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Duels: Battle of the Five Star Products >

Apple iPhone 4 Retina vs Samsung Galaxy S AMOLED

Vincent Alzieu / Alexandre Botella
Translator: Jack Sims
Updated: August 23, 2010

On the left, we have the Apple iPhone 4, the star phone of the year with its renowned screen tailored to bionic eyes (ours!). Because standard humans are no longer able to distinguish pixels, so small have they become. A number for you: the iPhone 4 has 4 times as many pixels as the previous iPhone 3GS. |
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| 		On the right, the Samsung Galaxy S, with a Super AMOLED (like the Wave) multitouch 4" screen (800 x 480 pixels). Contrast is reported to be so high that the screen is supposed to be legible even in full sunlight. In this era of overly glossy screens, this is a strong argument in its favour!

MARCHANDS €
 
 
Amazon mark...  673.54 
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IPS (Retina)
 | OLED (AMOLED)
960 x 640 pixels
 | 800 x 480 pixels*
32 GB internal | 8 GB internal + 32 GB external
7 hours talk time
 | 6 hours 30 minutes talk time
3'', 614 000 point screen
 | 4'', 384 000 point screen*
115 x 58 x 9 mm, 137 g
 | 122 x 64 x 9.9 mm, 118 g
SAR: 1.39 W/Kg
 | SAR: 0.238 W/Kg

* Samsung's claims about the number of pixels should be taken with a pinch of salt.  See our closer look below ...

BACKGROUND


The Apple Retina screen has been presented as the latest generation IPS screen. In addition it has a very nice 960 x 640 pixel resolution. Now then, in contrast to photos, is it better to have more pixels, or is this just marketing spin? Does it improve image quality?		 |
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While the OLED screen is still a dream when it comes to TVs, it has long since been used on mobiles. Nevertheless, is it really the ideal technology that we have been told it is for years? And how does it compare to Sony SLCD that HTC is now starting to use?

Superb duel here, very compelling, behind which much more is in fact at stake than just these two phones. The future of all screen technology may well be decided in this battle! The OLED has the disadvantage that it is complex to produce, and therefore costly. We also still don't know how long OLED screens last. For a long time they had the reputation of failing quite quickly. Will the current batch better stand up to years of intensive use? Nobody can know this for certain at the current time.

What if IPS technology carried the day? What if IPS were the technology of the future? This type of screen had two disadvantages until very recently: ghosting that was too marked and contrast that was too low. It looks as if these faults have now been consigned to history.

 

RESOLUTION: APPLE WINS




The two phones were placed on the same table, in the same position, under the same light. We photographed our site logo in macro mode, with no zoom on the page.

What precision from Apple! The 960 x 640 pixels allow it to display text at previously unseen legibility.

For frequent web browsing, this is an undeniable advantage.

Let's go even closer, and see if we can spot the individual pixels:



The sub-pixels are invisible, even from this close.  Each one of those white dots, though, is actually made up of red, green and blue sub-pixels
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The Samsung gives stronger colours! Samsung's OLED screen clearly gives much better contrast.

However, it only has 800 x 480 pixels, and legibility of small characters suffers as a result. You can see that the word in the search bar is less clear here. The characters forming the word "NUMERIQUES" on the iPhone are also much finer and cleaner.

Let's go even closer, and see if we can spot the individual pixels:



The sub-pixels are clearly visible, and you can even see that they're laid out differently to how they would be on a computer monitor.  Instead of one red, one green and blue sub-pixel, there is half green, one red, half green and one blue.

In fact, if you look even more closely, you'll see that the ½+1+½+1 is repeated every two pixels.
 
Here is an extreme close-up on the two screens, honing in on the word 'Rechercher' ('Search') on our homepage.

Apple iPhone 4

The word 'Recercher' is 43 pixels wide.

Samsung Galaxy S

It takes a line of 14 blue sub-pixels to write the word 'Rechercher'.  Bearing in mind the alternating pattern, that gives 27 blue sub-pixels.

