What’s the difference between OLED, AMOLED and Super AMOLED displays?
In: Technology
Short answer: It’s complicated.
OLED is display technology that involves the use of pixels made of organic material.
AMOLED display technology combines the properties of OLED technology with a pixel-modulating matrix and thin-film transistors, essentially providing a transistor and capacitor to each pixel in the display. This makes AMOLED displays more expensive but also more flexible and energy efficient, able to provide more vivid picture quality and render faster motion response.
Super AMOLED is a marketing term created by Samsung for an AMOLED display with an integrated digitizer. It is a more advanced version of AMOLED and it integrates touch-sensors and the actual screen in a single layer. Samsung claims it provides a 20% brighter screen, 20% lower power consumption and 80% less sunlight reflection.
Edit: Added the information that AMOLED is marketing term.
Okay so think of it like this.
> There’s a class with few children in it. Here, each child is an OLED(Organic Light Emitting Diode) and the class is an OLED display.
> All the children are given an activity to do. Maybe to draw their favourite animal.
> Suppose there is a separate teacher for each child helping them draw, it’s called “Active Matrix”, the AM in AMOLED.
> If there’s a teacher for a group of students, it’s “Passive Matrix”
Super AMOLED is similar to AMOLED, just a bit more advanced.
Hope this analogy helps.
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My favorite simplification of OLED was in an article I read a few years back. It explained it as OLED being lab created fireflies, they turn on and off. Full HD tv’s still have a glow when the screen is black but OLED’s are true black, it looks like the tv shut off. I am not up to speed on AMOLED or Super AMOLED but usually these improvements just mean more color, brighter color, and more energy efficient. Hope this helps.
It’s all basically OLED. Organic light emitting diode. Nothing much different other than marketing. If you are interested to seeing the difference on structural base you are better off comparing LED to O-LED.
To combine the current top 2 responses into a complete story. ELI15 in parentheses:
A LED is a tiny, bright, light. (A material which emits light when a current is passed through it.)
An OLED is a LED made out of “plastic”. (Synthetic organics not too different from the hard part of wood, lignin).
An AMOLED is an OLED with some additional electronics built in. (For power efficiency and responsiveness.)
A Super AMOLED is Samsung’s name for their cutting-edge AMOLEDs.
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