Samsung USA's Philip Berne was kind enough to explain at the CTIA expo why the company went with the PenTile instead of RGB matrix for the 4.8" HD Super AMOLED screen of its new Galaxy S III flagship.
What he said is actually quite surprising - Samsung apparently deems PenTile superior for an AMOLED screen longevity, despite that it touted the RGB matrix last year in the Galayx S II marketing. We know that blue subpixels deteriorate orders of magnitude faster in an OLED screen due to the nature of their components, compared to the longer-lasting green and red. With recent advancements in the blue diodes, this has been remedied, but on the research phase, and not yet implemented in mass production, it seems.
Samsung research showed that people are keeping phones like the Galaxy S III longer than 18 months, so it wanted to ensure the screen will keep its initial quality as long as possible. The thing is that PenTile uses red-green-blue-green (RGBG) subpixel arrangement in the "screen door"-style PenTile matrix, whereas the ordinary red-green-blue RGB "stripe" matrix has twice more blues, obviously, which you can see in the picture on the right, while the human eye is much more sensitive to greens, so blues are not missed much with PenTile.
Still, Philip Berne said they are using a different PenTile method for the 4.8" HD screen on the Galaxy S III, compared to the 4.6" on the Galaxy Nexus, with shrunken gaps in the subpixel matrix, further minimizing the PenTile "grainy" effect in solid colors when looked at from right under your nose, or, even funnier, under a microscope, both of which you won't be doing anyway with the Galaxy S III.
Well, now we know, it's definitely not because Samsung is cheap, as producing a high pixel density S-AMOLED display with its current Fine Metal Mask (FMM) method used for the PenTile layout actually costs quite more than the Laser Induced Thermal Imaging (LITI), that is required for a high-res RGB stripe AMOLED. It will eventually get into Samsung's phones, we hope, when those blue phosphorescent dyes gets from the labs to mass production.
Daniel, a devoted tech writer at PhoneArena since 2010, has been engrossed in mobile technology since the Windows Mobile era. His expertise spans mobile hardware, software, and carrier networks, and he's keenly interested in the future of digital health, car connectivity, and 5G. Beyond his professional pursuits, Daniel finds balance in travel, reading, and exploring new tech innovations, while contemplating the ethical and privacy implications of our digital future.
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