Because the iPhone's screen is 960 pixels across, but the display on the Galaxy S is said to 800 wide, we should have found 43 x 800 / 960 = 36 blue sub-pixels on the Samsung screen.   That's actually about how many green sub-pixels there are, but they're half as thin as the others: 29.

So Samsung has decided to count not the number of pixels, or sub-pixels in their entirety, but the number of green half-pixels.  The manufacturer considers its display hardware sufficiently different from everybody else's to use a different way of describing its display.  We're not at all sure that's entirely justified.  There are no problems vertically though, with the number of rows counted normally.

The differences in usability on both screens is even easier to understand once you take this into consideration.

CONTRAST: SAMSUNG WINS



A contrast ratio of 870:1 is a pretty good score that many computer screens don't manage. Especially those with IPS panels! Only latest generation screens reach such high scores.

Indeed, a year ago, IPS screens stood out for their washed out blacks. Progess has been made since then. We will moreover have more to say on this subject soon, but progress in comparison the iPhone 3GS is considerable! 3GS contrast: 170:1 as measured by our sensor!
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The OLED doesn't disappoint. An infinite contrast ratio! Well, it isn't in reality but the black level is so deep that our sensor is incapable of measuring it. Perfect!

This enormous contrast ratio also gives the screen an enormous indirect advantage: the screen is legible in full sunlight. Even with reflections. In any case, much more legible than any other telephone. And this is a quality we love!

COLOUR TEMPERATURE AND GAMMA: APPLE WINS



Average colour temperature of this screen is 7500 K. Not yet the 6500 K score we get for TVs and monitors but already a little less blue than the Samsung.



We aim for a stable gamma of 2.2. On the iPhone 4, it is a little higher (2.3 on average). Even though the differences in tone are slightly more marked, it is almost perfect.
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Blue! The screen clearly tends towards blues. With a colour temperature that approaches 9000 K, the images displayed are colder than in reality.



We aim at a stable gamma of 2.2. On the Galaxy S, the gamma is a little lower. (2.1 on average). Still almost perfect.

COLOUR ACCURACY: APPLE WINS



The greys are well rendered, very accurately in fact! For the other colours, things are a bit more random. With a (dE) average difference of 5.8, this score would be very modest if it was for a monitor. Compared to the Galaxy S screen however, it's a model of accuracy!
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The average difference (dE) of 7.4 is rather disappointing. The greys are also very well rendered here (though the iPhone does even better). However some other tones (red, green...) explode.

 

RESPONSIVENESS: APPLE WINS


In terms of the stats, the screens are equal: the iPhone 4 has a coloured ghosting of 0.75 frames for moving objects. To the eye however, the iPhone clearly does better on our sequence of tests, thanks not to the responsiveness of its pixels, but due to the fact that there are more of them. The better defined iPhone image is cleaner overall, both when static and in movement.

Clearly, the future belongs to high definition screens.		 |
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With a coloured ghosting of 0.8 frames for moving objects, the OLED screen is about as responsive as a basic and not very recent 2 ms TN monitor. This is good, though a little disappointing if you've been following the gen on OLED screens over the last few years. They promised a responsiveness of 0.1 ms, which is perfect and better than CRT screens.
They haven't lived up to their promise!

VERDICT: iPhone 4 WINS

In the end, the better balanced screen carries the day. The readings confirm the visual impression. It doesn't have perfect colours, the contrast ratio isn't the best and the gamma could be improved... The results are however still better than average.

Moreover its 960 x 640 pixel resolution gives it perfect legibility, which is very practical when you spend a lot of time on your phone replying to mails, browsing, posting your status or playing games. What great progress compared to the iPhone 3GS screen!		 |
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 Samsung had plenty in the bag against Apple here. What with the record contrast and tolerance to reflections. Just one thing was lacking: the colours were way off. Some tones really are too much. For lots of usage it's not a problem, but when viewing photos, it produces a very strange effect.

If Samsung were to offer an OS update with improved colours, we would certainly appreciate it.

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