A comparison of all the flagship devices done by PhoneArena reveals that the iPhone 5 still has the best display and leads the pack in 3 out of the tested 4 categories, the only category that iPhone 5 failed to win was in screen resolution which is lower than the latest phones from Samsung and HTC. Read on to get more in detailed information about all these devices. Apple iPhone 5 vs. Samsung Galaxy S4 vs. HTC One vs. Sony Xperia Z vs. Samsung Galaxy S3 vs. Nokia Lumia 920
Brightness and Visibility (Winner Apple iPhone 5)
AMOLED has been making huge improvements primarily by Samsung but it still is lagging behind LCD displays when it comes to screen brightness and visibility tests. Phonearena says that the LCD displays on iPhone 5, One, Xperia Z and Lumia 920 all had better brightness than Galaxy S4 which is the only AMOLED display based device.
The lack of brightness also ads on to poor outdoor visibility in direct sunlight for the AMOLED display screens and the on the Galaxy S4 is no different. Phonearena says that Galaxy S4 is literally unusable with iPhone 5 and HTC One leads the race.
And the visibility tests go a step further by testing the displays in the dark as well. In dark conditions a user would feel comfortable to read the screen in extremely low brightness, iPhone 5 seems to offer the least brightness of the pack.
Viewing angles (Winner Apple iPhone 5 and HTC One)
Most of the modern day smartphone boast about good viewing angles but there are always few exceptions out there like the Sony Xperia Z and Lumia 920 which have a very poor viewing angle compared to the rest of the devices. Most of the times AMOLED displays have a bit poor view angles compared to LCDs and Galaxy S4 was no exception, though it could retain contrast and brightness and various angles it usually tends to give a bluish tint with even a small angular view. The LCD screens on the iPhone 5 and One do really in the tests and are almost similar with a natural color balance.
Resolution (Winner HTC One)
Apple came up with the fancy term of retina display saying that a naked eye cannot identify any pixels at standard reading distance on a retina display which seemed quite true. But 2013 seems to be a crazy year with screen resolutions being pushed up to something as high as 468 ppi on HTC One which has the highest screen resolution of the pack. HTC One offers a 4.7″ 1080p display with a screen resolution of 468 ppi followed by the 5″ displays of Xperia Z and Galaxy S4 with 44i ppi and then Lumia 920 with 332 ppi and last by iPhone with a 326 ppi.
Color reproduction (Winner Apple iPhone 5)
AMOLED again lags behind LCDs when it comes to color reproduction. AMOLEDs typically over saturate colors and have very bad gradients in their displays. Though Samsung is trying to add many fancy words to their AMOLED range of displays it is still not there yet.
Out of the LCD screen in the compared devices Apple iPhone 5 and HTC One seems to have the best displays with super-realistic, vibrant and lively colors that manage to please the users with ease. The Nokia Lumia 920 comes after the above with almost as good colors as iPhone 5 and One, Xperia Z seems to be almost as good as the Lumia 920 but it still has a bad display that could not compete with the other high end devices.
Overall PhoneArena tests show that it is not only about the pixel density or advanced tags of the display that win give a better result. Though iPhone 5 has a much lower resolution display it still wins in most aspects of judging a good display.