Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra Carries Company’s Variable Refresh Rate Display Technology

Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra is the first smartphone to feature Samsung Display's backplane display technology that has a variable refresh rate, the company announced on Wednesday. The new display panel is touted to deliver 22 percent better power efficiency over conventional displays. Samsung claims that it automatically adjusts the refresh rate to minimise overall power consumption. The Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra comes with up to 120Hz refresh rate. The phone is the second in the company's lineup to offer that high refresh rate — after the Galaxy S20 series.

Samsung claimed that the backplane display technology it has developed can seamlessly switch from 30Hz refresh rate for general text viewing to 60Hz for video streaming and 120Hz for mobile gaming experiences. Also, the display panel could down even to 10Hz for still images and other static content.

Samsung said that by using the refresh rate of 10Hz in case of still images and other similar content, devices will be able to reduce power consumption by up to 60 percent. This will be useful especially in the case of 5G-supporting hardware as the next-generation network requires quite a lot of power over 4G and previous cellular network generations.

A rumour also suggested that the Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra would include Low-Temperature Polycrystalline Oxide (LTPO) backplane display technology. However, while Samsung hasn't provided any further details about the architecture, it did confirm that the new smartphone is the first to feature the latest technology.

The Galaxy Note 20 Ultra allows users to switch between the default 60Hz and an auto refresh rate. The latter seems to enable the variable refresh rate experience. This is notably unlike the Galaxy S20 series that has 60Hz and 120Hz as the two separate refresh rate options.

Why are smartphone prices rising in India? We discussed this on Orbital, our weekly technology podcast, which you can subscribe to via Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or RSS, download the episode, or just hit the play button below.