JANUARY 2021 PCWorld 33wanted them. Full HD displays
have become relegated to
budget Android phones as
more emphasis is placed on
immersive, edge-to-edge,
pixel-packed experiences. You
need look no further than
DisplayMate’s iPhone 12 Pro
Max OLED Display Shoot-Out
(go.pcworld.com/dpmt) to see
how wrong that thinking is: The
iPhone 12’s Full HD display
received the highest-ever A+
display performance grade.
But all those extra pixels just
aren’t necessary. Case in point:
Samsung ships with its QuadHD+ resolution
turned off by default. I’m willing to bet many
people who buy one don’t even know how to
turn it on. Super-high-resolution displays are
nice on spec sheets and in macro testing, but
on a six-inch display, the results are basically
indiscernible to the human eye. If the jaw-
dropping Infinity display on the Galaxy S8
had maxed out at 1080p, no one would have
complained.
Android enthusiasts may claim they can
tell the difference, but I doubt they would be
able to pick a 1440p display out of a 1080p
lineup. I should know; I was one of them.
There was a time when the first thing I did
when I got a new Samsung Galaxy phone in
for testing was bump the resolution from
1080p to 1440p. I would have challenged
anyone that my eyes could tell the difference.
They can’t. When Samsung launched its
first phone with a 120Hz refresh rate earlier this
year, I was among the reviewers who criticized
it for not working with the higher-resolution
setting. I was so convinced that WQHD+ was
the superior setting that I questioned whether
the 120Hz refresh rate was worth downgrading
to a lower resolution.
It is, and Samsung is smart to limit 120Hz
to 1080p. Even without a fast refresh rate,
1080p screens provide 400 to 450 pixels per
inch, well above what Apple’s Steve Jobs
called the “magic number right around 300
pixels per inch, that when you hold
something around...10 to 12 inches away
from your eyes, is the limit of the human retina
to differentiate the pixels.”The Galaxy S20 Ultra’s screen is just as gorgeous at 1080p as it is
at 1440p.