iPhone 11 OLED v LCD surprise

[dmaxdmax]

I’m happy with the screen on my 7 so as I don’t want to be limited to 64gig, I’ll have to upgrade storage, making it a $400 difference. I just can’t justify that much for the 2x lens, probably the only feature that would push me over the edge.

 

[Macalicious2011]

Most Youtube content is not a great test at any resolution.

I find that OLED makes YouTube videos look better, especially those with dark scenes that look murky on LCDs.

 

[cap7ainclu7ch]

I LOVE my XS display. It's the best screen I own by far. Something about OLED just gives it an almost print like quality. I love looking at older pictures I've taken on it just to see how great they look. Makes my MBP and iPad screens just look average. The inky blacks and fantastic colors are just something that I couldn't give up at this point. It takes time to appreciate it, you won't really get a true sense for the differences until you try one out for a few days.

 

[Zxxv]

I've looked at photos in the photos app on an XR. The screen definitely wasn't "blurry". Perhaps you were looking at a defective unit.

Apple shop store model. My 6 was the same. Made me think I needed glasses. Changed to iPhone 8+ and realised it wasn’t my eyes. Now have Xs Max.
Sure it could have been a defective unit but all the old screens made me feel like I needed glasses.

 

[EM2013]

Went from the 8 plus to XS max and I don’t see a difference either. All hype.

 

[jonblatho]

I was in the Apple store yesterday and scoped out the screens on a XS and an XR. I used two highly unscientific tests:

- legibility of smallest font street names in Maps. Phone held at arm’s length on an angle to simulate how it would look in the car. Cranked to full brightness.

- a dark interrogation room scene from the Usual Suspects, looking for details in the shadows. Phone held at normal watch a movie distance. Used the same YouTube clip.

In neither case could I tell even the slightest difference. I purposefully put about 30seconds between the phones rather than simultaneous A/B.

Do you think that there’s a practical difference, noticeable to someone not actively trying to find one? I wouldn’t mind saving $300.

Assuming the first is a reference to pixel density, it’s tough to directly compare pixels per inch on iPhones’ LCDs and on iPhones’ OLED displays because the pixels have different subpixel layouts. The difference is not as large as you’d expect optically given the difference in advertised pixel density (458 ppi vs. 326 ppi).

For what it’s worth, I can notice some small differences in the appearance of text on my XS vs. my mom’s XR. Not enough to bother me, though.

 

[Zxxv]

Went from the 8 plus to XS max and I don’t see a difference either. All hype.

8+ is a 1080p screen and a great one at that. I owned one before going to Xs Max. I agree there’s not much in it. Slightly lighter on 8+ overall but hardly anything like the 6 I had or an xr which are both blurry.

 

[mbhforum]

I had an X but sold it for $675 two months ago in anticipation of a price drop with new models coming out. In the meantime, I was able to get an XR from work to hold me over and I don’t miss the OLED screen. I did a test where 5 of my friends (who don’t even know what OLED and LCD mean) compared the XS and X and 4 out of 5 chose the XR over the X. Now, yes, that could be because the screen was slightly bigger. I believe in most situations, it’s more of a marketing gimmick and you can’t appreciate OLED on such a small screen, but rather on a 60” TV.

Anyway, I am getting an X pro, but more because I miss the size of it and the camera on the XR is laggy.

 

[eulslix]

The XR screen is OK but clarity on small fonts on my wife’s XR is noticeably worse than on my 7 Plus though.

I don’t really notice it at arm’s length but will notice it if I hold it closer, which I often do.

This makes sense.

DPI wise the iPhone OLED doubles the DPI of a MacBook. Retina is designed to be sufficient for pixels to be indistinguishable at their optimal viewing distance. So in order to get to the same threshold, you would need to hold the phone at half the distance to your MacBook screen. This would equate to 25cm, according to Wikipedia.
As most people might’ve not done that in their testing, they wouldn’t notice the difference. At a reading distance, there will be definitely a distinguishable difference in the details of the font rendering. The difference will be more subtle than a Retina to a non retina screen though.

