Rumor: Samsung considering going LCD with the Galaxy S5 and Note 4 in order to cut costs

BY Stefan Constantinescu

Published 10 Dec 2013

Samsung’s high end smartphones have used AMOLED screens since the very first Galaxy S rolled off the assembly line a little over three years ago. You’d think that the company would want to keep on using AMOLED displays as a way to differentiate their phones from the competition, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. According to the Korean publication ETNews, Samsung is thinking about going LCD for the Galaxy S5 and the Galaxy Note 4 because it would save them a substantial amount of money.

Now why would Samsung want to save money when their mobile phone division is practically printing it right now? That’s not an easy question to answer. It could be that Samsung’s AMOLED factory is running at full capacity, and to ensure that the 2014 portfolio has enough components, another factory must be built. That not only takes a boat filled with cash, but time as well.

Then there’s the conspiracy theory view. Maybe Apple asked Samsung to build them tens of millions of displays with an incredibly high pixel per inch rating, so the right factories were built, and now Samsung wants to use that technology for their own devices.

Either way, these are just rumors, and I promise you that regardless of which technology Samsung eventually decides to adopt, they’re going to sell tens of millions of Galaxy S5 and Galaxy Note 4 smartphones.