take a look at these reliably-rumored specs: 120Hz screen, 5,000 mAh battery, 108-megapixel camera, six or seven cameras in total, and, of course, the latest Snapdragon processor. Samsung is not playing around—it knows it needs to have the most hardware to compete with the aggressive OnePlus and Oppos and Huaweis.

OnePlus, of course, isn’t going to let Samsung grab all the attention. So its social media accounts have been teasing a 120Hz display of its own, all but confirming it will be used in the OnePlus 8 Pro that’s likely coming in June.

OnePlus’ sister company Oppo, meanwhile, has a major flagship coming in about a month’s time—it’s the sequel to the jaw-dropping Find X of 2017—and reliable rumors from leaker Ice Universe say that phone, too, will use a 120Hz panel.

It’s worth noting that Asus had already launched a phone with a 120Hz screen last year, the game-centric ROG Phone 2, but that tech was used on an LCD panel. In 2020, we’re getting 120Hz refresh rate on the superior OLED technology which produces deeper blacks and more lush colors.

Finally, there are rumors that this year’s iPhones will use a 120Hz panel, too, which Apple dubs “ProMotion” (the tech is already used on the company’s iPad Pros). Though iPhones arrive so late in the year that their life cycle is more in line with 2021 Androids.

Of all of these ultra-high refresh rate screens, I’m most excited about OnePlus’ implementation because it always had the smoothest and fastest UI around, and the OnePlus 7 Pro’s 90Hz screen is still my favorite screen to look at as of today.

But the 120Hz are coming—and it’s going to become the norm. Any phone coming out in the next few months that lack this technology, which may include Huawei’s and LG’s next big releases, will have an uphill battle just to impress out of the box to be honest.

We can thank Chinese brands and their crazy, aggressive strategies for us getting new and exciting tech all the time at barely an extra cost. Other consumer tech sectors, from laptops to speakers to video game consoles, seem slow to evolve by comparison.