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When we choose a mobile phone, the performance of the screen has become one of the important criteria to measure the performance of the mobile phone. So, how did the mobile phone screen gradually develop from the original black-and-white screen to today's high-definition color screen? Today, let's take a look at the history of the development of mobile phone screens with Mr. documentation.

Before we understand the mobile phone screen, we first need to know how the mobile phone screen realizes the display function.

The display principle of LCD (Liquid Crystal Display liquid crystal display) LCD screen is to control the rotation direction of liquid crystal molecules through the signal and voltage on the thin film transistor, and to control the polarized light emitted by each pixel, so as to achieve the purpose of display. It is mainly composed of backlight layer, vertical polarizer, glass, liquid crystal layer, positive and negative circuit, color filter and horizontal polarizer. The display principle is as follows:

At present, the development of LCD screen technology has been very mature, and the price is cheaper than screens of other materials, so the market share and penetration rate are higher. We can also understand that LCD screen was the ruler of the early mobile phone screen market. However, because it glows by refraction of the backlight layer, the screen is relatively thick and hard. In order to overcome the shortcomings of LCD, people have developed a new display screen: OLED.

OLED (Organic Light-Emitting Diode Organic Light emitting Diode) but before the OLED screen, we have to take a look at the LED screen. LED, whose full name is light emitting diode, is a new type of imaging electronic device that can emit light. It arranges the light emitting diodes in a certain order and can convert electrical energy into light energy. It is called the fourth generation light source and is widely used in general lighting and other fields, such as traffic lights, decoration and so on.

The full name of OLED is organic light-emitting diode, which is mainly composed of display unit and light-emitting materials, including anode, emission layer, conductive layer and foundation. The biggest difference between the OLED screen and the LCD screen is that it has the characteristic of self-luminous and does not need a backlight, so it can be made very light and thin, can reduce the thickness of the phone, and it is more malleable and flexible. And its disadvantage is also obvious, because the OLED screen is each pixel self-luminous, but the working time of each pixel is different, so it is easy to cause "screen burning" phenomenon. The display principle is as follows:

AMOLED (Active Matrix / Organic Light-Emitting Diode active matrix organic light emitting diode panel) AMOLED screen is strictly a kind of OLED screen, and the relationship between AMOLED screen and OLED screen is subordinate.

In the 1980s, most of the screens on mobile phones used LCD display technology, but they had relatively low resolution, usually 96x65 pixels. This is also because at that time, mobile phones were mainly used for phone calls and information transmission, and the display requirements for the screen were not high. The first phone with a black-and-white screen was the Motorola 3200 phone produced in 1987, commonly known as the mobile phone.

With the development of the times, people have higher and higher requirements for screen color. The Siemens S10, produced in 1998, means that the mobile phone screen has officially entered the color era, but the original color screen can only show a handful of four colors.

The development of color screens has gone from 1 to 4 and then to 256, until Samsung's 65536 TFT-LCD screen phones with 65536 colors. Although more and more colors are displayed, the screen size has not changed much. Mobile phone manufacturers focus on the style of the phone, such as Nokia's slide phone and BBK's flip phone. The mainstream mobile phones on the market, whether they are flip phones or slide phones, seem to be unable to escape a rule that is a small screen plus physical buttons.

In the 21st century, with the continuous progress of science and technology and the rapid development of mobile phone screen technology, color LCD screen has become standard. In 2003, BlackBerry launched the first phone with a full keyboard and color screen. As a result, people begin to realize that as long as they can improve the resolution of the screen and improve color performance, they can get a better user experience. At this time, the rise of smart phones has laid the foundation for the rapid development of screen technology.

In 2007, Apple launched its first iPhone, which uses a high-resolution, ultra-thin touch screen. This screen technology is widely regarded as an important breakthrough in mobile phone display technology, because it is more power-efficient, clearer, brighter and more suitable for experiencing various functions of smartphones than other screens.

For nearly a decade, OLED screen technology has been at the highest point of mobile phone display technology, showing consumers a high-definition, colorful display effect. Since then, mobile phone manufacturers have applied this technology to their own mobile phones. At the same time, with the progress of hardware technology, the resolution of the mobile phone screen continues to improve, and the colors are more and more abundant, so as to provide a clearer and real display effect. Continuously improve the brightness and contrast of the screen, significantly improve the use and viewing experience.

By 2010, Apple released the first iPhone 4s with a Retina screen, with a screen density of 326PPI, allowing cumbersome text and details to be displayed on the screen, laying the foundation for later high-definition screens.

In 2014, Samsung released its first flagship Galaxy Note4, which not only has a 2K resolution screen, but also uses its own AMOLED technology to maintain excellent color restoration and better incremental brightness performance, reaching a higher level than ever before. In addition, its screen size has reached 5.7 inches, making it unquestionably the mainstream size of smartphones.

In 2017, the release of iPhone X marked the arrival of a full-screen era, equipped with an unprecedented OLED screen + 3D sensor panel, bringing users' use and viewing experience to new heights.

Up to now, the emergence of curved screen and folding screen makes the development of mobile phone screen further. The development of AMOLED technology and ultra high definition (4K) screen technology can not only provide higher resolution, better color expression and higher brightness, but also reduce the impact of battery life. Therefore, using AMOLED technology, major mobile phone manufacturers at home and abroad began to use foldable screen, this technology can make the mobile phone screen folded without affecting the display effect, so as to improve the portability and ease of use of the mobile phone.

The curved screen uses similar 3D curved surface technology to bend the edge of the screen to the side, which can not only make the screen display more three-dimensional and natural, but also make the screen work more closely with the fuselage and look more beautiful.

The folding screen uses foldable screen technology, so that smartphones can be folded like books, thus achieving larger screen area and more excellent visual effects. At the same time, the folding screen also provides users with a more flexible experience, making the functions of mobile phones more diversified and intelligent.

But at the same time, both curved screen and folding screen have their technical difficulties, and the difficulty of curved screen mainly lies in production process and cost control. The curved screen needs to bend and polish the glass in 3D, which requires high process and high cost. In addition, the curved surface is vulnerable to impact and scratches, which increases the maintenance cost of the screen.

The difficulty of the folding screen mainly lies in the reliability and life of the screen. As the folding screen requires the cooperation of many components, such as screen, driver, flexible circuit and so on, the reliability and life of the screen have become a challenge for mobile phone manufacturers. And in the use of the folding screen, it is easy to appear screen creases, drive failures and other problems, affecting the use experience and life. At the same time, it also faces some problems, such as high design cost, great difficulty and so on.

Generally speaking, although curved screen and folding screen have high innovation and technical content, there are still many challenges to be overcome in production process, reliability, life and cost.

At present, mobile phone manufacturers continue to make efforts in screen technology, screen resolution and brightness, color performance have also been further improved. The resolution displayed in the mobile phone has been very close to or has exceeded the resolution of some high-end TV or computer monitors. The screen ratio has reached the extreme. For example, ZTE's AXON 40 Ultra and Nubia Z50 Ultra phones have achieved a screen-to-frame ratio of nearly 100%.

To sum up, mobile phone screen technology has made great progress, from the initial simple, single LCD screen to today's OLED, ultra-high-definition IPS screen, not only the resolution has been improved, the color restoration is also more real, and the screen share has become higher and higher, greatly improving the sense of experience that users use and watch. In the future, we believe that screen technology will continue to improve to make the display experience of mobile devices more shocking and satisfactory.

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: ZTE documents (ID:ztedoc)

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