iPhone 7 display sets performance record, but it's still not the best around

The iPhone 7 is in many ways Apple's best iPhone yet, including in screen performance according to a new report.

The folks over at DisplayMate put together an extensive report about the display performance of the iPhone 7 and found it to be one of the best mobile displays it has ever tested.

This iPhone 7's display shows a significant improvement across the board from the display of the iPhone 6. DisplayMate cites color accuracy, peak brightness, high contrast ratios, great viewing angles and low screen reflectance as reasons for awarding the iPhone 7's display an "A" grade.

iPhone 7 display

"It is by far the best performing mobile LCD display that we have ever tested, and it breaks many display performance records," writes DisplayMate in its report. "It is the most color accurate display that we have ever measured. It is Visually Indistinguishable From Perfect, and is very likely considerably better than any mobile display, monitor, TV or UHD TV that you have."

Apple took what it learned from the iPad Pro 9.7-inch's display and offers two color gamuts on the iPhone 7 display: sRGB, which is an older standard, and the new DCI-P3 color gamut that's 26% larger than sRGB. This means the iPhone 7 "will be able to accurately display all of the new 4K TV and video content," though DisplayMate notes the screen resolution is far from 4K. However, the iPhone 7's Retina Display resolution is good enough at normal viewing distances that you won't be able to see any individual pixels.

Great LCD display, but OLED still wins

The iPhone 7's display is undoubtedly impressive, but how does it stack against its main rival, the Galaxy Note 7? Displays for both phones received an "Excellent" and "A" rating, but DisplayMate awards the Note 7 with its "The Best Smartphone Display" award, citing some advantages of Samsung's OLED technology.

"LCDs are a great cutting edge high performance display technology for Tablets to TVs, but for handheld Smartphones, OLED displays provide a number of significant advantages over LCDs including: being much thinner, much lighter, with a much smaller bezel providing a near rimless design, they can be made flexible and into curved screens, plus they have a very fast response time, better viewing angles, and an always-on display mode," said DisplayMate in its report.

Galaxy Note 7 display

The Galaxy Note 7's display also offers the DCI-P3 color gamut for displaying accurate cinema content, as well as being extremely bright in high ambient lighting, useful for outdoor viewing.

DisplayMate speculates that the rumors of Apple moving to an OLED display for its next iPhone could be a possibility because of the improvements in brightness, efficiency and flexibility of design. The company sees improved image quality in bright ambient light as the next battleground for display dominance in future phones.