Raymond Soneira, Displaymate's display guru (and our friend) has previously criticized Samsung for the lack of calibration on their AMOLED displays - the colors are too saturated, the whites are too blue, and the intensity scales are too steep. This is hopefully going to change with the S4 however. Samsung is including a new feature in the S4 called Adapt Display that offers seven automatic modes and four manual modes - to provide the optimal viewing experience.
As Raymond points out, Samsung's own S4 site shows a CIE chromaticity diagram and a gray scale level picker (see screenshot above). This leads Raymond to believe that the S4 will have extensive color, white-point, and display calibration adjustments. This could be a "major display advancement and a win for Samsung and AMOLED displays" - according to Raymond.
Raymond adds that this multi-parameter interactive display calibration software will enable will make it possible for such an OLED to accurately provide any desired color gamut, white point color temperature, and intensity scale. This is actually much harder for LCDs to implement because they are internally a non-linear analog display technology at the panel level, whereas OLEDs are digitally driven via Pulse Width Modulation (PWM).
LCDs have a non-linear and irregular S Shaped Transfer Characteristic (light output versus drive signal) that makes it harder to accurately implement the various calibration variables. On the other hand, OLEDs driven with PWM respond in a straight-forward linear fashion that makes it easy to accurately calculate and precisely adjust the various parameters.
When Raymond tested the iPhone 5's LCD against the S3's AMOLED, the second issue was the screen's brightness and efficiency. Hopefully the S4 will indeed adopt green PHOLEDs which will increase the screen's efficiency by 25% - and so it'll be possible to make it brighter, too. This means that DisplayMate's two main concerns with the S3 AMOLED has been vastly improved in the S4. Hopefully DisplayMate will post a review of the S4 display soon.
DisplayMate also criticized Samsung's OLED TV prototype shown at SID 2012 for the over saturated colors. Perhaps Samsung will include calibration software for their TV as well, if/when it finally launches...