There will not be much perceivable difference in contrast ratio in bright daylight. In fact the higher brightness of the LCD will probably win out there.

I dont know where you take this information from. Both of the displays cap at roughly 600nits. This is not your traditional QLED vs OLED panel. And especially with the new 11 Pro OLED panel the contrast ratio should become even better. I don’t know where Apple’s 2000000:1 are coming from, but theyre definitely not in the dark, since for OLED panels thats per definition an infinite contrast ratio.

 

[ghanwani]

There will not be much perceivable difference in contrast ratio in bright daylight. In fact the higher brightness of the LCD will probably win out there. It is in a darker environment that the OLED would be able to maintain higher contrast while the LCD would becomes less vibrant. However, with OLED at or below about 25% brightness, Pulse-width modulation begins to flash the OLEDs on and off, something which is imperceptible to most, but which gives a significant number of people eye fatigue and/or headaches. For even those who are not able to perceive PWM flickering, it is said to be quite damaging to retinal cells.
Perhaps the new iPhone 11 Pros will implement some kind of DC switching for their OLEDs? Here's hoping.

Another reason why you wouldn't really notice a difference in viewing Youtube content, is that most media content is 8 bit, which means it has 256 levels of brightness (actually less than that in reality). If a display is well calibrated, even the most basic of screen technologies can represent evenly those 256 levels of brightness.

I do notice a difference in resolution between the OLED iPhones and the LCD ones, especially if you bring up 4K videos on youtube. But this would obviously be down to resolution and not necessarily the OLED tech. In fact sometimes the LCD looks sharper, given that it has RGB subpixel arrangement, rather than pentile of OLED.

Anyway, there is no one definitive better tech in displays at the moment, until DC switching is the norm (it is available on many Android phones already) or until MicroLED comes round. OLED's (as implemented by Apple) and LCD's each have pros and cons.

Waiting to see if they have done something to address PWM. Has Samsung or any other phone maker done something to help with PWM?

 

[EugW]

This makes sense.

DPI wise the iPhone OLED doubles the DPI of a MacBook. Retina is designed to be sufficient for pixels to be indistinguishable at their optimal viewing distance. So in order to get to the same threshold, you would need to hold the phone at half the distance to your MacBook screen. This would equate to 25cm, according to Wikipedia.
As most people might’ve not done that in their testing, they wouldn’t notice the difference. At a reading distance, there will be definitely a distinguishable difference in the details of the font rendering. The difference will be more subtle than a Retina to a non retina screen though.

Just a little nitpick but you can't directly compare the iPhone OLED's stated pixel density vs. a MacBook LCD's stated pixel density. While it's still quite high on the iPhone OLED, it's not quite as high as the number may suggest.

I did some back-of-the-napkin calculations here:

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...r-326-are-these-calculations-correct.2139201/

Effective PPI would be:

Plus: 401 ppi
Max/Pro: 373 ppi
XR/11: 326 ppi

People may not necessarily agree with my methodology for the calculation but it does get the point across.

Does it matter? Not really to me for the Max vs Plus, since to my eye the pixel densities of the Plus and Max/Pro are both already beyond what I can resolve with my usage, even when looking at the screen from the closest I'd ever use it. IOW, I think the Plus LCD looks great, and the Max OLED looks even better because... well... OLED.

OTOH, the 326 ppi LCD of the XR/11 is somewhat noticeably blurrier for small text when I hold the phone close. Interestingly, due to the sub pixel antialiasing, some of the smaller fonts look more grey than actual black. On my Plus they're black, on the Max they're black, but on the XR and 6s sometimes they are dark grey.

 

[eulslix]

Just a little nitpick but you can't directly compare the iPhone OLED's stated pixel density vs. a MacBook LCD's stated pixel density. While it's still quite high on the iPhone OLED, it's not quite as high as the number may suggest.

