Is OLED the only model available for high-quality iPhone Displays?

Written by Carlos Saca and Carlos Saca Jr, from Hank.

Currently there are different display models for iPhone series X and further. In this blog article, we will be talking about some of the most outstanding and popular displays on the market and we will order them by price, from highest to lowest.

First, let’s start with the Original Display: Original displays are also sold in the market as extracted from another mobile phone. These screens are called “PULLED” and obviously they are OLED HDR display, with true tone available and 3D touch function.

Next, we will talk about the Refurbished Display which is nothing more than an original screen whose touch function was changed through a repair procedure. This type of repair procedure is only possible if the screen is original. You can’t refurbish a compatible screen.

OLED Soft Display is a screen that is very similar to the original in appearance and characteristics. It  is manufactured with a flexible material (plastic substrate) that avoids breakage, both during use and in case of installation and/or handling. Due to the plastic material, the screen is susceptible to burns in the future.

OLED Hard Display is a display that looks and has the same quality as the OLED Soft Display. The difference is, in fact, in the material with which it is manufactured: the mentioned glass substrate. This allows it to be cheaper but more fragile. It can break more easily than the Soft screen when handled or dropped.

An OLED Display (Organic Light Emitting Diode) whether it’s the Hard or the Flexible type, is a display with pixels that produce their own light, but it doesn’t contain backlight. This means that the brightness of an OLED display can be controlled pixel by pixel, which saves energy.

INCELL, ONCELL and OUTCELL Displays. These three types of screens are LCD-TFT type screens (Liquid Cristal Display - Thin Film Transistor) but thinner than these. They are thinner, because they group two layers that in the case of LCD’s were separated, the LCD and the Touch Sensor. The difference between INCELL, ONCELL and OUTCELL is the in place where this two layers are located. In the case of INCELL, it is in the center and seems to be the one that responds best to touch.

LCD or AAA Class Compatible. INCELL displays come out of this technology, but they are thicker than INCELL for the reasons indicated above.

In conclusion, the colors of OLED screens, will always be more vivid and lifelike than LCD screens, including the INCELL type. But regarding the price, OLED screens cost almost twice as much as INCELL screens. The quality of each screen type, in relation to their duration over time, depends mainly on the quality of the materials with which they are built, and on quality controls during and after the manufacturing. In fact, there are a few manufacturers and many display assemblers in the countries where they are made.  

Considering that the quality of each type of display actually depends on the manufacturer, it is best to check the quality of each supplier, and also look at the warranties offered for each product. But have in mind that it would be unrealistic to think that a no screen will turn out flawed, because the display manufacturers are all humans (nobody is perfect 😀). 

But what is realistic is that a supplier must have good quality and a good warranty on top of it.

To make this explanation a little bit more specific we have done some tests through a video, in this case, with the INCELL and the OLED displays, comparing them with the Original screen, so that you can see such differences for yourself.

Would you like to take a look? 

We hope this information helped. Also, feel free to use this video in the future to give your clients a more visual explanation of the screen differences, so that they can be the ones making the decision on what display to use.