IPS Vs AMOLED Display

 An important aspect of the evolution of smartphones has been their displays. There are a variety of options to choose from.

Samsung prefer using AMOLED panels and other companies like Xiaomi and Realme use IPS LCD technologies for their smartphones. Which one exactly is the better one? To find this we'll look at the important aspects of these two display technologies and go through some history.

IPS stands for In-plane switching and it is a display technology built on the improvements from LCD which Liquid crystal Display and TFT which are Thin Film Transistors. IPS displays have a better viewing angles  compared to their predecessors which are the TN displays, which had major complaints regarding  color inversion at extreme angles. IPS displays are also much more efficient in power consumption compared to their previous Gen. 

AMOLED which means Active Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diodes are based on active Matrix technology. IPS also has active matrix technology. This means that TFT's thin film transistors regulate each pixels power themselves without the support of external wires. One important aspect of AMOLEDs is the fact that the organic LEDs are present which emits light and black color in AMOLED displays is equivalent to an off pixel. This helps with the ambient technology usage of ambient displays. 

So far you have the basic knowledge about IPS & AMOLED, So let's compare both of them.

The evident ones- 

There are some obvious points that everyone notices on IPS & AMOLED panels. The fact that AMOLEDs have technically an infinite contrast ratio since it turns off the power for black color gives it an edge upon  IPS displays which produces black color using its pixels power. Thus, ambient display applications, where just a very tiny part of the display has to be lit up, those applications are practically viable only through ambient displays. 

Another obvious point of comparison is the fact that the displays be generally bent. However, the AMOLED displays are highly flexible and have more applications across bendable and edged devices. So, definitely, if we talk about the obvious points AMOLED has a very clear edge upon IPS panels. 

Now, when we talk about non-obvious points- 

The IPS displays are are built upon previous technologies and are well refined. A lot of tests and refinements have been done on IPS panels and thus, maximum efficiency till date has been ensured, Research on AMOLED displays are also going on very high levels but they are comparatively new and have a few etches(pattern) here and there. One important example is that the pixels in IPS panels would never burn in to the display given their technological advancements. This might be a problem in AMOLED displays after an year or two where notification panel icons can burn it into the display and damage it permanently.

Battery Drain-

As I've already mentioned, if AMOLED displays have black color on their screen they would turn the pixel completely off. However, for IPS panels, the entire backlight would be on even if the output color is completely black. Thus, this point is simply won by AMOLED displays, there are also drawbacks. Each pixel in AMOLED displays take up a higher amount of energy compared to an IPS pixel for producing the same amount of light. This is because IPS panel's pixels are much more power efficient compared to the organic pixels used in AMOLED displays and well, other factors like display size, average brightness of the display, the resolution of the display etc, are also very important in factoring the power efficiency of the display of a given smartphone. There is a new trend- Jumping for higher resolution, where more light is pushed through each pixel, IPS panels are better however, where ambient display technology is much more used, AMOLED panel one should opt for. 

For general usage purpose, it comes down to the engineering decisions made for the specific display type. Like, Samsung's Super AMOLED displays have even higher saturation levels than normal and that make those displays even less efficient. But, their extensive usage of Ambient display technologies basically makes it virtually impossible for them to to use IPS panels. On the other hand, Apple has been able to produce very high contrast images. with the help IPS panels alone. Also, as IPS displays on an average give a much higher power efficiency to the company.