There are two things I'm unclear about:
1. Why are they conflating resolution and color accuracy? You could have a 4k display and STILL have perfect color accuracy. Having one doesn't negate any possible advantage of the other. Like others have said, I don't see the *point* of 4K on my phone - not that the Samsung display's aren't good looking (they are), but they aren't noticeably better to me either.
2. Why would other manufacturers need to play catch-up? Except for a certain subset of geeks that are excited about display technology (I count myself one), most people could not care less. As long as stuff looks good enough, it is. Nobody is doing professional photo-editing on their iPhone, or using it as a reference monitor. I hope.
Aside from that...go Apple go. I'm very happy with my 6S+ display, and glad to hear that my 7+ will look even "better".
Ok, well I get the confusion. Resolution and color accuracy are two different things. But to understand what is being said, you really need to go to Displaymate's site, and read the review in all of their own words, and look at all the charts.
i strongly believe that at some point, camera makers will add the DCI-P3 standard to their cameras, along with the sRGB and Adobe RGB 1998 they have now. The advantage to this standard is that unlike with the other standards, flesh tones, no matter what color you are, will be better, and that's a major, and good thing.
In the interest of future-proofing I'd sooner see Rec. 2020 pushed for pro and prosumer.
What's the point of a 4K ~5" screen anyway? As noted, there are many ways to make a better screen than just packing more pixels in there. Is 4K on a 5" screen really a droid/ Samsung feature? While I do like my 4k TV because I sit quite close. 10 Bit RGB color makes the bigger difference. I basically "can't see" the pixels on my iPhone as it is. Not sure how "MORE PIXELS" makes a better phone anyway except maybe for some one who doesn't know any better, bragging to another friend (who also doesn't know any better) that their phone is measurably superior to another. I don't even waste my disputing it with Droid fans. They go down that road of "well, droid does x better". And I just nod my head and say of course it does.
Not sure how "wide color" makes a better phone neither. Both pixels and wide color make a slight difference if you look at the screen in perfect circumstances, but do not improve the user experience. If you surf to a website, all images are compressed and scaled down, so why bother?
Sheesh! Can't people look to the future? Do you have to look at what's here now, and fail to see where things are going? As I've mentioned in previous posts here, color standards are improving across the board. You'll see it if you buy a new decent quality tv in the next two or three years.
apple tends to look at where things are going, and gives a push to move things along. If no one does it, when will it happen? I read elsewhere that who other than Apple, with its prestige, and money, can do any of this? Essentially, no one.
its like the headphone jack. I've also read, in several articles, that "sure, we all know that jack is going, but now is not the time". Well, when is it the time? It's either never the time, or the time is now. Now that Apple said it, Intel is saying it too, but with USB C. And Samsung apparently is working on its own proprietary jack, despite giggling at the Note 7 release, mentioning that it had a headphone jack. Does anyone remember reading that a new Motorola phone has no headphone EU Jack? Or that a Chinese maker just released three phones without one? Well, until Apple said it, you wouldn't have read about it, because no one cared
with color standards, the time comes in different industries on differing time scales. What I see here is that Apple is working to bring all of these standards together at the same time. This will force other companies to look at what Apple is doing, considering its considerable,influence, and work to move towards it. Does anyone think that Dell would have come out with a DCI-P3 monitor now if it weren't for Apple's influence?
i can tell tou that when you see an image with DCI-P3 on a phone, tablet or computer that capable of displaying it, compared to the same image in sRGB, you will see the difference. Know all of those times when someone is wearing a shirt in bright red, or green, or blue, or any other color, or a flower in a bright color, and it's just a blob of that color? Well, this will stop that from happening. You WILL notice. But, everyone must come on board. It will take years, but it has to begin somewhere, and some time. Now it has.
This is a weird headline- 4K = better screen quality? What does 'screen quality' even mean?
