The manufacturer claims the screen will last longer

May 11, 2012 09:02 GMT  ·  By

Many Samsung fans were disappointed by the company’s decision to choose a PenTile display for its third-generation Galaxy smartphone, instead of the rumored AMOLED screen.

Although Galaxy S and Galaxy S II, both come with AMOLED display, Samsung claims that these degrade much faster over time, but this is not the case with PenTile screens.

This is the main reason that Samsung decided to go for the latter technology inside the Galaxy S III. Many will probably say they don’t need an increased lifespan for their phone’s display, especially given the fact that they rarely keep their high-end phone more than 2 years.

There’s an obvious tendency among Samsung fans to replace their Galaxy S high-end smartphones once per year. At least that’s what Samsung wants, otherwise it wouldn’t launch another Galaxy S device each yearly.

All in all, the folks over at Mobileburn had the chance to talk Galaxy S III’s PenTile display and the reasons behind the decision to embrace the technology, with Philip Berne, marketing manager and technical media at Samsung.

According to him, “the blue subpixels on AMOLED displays actually degrade the fastest, quicker than the red or green subpixels. With a PenTile layout, the subpixels are arranged RGBG (red, green, blue, green), so they feature more green subpixels and fewer red or blue subpixels than an RGB stripe layout with the same resolution.”

Now, Samsung claims that the main target for its high-end smartphones are consumers who usually keep their phones for at least 18 months, which is why it has chosen a PenTile AMOLED display for the Galaxy S III.

On the other hand, those who have previously seen and/or owned a phone with a PenTile display complained that it was not as vibrant as an RGB display.

Even Berne admitted that the PenTile arrangements were faulty along the edges of images, but he claims that this is only noticeable at lower resolutions like WVGA and qHD.

Given the fact that Samsung Galaxy S III comes with a 4.8-inch display that supports HD (720 x 1280 pixels) resolution, “it features smaller gaps in its subpixels matrix,” which minimizes the annoying effects of the PenTile layout, so users will never notice it with the naked eye.

Even though some may still think that putting a PenTile display into Galaxy S III was a mistake, Samsung thinks that “the average smartphone buyer” won’t notice the difference at all.