Display improvements were once again featured at yesterday’s Apple keynote event. The most obvious improvements may have been the larger display and thinner form factor but most interesting to dot-color are the color claims.

Just like the new iPad, Apple claims that the iPhone 5 can display “44% more color saturation.”

Apple SVP of Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller talks color saturation at the iPhone 5 keynote

Let’s do some simple math to see how the iPhone 5 stacks up against older iPhones and last week’s color performance claim from Motorola.

• iPhone 4S IPS LCD: 50% NTSC color gamut (CIE 1931^†)
• iPhone 5 IPS LCD: 50% * 144% = 72% NTSC color gamut (CIE 1931)
• Motorola Droid Razr Maxx HD AMOLED: iPhone 4S (50%) * 185% = 92.5% NTSC (CIE 1931^‡)

So Motorola is still king of the fall 2012 smartphone color saturation, based solely on marketing claims. That said, I wouldn’t be surprised if they updated their marketing to say that the Droid Razr Maxx HD offers 28% more color saturation than the iPhone 5 once it hits store shelves in a couple weeks. I plan to measure all of the announced devices to verify these marketing claims, but for now, this is all we have to go with.

Apple also claimed to be able to match the sRGB standard used in TV and movies. With the addition of the iPhone 5, nearly all of Apple’s flagship products (with the exception of the MacBook Air) now meet this standard. This means content should look very consistent across all Apple devices and may open up the possibility for serious content creation apps in iOS.

It also means we’re only just now catching up to an average CRT display from circa 1990, as the sRGB standard is based on the capabilities of phosphor materials used in CRTs. And even still, the new displays are only covering about 35% of the range of colors a human eye can see. There’s still plenty of room for improvement in display color performance (as well as updated content delivery standards, but that is a whole different post).  Hopefully if we keep on this kind of pace with display enhancements, next year we’ll start to see a push beyond the limits of last century’s color standards.

^† We’re using the long outdated CIE 1931 color space and NTSC 1953 gamut standards here since this is clearly Apple’s reference when they claim 44% more saturation and sRGB coverage. 50% * 1.44 = 72% and 72% of NTSC 1953 gamut in the CIE 1931 color space is also called the sRGB color gamut.

^‡ It is not clear which color space Motorola is referencing; we are assuming CIE 1931/NTSC 1953 for ease of comparison.