ProMotion LTPO display in 'iPhone 13' expected to be solely supplied by Samsung

Apple has reportedly whittled down its supplier list for the 120Hz screen said to be in the iPhone 13, down to just one of its long-time suppliers — Samsung.

Apple has always had a strong relationship with Samsung for iPhone displays, so Wednesday's report from The Elec isn't much of a surprise. Samsung is one of few companies capable of meeting Apple's demanding supply schedule and quality without hiccups in the supply chain.

Apple reportedly cut ProMotion in the iPhone 12 right before mass production began due to impact on battery life. Apple was also rumored to be close to a breakthrough to cut battery drain down, but the introduction of 5G combined with the higher refresh rate is said to have led to issues.

That breakthrough, with low-temperature polycrystalline oxide (LTPO) thin-film transistors, was previously rumored to be essential to managing battery life for high-refresh displays on devices with small batteries. LTPO is currently used to reduce the refresh rate of the Apple Watch to near zero when not displaying active information on the screen.

Previous reports suggested that Samsung will supply a majority of the OLED panels needed for iPhone production in 2021. BOE and LG were originally slated to supply a small portion of the panels, but other reports suggested those companies have trouble meeting Apple's quality standards in bulk.

The Elec is a decent source of information from within Apple's supply chain in Korea, but has a notably worse record in predicting Apple's future product plans. Monday's report is a mix of the two topics.

5 Comments

bushman4 14 Years · 860 comments

About 3 years ago

Samsung screens tend to be less yellowish compared to LG

Sounds good

MplsP 8 Years · 4047 comments

I’m wondering where all the Samsung bashers that claim ‘Samsung is crap’ are.

From the description in the article, it sounds like the phone may dynamically alter the refresh rate to save energy? That would be pretty impressive if so. I haven’t seen a pro-motion display with the higher refresh rate side by side with a ‘regular’ display to compare them. I have to wonder how much of this is people obsessing about specs more than an actual improvement that will matter. It’s similar with OLED displays. For some people they matter, for others they think they matter and a lot of people can’t tell the difference for 99% of their use.

godofbiscuits 10 Years · 249 comments

Apple won’t go to 120Hz unless there’s a specific feature that drives it.

crowley 15 Years · 10431 comments

godofbiscuits said:

Apple won’t go to 120Hz unless there’s a specific feature that drives it.

What was the specific feature that drove it on the iPad Pro?

chasm 10 Years · 3624 comments

MplsP said:

I’m wondering where all the Samsung bashers that claim ‘Samsung is crap’ are.

Samsung makes a lot of different stuff in a lot of different divisions. They are a TV business, a household appliance business, a storage business, a phone business, a monitor business, and a ton more. Most have very little to do with any other division.

Unsurprisingly, then, opinion varies on how crap they are not only depending on the users' subjective perceptions, but on a more general (not "objective" per se but a broad consensus) based on the particular product.

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