The Apple Watch is designed to remain dark until a wearer raises his or her arm. In the prototypes worn around the Cupertino campus at the end of last year, this feature was still glitchy. For Marc Newson, it took three attempts—an escalation of acting styles, from naturalism to melodrama—before his screen came to life. Under normal circumstances, the screen will then show one of nine watch faces, each customizable. One will show the time alongside a brightly lit flower, butterfly, or jellyfish; these will be in motion, against a black background. This imagery had dominated the launch, and Ive now explained his enthusiasm for it. He picked up his iPhone 6 and pressed the home button. “The whole of the display comes on,” he said. “That, to me, feels very, very old.” (The iPhone 6 reached stores two weeks later.) He went on to explain that an Apple Watch uses a new display technology whose blacks are blacker than those in an iPhone’s L.E.D. display. This makes it easier to mask the point where, beneath a glass surface, a display ends and its frame begins. An Apple Watch jellyfish swims in deep space, and becomes, Ive said, as much an attribute of the watch as an image. On a current iPhone screen, a jellyfish would be pinned against dark gray, and framed in black, and, Ive said, have “much less magic.”
One can infer from this quote that Jony Ive has a newly acquired affinity for OLED displays and he clearly views LCD displays as being slightly outdated.
I believe iPhones and iPads, and possibly MacBooks will eventually feature OLED displays. And quite possibly, Samsung-made "Super AMOLED" displays.
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I used to have a disdain for OLED displays as they featured inaccurate colours. Tim Cook, and I assume the guys at Apple thought so as well. Cook had this to say in early 2013 about OLED displays, "If you ever buy anything online and really want to know what he color is, as many people do, you should really think twice before you depend on the color from an OLED display." He added, "There are many attributes to the display, and what Apple does is sweat every detail." I think he was right. Displays on Apple devices have been known to be extremely colour accurate, with accurate White Point and right colour temperature. Simply put, displays on Apple devices are very well calibrated. You can refer to Displaymate's detailed analysis of the display on the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus.
For years, other phone makers have tried to win over consumers with displays that feature oversaturated colours, with colours that appear "punchy". Sure, it looks attractive to some consumers but I have always preferred natural-looking colours. Even today, some phone makers are still oversaturating colours on even LCD displays - you just have to take a look at the LG G4's display. They are artificially enhancing colours on LCD displays to mimick those on an OLED/AMOLED display, even though LCD displays themselves tend to exhibit natural looking colours.
It's important to note that OLED, AMOLED displays are a newer technology than LCD displays(what is currently being used in Apple devices, except Apple Watch), and for years, they were known to exhibit inaccurate colours.
But OLED technology has improved through the years and with this advancement, one phone maker has recently started giving consumers the option of having accurate colours on their AMOLED displays and that phone maker is Samsung. Out of the box, Samsung's recent flagships(Galaxy S5, Note 4, S6) have come with the "Basic Mode", a screen mode for users that want accurate, natural-looking colours. Yes, OLED/AMOLED displays have advanced in a few short years and are now as capable of accurate colours as LCD displays. It is up to the phone maker to decide how they want to calibrate the display. In Anandtech's review of the Samsung Galaxy S6, Joshua Ho wrote, "with this generation, I suspect Samsung is either meeting or exceeding the best LCDs in quality and with the next generation of AMOLED it's highly likely that high end smartphones will have to migrate to AMOLED to stay competitive."
Couple this with Jony Ive's recent affinity with OLED displays, it seems obvious that future iPhones, iPads and possibly MacBooks will feature OLED/AMOLED displays. OLED/AMOLED displays will eventually eclipse LCDs in quality and if Apple intends to stay competitive, they have to equip their products with this newer display technology. And you can be sure that the OLED/AMOLED displays featured in Apple devices will have the same characteristics as the LCDs that are currently in use - well-calibrated, good viewing angles, natural-looking and sRGB accurate colours, at the same time combined with the benefits that OLED displays are known for.
Question is: How soon can we see those displays on Apple mobile devices? The 2016 iPhone series(7, 7 Plus) perhaps?
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