I have a 6S for personal and Galaxy 7 for work --- set to roughly the same brightness, G7 is a more blue-ish tint. 6s red-ish tint. For a picture I took on my desk of same object I take under fluorescent, To my eye the G7 color closer to actual, but the 6S photo had better fidelity.
melgross said: in fact, most prepress work uses "soft proffing" and has for years. No more prepress prints. That's gone. We stopped making prepress prints for our clients around 2000. Fuji and Kodak don't even make the materials for them anymore.
Not sure what you are referring to but obviously no one makes film proofs, but we proof everything using Epson large format ink jet. Without that, the customer cannot sign off on the job. Our rip curves for the proofs are digitally linked to the plate maker and match the Komori presses precisely.
Well, most press work today uses images seen at the print house, where the press is, on the monitor. I'm not talking about film proofs. I'm talking about the old print proofs for prepress. We used that forever, it seemed, until we didn't any more. While prints off an inkjet is really good there days, and as long as you have the proper profile for the press, it should work ok. But that's a dying way of doing it.
but taking the photos is something different. If the proper lighting isn't used, or the camera isn't properly calibrated, or the monitor used to color correct the images isn't properly calibrated, or the color corrector isn't using the proper color space, well, anything can happen.
I'm not talking about taking photos. I'm saying that we order color swatches from Pantone. Then you create a file in Photoshop with nothing but a rectangle filled with RGB values of 218, 24, 132. Compare it to the color swatch. If it doesn't match then it is not accurate color. Even so we mostly order our ink from Pantone and print using spot color. People who do not understand this do not get Barbie print work.
Yeah. I've got about a half dozen Pantone swatch books here. Even have the Pantone swatch app on my phone. Unless you used custom Pantone colors, I don't see why you would need to order a swatch. But if you were using corporate colors, then Pantone would develop a color just for them. It's interesting, but most shops who print Pantone colors don't use Pantone's inks. They screw around with cheaper inks until they get where they want to go. Not the best method, but everything is money, I guess.
you know, Barbie is different every time they do another batch of Barbies. Probably by about a 10 in each color.
melgross said: in fact, most prepress work uses "soft proffing" and has for years. No more prepress prints. That's gone. We stopped making prepress prints for our clients around 2000. Fuji and Kodak don't even make the materials for them anymore.
Not sure what you are referring to but obviously no one makes film proofs, but we proof everything using Epson large format ink jet. Without that, the customer cannot sign off on the job. Our rip curves for the proofs are digitally linked to the plate maker and match the Komori presses precisely.
Well, most press work today uses images seen at the print house, where the press is, on the monitor. I'm not talking about film proofs. I'm talking about the old print proofs for prepress. We used that forever, it seemed, until we didn't any more. While prints off an inkjet is really good there days, and as long as you have the proper profile for the press, it should work ok. But that's a dying way of doing it.
We proof off the same equipment, the same media, and the same ink sets we'll print with if the color is critical. Viewing or sending soft proofs is a terribly unreliable way to accurately determine the final colors of a large-format production piece which is our bread and butter.
The main place LCD falls down at this point is black levels. Everything else is wonderful. Reflectivity is an issue, but black levels matter more to my use personally.
black levels mean very little in a lit area.
You're saying Apple Watch was designed only to be used in the dark? If lit areas aren't important then why is now, by a wide margin, Apple's brightest display?
What I believe he means, as it's what I said in an earlier post here, is that when light levels get bright, black levels look blacker. So, when outdoors, as long as the screen isn't being washed out by direct sun. The brightness of the screen, which is at its highest level, will make the black level seem darker because of the contrast.
but this really depends on the screen being clean. A lot of smudges will wipe out all of the benefits.
To me it read that he was saying that OLED is shit and Apple would never consider that technology on the iPhone.
