A lot of different technologies are available for the components of smartphone. The smartphone manufacturers these days are adopting more and more glorified names for these technologies. This ends up in increasing the potential for confusion among old as well as first time consumers of the smartphones. The consumers require specification sheets to decipher them and understand what these fancy terms mean. There are primarily six types of displays found in smartphones. One of the most frequently found on mid to high range phones now is in plane switching liquid crystal display. Primarily there are two kinds of technologies available in the market for smartphone displays which are liquid crystal displays and organic light emitting diode displays. Each of them has several variations and generations which given rise to even confusion in the mind of the end users. Liquid crystal display refers to the array of liquid crystals illuminated by a backlight. Their ubiquity and relatively low cost makes them a popular choice for smartphones and many other devices. They also tend to perform quite well in direct sunlight due to the entire display being illuminated from behind. They does suffer from potentially less accurate colour representation than displays that do not require a backlight. Thin film transistor is an advanced version of liquid crystal displays. They use an active matrix. Active matrix means that each pixel is attached to a transistor and capacitor individually. The main advantage this is its relatively low production cost and increased contrast when compared to traditional liquid capacitor displays. Thin film transistor have higher energy demands then some other displays. They also have less impressive viewing angles and colour reproduction. Due to these reasons they are not commonly used in smartphones anymore. In plane switching solved the problem that first generation liquid crystal displays experience. In these the liquid crystals are aligned to the display so the resulting viewing angles are superior. Another characteristic of these displays in relation to other technologies is the superior colour reproduction. The plane to line switching displays use the has the same characteristics as in plane switching displays. They have good colour reproduction and viewing angles. But they have a lower contrast level compared to organic light emitting diode displays. According to the manufactures these displays have a lower production cost. They have higher brightness rate and even superior viewing angles when compared to their rivals displays. The quality of the display does not depend on the technology behind it but more importantly on the choice of the choice of the component supplier. Light emitting displays also uses the liquid crystals. The only difference is that the light emitting diodes generates the backlight used to light the panel. A very big advantage with light emitting diodes is that they consume very little power while generating this required light. The component manufactures have made sure to emphasise this advantage of light emitting diodes in every marketing campaign. Light emitting diode displays fail to gain same advantage of using less power while being used on the mobile phones. The mobile phones have a reduced display size as compared to the televisions. The light emitting diode displays fail to offer a level of contrast that is competitive with the organic light emitting diode displays. The choice depends on these trade offs.