When critics of Samsung see the Korean technology mega-corporation turn out yet another huge, impressively sharp screen for a new phone or tablet computer, it makes them see red.
当韩国三星集团（Samsung）推出一款针对智能手机和平板电脑的全新屏幕时，许多批评人士都觉得这款屏幕有些发红。

Well, not red, actually—more like a super-saturated, unrealistically bright version of red.
也许用“发红”来形容并不确切——其实它更接近一种饱和得有些不真实的亮红色。
Samsung is the near-undisputed king of OLED, or organic light-emitting diode, display technology. It has been using its dominant position in that market as a source of stability as it enters an increasingly untenable situation: eroding sales on both ends of the phone price spectrum. On the low end where profit margins are thin, Samsung has been under attack by local manufacturers such as Xiaomi, which have been willing to sacrifice profit for the sake of market share. On the high end where margins are better, rivals such as Apple’s iPhone have proved to be fiercely competitive. Every company in the business hopes that large sales volumes will make their big bets pay off in the end; the question is what will prompt consumers to buy one glassy device over another.
三星是OLED领域几乎无可争辩的王者。OLED的全称是有机发光二极管。近年来，随着三星在高端和低端手机市场受到了越来越大的挑战，该公司开始利用自己在OLED市场的霸权稳固。在利润较低的低端市场上，愿意牺牲利润换取市场份额的当地厂商，比如小米（Xiaomi），着实给三星造成了不小的冲击；而在利润相对较高的高端市场上，以苹果（Apple）iPhone为代表的竞争对手又给三星带来了极大的压力。每家企业都希望自家的设备销量好，问题是大家的产品大同小异，是什么刺激消费者买这一款，不买那一款呢？
Samsung hopes that display technology will be one of those things as its rivals use less flashy but more trusted screen technology.
三星希望它的显示技术能够成为刺激购买欲望的因素之一，因为它的竞争对手们使用的都是不那么鲜艳，但更受信赖的屏幕技术。
Apple’s iPhones and iPads and roughly two-thirds of all smartphones have LCD, or liquid-crystal display, screens. LCDs essentially twist and untwist liquid crystals to allow a certain amount of light through each red, green, or blue sub-pixel, the term for the components that make up each individual pixel in a display. The technology is well-known and well-worn, but it comes with a major downside: liquid crystals provide no light of their own. The necessary backlight that accompanies such displays is a substantial draw on battery life; taken together with the crystals and other necessary technology, such displays make the resulting screen thicker and more rigid.
苹果的iPhone、iPad以及大约三分之二的其他智能手机均使用LCD屏幕，即液晶显示屏。LCD显示屏通过扭转液晶来使一定量的光线穿过每个红、绿或蓝像素。这一技术很知名，也很成熟，但它也有一个比较大的缺点：液晶自己是不发光的，液晶背后的发光板会显著影响电池寿命。另外算上液晶屏本身和其它必要技术配件的厚度，LCD屏通常要更厚、更硬一些。
Most of Samsung’s modern devices have AMOLED (as in “active-matrix organic light-emitting diode”) displays. The technology involves passing a current through tiny, thin films of organic material (red, green, or blue), which cause them to throw off colored light. AMOLED screens generate their own light, so they do not need a backlight. Even better, when the pixels are not needed, they are actually “off,” saving device power and allowing blacks to be deeper and truer than with LCDs. Manufacturing and material improvements have made AMOLED displays thinner, extremely pixel-dense, occasionally curved, and able to display a huge range of colors.
目前三星的大多数设备采用的是AMOLED屏幕（又叫主动矩阵有机发光二极管）。这种技术使电流通过一些有机材料薄膜（红绿蓝色）来发出有色光。由于AMOLED显示屏自身可以发光，它不需要背光板。更妙的是，当不需要某些像素发光时，它们会被“关闭”掉，从而节省电力，而且AMOLED显示屏上的黑色也要比LCD显示屏更深、更纯。随着工艺和材料的进步，如今的AMOLED显示屏已经造得比以往更薄、像素密度极高，有的甚至还能弯曲，而且它的色域也非常广。
Most importantly, these manufacturing improvements come largely from one single maker: Samsung Display, a division of Samsung Electronics. “There may be a couple of other players, technically, but, really, these displays come from Samsung,” says Vinita Jakhanwal, senior director of analyst firm IHS. “There is no other OLED or AMOLED maker making displays for mobile phones or tablets.”
