OLED and LCD, and why it decides what a screen costs
The short answer
An LCD makes light behind the screen and blocks it to make an image, so black is dark grey and the backlight glows at the edges. An OLED lights each pixel itself, so black is genuinely off. OLED costs more to make, more to replace, and is what almost every phone since 2020 uses.
Two completely different ways of making a picture
An LCD has one light source, a white backlight, sitting behind the whole panel. In front of it is a layer of liquid crystal that twists to let light through or block it, and a colour filter that decides what shade comes out. Nothing on an LCD ever switches off; it only gets as dark as the crystal can block the light behind it.
An OLED has no backlight at all. Each subpixel is its own tiny light, made of an organic compound that glows when current runs through it. To show black, an OLED turns those pixels off. That is why an OLED phone in a dark room appears to have no edges: the black parts are not dark grey, they are unlit.
Everything else follows from that one difference. Contrast, how the panel handles low brightness, why one burns in and the other does not, and what the part costs.
What you actually notice, side by side
Neither list is a verdict. An LCD in a bright kitchen is a perfectly good screen and always was. What changed is that manufacturers moved to OLED for thinness, contrast and always-on displays, so on most phones made since 2020 there is no LCD option to choose.
| LCD | OLED | |
|---|---|---|
| Black | Dark grey, with a faint glow at the edges | Genuinely off |
| Thickness | Thicker, because the backlight is a separate layer | Thinner, no backlight to stack |
| Always-on display | Not practical, the backlight has to be on | Works, only the lit pixels draw power |
| Burn-in | Effectively never | Possible after years of the same static image |
| Low brightness | Dims smoothly | Many panels flicker at the very bottom of the range |
| Colour after years | Fades slowly and evenly | Can shift as the blue subpixels age fastest |
| Repair cost | Lower | Higher, and it is the panel rather than the labour |
Why the panel type sets the repair price
An OLED panel is harder to manufacture, the yields are lower, and on a phone it is bonded to the glass and the touch layer as a single assembly. Replacing it means replacing all of that, which is why a screen repair on an OLED phone is a part cost with a little labour attached rather than the other way round.
An LCD assembly is cheaper to make and, on some older models, the glass and the display are separate layers. Where that is true a cracked front with a perfect picture can sometimes be a glass-only repair, which is a fraction of the price.
This is also why fitting an LCD into a phone that shipped with OLED is the most common downgrade in the trade. It is cheaper, it works, and it looks visibly wrong beside any other phone of the same model. We do not do it.
- An OLED screen repair is mostly the cost of the panel
- On a handful of older LCD models the glass alone can be replaced
- A curved OLED costs more again: harder to make and no cheap tier fits properly
- Every model page on this site says which panel that phone shipped with
The words the trade uses, and what they mean
Manufacturers brand their panels and the names are marketing rather than technology. Super Retina XDR, Dynamic AMOLED 2X, Super Actua and Fluid AMOLED are all OLED. Liquid Retina and Retina HD are LCD. AMOLED means an OLED with an active matrix driving it, which is every OLED phone panel made.
Soft OLED and hard OLED describe the substrate the panel is built on. Soft is flexible plastic, which is what the original almost always is and what a curved phone requires. Hard is rigid glass, which is cheaper, thicker and more brittle at the edges. On a curved phone a hard OLED cannot be made to sit properly at all.
Incell and oncell describe where the touch layer sits, and they are LCD terms. An incell LCD sold as a replacement for an OLED phone is the cheap tier, and it is the one that produces grey blacks and a thicker phone.
Which one is in your phone
The quick test costs nothing. Put a black image on screen in a dark room. If the screen disappears into the bezel, it is OLED. If you can see a faint grey rectangle with slightly brighter edges, it is LCD.
The other test is the always-on display. If the phone can show a clock with the screen otherwise off, it is OLED, because an LCD cannot do that without lighting the whole panel.
And every model page on this site lists it in the specification block, along with the size and the technology name the manufacturer uses.
Common questions.
For contrast, thinness and always-on displays, yes, and that is why the industry moved. For price and for immunity to burn-in, LCD still wins. On most phones made since 2020 there is no choice to make, because the manufacturer only ever shipped one.
Because it is almost all part cost. An OLED assembly is the panel, the glass and the touch layer bonded together, it is harder to manufacture than an LCD, and on a curved phone it is harder again. The labour is the small half of that bill.
Physically, on some models, yes. It produces grey blacks, a thicker phone, and an always-on display that no longer works properly. It is the most common undisclosed downgrade in this trade and we will not fit one.
No. What some people notice is the flicker many OLED panels use to dim at very low brightness, which can cause headaches in a small number of people. Raising the brightness above about ten percent usually stops it.
Slowly. The blue subpixels age fastest, so a panel that has run for years can shift very slightly in colour, and a static image shown constantly can leave a faint permanent mark. Neither is something most people meet inside the life of a phone.
A fixed price per model, on that model's repair page. The panel is most of it: an OLED assembly is harder to make than an LCD and a curved one is harder again, which is why one screen costs twice another.
Where this leads.
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