DisplayMate: iPhone XS Max Has the Best Smartphone Display Ever

Apple’s iPhone XS Max has the best smartphone display ever, according to display testing firm DisplayMate.

In its “iPhone XS Max OLED Display Technology Shoot-Out,” DisplayMate wrote that the 6.5-inch handset sports a number of notable improvements over Apple’s iPhone X flagship — not even including its 22 percent increase in screen area.

According to DisplayMate President Dr. Raymond M. Soneira, the iPhone XS Max matches or sets a handful of smartphone display records — which can be seen below.

• Highest Absolute Color Accuracy
• Smallest Shift in Color Accuracy with the Image Content APL
• Highest Full Screen Brightness for OLED Smartphones
• Highest Full Screen Contrast Rating in Ambient Light
• Highest Contrast Ratio
• Lowest Screen Reflectance
• Smallest Brightness Variation with Viewing Angle
• Highest Visible Screen Resolution

Based on its extensive testing, the firm said that the iPhone XS Max has a “very impressive top tier smartphone display” with “close to Text Book Perfect Calibration and Performance.”

For example, the iPhone XS Max has a peak full-screen brightness of 660 nits, compared to the iPhone X’s 634 nits. It also has a screen reflectance of 4.7 percent, nearly the lowest it has ever measured in a smartphone.

Because of that high brightness and low screen reflectance, DisplayMate found the iPhone XS Max to have one of the best contrast ratings in “high ambient light” on any OLED handset it has tested.

The testing and calibration firm also praised the iPhone XS Max’s Mobile HDR, TrueTone, and Automatic Color Management, among other “state-of-the-art display performance function and features.”

“Based on our extensive Lab Tests and Measurements the iPhone XS Max receives our DisplayMate Best Smartphone Display Award, earning DisplayMate’s highest ever A+ grade by providing considerably better display performance than other competing smartphones,” Dr. Soneira wrote in the Shoot-Out.

Back when the iPhone X launched, DisplayMate also touted it as having the best smartphone display on the market. While the iPhone X was unseated by Samsung’s Galaxy S9, it seems that an Apple handset has retaken the “best smartphone display” throne for the time being.

In this year’s shoot-out, DisplayMate compared the iPhone XS Max to the iPhone X and Samsung’s Galaxy Note 9. It’s worth keeping in mind that the iPhone XS Max and smaller iPhone XS share the same underlying display technology.