The shot above makes it pretty plain too, with there being a very definite change in skin colour on Mr Sheeran. With the tendency for blue subpixels in AMOLED screens to degrade fastest, the 'shift to yellow' is indeed what I'd expect to see from an older/aging screen.īut it's hard to judge just from from one angle, one photo above, so I tried different content and from different angles/lighting: There was a slight balance issue, in terms of colour, the newer 1020 screen seemed less red/yellow and more neutral, though overall brightness seemed about the same. Minor concerns were that the 'old' 1020 was on the Developer Preview programme and thus had a slightly newer version of the OS. Each phone was set up with the same app, the same content and the same 'Automatic' brightness setting. Helping me were my family, who each voted on which screen looked clearer and crisper, without being told of the reason for the test or what they should be looking for. So, why not try looking at the same screens of content on both the 'old' 1020 and the 'as new' 1020? Would I be able to tell any difference? Happily, I happen to have ended up with two Lumia 1020s - one is the workhorse that I've used almost every day for eighteen months, while the other is an AT&T model that doesn't work on UK frequencies and so had hardly been used at all - just the odd test here and there. But what I wanted to test was if I could detect such a worsening, either in brightness or colouration. In normal use, of course, and especially with Windows Phone 'Brightness' set as 'Automatic', it's hard to detect any degradation over the normal lifetime of a smartphone, e.g. So when asked to display a block of solid colour, lines, spots and characters can be seen 'etched' into the block, i.e. Actually, what is seen here is that parts of the display which have been on for a long time and on brightly have parts which don't shine as brightly as they once did. on demo units, with AMOLED screens forced on for hour after hour, genuine 'burn-in' has been observed. Leaving aside, just for a moment, that most AMOLED screens have these sub-pixels in a 'pentile' layout (with twice as many greeen pixels as red and blue, to try and even out the colours rendered to the human eye), it's a known fact that blue pixels age much faster than red and green. The 'degradation' mentioned above is due to the way the individual red, blue and green sub-pixels gradually lose their efficiency (and thus brightness) over time, with use. I then went on in the original piece to demonstrate that colours and detail are now better for top end LCD screens. Refresh rates can be slower, leading to flickering or tearing in screen elements.Display has to be slightly thicker, due to the need for a backlight.Glance screen has noticeable 'all over' glow when seen in dead of night.Limited in pixel density and resolution. Tend to be more expensive to manufacture than LCD.Brightness can reduce in time (several years).In some cases, users have seen 'burn in' of UI elements, due to natural degradation of the organic polymers in the AMOLED pixels.At high resolutions, cost and longevity concerns means that a 'pentile' layout is often used, leading to slightly fuzzy text and a lower than nominal resolution.Uses dramatically more power when displaying a white-themed screen.Brightness stays constant across many years (dimming would require a decade of regular use).A full RGB matrix is almost always used, giving crisper results for a given, nominal resolution.More accurate colour balance (including 'whiter whites').Power drain doesn't vary wildly according to displayed content.Can be made flexible (ok, not relevant for smartphones in their current form, but worth mentioning!).Display can be slightly thinner, since no backlight layer is needed.Glance screen has far less 'background' glow at night.Uses less power when displaying a dark-themed screen.Firstly, a summary of the technology, from my earlier article: 2014
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