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Google Pixel 5, Better than Previous Pixels but Less than Top Competitors
The Google Pixel stands out from its predecessors with an edge-to-edge display, truly uniform bezels about 4 mm for each side uncommon for Android phones. Google continues to use a flexible OLED substrate for its flagship, which can be made thinner and be made to have better viewing angles and polarization characteristics compared to the rigid OLED that they use in their mid-range Pixel a-lineup. The thinness of the flexible OLED also increases optical clarity by bringing the emissive pixels closer to the cover glass (thus closer to the fingertips), which helps the screen appear more paper-like and inky. Most modern flagship OLEDs have been made of a flexible substrate for the past couple of years, but it is important to make this distinction since its optical advantage does not show up in current display measurements. Additionally, the front camera cut-out on the Google Pixel 5 appears flush with the display, while the camera on the Pixel 4a appears slightly raised compared to the screen with a noticeable silver ring around the component. The Pixel 5’s 6-inch display size may lead some to believe that this is a plus-sized device, but it is a relatively-compact device. The body of the Google Pixel 5 is about the same size as all of its smaller-sized predecessors. Where most of the increase in display size comes from the bezel reduction along the vertical axis. The Google Pixel 5’s resolution is 2340×1080 (432 ppi). The panel is sourced solely from Samsung Display, and the hardware seems to have been slightly upgraded from last year’s to accommodate a higher peak brightness. However, the display driver IC remains the same as that of the Pixel 4 XL’s (s6e3hc2), and the display panel is an older-generation Samsung OLED putting the Google Pixel 5 behind other flagships that use Samsung’s newer generation of OLED in terms of peak output and power efficiency.
The Pixel 5 maintains Google’s standard three color profiles: Natural, Boosted, and Adaptive, with Adaptive being the default profile out-of-the-box.
Figure 1: Pixel 5 Color Gamut
The Google Pixel stands out from its predecessors with an edge-to-edge display, truly uniform bezels about 4 mm for each side uncommon for Android phones. Google continues to use a flexible OLED substrate for its flagship, which can be made thinner and be made to have better viewing angles and polarization characteristics compared to the rigid OLED that they use in their mid-range Pixel a-lineup. The thinness of the flexible OLED also increases optical clarity by bringing the emissive pixels closer to the cover glass (thus closer to the fingertips), which helps the screen appear more paper-like and inky. Most modern flagship OLEDs have been made of a flexible substrate for the past couple of years, but it is important to make this distinction since its optical advantage does not show up in current display measurements. Additionally, the front camera cut-out on the Google Pixel 5 appears flush with the display, while the camera on the Pixel 4a appears slightly raised compared to the screen with a noticeable silver ring around the component. The Pixel 5’s 6-inch display size may lead some to believe that this is a plus-sized device, but it is a relatively-compact device. The body of the Google Pixel 5 is about the same size as all of its smaller-sized predecessors. Where most of the increase in display size comes from the bezel reduction along the vertical axis. The Google Pixel 5’s resolution is 2340×1080 (432 ppi). The panel is sourced solely from Samsung Display, and the hardware seems to have been slightly upgraded from last year’s to accommodate a higher peak brightness. However, the display driver IC remains the same as that of the Pixel 4 XL’s (s6e3hc2), and the display panel is an older-generation Samsung OLED putting the Google Pixel 5 behind other flagships that use Samsung’s newer generation of OLED in terms of peak output and power efficiency.
The Pixel 5 maintains Google’s standard three color profiles: Natural, Boosted, and Adaptive, with Adaptive being the default profile out-of-the-box.
Figure 1: Pixel 5 Color Gamut
All three color profiles share the same exact white point at 6400 K. The tone mapping of the profiles is also identical, which targets the standard gamma power of 2.20. The only difference between the profiles is in the color primaries of their target color space:
Figure 2: Pixel 5 Luminance and Contrast
- The Adaptive profile, which is the default color profile for the Google Pixel 5, targets a color space with red and green primaries that extend past that of sRGB but are short of DCI-P3. Pure blues are similar between all three profiles, which all share the same sRGB-blue primary. The name of the profile is a misnomer in that there’s nothing “adaptive” about it. This naming may lead many users to believe that the profile switches color spaces depending on the content being viewed. However, this is not the case at all; the Adaptive profile is similar to the Vivid profile found in other Android phones, which just increases the color saturation for all generic content.
- The Natural profile is the phone’s color-accurate profile, which targets the sRGB color space for generic content. The profile supports Android’s color management system, which allows the profile to render content with colors up to DCI-P3
- The Boosted profile is similar to the Natural profile but with slightly boosted colors for each color primary. Google says that the profile increases color saturation by 10% in every direction, although I haven’t actually measured how accurate this description is.
- Google’s previous Pixel devices have generally underwhelmed when it came to peak display brightness. For many people, the maximum brightness of a display is one of the most important specs, if not the most important spec to look for in a display. After all, a phone is of no use if the display isn’t legible. In a world where smartphones are touting 700-800 nits of full-screen display brightness (at 100% APL), Google unleashed its flagship, the Pixel 4, which was only able to muster 450 nits. Thus, display brightness had become one of the banes of the Pixel line. An update to the Pixel 4 series brought the devices closer to their competitors by finally implementing their display panels’ high brightness modes. This boosted the peak full-screen brightness from 450 nits to 550-600 nits, which was still considered conservative for a flagship at the time it was released and mediocre by today’s standards.
