Fancy phones now have higher refresh rates but should you buy one?
Refresh rate measures how often a display updates itself with new images. The higher the refresh rate, the smoother the image on the screen.
The term “refresh rate” doesn't really sound sexy, I know.
Of all the features that can coax people into buying a new phone -- better cameras and a bigger screen, for instance -- it’s hard to get most users to care about how often their display blinks. It’s simply one of those things that’s hard to comprehend without seeing it for yourself.
None of these phones come cheap -- starting at US$1,000, the Samsung Galaxy S20 is one of the priciest Android handsets you can get right now. Some of you might be wondering if it’s worth buying a new phone in 2020 just for a display that refreshes faster.
Let’s first take a moment to recap what refresh rate is exactly.
Movement on a screen can be likened to that in a flipbook. An image updates several times every second, so any movement shown on the screen looks continuous -- just like the animation you see when you rapidly flip through the pages of a flipbook.
