OnePlus confirms upgrade to 120 Hz displays in 2020 that will also be brighter

Ben Schoon | Jan 13 2020 - 6:23 am PT

The past year of smartphones has seen the rise of high refresh rate displays, and in 2020, we’re expecting that trend to get even better. Today, OnePlus has confirmed that it will adopt 120 Hz AMOLED displays this year that will have more benefits than just the faster refresh rate.

In a forum post, OnePlus’ Pete Lau explains that the company’s next smartphone display will be the “best you’ll lay your eyes on in 2020.”

Following a previous tease, OnePlus has confirmed that it will adopt 120 Hz displays in 2020, most likely starting with the OnePlus 8. Once again, the display is manufactured by Samsung Display, and 120 Hz alone presents some big benefits. Some of those benefits include an overall smoother experience, but also better click/tap response, scroll response, and accuracy since the jump to 120 Hz also brings the device to a 240 Hz sampling rate.

On top of that, though, OnePlus is also making this display considerably brighter with a peak brightness of 1000 nits. This matches more closely with some of Samsung’s flagships and also builds on improvements from the OnePlus 7T.

Finally, OnePlus also mentions that color accuracy should be even better on this device. Apparently, the company is adding 30 seconds to the production time to calibrate the color accuracy on every single device produced. The full post reads as follows for more of a deep dive on OnePlus’ plans.

Deep Dive: 120 Hz Fluid Display — the best you’ll lay eyes on in 2020

Hello friends,

At OnePlus, we believe that every part of our device should provide the best experience possible to our users. With the OnePlus 7 Pro, we started pushing the envelope in display quality by introducing our 90 Hz Fluid Display, finely tuned to achieve a record-breaking A+ Top Tier Display Rating from DisplayMate. Today, we have finished the development of our next-generation display, and I’m excited to tell you more about it.

The spirit of “Never Settle” is not about specs alone. The smoothest smartphone display must also be able to deliver a superior visual quality and viewing comfort. We’re sure that OnePlus’s new 120 Hz Fluid Display will be the best you’ll lay eyes on in 2020.

Engineering the most advanced 120 Hz display panel in the industry

Following the 2K+ 90 Hz Fluid Display of the OnePlus 7 Pro, OnePlus has once again cooperated with Samsung Display to tailor a unique AMOLED display with the most rigorous specs in the industry, including a breathtakingly smooth 120 Hz refresh rate. The display uses the latest generation of organic light-emitting materials, with a peak brightness of more than 1000 nits and a much longer lifetime. In addition, we’ve raised the touch sampling rate to an industry high of 240 Hz for a more responsive touch experience.

Our R&D team also developed an exclusive optimization solution that can increase the rendering speed of a single frame with 7%. In testing, OnePlus’s 120 Hz display has yielded significantly better results than other existing high refresh rate displays in the industry on measures of click response, scroll response, and accuracy.

Unprecedented smoothness in video playback

After numerous system optimizations, many major apps will now be able to take full advantage of the new 120 Hz refresh rate. But, for videos, there’s an additional hurdle. Most video content is still produced at either 24fps or 30fps, with a small portion of content in 60 fps.

To address this problem, we’re including MEMC technology to deliver smoother video playback. MEMC is a technology featured in high-end TVs that uses real-time algorithmic adjustments to insert additional frames to a video file, enabling something shot at 24 or 30 fps to play at 60 or even 120 fps.

MEMC technology is more demanding in terms of computational power and algorithm processing, making it very difficult to simply carry over from TVs to smartphones. But by using a hardware-based MEMC solution, OnePlus has managed to elevate frame rates to 60 or even 120fps without raising power consumption, providing a seamless, more fluid viewing experience for users.

True-to-life color display and support for up to 1 billion shades of color

With a display that offers greater color accuracy, users will see colors as they are meant to be seen. For designers, photographers, and all creators, top-notch color accuracy is essential for creative work.

JNCD is the highest industry standard and most important indicator for measuring the accuracy of a display panel in the smartphone industry. Current professional displays can achieve a JNCD ＜ 0.8 ratio, so we set this as our benchmark. By professionally tuning the color display, OnePlus was able to achieve an industry-leading JNCD ratio of less than 0.8 for every single 120 Hz Fluid Display. With a near-perfect display performance rating, users and creators will be able to edit and render images with absolute confidence.

OnePlus’s 120 Hz Fluid Display also provides support for 10-bit color, providing 1,024 shades of each primary color and over 1.07 billion possible colors. This is 64 times as many colors than are supported on mainstream smartphone devices, giving users fuller, more natural gradients when viewing content, and creators more confidence to accurately display the intended color spectrum.

In order to reach industry-leading color accuracy standards, we have added an additional automatic color calibration machine to the production line. By adding an extra 30 seconds to the production time, each display panel is automatically calibrated for color accuracy before it’s released.

Our upcoming 120 Hz Fluid Display is part of our commitment to “Fast and Smooth.” You, our community, are what drives us to move forward and innovate, and we can’t wait for you to try it out.

Never Settle.