[THE INVESTOR] Even though organic light-emitting diode has a long history, it fell short of taking the throne held by liquid-crystal display in the smartphone sector for years.

LCDs, which boast a high level of brightness and picture contrast, have remained mainstream as it has been preferred by many smartphone makers so far, especially Apple, despite the wooing of OLED makers, such as Samsung Display.

Now things are likely to change as Apple is expected to switch to OLED and the wave of change was writ large on the Samsung Electronics Galaxy Note 7, according to DisplayMate, a display market research firm.

In a series of extensive tests, the Galaxy Note 7 has proved that its OLED display is “the most innovative and high performance smartphone display” that the research firm has ever tested.

“(Samsung’s) OLEDs have developed into excellent smartphone displays that now outperform the best LCD smartphones,” said Raymond Soneira, president of the research firm, in his report.

“There is no better confirmation of the OLED performance lead than a series of well-founded rumors from a number of prominent publications that Apple will be switching the iPhone to OLED displays in 2017.”

Giving kudos to Samsung Display ’s pursuit of innovation for display, he also said the Note 7 leapfrogged the displays of the Galaxy Note 6 and Galaxy S7.

The Note 7 scored the highest points in a list of categories in the tests, including brightness, screen readability, and color gamut.

The Note 7’s 5.7-inch quad HD OLED display showed off the highest peak brightness at 1048 nits in high ambient light conditions, compared to 861 nits of the Note 5’s and 750 nits of the Note 4’s.

The screen reflectance level of the Note 7 display also stood at a record low of 4.6 percent, compared to 10 percent of an average LCD screen.

By Kim Young-won (wone0102@heraldcorp.com)