Well, it isn't shit, and it's getting better all the time. But is it equal to what Apple is doing - not this year. Last year, and the year before, yes, it was equal, and even possibly a little bit better.
i mean, we do need to try to be more objective here, right?
next year, as it looks as though Apple might be going to OLED, will OLED suddenly become a lot better, either in reality, or in people's imagination? Well, OLED does have a bigger color gamet than LCD does. Samsung needs to calibrate that down - a lot. Before they did, everything was very over saturated and garish. That wasn't because the display was bad, it was because when the gamut is larger than the images displayed on it, it needs to be calibrated to the standard the images are supplied in or everything looks oversaturated.
android has no color management, and won't, for some time, if ever. So displays need to be calibrated as sRGB. Once Samsung decided to spend what it took, the displays looked very good. But there's a problem for them. Without calibration and color management together, there's no way to read what an image is, colorwise, as it can't read a profile, if one is supplied. Right now, it's just assumed that everything is sRGB, and everything's hunky dory. But if an image is Adobe RGB, it doesn't look right. Same thing with P3.
apple has been adding the color management from OS X since iOS 7. Bit by bit. With iOS 9, most of it was in place, and with iOS 10, it's all there. So it reads profiles, if they are provided. That's a major issue. Safari in OS X can read an Adobe RGB file and display it properly ( DCI-P3 too?), but safari in iOS couldn't. I haven't tested it yet, but I hope Apple has added that capability now. If not yet, maybe in an update.
so using an OLED screen would allow DCI-P3 to be seen just as well as now. The color gamut is there, it just needs to be used.
What's the point of a 4K ~5" screen anyway? As noted, there are many ways to make a better screen than just packing more pixels in there. Is 4K on a 5" screen really a droid/ Samsung feature? While I do like my 4k TV because I sit quite close. 10 Bit RGB color makes the bigger difference. I basically "can't see" the pixels on my iPhone as it is. Not sure how "MORE PIXELS" makes a better phone anyway except maybe for some one who doesn't know any better, bragging to another friend (who also doesn't know any better) that their phone is measurably superior to another. I don't even waste my disputing it with Droid fans. They go down that road of "well, droid does x better". And I just nod my head and say of course it does.
Number of pixels is the easiest spec to sell to the common public. Everyone understands it.
Try talking to someone about contrast ratio, or color saturation and you're likely to get blank stares.
As far as OLED displays go, I think Apple will eventually go there, rumour has it next year. One thing they should've figured out by then is the way to drive all those extra pixels. The real advantage of that type of display however is more likely to be power consumption and a smaller footprint (think bezels).
you know, Barbie is different every time they do another batch of Barbies. Probably by about a 10 in each color.
No it isn't and if it was, you would lose your contract and be calling your insurance agent for "Errors and Omissions" coverage.
I challenge you to take a walk down the Barbie aisle at any toy store and try to find any variation in color of Barbie pink. I can save you the trip though, because it does not exist, except if perhaps the product has been on the shelf too long and the fluorescent lights have faded it, but even that is unlikely.
Subrandom said: Nobody is doing professional photo-editing on their iPhone, or using it as a reference monitor. I hope.
I agreed with everything you said except the above statement. Any work that Apple does to improve displays on any of their devices benefits the rest of the devices, so this means the advancements will definitely land on iPad and Macs, too.
And some people are doing professional photo-editing on an iPhone, you can be certain of that.
The main place LCD falls down at this point is black levels. Everything else is wonderful. Reflectivity is an issue, but black levels matter more to my use personally.
black levels mean very little in a lit area.
You're saying Apple Watch was designed only to be used in the dark? If lit areas aren't important then why is now, by a wide margin, Apple's brightest display?
black levels does not equal brightness of display
That doesn't even come close to address my questions.
come on dude.
black levels are not that important if you are using your phone in lit areas. Like in an office or home with lights on, or outside when the sun is up. Since those lights will wash out near true black anyway.
The Watch is made with OLED because OLED is thinner.
OLED is more power efficient, especially if using a dark mode. That's probably of even more importance since the Apple Watch has a pretty small battery. For smallish devices there are a lot of advantages to OLED over LCD.
