Katarzyna Petru
After more than a decade of dominance by PenTile OLED matrices in smartphones, Xiaomi is doing something that many screen enthusiasts have been waiting for years – the Xiaomi 17 Pro Max features a Real RGB OLED panel. The information has been officially confirmed by the display manufacturer TCL CSOT, which has been announcing a return to the classic concept of RGB subpixels for some time now.
What's new in the Xiaomi 17 Pro Max?
The smartphone is equipped with a 6.9-inch display with a resolution of 2608×1200 px and an impressive peak brightness reaching 3500 nits. The most important change, however, is not in the specifications themselves, but in the subpixel technology – instead of PenTile, we have full RGB.
RGB vs. PenTile
Older individuals in the technology world remember that the first smartphones from 15 years ago could utilize RGB OLED. At that time, Samsung Display heavily promoted PenTile – a configuration where red and blue subpixels are shared, and only green always appears separately. The result? Text and graphics had poorer sharpness, although in recent years, with higher resolutions and correction algorithms, the differences have become less noticeable.
Now TCL CSOT claims that RGB OLED not only provides better text readability and higher effective resolution, but also even 26% lower energy consumption compared to PenTile.
The first step in a bigger plan
Xiaomi 17 Pro Max is just the beginning. TCL CSOT has long been talking about an offensive in the printed OLED (inkjet printing) segment, although the panel in this smartphone was still made using the classic FMM (fine metal mask) method. The company plans to launch an 8.6G factory within two years, which is expected to enable mass production of large RGB OLED panels – from tablets and laptops to monitors and televisions.
One Hook
It is worth noting that TCL CSOT does not use a classic RGB stripe layout – subpixels are not arranged in even rows, but in a different configuration. How this will affect image quality? We still do not know – only tests will show whether this is indeed a return to “true” RGB, or rather a new variation on the theme.
Xiaomi 17 Pro Max with a TCL CSOT panel is the first smartphone in many years that breaks the PenTile OLED monopoly. If RGB actually turns out to be better and more energy-efficient, we could witness a significant change – not only in phones but also in the entire display market.
