DXOMARK introduces new score for smartphone display and expands smartphone rear-camera testing

20 October 2020, Paris – DXOMARK, the scientific benchmark recognized worldwide, is expanding and diversifying. DXOMARK announces its new score for display quality of smartphones and expands its famous smartphone rear-camera test protocol. “With the arrival of 5G and increasing AI capabilities in mobile devices, consumer expectations of the quality of video, gaming and camera features are rising,” said Frederic Guichard, CEO and CTO of DXOMARK. “Smartphone experiences are multi-sensory, so the addition of display to our camera and audio testing provides consumers with a more comprehensive view of device performances.”

For over a decade, DXOMARK has been helping consumers navigate a complex technology landscape with a scientific approach and an easy-to-understand scoring system that allow buyers to choose a phone that best suits their needs.

DXOMARK Display

Manufacturers’ specifications such as screen size, resolution, technology, and refresh rate do not tell much about a phone’s display quality. DXOMARK examines screen quality from a deeper end-user perspective. Its test protocol combines 400+ objective measurements and over 20 hours of perceptual evaluation in lab and real-life settings to generate the DXOMARK Display score for each product tested. Each Display score is composed of 6 sub-scores: readability, color, video, motion, touch, and artifacts, a relevant set of the key display quality attributes.

“We congratulate DXOMARK on the launch of its new smartphone display benchmarking program. DXOMARK’s scientific approach is poised to advance display performance as it has done for camera over last ten years,” said Todd DeBonis, President and CEO of Pixelworks. “The smartphone is an inherently visual tool that consumers experience through its screen, which makes display benchmarking a natural complement to DXOMARK’s world-renowned camera scoring. As a result, the market now has objective ratings that compare the entire visual experience of popular smartphones.”

 “DXOMARK’s optical engineering expertise lends itself well to the complexity of display benchmarking,” said Jon Peddie, President, Jon Peddie Research. “Their methodology is very sound, but I also like the fact that it is designed for how consumers actually use their phones and the content they care most about in terms of visual quality. DXOMARK’s easy-to-understand scoring will not only facilitate product comparison shopping but also motivate smartphone makers to focus on delivering meaningful consumer benefits, not only on specmanship.”

 “As smartphone adoption of 5G accelerates, displays are advancing to handle richer content and performance is becoming harder to characterize. As such, objective benchmarks will be critical in helping consumers assess the right solutions for their needs,” said Francis Sideco, Principal Analyst of TIRIAS Research. “DXOMARK is already an established name in objective benchmarks for cameras and smartphones. By expanding into mobile displays, consumers now have another valuable resource to help with their purchasing decisions.”

DXOMARK Camera

DXOMARK Camera has undergone various updates these past years with the addition of bokeh, zoom, wide angle, and night testing to its already rigorous evaluation. As smartphones continue to progress, DXOMARK tests continue to challenge them. In spite of the progress made, even high-end smartphones sometimes fail in relatively simple scenes. DXOMARK has updated 80% of its shooting plan to address upcoming camera technologies, assess trustability, and evaluate preview. This expansion includes many new demanding test scenes in photo and video with more people, motion, low light and HDR in each shot. The test protocol has added a new Preview score to evaluate preview quality on the smartphone screen before pressing the shutter.

To read more about our Display Test Protocol: https://corp.dxomark.com/dxomark-tests-display-quality/

To know more about our updated Camera Test Protocol: https://corp.dxomark.com/dxomark-camera-test-protocol-version-4-brings-trustability-preview/

About us: DXOMARK is the trusted industry standard for smartphone and digital camera tests and ratings. For the past 12 years, it has been recognized for providing the most rigorous hardware testing, using industry-grade laboratory tools in its analyses, and for establishing the most comprehensive reference database of test results. DXOMARK performs scientific tests to evaluate image, audio, and display quality from an end-user perspective.