There are practically over a million reasons you can come up with for preferring a certain smartphone over another, but the most important emphasis I usually write down first is the display panel. Having a device with an awesome panel is something I always lookout for, I’d choose a brilliant screen over any other feature within a glance and some of my favorite display features include; AMOLED panels, high resolution screens preferably QHD and above and lastly but not least, support for HDR content.
Most of our daily activities have shifted to mobile phones such as sending and responding to an email, sending and transferring cash to others and taking professional class photos; we consume a lot of content via mobile phones more than before. This can be articulated to increased video consumption from top streaming services such as Netflix and YouTube. While we see a lot of technology shifts on traditional televisions, mobile devices have since kept up with brilliant inventions such as HDR 10 support.
What is HDR10
High Dynamic Range usually denoted as HDR is a new video technology that allows devices such as smartphones to display videos as well as images with much greater brightness, contrast, and better color accuracy than what was possible in the past. This is way far from resolution upgrades such as 720p to 1080p and consequently to 4K or even current 8K trend in terms of color reproduction.
For a smartphone to support HDR10 content, there has to be hardware capability but Google managed to support YouTube HDR solely from software optimizations in the first generation of pixel handsets. Since HDR10 is the minimum specifications, every device that has HDR capability should ideally support HDR10. HDR10 standard produces an image that is over twice as bright, with a corresponding increase in contrast (the difference between the blackest blacks and the whitest whites), and a color palette that has one billion shades, as opposed to the approximately 16 million of SDR.
As of 2019, HDR has almost become a thing with most video streaming platforms such as Netflix and YouTube supporting the standard. But something to note, when your device has HDR capability it doesn’t automatically qualify to render content in the HDR standard, it’ll need to gain support from respective company such as Netflix or YouTube first.
Here is a list of Smartphones you can buy locally in Kenya in 2020 that support HDR10 content either on YouTube or Netflix
- Xiaomi mi note 8 pro
- Samsung Galaxy S10/S10 Plus
- Samsung Galaxy S10e
- Samsung Galaxy S10 Lite
- Samsung Galaxy Note 9
- Xiaomi Mi Note 10 Lite
- Xiaomi Mi 10
- Nokia 8 Sirocco
- iPhone XS / XS Max
- iPhone XR / 11 / 11 Pro