This is an interesting question. I still doubt that OLEDs are more power efficient, on average, than LCD screens. Both are advancing at decent rates. Both use LEDs for the light. LCDs use inorganic Leds, which can stand a lot more heat, and last longer. OLEDs have been, and still are, limited by that problem, which required manufacturers to run them at levels that don't heat them up much. That includes using them out door on hot and humid days, and being left on the windshield when used as a GPS. The more current going through an LED, the more efficient it becomes.
samsung has given a direct sunlight mode for extra brightness that can't be manually overrode, last I've seen. That's so people don't turn them up too far and damage them for long periods.
somehow, Apple's new OLED for the watch is 1,000 nits, assuming that number will hold up in testing. That's much brighter than any other commercial OLED I've ever seen, or read about. We know that Apple does a lot of R&D on displays, so possibly they've developed something that allows higher levels. Or, possibly, but more disappointingly, they figure that you won't be using the watch display as much, so they're just going for it. I get my new watch, Apple says, this Thursday, so I'll be doing some testing.
High def uses sRGB as standard with 16.7 million, though the cheap screens on TV sets and cheap monitors can't actually show 16.7 million colors at once, so they're dithered.
Even the best 4K monitor can only display 8,847,360 colors at once because that is all the pixels they have.
Yes, of course. But that doesn't matter as much as it being able to display a much greater number when needed. The importance comes in places such as skies, where a slow change in color across the entire image can be seen with color banding. So while every color can't be seen across all the pixels, it isn't needed.
but cheaper displays often dither, because they can only display about a half million colors.
There are two things I'm unclear about:
1. Why are they conflating resolution and color accuracy? You could have a 4k display and STILL have perfect color accuracy. Having one doesn't negate any possible advantage of the other. Like others have said, I don't see the *point* of 4K on my phone - not that the Samsung display's aren't good looking (they are), but they aren't noticeably better to me either.
2. Why would other manufacturers need to play catch-up? Except for a certain subset of geeks that are excited about display technology (I count myself one), most people could not care less. As long as stuff looks good enough, it is. Nobody is doing professional photo-editing on their iPhone, or using it as a reference monitor. I hope.
Aside from that...go Apple go. I'm very happy with my 6S+ display, and glad to hear that my 7+ will look even "better".
Ok, well I get the confusion. Resolution and color accuracy are two different things. But to understand what is being said, you really need to go to Displaymate's site, and read the review in all of their own words, and look at all the charts.
i strongly believe that at some point, camera makers will add the DCI-P3 standard to their cameras, along with the sRGB and Adobe RGB 1998 they have now. The advantage to this standard is that unlike with the other standards, flesh tones, no matter what color you are, will be better, and that's a major, and good thing.
In the interest of future-proofing I'd sooner see Rec. 2020 pushed for pro and prosumer.
I agree. But that's even more difficult. Notice that only the Apple displays can actually show DCI-P3, though some others come close. 2020 won't be seen on 4K Tvs no matter what anyone says, because they will need to be very expensive, and that ain't gonna happen. But some will come closer than others. I saw some Sony 4K Tvs at some trade shows over the last two years. The cheaper monitors didn't come close, but their better ones (around $6,500 and up for 65") did.
ive got a Samsung 61" Tv from 6 years ago, which I'm loath to give up, because it's a rear projection that uses three large rectangular LEDs for illumination. It already supports all of the new standards of color, in theory. I say theory, because some have been proposed after mine came out. But the point is that the RGB LED lighting allows for those wide gamuts. So unless someone buys an OLED 4K set that works with these standards, it ain't gonna happen. Too expensive to make. But some front projection sets have been coming with the RGB LED lighting for several years. Yup, they too are expensive, but prices have been coming down.
Apple has done magnificent job at optimizing the LCD screen. However, there is little room for further optimization. They will never be as thin as OLED panels and can never match the lower power consumption.
OLED panels have a number of advantages which is why Apple uses them in the watch. The watch has greater brightness than any other panel Apple uses in their mobile products.
OLED panels will be coming to the iPhone. The manufacturing capacity just isn't there for the numbers of iPhones Apple sells. It's coming soon.
The importance comes in places such as skies, where a slow change in color across the entire image can be seen with color banding.
