OLED Smartphones - introduction and industry news - Page 59

When Apple adopted a flexible OLED for the Watch, it immediately sparked the discussions of whether - and when - they will finally adopt an OLED display for the iPhone.

Apple is set to unveil the iPhone 6S next month (on September 9) - and new rumors suggest that it will use motion-wallpapers for the lock screen, like the ones used in Apple's Watch. Some see it as a sign that the new iPhone will also use an OLED display.

Following Samsung's success with curved-edge smartphones, other phone makers are obviously thinking about similar designs. It turns out that LG has filed for several US trademarks last week, all of which hint at phones with curved edges.

The trademarks include G Edge, Super Edge, Dual Edge, Double Edge and Dual Side Edge. The G Edge seems to be the best name for LG's first curved-edge flexible OLED phone, and will complement the company's LG Flex 2 smartphone which is a vertically-curved flexible OLED smartphone.

A few days ago Samsung launched their latest phones, the Galaxy Note 5 and the Galaxy S6 edge+. Both use a similar 5.7" QHD (2560x1440, 518 PPI) Super AMOLED displays (the S6 Edge+ uses a plastic-OLED curved over the edges). Display measurement experts DisplayMate posted an in-depth review of the display used in these new phones (they tested pre-release production units).

Unsurprisingly, DisplayMate found that these are the best mobile displays they ever tested - there are many significant improvements over both the Galaxy Note 4 (which was previously crowned as the best mobile display) and the Galaxy S6. The most impressive improvements are in peak brightness, screen readability in high ambient light and the power efficiency.

Chinese smartphone start-up Zuk demonstrated a concept/prototype smartphone that uses a large transparent OLED panel. All we currently have is the video below:

It's not clear whether this is even a working transparent OLEDs. While we have seen larger transparent OLEDs (for example Samsung's soon-to-be commercialized 55" transparent OLED panels) it's not clear when smartphone-sized transparent AMOLEDs will be released commercially for such applications.

As expected, Samsung announced two new phones today, the Galaxy Note 5 and Galaxy S6 edge+. Despite the confusing naming, both phones share the same display (5.7" Quad-HD, or 2560x1440, 518PPI Super AMOLED) and hardware - with two differences: the S6 edge+ uses a flexible OLED that is curved around the edges, and the Note 5 has the S-Pen.

The rest of the features are similar - an Octacore 64-bit CPU, 4GB of RAM, 32/64GB storage, a 3,000mAh battery, 16MP camera, NFC and several sensors. Both phones will be available globally on August 21st, 2015.

Samsung is set to unveil the upcoming Galaxy Note 5 on August 13, and some say that in this event the company will also unveil a larger variant of the popular GS6 Edge (which will be called, unimaginatively, the Galaxy S6 Edge Plus).

SamMobile posted the leaked image below, which supposedly shows the two new upcoming phones. The Note 5 (on the left) will have a 5.66" QHD (2560x1440) Super AMOLED display - which is actually a bit of a disappointment as it seems to be the exact same display used in the Galaxy Note 4. Other Note 5 features (according to this leak) include an Octa-core Exynos 7420 CPU, 4GB of RAM, Android 5.1.1 and a 16 mp camera (sadly - no micro SD slot).

According to Sinmaintell Consulting, about 15 million AMOLED smartphones were sold in China in the first of 2015, up almost 20% compared to 2014. AMOLED panels are used in about 7% of all smartphones sold in china (201 million in H1 2015).

Sinmaintell expects even more smartphones with AMOLED displays to be released in the second half of the year. Most of those AMOLEDs are supplied by Samsung Display (which is now attempting to increase its AMOLED customer base) - but new AMOLED makers AU Optronics, Everdisplay and Visionox are also aiming for the smartphone market.

IDTechEx Research have recently revised its forecast for OLED displays - saying that glass-based OLEDs are not growing as fast as they expected (mostly because of Samsung's disappointing high-end AMOLED mobile phone sales) while the company is more optimistic regarding the flexible OLED market.

IDTechEx sees the glass-based AMOLED display market reaching $22.7 billion in 2022. The company's earlier estimate was $28.2 billion in the same year. The flexible OLED market will grow from $1.5 billion in 2015 to almost $3 billion in 2016 and over $16 billion in 2020. Most of those panels will be used in mobile phones. Note that the chart above does not include all flexible OLED applications (for example automotive applications).

Samsung posted their financial results for Q2 2015. As expected, it was another weak quarter, with operating profits down 4% compared to last year. Samsung's main problems are in its mobile phone division that actually saw higher profits but the company is seeing a slump due to low and medium end phone pressure from Chinese makers and the fact that they could not make enough GS6 Edge phones to meet demand (as people prefer the Edge variant over the regular GS6).

Samsung warns that the second half of the year is going to remain weak. In order to spur up sales, Samsung is set to lower the price of the GS6 and GS6 Edge phones, and it's also planning to introduce new phones soon - the Note 5 will be announced in August 13, and the company will also release new "GS6 models" - perhaps the GS6 Edge Plus that was leaked a couple of weeks ago.

Samsung sent out invitations to their 2nd 2015 - "Galaxy Unpacked Event" that will take place in August 13. Samsung will probably unveil the Galaxy Note 5. Here's the event invitation:

As you can see, Samsung is clearly hinting at a curved design - and this invitation is very similar to the Galaxy S6 event invitation sent out in early 2015. We wouldn't be very surprised to see a curved variant of the Note 5 - after all the Note 4 had its own single-side curved variant (the Galaxy Note Edge) and the GS6 Edge is very successful - beyond Samsung's own expectations.