OLED Smartphones - introduction and industry news - Page 60

ZTE announced two new devices today, both with AMOLED displays. First up is the Axon Watch, which is a smartwatch based on the Chinese TenCent OS (which means it will be sold only in China). It sports a circular 1.4" AMOLED display (400x400) a heart rate monitor, GPS and 4GB of internal memory.

The second device is the Axon Mini - the world's first smartphone that features a force touchscreen. It uses a 5.2" Super AMOLED display - and that's the only information ZTE released at this stage. The company also announced two more Android smartphones - but both use LCD displays.

It seems that Samsung will soon release a new phone called the Galaxy S6 Edge Plus. If this story is true, it will be a GS6 Edge variant with a larger display (around 5.7" inch, as opposed to the 5.1" display found in the original GS6 Edge). The display will of course be a flexible AMOLED, bent on both edges.

Apparently Samsung already sent store dummy units, and you can it next to a Galaxy Note 4 above.

Up until now analysts estimated that Samsung's GS6 and GS6 Edge have been very successful, but today Samsung announced that Q2 earnings will be lower than expected - and this was probably due to lower than expected smartphone shipments.

Samsung already said that they could not keep up with the demand to the GS6 Edge - as more people wanted the curved-OLED variant over the regularly shaped GS6. It seems that this lead to lower than expected GS6 sales. Samsung increased their flexible OLED capacity and will now be able to meet demand - but it may be too late financially as Apple is set to release a new iPhone soon and Samsung may have "missed the window" on the GS6.

Reports from Korea suggest that Apple is considering to use an OLED display in the 2018 iPhone. The main reason that is quoted is that Apple wants to improve the saturation and brightness of their mobile phone displays.

According to the reports, LG Display may be chosen as the main OLED supplier. LG Display's current small-sized OLED capacity is very small, and so the company will convert its LCD facilities in Gumi to produce OLED displays, with mass production reached by the end of 2017.

Anandtech posted an interesting article discussing the power consumption of Samsung's AMOLED displays, from the GS4 to the GS6. The basic results are show in the graph below, which compares the power consumption of a completely white screen at different brightness levels:

You can see that The GS4 is by far the worst performing screen of the bunch. Samsung is consistently improving its AMOLED displays, but from the GS5 onwards it also introduced PSR (Panel Self Refresh) functionality which helps reduce power consumption on static images.

Samsung is seeing much higher demand for the Galaxy S6 Edge, and they cannot produce enough flexible OLEDs. According to the OLED Association, Samsung Display will triple its flexible OLED production capacity - from around 3 million monthly panels to about 8-9 million by the end of the year.

Interestingly, while earlier reports suggested that SDC started producing at its new 6.5-Gen A3 flexible OLED fab sooner then planned, The OLED-A says that Samsung decided to first expand production at the older 5.5-Gen A2 flexible fab - mostly because yields at the smaller fab are better.

According to a market analyst, sales of Samsung's GS6 and GS6 Edge are off to a good start, with over 6 million phones sold by the end of April, less than a month after the official launch. The GS6 and GS6 Edge together have fared better in the first 20 days compared to the GS5 sales back in 2014.

The same analyst says that the GS6 outsold the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 plus during the launch. The main problem is the supply issues of the GS6 Edge - we know that Samsung Display cannot make enough flexible displays, although reportedly it has started production in their next Gen-6 fab earlier than planned to meet demand. The GS6 is expected to sell over 50 million units by the end of the year - better than the GS4 that sold 45 million units in the same period - and was Samsung's best selling phone ever.

SID announced their display of the year awards toward DisplayWeek 2015, and OLEDs won both awards. The Gold award went to the flexible OLED display used in Samsung's Galaxy Note Edge device (5.59" curved WQXGA panel). The silver award went to LG Display's 65" 4K curved OLED TV panel. AUO's 1.4" circular AMOLED, now in mass production, was honored with the 'best in show' award.

LG Display's 1.3" 320x320 circular flexible plastic OLED (used in the G Watch R) won the display application of the year, silver award.

SamMobile reports that Samsung launched a new 'secret' project code-named Project Valley (or Project V) that is a dual-screen device, probably a foldable phone.

Foldable OLED concept (2013)

We've seen some false reports from SamMobile before, but we've also seen some accurate ones. This one actually makes sense, and isn't really a surprise - Samsung has been promising a foldable phone towards the end of 2015 for almost two years now. Following the success of the GS6 Edge, it's highly likely that Samsung is developing mobile devices with even more innovative designs.

Towards the end of 2014 China's Everdisplay (EDO) started producing AMOLED displays with an initial capacity of 600,000 5" panels per month, and the company already claims at least one Chinese smartphone maker as a customer. Today Digitimes reports that the company (which they refer to as Hehui Optoelectronics, which is Everdisplay's Chinese name) has signed up HTC and Huawei a customer, with several new AMOLED phones expected later in 2015.

Everdisplay's first AMOLED display is a 5" 720p (293 PPI) panel - and it's likely that this will be the panel adopted by HTC and Huawei. On the other hand, EDO is also developing 5.5" and 6" AMOLEDs for mobile phones, so these may end up on the new phones too.