Samsung Galaxy S5: deeper dive in the Diamond PenTile matrix reveals the secrets of the brightest AMOLED display

Samsung Display has just unveiled a lot of the inner works of the new AMOLED display of the Galaxy S5, but now we have even deeper insights coming from an ongoing dissection of the display by Chipworks.

Samsung has been using a Diamond-shaped PenTile matrix since the Galaxy S4, and while the Galaxy S5 also features a Diamond matrix, this time there are some slight, but noticeable modifications. Unlike traditional RGB LCD displays where each pixel is made out of a red, green, and blue sub-pixel, PenTile displays use less sub-pixels. In the Galaxy S4 we had diamond-shaped sub-pixels for the blue and red colors, and an oval-shaped green sub-pixel. In the Galaxy S5, all sub-pixels are now in the diamond shape, and that’s the first change.


The actual arrangement of the pixels has not changed from the S4 - in every 4 sub-pixel diamond shaped block, we have two green sub-pixels, one red and one blue sub-pixels. However, the actual size of the sub-pixels has changed. In the Galaxy S4, the blue sub-pixel was larger than all others by a huge margin, and it was assumed that this is because of the lowest emission efficiency. If that was indeed the reason, it seems that now, the Galaxy S5 has largely fixed such issues, as the blue sub-pixel now matches the red one in size.

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