Paul Briden 13/04/2017 - 1:43pm

The Samsung Galaxy S8 allegedly has the "best" display ever, according to DisplayMate

The Samsung Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8 Plus have now launched and are grabbing headlines left, right, and centre, and already a few early reviews are trickling in giving us a largely positive vibe about the phones. A new report from DisplayMate claims that the handsets have the "best" smartphone display available.

Last year, with the launch of the Galaxy S7 series, display tech analysis firm DisplayMate undertook an in-depth testing of the handsets. Using equipment that can accurately measure the display's contrast, sharpness, brightness and many other important variables that contribute to overall image quality and viewing experience, DisplayMate concluded that the Galaxy S7 was the "best" smartphone display on the market in 2016.

So now this year, with the release of the new Galaxy S8 series, DisplayMate has undertaken a new round of analysis to determine just how the latest model stacks up. The firm has given it an "A+" rating, its highest ever score.

The report highlights plenty of standout features of the Galaxy S8's display tech and performance. Amongst them, an impressively high peak brightness of 1020 nits, and a pretty advanced implementation of HDR; Mobile HDR Premium, certified by UHD Alliance, which is equal in image quality and colour accuracy to many top-of-the-line HDR TV sets.

You can read the full report here, and we'd advise that you do, it's a very interesting set of data that shows empirically that the Galaxy S8 has a superb display panel.

"The primary goal of this Display Technology Shoot-Out article series has always been to publicize and promote display excellence so that consumers, journalists and even manufacturers are aware of and appreciate the very best in displays and display technology," says the DisplayMate report, "We point out which manufactures and display technologies are leading and advancing the state-of-the-art for displays by performing comprehensive and objective scientific Lab tests and measurements together with in-depth analysis."

"We point out who is leading, who is behind, who is improving, and sometimes (unfortunately) who is back pedaling… all based solely on the extensive objective careful Lab measurements that we also publish, so that everyone can judge the data for themselves as well…"

Now, first of all, let us just say that we have no problem with DisplayMate's findings, either this year or last; the firm seems to know exactly what it's doing when it comes to analysing the capabilities of display hardware. We believe its measuring methods are accurate, and we agree that the findings do show Samsung's displays to be extremely capable; again, this is with both last year's Galaxy S7 and this year's Galaxy S8.

However, there is something of a caveat to the firm's finding of "best" display we feel should be kept in mind.

DisplayMate has been testing smartphone and tablet displays for a few years, but in terms of the broader market the selection of devices it has actually tested is somewhat limited.

For example, between the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S8 launches, purely on the subject of smartphones, DisplayMate appears to have only tested the iPhone 7, Galaxy Note 7, and the Google Pixel.

Needless to say, this is nowhere near a comprehensive list of devices launched in that timeframe. Hundreds if not thousands of phones are missing from the likes of Sony, HTC, Huawei, Honor, Asus, OnePlus to name but a few brands off the top of our heads.

None of these devices have therefore had their results compared against the Galaxy S8's new findings before the Galaxy S8 has been declared "best".

Likewise, prior to the Galaxy S7 launch DisplayMate had a catalogue of testing which encompassed most, if not all, of the iPhone range, every Galaxy S flagship, a bunch of Galaxy Note series devices, pretty much every iPad, the Microsoft Surface Pro 4, the Samsung Galaxy Round, the Sony Xperia Z, the HTC One, some Kindle Fire tablets, the Nexus 7 and Nexus 10 tablets, the Huawei Ascend D2, and a handful of smartwatches.

Of course, as phone reviewers ourselves, we understand as much as anyone that it's a big ask to expect someone to test every phone that hits the market, indeed, it can't possibly be done. There are just too many.

But there aren't THAT many other flagships, and when you make a claim like "best" that is what people will think you are comparing it to.

We think it's important to highlight the relativity at play here when it comes to declaring a phone like the Galaxy S8 as having the "best" display.

It almost certainly does have the "best" display of every phone DisplayMate has ever tested, which means it's better than every previous Samsung Galaxy S flagship and Galaxy Note series device, every Apple iPhone, and a handful of other devices from OEMs such as Sony and HTC.

But there's a LOT of other stuff out there that just hasn't been covered.  We have to take with a pinch of salt that it's the "best" display on the market. We're not saying that it isn't the best, however, of course it may very well be, but until we get a comparison with similar data for the likes of the LG G6, Sony Xperia XZ Premium, and many other key rivals, a big question mark will remain over this claim.