Samsung Galaxy S22 series smartphones launched last month. The smartphones — Galaxy S22, Galaxy S22 Plus and Galaxy S22 Ultra — are the company’s first flagship launch of the year 2022. Keeping with the company’s Galaxy S series tradition, the smartphones come with powerful features and specifications. At a recent round table, Byung Duk (BD) Yang, vice president (R&D), Samsung Display, spoke about how Samsung has addressed some of the major consumer pain points related to smartphone screens with the new Galaxy S22 series.
“Based on our own internal research, we heard directly from consumers that the auto visibility was a primary source of frustration with smartphones. Additionally, we also know that long battery life is one of the most essential functions of a smartphone,” said Yang. He said that the challenge was to find a solution to provide auto visibility without compromising battery life. For this, Yang said “We increased the peak brightness of the Galaxy S22 Ultra up to 1780 nits, developed a new feature called Vision Booster.” Explaining the new display technology, Yang said, “Vision Booster technology uses our new algorithm to enhance the outdoor visibility of the display in direct sunlight or situations where reflections are permanent on the display. The Vision Booster will analyze the brightness contribution histogram and then remap the tone of the image to maximize the coluor contrast.” In simple term, Vision Booster improves display visibility by “considering the light intensity of the surroundings and its influence on the display.” The result is a clear picture even under direct sunlight. Presently, the Vision Booster technology is limited to the new Galaxy S22 Ultra.
Yang also spoke about Adaptive refresh rate of the new Samsung phones. Incidentally,the Refresh Rates on the phones have been bit controversial as Samsung reportedly quietly updated the specifications sheet of the Galaxy S22 and its Plus variant, which now says that the lowest refresh rate that their screens can hit is 48Hz, not 10Hz that the company initially advertised. For those not sure why this matters, the refresh rate numbers matter as it not only affects the content viewing experience on your phone but also affects the battery life.
“As early as three years ago, the refresh rate of a smartphone display kit at 60 Hertz. That all changed when Samsung introduced our first display with 120 hertz refresh rates on the Galaxy S20. Since then, we introduced the first automatic refresh rate smartphone display which optimize the screen from 120 Hertz to 10 hertz depending on the context and participate destroyed,” said Yang giving a background.
Coming to the Galaxy S22 series he said, “With Galaxy S22 we have moved the needle once again in terms of display performance by developing the first advanced panel self refresh rate technology.” Detailing the tech further, Yang said, “The display signal is deliberately from the AP to the display panel through the display drive IC to save power the refresh rate should be minimized where still images are displayed. But there is a limit for how low the refresh rate can go. If the refresh rate is too low, then we started to see flickering occur on the screen. So to decrease the refresh rate and save power we decrease the frequency of signal transmitted between the speaker and the display drive, something there in the Galaxy S21. The frequency of the signal between AP and drive IC is also restricted by several items such as touch response time. And with Galaxy 22 we were able to decrease the frequency of signal between AP and the display using alternative can ACEF refresh rate technology which will lead to greater power saving and overall smartphone performance.”