Even if it did look smooth on the monitor, in the print industry, banding can still appear on the final print output because even at 175-200 line screen, there are only 256 dot sizes for each CMYK separation, and that does not show up on any ink jet proof, although it used to on the old 3M film proofs. In the case of the sky it is almost entirely cyan, usually no more than 50%, so there is virtually zero rosette, hence banding can definitely be an issue even with the best equipment. That is why sometimes we will use a Pantone 5th color touch plate on top of a light color like sky. But I understand where you are coming from, not many shops are that interested in high quality, however we do everything possible to achieve the best possible result, even if it is a dying art.
but cheaper displays often dither, because they can only display about a half million colors.
Every monitor dithers unless the image being viewed has the same aspect ratio, same number of pixels as the monitor, the same color depth of the graphics card and also being viewed at 100%. Otherwise, in either direction, up or down, it is being dithered if the pixels in the image do not precisely align with the grid of the pixels in the monitor, that is assuming the image has square pixels, which is usually not the case for video. Obviously, the more display pixels you have, the better the dithering.
A description also used by DisplayMate for the color accuracy of Samsung Amoleds.
" tied with the Galaxy Note 5 and Galaxy S6 for the most color accurate displays that we have ever measured for a smartphone or tablet, which is visually indistinguishable from perfect, "
That's just about color accuracy (both in the case of Samsung and the iPhone). DisplayMate is very clear. To quote: "It is by far the best performing mobile LCD display that we have ever tested, "
But the Note 7 is still regarded as the best mobile display ever. Quote: "So the Galaxy Note7 becomes the Best Performing Smartphone Display that we have ever tested."
So in other words: the iPhone has the best mobile LCD ever tested and has a truly excellent screen. But the Note 7 is the best mobile display ever tested.
The importance comes in places such as skies, where a slow change in color across the entire image can be seen with color banding.
Even if it did look smooth on the monitor, in the print industry, banding can still appear on the final print output because even at 175-200 line screen, there are only 256 dot sizes for each CMYK separation, and that does not show up on any ink jet proof, although it used to on the old 3M film proofs. In the case of the sky it is almost entirely cyan, usually no more than 50%, so there is virtually zero rosette, hence banding can definitely be an issue even with the best equipment. That is why sometimes we will use a Pantone 5th color touch plate on top of a light color like sky. But I understand where you are coming from, not many shops are that interested in high quality, however we do everything possible to achieve the best possible result, even if it is a dying art.
I still love Hexachrome. It's too bad the expense didn't allow it to take off. I have some work with it, and it really is so much better. Regular CMYK theoretically has 256 levels per color, but you know the problems. Too much ink results in a mess. How many shops will chance 300% ink? Not too many. That leaves maybe 245 levels, maybe only 240 on good, but not great work, and less on more average work. Blacks block up so we lose as many as 20 lower levels there. Ugh.
melgross said: in fact, most prepress work uses "soft proffing" and has for years. No more prepress prints. That's gone. We stopped making prepress prints for our clients around 2000. Fuji and Kodak don't even make the materials for them anymore.
Not sure what you are referring to but obviously no one makes film proofs, but we proof everything using Epson large format ink jet. Without that, the customer cannot sign off on the job. Our rip curves for the proofs are digitally linked to the plate maker and match the Komori presses precisely.
Well, most press work today uses images seen at the print house, where the press is, on the monitor. I'm not talking about film proofs. I'm talking about the old print proofs for prepress. We used that forever, it seemed, until we didn't any more. While prints off an inkjet is really good there days, and as long as you have the proper profile for the press, it should work ok. But that's a dying way of doing it.
We proof off the same equipment, the same media, and the same ink sets we'll print with if the color is critical. Viewing or sending soft proofs is a terribly unreliable way to accurately determine the final colors of a large-format production piece which is our bread and butter.
Most work is soft proofed these days, and for better or worse, that going to increase. The expense of doing what you do is certainly worthwhile for high quality work, but price presssure has been getting greater as time goes on, and there's simply less of that being done these days.
you know, Barbie is different every time they do another batch of Barbies. Probably by about a 10 in each color.
