What is LTPO? How this tech delivers killer phone displays

(Image credit: Tom's Guide)

High refresh charge per unit displays have helped make a lot of mid-range and flagship Android phones experience significantly smoother to use than the standard 60Hz displays notwithstanding constitute on most phones, including about notably Apple's iPhone 12 flagships. Apply a smartphone that refreshes at 90Hz — or fifty-fifty 120Hz like the Samsung Galaxy S21 and OnePlus 9 Pro do — and you go smoother scrolling and more immersive experiences.

However, 120Hz displays can be rather ability-hungry, specially when running at QHD resolutions. And that's where LTPO display tech comes in.

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LTPO displays allow you to take both a high refresh rate and resolution without turning a smartphone into a battery-sucking rectangle of glass and metallic. And the tech is becoming increasingly common in 2021's Android phones.

Nosotros commencement got a proper sense of taste of LTPO displays with the Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra. Merely now they tin be found in all iii models in the Galaxy S21 range, equally well as the Oppo Find X3 Pro and the newly released OnePlus 9 Pro.

And we wait information technology to pop upward in a lot more phones as the year progresses — including the iPhone 13, which may well adopt the technology when information technology arrives this fall, as Apple looks to lucifer the leading Android phones with this sought-after feature.

Here'south what you demand to know about LTPO and how it'll feature in some of the best phones of the year.

What is LTPO?

LTPO is the snappy acronym that stands for depression-temperature Polycrystalline oxide. In short, it allows for a display to dynamically change its refresh rate without needing any additional hardware components to sit between a device's graphics processing unit and the display controller.

By being able to modify the refresh rate of a brandish on the fly, a device tin can flip from using power-hungry high refresh rates to lower refresh rates when they aren't needed, which can help squeeze out more battery life.

Apple developed LTPO technology and uses it in the Apple Spotter Serial 5 to scale a refresh rate from 60Hz downward to 1Hz, thereby helping the smartwatch last longer. So adopting such tech for smartphone displays would assist reduce their power consumption.

LTPO: Apple Watch Series 5 — Apple tree Watch Series 5 (Image credit: Tom'due south Guide)

Currently, a lot of OLED displays in phones apply low-temperature polycrystalline silicon (LTPS) in the structure of the thin-picture-transistors (TFTs) that form the backplane of a brandish, effectively providing a lot of the electronics components to run a display. Using LTPS immune for OLEDs brandish on smartphones to exist more ability-efficient, effectually 20% to xxx%, than IPS LCD displays.

However, LTPS panels don't allow for dynamic refresh rates, unless actress hardware is used, as is the case with the OnePlus 8 Pro and Oppo Find X2 Pro. And other phones can just bandy between 120Hz and 60Hz, rather than anything in betwixt or lower.

Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra and Note 20 Ultra — The Galaxy S21 Ultra and Galaxy Notation 20 Ultra both utilize LTPO to offer dynamically adjusting displays. (Image credit: Tom's Guide)

Display backpanels that utilize LTPO, on the other hand, have a combination of LTPS TFTs and transistors made from Indium gallium zinc oxide (IGZO). This results in a display backpanel that uses IGZO TFTs for driving the brandish while LTPS TFTs take care of the switching circuits. All this leads to a more than efficient overall display and one that can dynamically change its refresh rate.

All this sounds very promising for future phones, simply you may have noticed that phones like the iPhone 12 Pro don't back up LTPO displays. Apple tree doesn't even have a 120Hz smartphone display yet, though that's rumored to change with time to come iPhones.

This is because IGZO TFTs are larger than LTPS ones and thus can't be packed as densely into a display. Given such displays uses a TFT for each pixel, using IGZO transistors would mean compromising on the sharpness of a screen.

Just with the latest suite of Android flagship hones, the likes of Samsung and Oppo have institute a fashion to make use of the tech without compromising on screen sharpness.

Samsung's ultra LTPO

Galaxy Note 20 Ultra with LTPO — The Galaxy Note xx Ultra (right) tin can become up to 120Hz on its refresh rate; the iPhone 12 Pro Max (left) is stuck at 60Hz. (Epitome credit: Tom's Guide)

As Apple owns the patents to LTPO, Samsung worked on its own display tech that apes LTPO just doesn't force Samsung to cough upwards patent fees. And the tech in question is HOP.

Standing for Hybrid-oxide and Polycrystalline silicon, HOP effectively combines a accept on LTPO tech with oxide TFTs. And that LTPO tech appeared in the Galaxy Note 20.

But with the Galaxy S21, Samsung has pushed the brandish envelope further with Samsung Display creating LTPO panels that can reduce the power consumption of OLED displays by 16%. That might not seem a lot but in our Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra review, we've seen it deliver admirable bombardment life while however powering a 6.8-inch, 3200 x 1400 resolution screen with a peak brightness of i,300 nits.

OnePlus 9 Pro review — The OnePlus ix Pro is i of the latest phones to offer LTPO engineering science on its display. (Image credit: Tom'southward Guide)

A newcomer to the LTPO mix, the OnePlus 9 Pro, seems to have found the right balance between a fast refreshing display that adjusts on the fly and good battery life. When we tested OnePlus' new flagship with its dynamic display enabled, it lasted for 10 hours, twoscore minutes on our demanding bombardment test. That'southward well above average for a smartphone and close to landing on our best phone battery life list. Fifty-fifty improve, when nosotros set up the telephone's display to 60Hz, it didn't impact battery life at all.

And there'due south good news here as Samsung Display makes OLED screen for Apple, and we're expecting it to go along to do and so for the iPhone thirteen — at least when it comes to this twelvemonth's Pro models at least.

Given Apple hasn't embraced loftier refresh rate displays yet, a move to LTPO panels would allow it to leapfrog the displays establish in late 2019 and 2020 phones and give the iPhone xiii a display worthy of 2021.

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Roland Moore-Colyer is U.Grand. Editor at Tom'due south Guide with a focus on news, features and stance articles. He frequently writes well-nigh gaming, phones, laptops and other bits of hardware; he'due south also got an interest in cars. When not at his desk-bound Roland can be found wandering around London, often with a look of marvel on his face up.