What is a great phone screen? Is it high resolution and pixel density? No. If that were the case, then the Sony Xperia 1 II with its 1644p 4K screen would be at the top of the list. Is it high brightness and high contrast for good outdoor visibility in daylight? It certainly matters, but most of today's flagships have HDR-certified screens that mostly break the 1,000-nit barrier to meet the standard, and their OLED technology offers almost infinite contrast, so it's hard to use that as a criterion for evaluation.

So, what kind of screen is the best cell phone screen? We say screens with the brightest mobile screens with LTPO technology and dynamic refresh rates of 1Hz-120Hz, with pleasing white balance and color in all conditions. These screens must have sufficient brightness, clarity, contrast, detail (resolution), uniformity, and be free of visual defects to provide a positive user experience and ensure the intended functionality and performance of the device. Powering the screen uses approximately 40% of the phone's power, so screen manufacturers must "find a good balance between displaying the screen even under the most challenging conditions and ensuring that the phone does not run out of power in too short an interval.

Best screen phone recommendations for 2022

Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra

The brightest cell phone screen with LTPO technology and a fine refresh rate of 1Hz-120Hz.

The phone's screen is a little smaller than the Note 20 Ultra's 6.8-inch, but it has the same resolution, roughly the same pixel density and the same peak refresh rate. To be sure, the Dynamic AMOLED 2x technology behind the screen is a real improvement, mostly helping in terms of contrast and brightness.

How is this all done? The Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra's screen is set to FHD+ and has an adaptive 120Hz refresh rate enabled. In this mode, it excels at everything. Your email and favorite websites look clean, your videos are in tip-top shape, and the high-quality movies are simply amazing. Changing the resolution to QHD+ or the refresh rate to a static 60Hz doesn't produce as much visual change as your eyes can see, except in certain situations, such as scrolling through menu screens.

The refresh rate measures how fast the phone displays updates. Screens with higher refresh rates (often categorized as 90Hz or higher) make mobile content look and feel smoother. Even browsing your email and interacting with your phone's UI looks smoother than the standard 60Hz rate.

I did some side-by-side comparisons and the Galaxy S22 Ultra's screen is significantly better than the iPhone 13 Pro Max, mainly because of dynamic range and brightness. In comparison, it makes the iPhone's screen look a bit dull. But the Galaxy S22 Ultra is about as good as the Pixel 6 Pro and the Note 20 Ultra and S21 Ultra. The only area where the Galaxy S22 Ultra excels is in absolute brightness. It's easier to use it outdoors in direct sunlight than any other phone I've ever used.

The S22 Ultra's screen offers a touch sampling rate of up to 240Hz. This is for gaming only and is only available when the phone is set to gaming mode. 240Hz is not as fast as the touch sampling rate of some dedicated gaming phones, such as the 300Hz of the ASUS ROG Phone 5, but it is more than adequate for intense action games when touch speed is important.

As far as managing the screen is concerned, it includes a blue light filter, setting vivid or natural screen colors, controlling white balance, managing touch sensitivity, and other functions. All these tools work well and affect your viewing experience with your phone.

So the Galaxy S22 Ultra has a truly outstanding screen, one of the best I've ever seen.

OPPO Find X5 Pro

The most color reliable screen with 1Hz-120Hz dynamic refresh.

As with Oppo, since working with Pixelworks, every phone LTPO screen has been factory calibrated to provide the best color confidence Delta measurements that only Google's Pixels do better.

The phone has a 6.7-inch AMOLED screen with QHD+ resolution and a maximum refresh rate of 120Hz. The screen supports 10-bit color, HDR10+ playback and has a touch sampling rate of 1,000Hz. And, like the S22 Ultra, the minimum refresh rate has been reduced to 1Hz, which helps extend battery life when performing simple operations such as reading e-books.

Its screen has four color modes to choose from, and I found the natural setting to be the most accurate, with 94% sRGB gamut coverage, 96% total volume, and an average Delta E of 1.31. Each color looked as good as possible, except for a slight increase in saturation in some red hues.

