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Finally! Galaxy Note 4's Super AMOLED screen to have super-accurate colors

By Rad Slavov

Updated: Sep 17, 2014, 1:51 AM

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Finally! Galaxy Note 4's Super AMOLED screen to have super-accurate colors

This story was initially published on September 6. We're now republishing it (with no revisions made), just in case someone missed it.

We've always been honest that one of our biggest gripes with Samsung's Super AMOLED screen technology is how inaccurate and pumped-up its color-reproduction tends to be. As undeniably eye-catchy as those ultra-vibrant visuals are, we've always imagined there to be a special screen mode that would allow Samsung's AMOLED-powered devices to exhibit more realistic screen tones. Sure, phones like the Galaxy S4, S5, and Note 3 came equipped display modes designed to make things look more 'natural', but truth be told, in reality, those modes never did much in order to fix the issue of AMOLED's overly cold and greenish color character.

When the Samsung Galaxy Tab S tablets arrived earlier this year, we were actually pleasantly surprised to find that they were armed with a new screen mode called 'Basic', which actually did a great job tweaking the display colors so that they look very true-to-life. That made us optimistic about the future of Samsung's AMOLEDs, and it also made us very excited, because we felt that this new, improved AMOLED technology is to eventually make its way to the company's smartphones.

Ideal color temperature and a relatively low Delta E in Basic mode make the Note 4's screen appear very natural to the eye.

Well, it seems like that time has finally come, as we've been able to take some scientific measurements of the new Galaxy Note 4's screen, and guess what - its 'Basic' mode successfully adjusts the 5.7" screen's color reproduction to be impressively close to the reference sRGB standard - meaning that we finally have an AMOLED smartphone, whose color tones can get very realistic! Of course, this data should be considered 'preliminary' for the time being, since the phone is yet to arrive on the market, which means that the retail product may perform in a slightly different manner. Still, we believe these early measurements are a pretty good indication of what's to come when the phablet hits retail.

Impressively, in this mode, the Galaxy Note 4's measured color temperature is ideal: 6596 K (Kelvin). That's pretty much spot-on with the reference value of 6500 K. This means that the balance between the primary blue and red colors is great. Thankfully, the third primary, green, isn't present in excessive amounts (as on Samsung's previous AMOLED screens), so things won't be looking decidedly greenish on the Galaxy Note 4's display.

With Delta E greyscale and Delta E rgbcmy values of 3.84 and 4.86, respectively, the Note 4's screen proves that its various hues and nuances won't deviate much from their target values. In the realm of Delta E, which is a metric used to indicate amount of 'color error', figures of less than 5 are generally considered fine.

Well, figures of 3 and below are to be preferred (Delta E of 1 is considered to be the smallest amount of color difference a human can distinguish), so there's obviously still some room for improvement, but even now, the Note 4's measurements speak positively about its overall color reproduction.

As you can see on the chart to the right, the measured color points are very close to almost all of their reference values (the squares) - that's a good way to visualize the level of color accuracy exchibited by a display. So, what else can we say but 'well done, Samusng!' Of course, should you wish to feast your eyes on the traditionally oversaturated and vibrant AMOLED looks, you can always switch to some of the other available modes ('AMOLED cinema' and 'AMOLED photo'), as those will present you with the familiar, punchy AMOLED outlook.

As a side note, we'd also like to mention that the Galaxy Note 4's display will easily be able to achieve a maximum brightness of about 500 nits and up when in excessively bright lighting conditions, so we expect outdoor visibility with Samsung's next-generation phablet to be more than adequate - just as it was with the Galaxy S5.

The Note 4's greyscale measurement in Basic mode reveals a mostly nice and neutral color balance.

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Rad Slavov is the Editor-in-Chief at PhoneArena. He joined the media in 2008, right on the cusp of the modern smartphone revolution. Through time and perseverance, he amassed a great deal of knowledge and industry know-how, allowing him to guide and organize the company's growing line-up of talented content creators and ever-expanding content portfolio.