Phone Screen Refresh Rate Basics and Importance, Part 1

Oct 5, 2020

While some areas of phone repair relate to specific damage that’s taken place, others may speak to issues with internal components that have worn down or malfunctioned over the years. A great example here is actually a broad phone theme rather than a specific “problem” your phone is having: Screen refreshment rate. At FixIT Mobile, we’re proud to offer a huge range of cell phone repairs for iPhone and Android models alike. We’ve addressed numerous phone qualities or issues with clients during our repairs, including screen issues that may play a role in impacting your phone’s screen refreshment rate. This two-part blog will dig into what refreshment rate (sometimes just called refresh rate) means and how it’s defined, plus some areas where it may be relevant for screen or related phone repairs.

Refresh Rate and Hertz

Put as simply as possible, refresh rate for a smartphone – or any other screen display – refers to how quickly the display updates for new information. Phone screens have various “panels” that encompass them, and these panels update their content at standard intervals we refer to as refresh rate.

Refresh rate is measured in Hertz, abbreviated Hz. As with many other display metrics, it will be represented based on number of refreshes per second of use. So a 60Hz display is one that refreshes itself 60 times per second, while 90Hz refers to refreshing 90 times per second.

Rows of Pixels

As we touched on above, it’s important to note that the refreshing process for a given phone screen is not done all at once. Rather horizontal rows of pixels will reach refresh in order, allowing the entire display to update in the proper order.

Want an example of this in action to help understand it? Film a phone or another digital display screen in slow motion, and notice how when you watch it back later on, the displays often flicker when being viewed through your camera viewfinder. This is because the display is updating itself regularly, but the cycle requires time to finish an entire refresh.

Latency Factors

For those who care about latency in their display, refresh rate is a very important metric. Screens that update faster, namely, are known to have lower latency due to the fact that their pixels are being refreshed more often than slower-updating pages. Refresh rate is not the only factor that plays a role here, but it’s generally considered to be the biggest one – it takes a 120Hz screen about half the time to refresh as a 60Hz screen, largely for this reason.

For more on screen refresh rate for your phone and why it matters for certain screen repairs or related areas, or for information on any of our laptop repair, tablet repair or other device repair services, speak to the staff at FixIT Mobile today.