A high refresh rate is one of the top selling points for top-end smartphones in 2021, and offers a smoother and more responsive screen experience in supported apps and games. Regardless of whether it is 90Hz, 120Hz, or 144Hz, it’s hard to find a flagship phone that doesn’t have this feature.
We have also seen the advent of phones with an adaptive refresh rate that automatically offer a much lower refresh rate (e.g. 10 Hz) when reading an e-book, but scale to 120 Hz or more when playing games or scrolling through system menus. That asked us whether users prefer a smartphone screen with an adaptive refresh rate or a display that always runs at a high refresh rate.
Do you prefer an adaptive or static refresh rate?
Results
We published the poll on February 18th and cast nearly 1,500 votes. It was a resounding win for the adaptive refresh rate camp with just over 72% of the vote. Comments suggest that many users would prefer longer battery life to high refresh rate in any situation.
In the meantime, almost 28% of the respondents were of the opinion that a static (ie always high) update rate would be the way to go. Most likely, these users do not trust a phone with an adaptive update rate to always get the update rate they want.
For what it’s worth, the Galaxy S21 Ultra has an adaptive refresh rate of 120Hz but doesn’t always let you force 120Hz. Hopefully future smartphones will offer a hybrid approach that allows you to have a fully automated adaptive experience or to give users granular control over the refresh rate.
Remarks
- Wesley: 60 Hz is better. I refuse to sacrifice battery life.
- Wongwatt: Yeah, because we’re all obsessed with fast frame rates … I get them on game phones, but for a general purpose device, it’s just a specification.
- Miguel7501: If it works right then Adaptive is the way to go. But even on a Oneplus 8 (where the only options are 60 and 90) this is not the case. By default, some apps (e.g. most browsers) are locked to 60 Hz even if you select 90 Hz in the settings. I fixed this with a shell command, but really shouldn’t have to. Oneplus should add the option to set the refresh rate for each app and possibly dynamically detect them for video playback. Without these options, an adaptive refresh rate is useless.
- kcgunesq: Really how many people who buy $ 1,000 phones even care about update rates. Maybe teenagers trying to gamble on a cell phone, but that’s not the likely audience. What am I missing? I never use my Note 9 and walk away wishing it had a different refresh rate.
That’s it for our article with static and dynamic poll results, thanks for voting and leaving a comment. What do you think of the subject? Let us know below.