[UPDATE] The iPhone 7's display quality is very close to the Samsung Galaxy S7 and Note 7.
That's the gist of the testing DisplayMate Technologies did on the iPhone 7's display. "The display on the iPhone 7 is...a major upgrade to the display on the iPhone 6," DisplayMate Technologies' Raymond Soneira wrote. "It is by far the best performing mobile LCD display that we have ever tested, and it breaks many display performance records."
iPhone 7 vs Galaxy Note 7 and Galaxy S7: The operative phrase is "best performing mobile LCD display." The Samsung 5.7-inch Galaxy Note 7 had the "best performing smartphone display that we have ever tested," DisplayMate said in a separate, earlier review. It also said that about the Galaxy S7's display (5.1 inches), though that is a more dated review. Both of those Samsung phones have organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays.
"Sometimes the iPhone 7 LCD is better and sometimes the Galaxy OLEDs are better," Soneira told me in an email. On smartphones, LCDs have been losing ground to OLEDs but Apple, at least for now, appears to have closed most of that gap.
Whatever the case, DisplayMate's Soneira wants to make sure you know that the 4.7-inch display on the iPhone 7 is really good.
Steve Jobs clearly always highly valued display performance and loved bragging about
Apple displays, so he would definitely be extremely proud of the exceptional performance of the iPhone 7 display, but probably be dismayed at how little public attention Apple has given to their outstanding iPhone 7 display – which provides a major competitive advantage that most consumers and reviewers are not yet aware of... and other manufacturers will need to play catch-up fast.
And here are some the deets. Note the frequency of the "perfect" rating.
The iPhone 7 matches or breaks new Smartphone display performance records for:
• The Highest Absolute Color Accuracy for any display (1.1 JNCD*) – Visually Indistinguishable from Perfect
• Very Accurate Image Contrast and Intensity Scale (with Gamma 2.21) – Visually Indistinguishable from Perfect
• The Highest Absolute Luminance Accuracy for any display (±2%) – Visually Indistinguishable from Perfect
• The Highest Peak Brightness Smartphone for any Average Picture Level APL (602 to 705 nits)
• The Highest Contrast Ratio for any IPS LCD display (1,762)
• The Lowest Screen Reflectance for any Smartphone display (4.4 percent)
• The Highest Contrast Rating in High Ambient light for a Smartphone for any APL (137 to 160)
• The Smallest Color variation with Viewing Angle (2.1 JNCD or less)*Just Noticeable Color Difference
DisplayMate's Soneira also underscored the fact that the iPhone 7's "new wider DCI-P3 Color Gamut is really a big deal...it is what makes 4K UHD TVs deliver noticeably better color and picture quality than 2K Full HD TVs."
And note that while the 4.7-inch iPhone 7 display has a lower resolution than the Galaxy Note's 5.7-inch display (1,334-by-750 pixels vs. 2,560-by-1,440, respectively) that difference is not noticeable in many cases because the of the relatively small size of the displays. The iPhone 7 Plus' 5.5-inch (1,920-by-1,080) was not included in the comparison.
So what will Apple do
"It's clear that OLEDs are definitely better for Smartphones, which are fairly small and battery powered, but not necessarily better than LCDs for the larger displays found in Tablets [and] TVs," Soneira told me.
And in a section in his report entitled "Switching to OLED Displays for Next iPhone" Soneira says OLED displays provide a number of significant advantages," including being thinner, lighter, usually more power efficient, having very fast response time, better viewing angles, and can be made flexible and into curved screens, among other advantages.
Soneira concludes with: "Apple’s reported move to an OLED iPhone is simply a recognition of all of the above."