最重要的是，这些工艺进步很大程度上来自同一个制造商，即三星电子集团旗下的三星显示公司（Samsung Display）。IHS公司高级总监维尼塔o贾克汉瓦表示：“可能还有其他几家公司涉及这项技术领域，但这些显示屏实际上都来自三星，除此以外，市场上再没有其他厂家为手机或平板电脑生产OLED或AMOLED显示屏了。”
Samsung certainly wants to talk about its display technology. In a video promotion for its Galaxy Tab S tablet this summer, women purchase salad bowls, dresses, and shoes online, only to sigh in deep exasperation when a different shade of blue-green, yellow, or shale comes out of the box. The Galaxy Tab S, the voice-over claims, displays the “professional RGB standard” and each pixel is a “living pixel, capable of producing a variety of color combinations.” The message: Samsung’s screens are organic, different, and simply better at colors.
三星当然乐于谈谈它的显示技术。在今年夏天发布的一段Galaxy Tab S平板电脑推广视频中，一位女士在网上购买了沙拉碗、裙子和高跟鞋，等快递到了，却发现实物的颜色跟网站上的图片颜色偏差很大，不由得唉声叹气。这时旁白说道，三星Galaxy Tab S平板电脑可以展示“专业的RGB标准”，每个像素“都是一个活的像素，能够创造一系列色彩组合。”潜台词就是说，三星的屏幕是有机的，是不一样的，在色彩显示上做得更好。
In reality, this is the opposite of what many industry pundits claim. The colors displayed on Samsung’s Galaxy Tab S, according to Dieter Bohn, an editor for the tech-lifestyle website The Verge, “still tend to look over-saturated to my eyes,” though he added that “Samsung has toned things down considerably from years past.” In an otherwise positive review of a newer Galaxy S5 smartphone model, Anandtech, a computer hardware site, made note of “minor issues with excessive green in the color balance.” In essence, people seem to agree that the colors of AMOLED displays are more vivid. Whether or not those colors are natural or accurate based on what the eye would see in real life is another matter entirely.
然而在现实中，许多行业权威反馈的情况却恰恰相反。科技生活网站The Verge的编辑迪特尔o波恩表示，Galaxy Tab S的显示屏颜色“在我看来仍然有过于饱和的倾向”，不过他补充道：“但和前几年相比，三星还是显著改善了失真的情况。”硬件网站Anandtech在一篇对Galaxy S5总体还算比较正面的评测中指出，这部手机在“色彩平衡上还存在稍微偏绿的小问题”。实际上，用户似乎也认同AMOLED显示屏的颜色要更加生动。至于这些颜色在实际生活中怎么样，是否还像显示屏里那样自然或饱满，那就是另一回事了。
Samsung may be sensitive to accusations of color problems because one of its main rivals is on record about it. Apple CEO Tim Cook told a Goldman Sachs investors’ conference in February 2013 that “the color saturation is awful” on OLED displays. He added: “If you ever buy anything online and you want to really know what the color is . . . you should really think twice before you depend on the color of the OLED display.”
三星可能对色彩饱和度问题很敏感，因为一位主要竞争对手曾经公开抨击过这个问题。苹果公司CEO蒂姆o库克曾于2013年2月在高盛（Goldman Sachs）投资人大会上指出，OLED屏幕的“颜色饱和度太糟糕了”。他还称：“如果你想在网上买东西，而且你想知道它是什么颜色……在你根据OLED屏幕上的颜色做决定前，最好再慎重考虑一遍。”
Part of the issue has to do with a seeming strength of AMOLED technology. It can create a wider range of colors than other display technologies. While the colors of most images are limited to fit inside the 18-year-old sRGB color gamut, AMOLED screens can technically reach far beyond that range, and Samsung often lets them. Some Samsung devices offer a display-correcting “mode”— “Professional Photo” is one—but for the most part, Samsung allows colors to run bolder and more saturated, especially in the red part of the visible spectrum.
