How is a 120Hz screen different from a regular one? It's simple: a normal screen operates at 60 Hz. Thus, if a game on a smartphone produces 70 frames per second, the user will simply not notice it. That is why it is customary in e-sports to use 144 Hz screens, as they allow the screen to refresh at a higher frequency and make the picture smoother and more informative. But will it be useful on smartphones?
120 Hz screens – trend of 2020?
Today, along with 120 Hz screens, manufacturers are releasing smartphones with 90 Hz solutions. This is also a good option and is justified by the lack of sufficient hardware power, but we will focus on 120 Hz screens for one simple reason – today, manufacturers increasingly use just such screens. Additionally, the Galaxy S10 is rumored to have a similar 120Hz screen.
Sharp Aquos Zeta Docomo became the first smartphone with 120Hz screen on the market. Since then, not many of these phones have been released, and it was only in 2019 that their number increased significantly. The most popular device with an increased refresh rate is Asus ROG Phone 2. This is a gaming smartphone powered by a Snapdragon 855+ processor. The first generation of the line was equipped with a screen with a frequency of 90 Hz.
However, even 90 Hz in 2020 can be called sufficient, but manufacturers do not want to slow down the process and immediately switch to 120 Hz screens. There are several reasons for this: firstly, the human eye is not limited to 100 frames per second, and the more frames the better, so 90 Hz will not be enough for the user to stop noticing the difference. Secondly, this is marketing, and the higher the numbers, the cooler. That is why 120 Hz displays can be called the best option.
Of course, the PC gaming market is already getting used to displays with a refresh rate of 144 Hz, but you should understand that PC performance is significantly different from mobile devices. Phones simply won't be able to run games at 144 frames per second. Let's take Rog Phone 2 as an example. A device in a heavy game PUBG Mobile produces 50 frames per second. And this despite the fact that it uses the most powerful Snapdragon 855+ to date. The Snapdragon 865 only improved graphics performance by 25%, so even 2020 chipsets won't be able to run heavy toys at 120fps, let alone 144fps.
120 Hz is temporary
At the end of September this year, Sharp introduced the Aquos Zero 2 smartphone with a 240 Hz screen and a Snapdragon 855 processor. And today Nvidia introduced a new standard with support for 360 Hz screens. Smartphones will also keep up with this trend, because players increasingly see phones as a full-fledged gaming platform. The gaming business is rich, and it is beneficial to develop it for both smartphone manufacturers and manufacturers of phone accessories in the form of various controllers.
Is there a limit?
Of course not. It is not yet fully understood how many frames a person can distinguish. Today it is known that the human eye can distinguish 1000 frames per second, but there is a possibility that this figure may be higher. Even 360 Hz, as you can see, is not the limit. Remember the times when everyone stubbornly believed that a person is not able to distinguish more than 24 frames? There are also opponents of videos with 60 frames per second. Such people are difficult to understand. It is possible that smartphones will soon learn to shoot at 144 frames without slowing down videos. This will become possible only when there are enough similar displays on the market.
What are we limited to?
Performance. 120Hz screens are just one of the stages, more modern screens with even higher frequencies will become popular already in 2021, even if in complex games they will not produce more than 100 frames per second.
The fact is that the increased screen frequency can be useful not only in complex games, but also in 2D-platform gamers with dynamic gameplay, in the interface Android. There are many benefits from the increased frequency, and it is strange that only now manufacturers have decided to tackle this issue.
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