OLED Smartphones - introduction and industry news - Page 52

Samsung Electronics halted production of new Galaxy note 7 devices, and the company told all its global partners to stop selling the smartphones. Samsung issued a recall due to faulty batteries - but the recall is not enough and in several cases the new units also exploded. Samsung also asked consumers to power down their devices.

The Note 7 has a 5.7" 2560x1440 (518 ppi) flexible Super AMOLED dual-edge display - which DisplayMate says is the best performing mobile display ever tested. The excellent display is certainly not helping Samsung at this stage...

Market Analyst UBI Research estimates the flexible OLED shipments used by Apple iPhone will grow from 34 million panels in 2017 (in which Apple will, according to UBI, launch its first OLED phone) to 518 million panels in 2021 - surpassing Samsung Electronics that will sell 298 million flexible OLED smartphones.

This is a bold statement by UBI - especially as flexible OLEDs have been used by Samsung for years now with great success, and the company is actually planning to adopt foldable OLED displays in future devices - which may completely revolutionize the segment if successful.

Yesterday Apple announced two new devices - the iPhone 7 (and 7 Plus) and the new Watch Series 2. The new Watch is Apple's 2nd-Generation smartwatch that has several improvements over the first generation - including a built-in GPS, waterproofing and better hardware.

We're mostly interested in the display, of course, and the Watch 2 display features the same size and resolution as the first generation - either 272x340 38mm or 312x390 42mm. The main improvement in the new display is that it is twice as bright at 1,000 nits (the original Watch's display had 450 nits).

There are reports that in a few cases, the battery of Samsung's latest phone, the Galaxy note 7, exploded while charging. Samsung Electronics is expected to announced a recall of all the Note 7 phones it sold since launching the phone last week.

It seems that less than 0.1% of the phones sold include a faulty battery, that can simply be replaced. But Samsung don't wish to appear as if it is delaying anything or hiding anything and rather increase its credibility worldwide.

Earlier this month we reported that Samsung Display cannot supply enough AMOLED displays to Chinese phone maker Oppo, as SDC's production capacity is fully booked, and Oppo is seeing higher demand than anticipated. In fact some reports say that Oppo is selling more phones in China than Apple.

Now Oppo confirms this shortage of AMOLED display panels for the R9, and the company's president announced that Oppo will release an LCD variant called R9km. The LCD in the R9km will be supplied by JDI. The Oppo R9 (also known as F1 Plus) has a large display (5.5" FHD, 401 PPI) and is now available for around $500 in the US, unlocked.

According to the Financial Times, demand for Samsung's new Note 7 smartphone (launched just last week) is very strong - to the point that Samsung cannot supply enough phones and it had to delay the launch in some markets.

The Note 7, Samsung's flagship large smartphone (phablet), uses a 5.7" 2560x1440 (518ppi) flexible Super AMOLED dual-edge display. The FT quotes an analyst from Macquarie saying that the major production obstacle is at SDC, specifically "applying a new touch technology to plastic OLED screens".

UBI Research says that 4" to 6" AMOLED panels shipments will reach 318.8 million in 2016 - up 27% compared to 2015. The fast growth will continue to reach 505 million in 2017, 902 million in 2018, 1.17 billion 2019 and over 1.35 billion in 2020.

Flexible OLEDs will lead this growth as the new displays will be increasingly adopted by display makers globally. In 2016, flexible OLEDs will amount to 22% of the OLED market, but this will grow to 56 in 2018.

Samsung announced its Galaxy note 7 last week, and our friend Raymond Soneira from Display Mate has published a comprehensive review of the Note 7 display. The Note 7 has a 5.7" 2560x1440 (518 ppi) flexible Super AMOLED dual-edge display - which DisplayMate says is the best performing mobile display ever tested.

This is hardly a surprise - Samsung's OLED displays have been advancing at a very fast rate, and have surpassed the best LCDs on all parameters (except price, that is). Displaymate says that the major display enhancements introduced in the Note 7 include a new wider color gamut and new HDR mode specifically for 4K videos and a record peak brightness of over 1,000 nits.

Samsung has been developing foldable OLEDs for a long time, and several reports in the past few months suggested that Samsung is working on a foldable phone (or maybe two?), to be released in 2017.

Foldable OLED concept (2013)

The so-called Project Valley is still under development at Samsung. Samsung Electronics Mobile Communications Business President Koh Dong-jin says that Samsung aims indeed to roll out foldable smartphones in the future - but the company "needs more time" to actually bring this to market. Interestingly he said that the major challenges are in the software and user interface - perhaps the development of the foldable OLED display itself is nearing completion.

Digitimes reports that mobile phone maker Oppo may not reach its goal of shipping 90-100 million mobile phones in 2016. Digitimes says that Samsung Display cannot supply enough AMOLED displays to Oppo as SDC's production capacity is fully booked.

Oppo R7

According to Digitimes, Oppo originally aimed to ship 60 million phones in 2016, but later increased its aim to 90-100 million. I guess Oppo reached out to SDC asking for more AMOLED displays, but SDC already committed its capacity to other phone makers (in China and elsewhere).