Huawei puts rgb-rgw screen in Mate 10 smartphone

Huawei has put a display with RGB-RGW pixel format in the Mate 10. At the announcement, the Chinese manufacturer reported that it would be an RGBW screen, but that turns out not to be entirely correct. The pixel layout has never been seen on a smartphone before.

The GSMArena review states that the screen manufacturer has removed the blue filter from every second blue subpixel, so that the Mate 10 has an LCD where half of the pixels have an RGB layout, while the other half has an RGB layout. As a result, only half of the usual number of blue sub-pixels is present in the display.

When the device was announced two weeks ago, Huawei claimed that it would be an RGBW screen. That pixel layout is quite common, especially on LG OLED TVs. The white subpixel in the pixel should ensure a higher peak brightness. In the smartphone market, Sony once used such a panel under the name WhiteMagic on the Xperia P smartphone.

It’s unknown how high the brightness and contrast would have been had the white sub-pixel not been in half of the pixels, but the Mate 10 now doesn’t stand out on those attributes. According to the GSMArena review, the brightness, contrast and readability in direct sunlight are not bad, but certainly not distinctive either.

There are many more smartphones with different pixel formats. Almost all LCDs have regular RGB sub-pixels, but Samsung OLED screens often have Diamond Pixels, a structure in which there are twice as many green sub-pixels as blue and red.

Huawei will not release the Mate 10 in the Benelux for the time being. The Mate 10 Pro, with OLED screen instead of LCD and without a 3.5 mm connection and microSD slot, will be released at the end of this month for 799 euros.