AMOLED之所以会被揪住这根辫子，部分原因恰恰和它一个看似优势的因素有关。AMOLED技术的色域比其它显示技术更宽。目前大多图像的颜色还限制在已经有18年历史的RGB标准里，但是AMOLED在技术上可以远远超越这个色域，而且三星也经常允许它“超纲发挥”。三星的有些设备提供了颜色校正模式。但大多数情况下，三星允许显示屏的颜色更加醒目和饱满，尤其是在可见光谱的红色部分。
“The colors look really off to me, but it’s up to you whether you like this effect or not,” says Erica Griffin, an in-depth video device reviewer, in her take on Samsung’s Galaxy S5. “I know Samsung is heading for an effect that’s eye-catching, to get people’s attention . . . For some people, that looks pretty, and for others it’s just an eyesore.”
在评测完Galaxy S5手机后，视频设备评测师埃里卡o格里芬表示：“这些颜色在我看来很不舒服，但是你喜不喜欢这种效果则取决于你自己。我明白三星在追求一种吸引眼球的效果，以吸引人们的注意力……对于有些人，它看起来是挺漂亮的，但在另一些人看来却觉得很难受。”
It’s also a look that may change as you use your device. The organic materials used to make blues in OLED displays wear out far more quickly than the reds or greens. As they start to wear out, the overall balance of color shifts. Samsung and other device makers often try to correct for this—for example, by making blue sub-pixels twice as large—but it remains an unsolved issue.
此外，在你使用设备的过程中，这种色彩的感觉可能还会有所变化。OLED显示屏用来发蓝色光的有机材料衰减得很快，远远超过红色或绿色。一旦它开始衰减，总体的颜色平衡就会产生变化。三星和其它设备厂商也想了一些办法解决这个问题，比如把蓝色像素的尺寸增加一倍，但目前这个问题仍然没有彻底解决。
A Samsung spokesperson pointed to the company’s latest displays, dubbed Quad-HD Super AMOLED, as having “an immersive viewing experience with a high contrast ratio and a wider color range” than the competition. The Galaxy Tab S featured in the aforementioned ad has a dedicated chip in it that can stabilize colors. At its most basic setting, tech site Anandtech says it mostly has the desired effect.
一位三星发言人表示，三星最新推出的Quad-HD Super AMOLED屏幕具有“沉浸式观赏体验、很高的对比度，而且有比竞争对手更广的色域”。前文提到的Galaxy Tab S平板电脑内置了一块用于稳定颜色的专用芯片。科技网站Anandtech表示，在最基本的设置上，它基本达到了预期效果。
Colors are important on mobile devices for one overarching reason: managed expectations. Knowing that Twitter uses a sky blue color for its logo, it can be jarring for users and marketers alike to see a version with a tinge of green. LCD display technology certainly is not standing still—displays are becoming thinner, brighter, and even more high-definition. But IHS’s Jakhanwal notes that it is more than just colors, battery life, or thinness that gets a device into buyers’ hands.
显示屏的颜色显示对于移动设备是非常重要的，尤其是它必须要满足用户的预期。我们都知道Twitter的Logo是天蓝色的，如果用户和营销人员发现自己手上的设备显示的Logo带点绿色，非抓狂不可。LCD显示屏当然也并非毫无进步，如今的LCD屏幕也变得更薄、更明亮，分辨率也变得更高。不过IHS公司的贾克汉瓦指出，消费者选择一款移动设备时，看重的并不只是色彩、电池寿命或厚度。
“The winners are going to be the device that has not just superior display technology, but superior overall performance,” she says. “Nobody is really going to feel good that, ‘Now I have the brightest tablet,’ or ‘Now my colors are more real.’ It’s a combination of features that make the display and the device.” Which may be good reason for Samsung and its market-moving AMOLED research teams more time to move its displays out of the red.
她表示：“这个行业的胜者不仅要有很好的显示技术，还要有很好的总体性能。没有人真的会因为‘我用的是最亮的平板电脑’或者‘我的颜色更真实’而感觉良好。最终造就一款显示屏和设备的，是一系列功能的组合。”这可能解释了为什么三星及其AMOLED研究团队还需要更多时间来解决屏幕发红问题。