No it isn't and if it was, you would lose your contract and be calling your insurance agent for "Errors and Omissions" coverage.
I challenge you to take a walk down the Barbie aisle at any toy store and try to find any variation in color of Barbie pink. I can save you the trip though, because it does not exist, except if perhaps the product has been on the shelf too long and the fluorescent lights have faded it, but even that is unlikely.
I hate to tell you, but it's true. I've seen it myself. Not with Barbie, because they were never a client, but with more than you would think. The major working factor is whether it's more than most people will notice or care about. When dealing with a single dye, it's not too hard, but when working with a carefully blended product, I've seen differences.
Comments
apple tends to look at where things are going, and gives a push to move things along. If no one does it, when will it happen? I read elsewhere that who other than Apple, with its prestige, and money, can do any of this? Essentially, no one.
its like the headphone jack. I've also read, in several articles, that "sure, we all know that jack is going, but now is not the time". Well, when is it the time? It's either never the time, or the time is now. Now that Apple said it, Intel is saying it too, but with USB C. And Samsung apparently is working on its own proprietary jack, despite giggling at the Note 7 release, mentioning that it had a headphone jack. Does anyone remember reading that a new Motorola phone has no headphone EU Jack? Or that a Chinese maker just released three phones without one? Well, until Apple said it, you wouldn't have read about it, because no one cared
with color standards, the time comes in different industries on differing time scales. What I see here is that Apple is working to bring all of these standards together at the same time. This will force other companies to look at what Apple is doing, considering its considerable,influence, and work to move towards it. Does anyone think that Dell would have come out with a DCI-P3 monitor now if it weren't for Apple's influence?
i can tell tou that when you see an image with DCI-P3 on a phone, tablet or computer that capable of displaying it, compared to the same image in sRGB, you will see the difference. Know all of those times when someone is wearing a shirt in bright red, or green, or blue, or any other color, or a flower in a bright color, and it's just a blob of that color? Well, this will stop that from happening. You WILL notice. But, everyone must come on board. It will take years, but it has to begin somewhere, and some time. Now it has.
This is a weird headline- 4K = better screen quality? What does 'screen quality' even mean?
I have a 6S for personal and Galaxy 7 for work --- set to roughly the same brightness, G7 is a more blue-ish tint. 6s red-ish tint. For a picture I took on my desk of same object I take under fluorescent, To my eye the G7 color closer to actual, but the 6S photo had better fidelity.
Go figure...
Yeah. I've got about a half dozen Pantone swatch books here. Even have the Pantone swatch app on my phone. Unless you used custom Pantone colors, I don't see why you would need to order a swatch. But if you were using corporate colors, then Pantone would develop a color just for them. It's interesting, but most shops who print Pantone colors don't use Pantone's inks. They screw around with cheaper inks until they get where they want to go. Not the best method, but everything is money, I guess.
you know, Barbie is different every time they do another batch of Barbies. Probably by about a 10 in each color.
i mean, we do need to try to be more objective here, right?
next year, as it looks as though Apple might be going to OLED, will OLED suddenly become a lot better, either in reality, or in people's imagination? Well, OLED does have a bigger color gamet than LCD does. Samsung needs to calibrate that down - a lot. Before they did, everything was very over saturated and garish. That wasn't because the display was bad, it was because when the gamut is larger than the images displayed on it, it needs to be calibrated to the standard the images are supplied in or everything looks oversaturated.
android has no color management, and won't, for some time, if ever. So displays need to be calibrated as sRGB. Once Samsung decided to spend what it took, the displays looked very good. But there's a problem for them. Without calibration and color management together, there's no way to read what an image is, colorwise, as it can't read a profile, if one is supplied. Right now, it's just assumed that everything is sRGB, and everything's hunky dory. But if an image is Adobe RGB, it doesn't look right. Same thing with P3.
apple has been adding the color management from OS X since iOS 7. Bit by bit. With iOS 9, most of it was in place, and with iOS 10, it's all there. So it reads profiles, if they are provided. That's a major issue. Safari in OS X can read an Adobe RGB file and display it properly ( DCI-P3 too?), but safari in iOS couldn't. I haven't tested it yet, but I hope Apple has added that capability now. If not yet, maybe in an update.
so using an OLED screen would allow DCI-P3 to be seen just as well as now. The color gamut is there, it just needs to be used.