It's as vibrant as the best AMOLED screens, measuring a peak brightness of 483cd/m2 and perfect contrast. HDR brightness is a bit on the low side, but peaks at about 725cd/m2 - for reference, the iPhone 13 Pro Max reaches a jaw-dropping 1,176cd/ m2.

In addition, the Find X5 Pro has the best white balance score, closest to the 6500K reference point, which means that the screen colors are spot on in terms of warm colors, neither too yellow, nor too cool and bluish.

To take full advantage of its outstanding screen capabilities, the Find X5 Pro features "multi-brightness color calibration," which means the screen has the same color confidence in all lighting conditions, whether at the beach or in the dark.

Google Pixel 6 Pro

The screen with the highest color confidence in the benchmark database, the 120Hz 1440p screen.

Google also uses factory calibration and its Pixel 6 Pro screen is one of the most feature-rich screens in the Android world (1440p resolution, dynamic 120Hz refresh rate and high brightness).

The Pixel 6 Pro's screen performs well compared to other screens in terms of color saturation and color accuracy, but it lags behind in terms of brightness. It has a dynamic refresh rate of 120Hz, which means it can go all the way down to 10Hz to save battery power, but for meaningful content it can go up to 120Hz.

As you can see, compared to the iPhone 13 Pro Max and Galaxy S21 Ultra, the Pixel 6 Pro performs very well and is even brighter than the latter. Even though the iPhone 13 Pro Max leads in Delta-E color accuracy score (where 0 is perfect), all three phones are comparable in color saturation.

Where I think the Pixel 6 Pro's display is a bit weak is in the brightness. While it can get pretty bright on the outside, it's not as noticeable as the iPhone 13 Pro Max's ridiculously bright screen. Inside, the iPhone again leads with higher peak brightness and disables adaptive brightness. the Pixel 6 Pro doesn't lag outdoors like previous Pixels, but it's still a ways behind the iPhone 13 Pro Max.

In fact, the screen is perfect for playing games, and watching movies and videos is a great experience. It's certainly the best screen I've ever seen on a Pixel. While the Pixel 5 or Pixel 5a screens are not bad, the Pixel 6 Pro is certainly leaps and bounds ahead.

OnePlus 9 Pro

The best variable refresh screen on a mid-range phone.

Value for money, the OnePlus 9 Pro features a 6.7-inch 1440p LTPO OLED screen with dynamic refresh rate and factory-grade individual display calibration, courtesy of the imaging experts at Pixelworks. In addition to near-perfect color accuracy, despite the wide color gamut coverage and high average brightness, the OnePlus 9 Pro specs have more arrows listed in its screen than most other phones, except for the S21 Ultra or Oppo's flagship phones.

The extremely fast response time of OLED screens enables new higher 120 Hz screen refresh rates, which improve image scrolling and video, as well as motion and gaming performance in applications.

Many of the OLED performance benefits stem from the fact that each sub-pixel in an OLED screen is independently and directly powered to emit light, so only the active image sub-pixel draws energy based on its respective brightness level. oLEDs also provide better color accuracy, image contrast accuracy and screen uniformity, as the irregularities and variations in LCD backlighting introduce color and brightness irregularities and variations on the screen. variation.

Thanks to their very versatile power management capabilities, OLEDs are not only more energy efficient than LCDs for most image content, but they now offer higher peak brightness than LCDs because the maximum power can be delivered as needed to generate the current image. However, for most white screen content, LCDs may remain brighter and more energy efficient over time.

OLED screens now offer a huge performance advantage over LCD, so high-end and flagship smartphones will need OLED screens to compete at the most advanced performance levels, ensuring that OLED is the ultimate display technology of choice for top-of-the-line smartphones for the foreseeable future 3-5 years into the future. As OLED hardware performance, image quality and accuracy continue to improve, new display technologies will have a much harder time challenging OLED.

