The Latest iPhone Screen Technologies Explained

You may have noticed that when Apple launch a new phone, it comes in a few different “flavours”. For example, in 2017/2018, Apple launched the iPhone X, XS, XS Max and XR devices. When Apple launch a new series of devices, they typically include at least one “budget” model, which has a price point that is significantly lower than its siblings.

The main difference with these cheaper models is typically the camera specification and the screen specification, and it’s the latter that we will be taking a look at in more detail.

Screen Technology

Currently Apple are using two different technologies for their screens. For premium phones, OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) technology is used, whereas the cheaper models use the more affordable LCD (Liquid Crystal Display).

To add a bit of confusion, Apple don’t use the terms “OLED” and “LCD”. They instead refer to OLED as “Super Retina Displays” and LCD as “Liquid Retina Displays”

If you’ve recently been shopping for TVs you may already be well versed in some of these terms, but in a nutshell, OLED displays are thinner, lighter, use less power, have more vivid colours and higher contrast ratios. In short, they’re a nicer screen to look at when compared to LCD. Interestingly, OLED displays have actually been used on Samsung devices for many years – so it seems Apple was a little late to the party, as the iPhone X was the very first Apple phone to use the tech.

As well as a nice bright screen, those power saving features of OLED displays really make a difference to how long your phone lasts between charges. As it takes less energy to display the black colour on an OLED (actually no power at all!) you can save even more power by enabling “dark mode” on your device.

Which iPhone models use OLED?

Here’s a quick summary of which devices use OLED display tech:

Screen Repair – OLED vs LCD

One factor you may not have considered when purchasing a new device is what the associated repair costs might be in the event you break the screen.

Not surprisingly, as OLED displays are newer technology, they are more expensive to manufacture than LCD displays. As such, if your iPhone uses an OLED display, you should expect screen replacement costs to be higher than similar models that use an LCD display.

If you are looking to repair a broken OLED screen, you should make sure that the repair service you use is replacing the screen with an OLED display and not LCD. We guarantee you’ll notice the difference – both in terms of display quality and power usage!

Unlike some of our competitors, at fix2U, we’d never consider swapping out your premium OLED screen with an inferior LCD one. If you phone has an OLED screen, we’ll always replace it with OLED. Simple as that. And for your complete peace of mind, all our iPhone screen replacements are guaranteed for five years.