I challenge you to take a walk down the Barbie aisle at any toy store and try to find any variation in color of Barbie pink. I can save you the trip though, because it does not exist, except if perhaps the product has been on the shelf too long and the fluorescent lights have faded it, but even that is unlikely.
I agreed with everything you said except the above statement. Any work that Apple does to improve displays on any of their devices benefits the rest of the devices, so this means the advancements will definitely land on iPad and Macs, too.
And some people are doing professional photo-editing on an iPhone, you can be certain of that.
This is an interesting question. I still doubt that OLEDs are more power efficient, on average, than LCD screens. Both are advancing at decent rates. Both use LEDs for the light. LCDs use inorganic Leds, which can stand a lot more heat, and last longer. OLEDs have been, and still are, limited by that problem, which required manufacturers to run them at levels that don't heat them up much. That includes using them out door on hot and humid days, and being left on the windshield when used as a GPS. The more current going through an LED, the more efficient it becomes.
samsung has given a direct sunlight mode for extra brightness that can't be manually overrode, last I've seen. That's so people don't turn them up too far and damage them for long periods.
somehow, Apple's new OLED for the watch is 1,000 nits, assuming that number will hold up in testing. That's much brighter than any other commercial OLED I've ever seen, or read about. We know that Apple does a lot of R&D on displays, so possibly they've developed something that allows higher levels. Or, possibly, but more disappointingly, they figure that you won't be using the watch display as much, so they're just going for it. I get my new watch, Apple says, this Thursday, so I'll be doing some testing.
Yes, of course. But that doesn't matter as much as it being able to display a much greater number when needed. The importance comes in places such as skies, where a slow change in color across the entire image can be seen with color banding. So while every color can't be seen across all the pixels, it isn't needed.
but cheaper displays often dither, because they can only display about a half million colors.
I agree. But that's even more difficult. Notice that only the Apple displays can actually show DCI-P3, though some others come close. 2020 won't be seen on 4K Tvs no matter what anyone says, because they will need to be very expensive, and that ain't gonna happen. But some will come closer than others. I saw some Sony 4K Tvs at some trade shows over the last two years. The cheaper monitors didn't come close, but their better ones (around $6,500 and up for 65") did.
ive got a Samsung 61" Tv from 6 years ago, which I'm loath to give up, because it's a rear projection that uses three large rectangular LEDs for illumination. It already supports all of the new standards of color, in theory. I say theory, because some have been proposed after mine came out. But the point is that the RGB LED lighting allows for those wide gamuts. So unless someone buys an OLED 4K set that works with these standards, it ain't gonna happen. Too expensive to make. But some front projection sets have been coming with the RGB LED lighting for several years. Yup, they too are expensive, but prices have been coming down.
OLED panels have a number of advantages which is why Apple uses them in the watch. The watch has greater brightness than any other panel Apple uses in their mobile products.
OLED panels will be coming to the iPhone. The manufacturing capacity just isn't there for the numbers of iPhones Apple sells. It's coming soon.
" tied with the Galaxy Note 5 and Galaxy S6 for the most color accurate displays that we have ever measured for a smartphone or tablet, which is visually indistinguishable from perfect, "
That's just about color accuracy (both in the case of Samsung and the iPhone). DisplayMate is very clear. To quote:
"It is by far the best performing mobile LCD display that we have ever tested, "
But the Note 7 is still regarded as the best mobile display ever. Quote: "So the Galaxy Note7 becomes the Best Performing Smartphone Display that we have ever tested."
So in other words: the iPhone has the best mobile LCD ever tested and has a truly excellent screen. But the Note 7 is the best mobile display ever tested.