OnePlus 9 Pro display performance highlights

• Very high absolute color accuracy (0.8 JNCD), visually indistinguishable from perfection.
• Very high image contrast accuracy and intensity scale accuracy, visually indistinguishable from perfection.
• High brightness mode in high ambient light (up to 1,655 nits), 15% higher than OnePlus 8 Pro.
• Peak brightness, color accuracy, contrast accuracy, and intensity scale are independent of the average image level APL on the screen.
• Small variations in brightness and color with viewpoint, including the most common background color of white.

The 9 Pro has an impressively superior, top-of-the-line, world-class smartphone screen with near-textbook calibration accuracy and performance that is visually indistinguishable from Perfect. Based on our objective lab tests and measurements, the 9 Pro received the DisplayMate Best Smartphone Screen award, earned DisplayMate's highest-ever A+ display performance rating, and set or matched 13 smartphone display performance records, five of which were visually indistinguishable from Perfect. As a result, the OnePlus 9 Pro joins the top ranks of selected best smartphone screens.

iPhone 13 Pro Max

The best and brightest iPhone screen, finally with a 120Hz refresh rate.

The 6.7-inch screen on iPhone 13 Pro Max dynamically adjusts its refresh rate from 10Hz to 120Hz, resulting in smoother overall performance and animations that are very smooth throughout the experience.

The original iPhone 13 Pro Max had issues with some apps not supporting 120Hz, but the iOS 15.4 update enabled 120Hz refresh rates for third-party apps.

Another benefit of the iPhone 13 Pro Max screen is the increased brightness. We measured an average of 837 nits with Adaptive settings off and 1,038 nits with Adaptive on. iPhone 12 Pro Max averaged 654 nits with Adaptive off. Galaxy S21 Ultra had a maximum brightness of 821 nits.

Even in poorly lit scenes, the screen on iPhone 13 Pro Max delivers stunning detail.

Google Pixel 5

Great low-profile screen with excellent calibration and brightness and 90Hz refresh rate.

The Google Pixel 5's large screen is unlike that of any other Pixel model before it. the Pixel 5's screen is one inch larger than the original Pixel, which launched in 2016. Its large screen allows Google to pack the maximum battery capacity in a Pixel device. Google has certainly improved its memory, connectivity and build quality enough to set it apart from its predecessors.

Google Pixel 5 is equipped with a 6-inch screen FHD+ OLED screen. While Google's other 5G phone, the Pixel 4a5G, has a slightly larger 6.2-inch screen with roughly the same resolution, the Pixel 5 still has the advantage of higher pixel density and a smoother 90Hz refresh rate. This translates into better image quality and shows sharper, smoother motion than other phones in the same lineup. To top it off, Google's flagship also features Corning Gorilla Glass 6, which is a much stronger screen than the Pixel 4a5G, which still features the more dated Gorilla Glass 3.

As far as the Pixel 5's display is concerned, Google may be doing its best, but it may not sound as appealing compared to other flagship phones. Samsung's Galaxy S21 has outperformed Google's flagships in other areas, as well as in the screen department. not only does the Galaxy S21 come with a slightly larger 6.2-inch AMOLED screen that delivers a smoother 120Hz refresh rate, but it's also made of a more robust Gorilla Glass Victus. While the resolution is slightly higher than the Pixel 5, the Galaxy S21 does have a lower pixel density, but not by much.

This disparity in display technology and quality becomes even more apparent when comparing the Pixel 5 to the iPhone 12. Apple's flagship phone is made with Ceramic Shield, a screen that is as strong, if not stronger, than the Galaxy S21. iPhone 12's 6.1-inch OLED screen also has a higher resolution and pixel density than Samsung and Google's flagships. While the Pixel 5 is undoubtedly the best Google has to offer, it still lags behind in terms of display compared to its peers. However, being slightly more compact, Google's flagship phone may be easier to operate with one hand than the Galaxy S21 or iPhone 12.