In recent years, several manufacturers have been making bold announcements about the refresh rate of their new smartphone screens. Companies like OnePlus, Asus, and Samsung pride themselves on their screens providing smooth motion in movies and apps. You may have seen the terms 90Hz or 120Hz mentioned in articles or on company websites when looking at cell phone specifications. So, let's explain what this is and the difference it makes to devices.

What does screen refresh rate mean?

Fortunately, this is a simple question to answer, because the terminology reflects what is actually happening on the screen you are looking at. So, for a screen to produce the illusion that there is a moving image in front of you, it needs to be refreshed a certain number of times.

As with any video, what you’re actually displaying is a sequence of still images, but they’re played back to back very quickly. So the display’s refresh rate is simply the frequency at which it updates to show the next scene. For example, if your screen has a refresh rate of 120Hz or 144Hz, that means it can refresh 120 times per second. And that’s a lot better than the traditional 50 or 60Hz of regular screens.

So, a high refresh rate can make a big difference in the perception and experience of watching a movie or fast-paced scenes in a game.

Is it enough to just have a higher refresh rate to have a better experience?

Well, life isn't that easy. To have a truly fluid experience, the content displayed must also be produced at the same frequency as the screen. If the app wasn't designed for faster refresh rates, the content will display normally. However, the display won't be much different from a regular screen.

Are there any games optimized for 120Hz screens?

Smartphone game developers have started to enhance the graphics of their titles to take full advantage of these faster refresh rates.
Popular games like Real Racing 3, Temple Run 2, Minecraft Earth, Alto's Odyssey, and Injustice 2 (and others) have their animations optimized to take full advantage of higher refresh rate smartphone displays.

Still has the touch response rate

As I said above, life is tough. But it's also fun, especially if you like to play online. Let's go: the touch response rate is the screen's ability to understand a touch in a given time. For example, if the screen has a touch response rate of 60 Hz, it means that it looks for a touch on the screen 60 times per second.

Doing the math, the result translates into a cycle of 16,6 ms (milliseconds), which means that the screen searches for a user touch every 16,6 ms. Well, now let's look at the example of a screen with a 120 Hz touch response rate. Here it's easy: if we double the touch search frequency, the screen will search for a user touch every 8,3 ms.

So, in an online game, you’ll be able to move your character faster than an opponent who has a phone with a 60Hz screen. Plus, you’ll be able to shoot faster, too. So, there’s no doubt that a high-touch screen will make you the fastest trigger-happy shooter in the West. And that makes life easier, at least in games.

Through which channels you reach those people, classic and out of the box. XDA Developers e Andes Computer Engineering.