I did some back-of-the-napkin calculations here:

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...r-326-are-these-calculations-correct.2139201/

Effective PPI would be:

Plus: 401 ppi
Max/Pro: 373 ppi
XR/11: 326 ppi

People may not necessarily agree with my methodology for the calculation but it does get the point across.

Does it matter? Not really to me for the Max vs Plus, since to my eye the pixel densities of the Plus and Max/Pro are both already beyond what I can resolve with my usage, even when looking at the screen from the closest I'd ever use it. IOW, I think the Plus LCD looks great, and the Max OLED looks even better because... well... OLED.

OTOH, the 326 ppi LCD of the XR/11 is somewhat noticeably blurrier for small text when I hold the phone close. Interestingly, due to the sub pixel antialiasing, some of the smaller fonts look more grey than actual black. On my Plus they're black, on the Max they're black, but on the XR and 6s sometimes they are dark grey.

I understand what you’re getting at. I wouldn’t throw this stuff into a basket though. The lower density in chroma pixels still doesn’t change much about the luma density. So speaking purely from a B/W contrast standpoint, the DPI should stay roughly the same. At the same time, the color contrast should suffer a little bit.
Speaking more practically, in the case of fonts, the difference should be more apparent than with lets color photos.

 

[JohnApples]

I’ve done the comparisons both on paper and in person. At the end of the day, the amount of difference is very minor.

Sure, OLED looks better at night and when there’s true blacks on the screen. No doubt. But again, it’s minor. I spent about 30 minutes comparing an XR and XS the other day. I really had to strain myself to see a difference.

In real-world use, I’m not going to be examining the screen- I’ll be more focused on the content that’s actually being displayed. Even though I currently have the X, I’m not too concerned about going to the 11.

If I do happen to find that I miss OLED, I’ll just switch back to the higher-end model next year.

 

[JPH675]

Going from the iPhone X to the iPhone 11 with the LCD screen.

I thought the penalty for the OLED screen was too severe with regard to battery life reduction in the X. Also, because of the OLED screen-burn issue required the phone to shut off in 30 seconds with my use, Face ID inaccuracies caused me to have to enter my 6-digit passcode much too frequently. With the LCD iPhone 11, I hope to have improved Face ID, no need to worry about screen-burn, and much improved battery life with the standard LCD screen. It is the same screen density as the iPhone 7+, which was my all time favorite iPhone.

The significant proposed increase in battery life with the OLED iPhone 11 Pros most likely comes from the use of the new dark mode in iOS 13, which will make sense because those nice blacks come from the entire OLED screen turning off to produce those colors meaning less battery life required. Interested to see it...

 

[eyeseeyou]

Should have looked at photos in the photos app. It’s clear the r has an inferior blurry screen.

Blurry when comparing to the oled and when looking for blurry areas but not blurry in general everyday use. If it was then ipads would be considered blurry too.

 

[Wackery]

let me put it this way, after using an OLED iphone, I will not upgrade my iPad until they’re OLED too

 

[FuzzMunky]

I dont know where you take this information from. Both of the displays cap at roughly 600nits. This is not your traditional QLED vs OLED panel. And especially with the new 11 Pro OLED panel the contrast ratio should become even better. I don’t know where Apple’s 2000000:1 are coming from, but theyre definitely not in the dark, since for OLED panels thats per definition an infinite contrast ratio.

The LCD has slightly higher nits.
In high ambient light displaymate measured the XS Oled to have contrast ratio between 137 - 164 or something like that. Sadly they never tested the XR LCD, but the measured the iPhone 7 LCD to have a contrast ratio in high ambient light of 136-160 (approximately). Make of that what you will, but it proves both of the points you were disputing.

 

[FlyingTexan]

I just didn’t want the bigger screen.

 

[dmaxdmax]

Another bang for the buck way to look at it is using the iPhone upgrade scheme, an 11 w/128gb is $37/mo, while an 11pro w/256gb is $56/mo.

$19 is more than I can justify, but if I regret the 2x lens I’ll only be without it for 1 year. I’ve somehow made it 57 years without it.