When buying a smartphone, monitor or even a smart TV, you may have come across the terms LED, OLED and AMOLED. These terms, which usually accompany other attributes of the screens (size, definition and so on), refer directly to light emission, duration and image quality.

we separate a little guide so you can understand the difference between the three types of screen, and what each one brings to the market:

What is LED

LED stands for Light-Emitting Diode. In the simplest terms, it is a semiconductor that emits light when an electric current passes through it. This light is formed when electrons react with the materials in the semiconductor. Due to the solidity of the material, LED lighting is also known as solid state lighting.

Inside semiconductors there is a small space where current exchange occurs, emitting photons. In the case of cell phones and other screens, it is common for LEDs to be grouped into micro cells of three colors: red, blue and green, the RGB standard. Depending on the light needed, the current activates one or more conductors, adjusting the intensity.

LEDs began to appear on screens as backlighting for LCD screens, which in turn emitted stronger lights, which consumed more energy and were more tiring for the eyes. Their main advantages for screens are energy savings, sustainability and longer component life.

What is OLED

The evolution of LEDs began when manufacturers began to insert a series of thin layers of organic material between one conductor and another. These layers help to preserve electrical current, resulting in greater energy savings. It is thanks to these organic layers that OLED, which stands for Organic Light Emitting Diode, was created.

As OLED screens are a leap in image quality compared to previous standards. This is because the new lighting structure is capable of completely erasing certain points on the screen. This increases contrast, creates more defined black tones and allows for the reduction of light in certain pixels, activating night mode. In other words: if on LED the color black appears grayish, on OLED it is truly black.

Finally, an OLED screen does not have an LCD on top, so it is able to emit more vibrant light and better display high-definition image standards, such as HDR. The lack of a rigid cover also means that OLED is used to develop foldable phones.

What is AMOLED

AMOLED stands for Active Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diodes (or Active Matrix Organic LEDs). The evolution of OLED uses a Thin Film Transistor (TFT) and capacitor to connect all the semiconductors. This allows the capacitors in the newly used pixels to hold their charge across cycles, enabling faster and more precise image control, illuminating pixel by pixel.

AMOLED grows in comparison to the previous standard by using it to present even higher quality in colors and contrast patterns. Some companies like and Samsung e a vivo, for example, use Super AMOLED, a screen that integrates lighting semiconductors with the layer that detects touch.

However, the semiconductor standard is still very expensive, which increases the price of devices that use it. Its life cycle is shorter than that of OLED and, because it uses precisely dot by dot, AMOLED can burn some dots per image repetition.

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