iPhone 7 has the highest color accuracy and peak brightness of any mobile display, making it the “best performing mobile LCD display that we have ever tested”
are the rumors of an OLED iPhone incorrect? The Macalope / Macworld : It's always something: Finding things to complain about with the iPhone 7 Brooke Crothers / Forbes : Apple Nails iPhone 7 Display: Keeps Pace With Samsung Galaxy Note 7, S7 Tyler Lee / Ubergizmo : DisplayMate Claims iPhone 7 Has The Best LCD Display Shawn Knight / TechSpot : DisplayMate: iPhone 7 has the best-performing mobile LCD screen ever tested Corazon Victorino / International Business Times : iPhone 7 Display ‘Breaks Many Display Performance Records’ But Still Cannot Beat The Galaxy Note 7 Chris Barylick / O'Grady's PowerPage : DisplayMate publishes full review of iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus cameras, gives new hardware top marks Jack Purcher / Patently Apple : Display Experts Claim that the iPhone 7 LCD Display is the Best Ever Tested Jordan Kahn / 9to5Mac : iPhone 7's 25% brighter display only reaches max brightness w/ ‘Auto-Brightness’ enabled Justin Yu / CNET : iPhone 7's display is ‘visually indistinguishable from perfect,’ says testing firm Yoni Heisler / BGR : iPhone 7 and Samsung's Galaxy S7 go head to head under 35 feet of water Christian de Looper / Digital Trends : The iPhone 7's display is the “best LCD display ever,” according to report Buster Hein / Cult of Mac : iPhone 7 display is the best LCD ever tested Jesse Hollington / iLounge : DisplayMate says iPhone 7 has the ‘best performing mobile LCD display’ Usman / iPhone in Canada Blog : Display Technology Shoot-Out: iPhone 7 vs. iPhone 6 Caitlin McGarry / TechConnect : The iPhone 7's sleeper hit feature is its display Tweets: Craig Hockenberry / @chockenberry : “The iPhone 7 ... is by far the best performing mobile LCD display that we have ever tested.” http://displaymate.com/... /via @RodriVzq Yogesh / @yogi_77 : Every year same story . iPhone best LCD & Samsung best AMOLED. What's new in it? .. http://twitter.com/... Mark / @markxmlx : @waltmossberg @Techmeme the Note 7 was deemed the best display on any smartphone by the same site. This is “just” the best LCD. Still good!
Context & Ripple Effects
DisplayMate has now handed the same 'best performing mobile LCD' title to two Apple products in five months — the 9.7-inch iPad Pro in April and the iPhone 7 here — evidence that Apple is squeezing the last drops out of LCD just as the panel market turns. The catch sits one month earlier in the corpus: Samsung's Galaxy Note7 already claimed the most innovative and high-performance smartphone display tested to date, so Apple's record is a class record, not an absolute one.
That gap is why the OLED-rumor question matters. The coverage frames the iPhone 7's LCD achievement as reason to doubt reports that Apple will switch to OLED — yet the arc runs the other way: a year later the iPhone X's OLED takes 'best color accuracy of any display we have ever tested,' ending the LCD era at the top of DisplayMate's rankings.
First-order effects
- iPhone 7 buyers get the highest color accuracy and peak brightness of any mobile display tested, with brightness up 25% when Auto-Brightness is enabled.
- Samsung's Galaxy Note7 keeps the overall crown — the iPhone 7 breaks LCD records but still cannot beat it, leaving Apple second on absolute display performance.
Second-order effects
- Record LCD performance gives Apple cover to delay an OLED transition without conceding display quality, while Samsung wins either way as both the rival flagship maker and the likely OLED supplier.
- DisplayMate's superlatives become a marketing battleground: each vendor's launch cycle now chases the 'ever tested' title, raising the stakes for panel suppliers who can deliver measurable accuracy and brightness gains.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, premium smartphones consolidate around OLED regardless of how good LCD gets — the iPhone X result confirms the endpoint — and third-party lab benchmarks like DisplayMate's harden into the de facto qualification gate for flagship display claims.
The trend: Flagship smartphone displays are crossing over from record-setting LCDs to OLED, with Samsung holding the top of DisplayMate's rankings through the transition.