Figure 2: Pixel 5 Luminance and Contrast
* Average pixel level (APL) is the area of lit pixels on the display expressed as a percentage of the total display area. Emissive displays, like OLED, vary in brightness depending on the intensity and the area of pixels it emits. “Measured Luminance vs. Display Area” or “Measured Luminance vs. Window Size” would both be better-fitting names for the chart since the APL metric can entail many other circumstances, but APL has been colloquially used and is generally understood when discussing display brightness.
Display tone mapping and contrast, along with actually assess it correctly—the advent of the Perceptual Quantizer provides the best look at luminance measurements. Display tone mapping may be the most important aspect of a display, and a display with bad tone mapping ruins the experience. Bad tone mapping can result in crushed shadows, colors that are too dark, and/or a washed-out display. There is a slight difference between the tone mapping in the 90 Hz and 60 Hz modes, but most of the differences come from color hue.
The tone mapping of the Pixel 5 targets the standard gamma power of 2.20 (except for in high brightness mode), which is a necessary baseline for accurate color tones and image contrast. And for the most part, we see that Google Pixel 5 accurately tracks the 2.20 gamma power, with a few hitches.
The Pixel 5's OLED panel exhibits zero black crush throughout its brightness range.
Besides these two issues, there’s one item that sets the Google Pixel 5 apart from most other displays: The Pixel 5’s OLED panel can render its first step gray (#010101) throughout its entire brightness range -- in other words, zero black crush from the display — which is a feat that I’ve only measured iPhones to perform until now.
Figure 3: White Balance and Grayscale Precision
- Google brings modest improvements to the display brightness. At its 50% APL midpoint, the Google Pixel 5 to peak is about 750 nits with auto-brightness (470 nits for manual max system brightness). At higher APLs, the Google Pixel 5 demonstrates inferior performance compared to the competition: At 80% APL, which is about the APL of light-themed apps, the Pixel 5 only outputs about 680 nits, whereas competitors can reach about 800 nits. This brightness performance for the Pixel 5 places it about halfway between the Pixel 4 and its competitors, lackluster for a flagship smartphone in 2020. Minimum brightness measures white at 1.9 nits, which is the same as most competitors.
- A display is heavily restricted by its full-screen/100% APL brightness, which is 650 nits for the Google Pixel 5. A higher-brightness panel that can output over 1000 nits at 100% APL, such as the Galaxy S 20 Series allows a higher-precision calibration at 650 nits. The peak brightness of the Google Pixel 5 varies significantly with on-screen APL, dropping in brightness as on-screen APL increases. Because of this, the tone mapping performance also varies with on-screen APL; the inverse-proportional relationship of luminance vs. APL means picture contrast will increase with on-screen APL, which makes display calibration complicated at these brightness levels.
- Finally, for Google’s sake in its camera and “helpful”-focused marketing campaign, a higher peak brightness would be indispensable in improving the accuracy of the camera viewfinder when capturing photos outdoors, and it would make the Pixel camera’s exposure and tone-map controls more useful.
Display tone mapping and contrast, along with actually assess it correctly—the advent of the Perceptual Quantizer provides the best look at luminance measurements. Display tone mapping may be the most important aspect of a display, and a display with bad tone mapping ruins the experience. Bad tone mapping can result in crushed shadows, colors that are too dark, and/or a washed-out display. There is a slight difference between the tone mapping in the 90 Hz and 60 Hz modes, but most of the differences come from color hue.
The tone mapping of the Pixel 5 targets the standard gamma power of 2.20 (except for in high brightness mode), which is a necessary baseline for accurate color tones and image contrast. And for the most part, we see that Google Pixel 5 accurately tracks the 2.20 gamma power, with a few hitches.
- First, the trace that stands out the most is the max-brightness tone map curve in red. The tone mapping seems to render color tones significantly lighter than the standard 2.20 gamma power, so expect the Google Pixel 5 to appear too light and washed out at max brightness. However, the Pixel 5’s max brightness is only viewed during really bright conditions, and ambient lighting is directly related to the perceived contrast of a display. When the ambient lighting is much brighter than the display brightness, color tones on the display will appear relatively darker, so to compensate, the display can make color tones lighter to counteract the ambient lighting. This is the same principle as increasing the display brightness to make the display more legible; as the display brightness is increased, perceived contrast increases.
- However, if the display has reached its peak brightness, the only option is to increase the lightness of color tones, which is what the Pixel 5 does. This tone map curve shows the concept of perceived contrast by Google, so this behavior deserves recognition. However, as mentioned in the previous section, the Google Pixel 5 is handicapped by its peak full-screen brightness, so it varies its luminance with APL to maximize content brightness. This results in the max-brightness tone map curve to become steeper and darker at higher APLs, such as in light-themed apps, which reduces the effectiveness of the lighter color tones.
