Good times for lovers of quality panels. The war of specifications is a constant in Android, as they are the main way for manufacturers to differentiate themselves from their rivals. Since last year, we have been living one of the most interesting wars in recent years: that of nits.
We are going to review this concept which, although basic, is still largely unknown as to how it works. A fight is brewing to see which manufacturer offers the panel with the highest brightness. It couldn’t be better news for today’s phones.
Nits are a unit of measurement that describes the brightness of a panel. More specifically, they designate the amount of luminous intensity on a given surface. This last point is particularly relevant and separates nits from lumens. Lumens only indicate the intensity of light coming from a source (which is why light bulbs, projectors and so on use this type of unit).
The higher the number of nits, the higher the brightness. Interestingly, nits are not an official terminology. The International System of Units designates candelas per square meter (cd/m²) as the unit of measurement, although designating them as nits is the most common in technology.
The nits war (and trap)
It would be logical to deduce under this premise that a panel with 2,500 nits will be brighter than a panel with 2,000 nits. Wrong. This point is crucial, and it is one of the reasons why this war for nits is as interesting as it is dirty.
Over the last two years I have seen some high-end manufacturers launch proposals with figures around 2,500 nits. To my surprise, they shone significantly less than my iPhone 14 Pro (2,000 nits). How is this possible? The trick is very easy: there are manufacturers that tell you that the panel shines at 2,500 nits, but they don’t tell you how much of the actual panel reaches this peak.
Manufacturers promise us a brightness of X.XXX nits. But they don’t tell us how much of the panel is shining at that intensity.
Google is one of the most transparent, and determines that its peak brightness of 2,500 nits of the Google Pixel 8 Pro is achieved by only 5% of the panel’s active pixels. Some of the manufacturers that omit this data are, with high probability, moving in the 1% for that maximum peak.
Apple does not give a figure for how much of the panel shines at 2,000 nits, but there is a curious fact. In 1% windows its brightness is around 2,400 nits, so the company has preferred to give a lower and less marketinian data, implying that the 2,000 nits are active in a good part of the panel.
Under luxmeter measurement, I have not yet found a phone that shines brighter in automatic mode than an iPhone 14 Pro / 15 Pro. It will remain to be seen how well the Xiaomi 14 and Xiaomi 14 Pro do, which promise peak brightnesses of up to 3,000 nits. This could be a real before and after in panels, but it will remain to be seen.
The challenge of energy efficiency
Making the panel shine to such high points comes with two major responsibilities: the panel must be efficient in and of itself, and the processor must be able to manage the amounts of power needed to illuminate it. Google is one of the best examples here.
The Google Pixel 8 Pro is capable of producing the maximum brightness of the 7 Pro while consuming 63% less power. This is an absolutely barbaric figure that allows it to keep shining brighter without compromises in autonomy. While in our tests the Google Tensor G3 did not do too well in raw performance and autonomy, it seems to form a good tandem to manage the energy expenditure of the panel.
In Apple’s case, the point is the opposite. The company counters that the brutal 3,000-nit peak brightness achieved on the Apple Watch Ultra 2 comes, in large part, from improvements arriving in its new S9 SiP chip.
Processors like the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, which have already proven to be well ahead of Apple’s A17 Pro, are also opening the door to 3,000-nit panels, as Xiaomi has shown.
Ultimately, the most bloody war is being fought over screen brightness. This comes hand in hand with better processors, energy efficiency and some dirty games to sweeten the technical sheet. 2023 looks to close with a maximum of 3,000 nits. The question is what next year’s record will be.