Samsung's Dynamic AMOLED: much more than just a punch-hole

The new Samsung Galaxy S10 range marks a number of firsts for the company, one of the most important firsts is the debut of the company’s new Dynamic AMOLED display technology. The panel grabbed our attention with its Infinity-O cut-out, but there’s a lot more to the new Galaxy S10 display than meets the eye.

Before diving deeper into some more technical features, let’s start with an overview of the panel specifications. The display hits a new high for peak brightness, offering a whopping 1,200 nits of retina-scorching light. That’s up 13 percent from the Samsung Galaxy S9 and ensures that outdoor viewing, even in bright sunlight, shouldn’t be a problem.

The panel also sports a deep 2,000,000:1 contrast ratio for detailed blacks and highlights. Samsung measures this from the highest to lowest possible brightness that a single LED can output (without turning off). This is a boon for the panel’s 10-bit HDR10+ playback support – a first for the mobile industry.

Bold, vivid color reproduction

According to Samsung, Dynamic AMOLED boasts a color gamut that hits 100% of the DCI-P3 color space. In other words, the panel should offer essentially perfect color reproduction for high-quality content, such as movies, that increasingly make use of this wider color space than sRGB. Samsung’s displays have supported DCI-P3 for generations now, but this time around has Color Volume 100% certification too. This same certification has previously been awarded to Samsung’s range of QLED TVs.

To achieve this, Dynamic AMOLED changes the organic materials in the OLEDs (organic light emitting diodes). So the improvement to color reproduction hasn’t come from a change to the sub-pixel layout. Dynamic AMOLED retains the pentile red, green, and blue pixel layout that Samsung has been using for quite some time.

As well as helping to produce a wider color gamut, this new OLED material also improves power consumption. This is particularly important for maintaining expected battery life in phones with even bigger displays. Such as the 6.7-inch Samsung Galaxy S10 5G, for example.

If all this wasn’t enough, the panel also supports HDR10+ tone-mapping to further improve color accuracy. Tone mapping information is included as metadata for frames in some HDR10+ files. Where available, the Samsung Galaxy S10 can read this format for even better-looking colors. The handset can also record this metadata into its own HDR10+ video files too.

Less blue light with Comfort Display

Eye fatigue and blue light are becoming increasingly popular topics in certain circles, and Samsung has made key improvements here too. Dynamic AMOLED boasts Comfort Display technology to reduce blue light and is certified by TUV Rheinland.

To do this, the display’s peak blue light wavelength has been shifted from approximately 450mm up to around 465mm (based on me eyeballing a graph). This takes the majority of the panel’s blue light out of the “danger” area between 415 and 455mm, which has been linked to causing eye fatigue. As a result, blue light emission falls from 11.8 percent in the Galaxy S8 and S9 to just 6.9 percent in the Galaxy S10. Samsung also states that this doesn’t have a negative impact on image quality.

The Galaxy S10 continues to include a software blue light filter option to help you wind down in the evenings. With this activated, 99 percent of blue light is removed from the image on the screen. A software toggle can be found in the quick settings menu in the notification shade.

Samsung’s best mobile panel to date

Samsung’s Galaxy series has always set a high bar for mobile display technology and the Galaxy S10 series continues this trend. Dynamic AMOLED appears to be the company’s best display technology yet, and for plenty more reasons than the punch hole. Which by the way is cut out with fancy laser technology that required Samsung to completely refit their production line. How about that for an eye for detail?

The Galaxy S10’s display is also hiding a number of cool and essential features. The ultrasonic fingerprint scanner is perhaps the big draw, but I bet you didn’t spot that the ambient light sensor is tucked in the display right by the Wi-Fi icon too? In fact, the phone’s proximity sensor and earpiece speaker are also concealed by the Dynamic AMOLED panel.

The Samsung Galaxy S10 and its Dynamic AMOLED technology have everything it takes to be the best mobile display ever built. Although with a foldable smartphone also right on the horizon, the best from Samsung Display could still be yet to come.