Galaxy Note7 has “the most innovative and high performance” smartphone display tested to date; with 518 PPI, it reaches limit of perceptible sharpness
The key element for a great Smartphone has always been a truly innovative and top performing display, and the best leading edge Smartphones …
Context & Ripple Effects
This is one installment in a recurring ritual: DisplayMate has crowned each successive Samsung flagship — from the Note5 and S6 edge+'s 'incredible displays' through the Note7 and onward to the Note8's highest-ever A+ grade — as the best screen it has tested. The Note7's distinction is narrower than the headline suggests: at 518 PPI it hits the ceiling of what human vision can resolve, meaning future wins must come from brightness, color accuracy, and gamut rather than pixel density.
The timing matters because the praise is not unanimous. A week after DisplayMate's verdict, AnandTech's real-world testing of the same phone found its performance and camera quality lacking for the price — a reminder that display leadership is Samsung's strongest, but not only, competitive axis.
First-order effects
- Samsung gains its standard pre-launch marketing ammunition: a third-party 'best display ever tested' claim it can put front and center against Apple and other Android rivals during the Note7 selling season.
- Competitors shipping lower-density or less accurate panels are pushed onto defensive ground, since the perceptible-sharpness argument makes their resolution specs look like wasted cost.
Second-order effects
- Apple's answer arrives within weeks: the iPhone 7 is rated by the same lab as having the highest color accuracy and peak brightness of any mobile display — reframing the contest from raw pixels to calibration, where LCD can still compete with AMOLED.
- Rival Android makers face pressure to adopt high-end AMOLED panels, concentrating display sourcing around Samsung's supply chain and raising component costs across the flagship tier.
Third-order effects
- With sharpness effectively maxed out, the benchmark arms race migrates to brightness, color gamut, and accuracy — exactly the axes where the Note8 and S9 later set new records, confirming that display calibration becomes the durable differentiator among flagships.
- If every Samsung flagship keeps winning the same lab test, third-party display measurement hardens into de facto industry certification, giving whichever supplier dominates the results outsized influence over what buyers perceive as premium.
The trend: Flagship smartphone competition is shifting from resolution specs toward measured display quality — brightness, color accuracy, and gamut — with Samsung's AMOLED pipeline setting the reference point each year.