- On the opposite end of the brightness spectrum, the lower-brightness tone map curves show some problematic behaviors:
- 20% PQ-brightness tone map curve in pink, which is associated with a white level of about 10 nits, shows the Pixel 5 rendering colors too light across its entire grayscale. Unlike the tone map curve at max brightness, the behavior at this brightness is undesirable. In general, people keep their display brightness a relatively fixed difference brighter or dimmer than the brightness of their surroundings, and the two brightness are usually within the same ballpark. Therefore, the display tone mapping should be consistent throughout a display’s brightness range, with the exception of the extremities (max and minimum brightness), since the display might not be able to get bright or dim enough to satisfy the user’s preference.
- At minimum brightness, the Pixel 5’s tone map curve (in blue) shows a response that tracks the gamma power of 2.20 very closely, and there’s a slight lift near black to ensure that the display doesn’t clip shadows. Typically, this would be great tone map behavior, but, opposite to the edge-case at maximum brightness, we have to consider that the brightness of the surrounding ambient light can be much dimmer than the white level of the Pixel 5’s minimum brightness (1.9 nits). A dark room in a house will typically have an illuminance below 0.1 lux, sometimes even under 0.01 lux for a room without any active light sources. Viewing a patch of white on a 1.9 nit display in these conditions is similar to viewing it on an 800-1000+ nit display in typical office lighting (~200 lux), which is uncomfortable and eye-searing for many people. This is why dark mode is pretty much mandatory for night-time viewing unless you hate your eyeballs. If the display is too bright compared to the ambient lighting and the display can’t get any dimmer, then the display should make color tones darker to compensate. But here with the Pixel 5’s minimum-brightness tone map curve, its 2.20 gamma power response may appear too light and washed out in dark environments. The ideal behavior would be to adapt the tone map curve to the ambient lighting, but so far there have been no phones that I know of that exhibit this behavior.
The Pixel 5's OLED panel exhibits zero black crush throughout its brightness range.
Besides these two issues, there’s one item that sets the Google Pixel 5 apart from most other displays: The Pixel 5’s OLED panel can render its first step gray (#010101) throughout its entire brightness range -- in other words, zero black crush from the display — which is a feat that I’ve only measured iPhones to perform until now.
Figure 3: White Balance and Grayscale Precision
The Smooth Display feature of the Google Pixel 5 will switch from 90 Hz to 60 Hz when the display is static or when playing ≤60 FPS content. If the display brightness is below 25 nits (14/255 brightness setting), the Pixel 5 will stay fixed at 90 Hz. In high refresh rate displays, there can be noticeable differences in color calibration between the 60 Hz and the 90/120 Hz modes.
Figure 4: Grayscale difference between 120 Hz and 60 Hz
Figure 4: Grayscale difference between 120 Hz and 60 Hz
The first figure above switch between the 90 Hz plots and the 60 Hz plots above 25 nits, showing the color difference when the Google Pixel 5 switches into its 60 Hz display mode. There is a slight shift towards green for mid-tones and darker colors, but the shift was barely visible. These differences are vastly less significant than what was seen on the Pixel 4/4 XL or the OnePlus 8 Pro.
Google Pixel devices performed quite well in color accuracy in their calibrated display mode. However, the color accuracy on the Pixel 5 isn’t bad per se, but there are errors.
-The Pixel 5 may not have state-of-the-art panel hardware, but it's a contender for one of the best displays this year
The general consensus of the Google Pixel 5 is that it’s a genuine refinement over previous Pixel phones. Google is doing the best they can with parts that they’re familiar with, and they continue to focus on aspects that constitute a practical smartphone. In the display department, the Pixel 5’s color tone performance has been refined to an extent that surpasses just about every other flagship.
Google Pixel devices performed quite well in color accuracy in their calibrated display mode. However, the color accuracy on the Pixel 5 isn’t bad per se, but there are errors.
- Below 40% PQ-brightness, gamut and saturation compression are noticeable, with the most problems around 20% PQ-brightness. Combined with the lighter tone mapping and contrast found at this point, the Google Pixel 5 appears slightly more washed out at this display brightness. The issue isn’t as prevalent at minimum brightness, but the Pixel 5’s weak color rendering at 20% PQ-brightness is a disappointment.
- At max brightness (high brightness mode), the Pixel 5 shows hue errors in reds and oranges, which can cause the appearance of skin tones to appear too red. High-saturation purples are also tinted far too blue. There’s a slight oversaturation across the gamut, but this is desirable behavior for high brightness mode to counteract some of the gamut compression caused by high ambient lighting.
- Between 60% and 80% PQ-brightness (90–250 nits), which covers the display luminance range for reference viewing environments, the Pixel 5’s color accuracy had no noteworthy color errors.
-The Pixel 5 may not have state-of-the-art panel hardware, but it's a contender for one of the best displays this year
The general consensus of the Google Pixel 5 is that it’s a genuine refinement over previous Pixel phones. Google is doing the best they can with parts that they’re familiar with, and they continue to focus on aspects that constitute a practical smartphone. In the display department, the Pixel 5’s color tone performance has been refined to an extent that surpasses just about every other flagship.