One of the few disappointments with this year’s iPhones is their lack of support for high-refresh rate displays. B.Based on new reports, this looks set to change for at least two versions of iPhone 13 next year.
According to a report from a Korean tech news outlet the Elec, Apple hopes to ship between 160 and 180 million iPhones by 2021 next year (up from about 100 million in 2020), with each model of the iPhone 13 expected to have some sort of OLED display. But more importantly, the Elec claims that at least two of the four new iPhone 13 models (most likely the Pro variants) will have displays with low-temperature polycrystalline oxide (LTPO) thin film transistors that allow those models to refresh at 120Hz. can support. prices.
Currently, Apple is sourcing the displays used in iPhones from three major suppliers: Elec says Samsung is expected to ship the lion’s share of the panels in 2021 with shipments of around 130 to 140 million displays, followed by LG selling between 30 and 40 million panels. , and Chinese display maker BOE is filling in all remaining orders, potentially shipping between 10 and 20 million screens. However, the Elec says that in order to supply those components, BOE must reapply to become an approved supplier in Apple’s supply chain after two failures during Apple’s regular quality assessments.
While reviews for the iPhone 12 line in the industry have been generally quite positive this year, including our reviews of the iPhone 12, iPhone 12 Pro, iPhone 12 Pro Max, and iPhone 12 Minithe lack of support for high refresh rate displays by Apple was a curious omission, especially afterwards early rumors claimed Apple had tested the feature on a handful of prototype units prior to launch.
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In comparison, this year Samsung introduced support for 120Hz refresh rates on the Galaxy S20 line, before further refining the technology with its new 120 Hz VRR panels that debuted on the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra. Which not just one 120Hz refresh, but also offered the ability to dynamically adjust the screen refresh rate to match the content you are viewing to improve power efficiency.
And it wasn’t just Samsung that upgraded to high refresh rate is shown this year, with OnePlus also showing the OnePlus 8 Pro a 120Hz screen sourced from Samsung, while Asus went even higher through the ROG Phone 3 a 144Hz screen. And while Google hasn’t made a true high-end premium phone this year, the Pixel 5 still retained a similar 90Hz display to the screen that Google debuted on the Pixel 4 in 2019. At the moment The push for smartphone screens with higher refresh rates has been a growing trend for quite some time now, reflecting a similar trend for high-end monitors and laptops. High refresh rate displays can greatly improve the smoothness and fluidity of a wide variety of content, including games, web surfing and more.
So while it’s a bit odd that Apple couldn’t jump on the high refresh rate trend this year, it seems Apple is well on the way to preparing for the iPhone 13 (at least the Pro models) will get a major display upgrade next year.