OLED Smartphones - introduction and industry news - Page 61

Samsung reported their financial results for Q1 2015 - the company's six consecutive quarterly decline in earnings, due to slowdown in its smartphone business. Samsung says it sees a pickup in its smartphone sales. Samsung Display actually saw a 12% increase in sales - mostly due to increased OLED and premium TV panel shipments.

Samsung's OLED shipment increase was apparently mostly to "new premium products" - which probably means the well-received GS6 and GS6 Edge.

According to reports, Samsung is seeing better-then-expected demand for the Galaxy S6 Edge - and SDC will not be able to produce enough flexible OLEDs. Earlier this month I speculated that SDC may try to start producing at its new 6.5-Gen A3 flexible OLED fab sooner then planned - and today Bloomberg reports that this is indeed the case.

According to Bloomberg, Samsung already started to produce flexible OLEDs at the A3 fab - which was expected to enter production in June.

Samsung launched the Galaxy Note Edge back in September 2014 - the company's first mass market flexible OLED phone. The Nice guys at Samsung Israel sent us a review unit a few weeks ago - and here's our hands-on review.

As always this is not a full phone review - we leave those to the experts and for people that actually love mobile phones. We will focus on the display - and our experiences of having this device for a few days. The first part is written by Ron, and then Roni will give her own views.

Market research company IHS says that the Galaxy S6 Edge costs about $290 to build (that's the 64GB model sold on Verizon) - and the flexible curved super AMOLED display (5.1" 2560x1440, 577 PPI) costs $85. Just for comparison, the GS5 BOM was estimated at $256 (and the regular GS6 is probably somewhere in between).

Other expensive parts include the application chip ($29.5), the 3GB of DDR4 memory ($27) and the 64GB flash memory ($25).

According to our information Taiwan's AU Optronics started to mass produce 5.46" Full-HD AMOLED panels, aimed for smartphone applications. AUO is already producing 1.63", 4.3" and 5" AMOLED displays. AUO is also developing a 1.4" circular AMOLED display.

AUO 5.7-inch WQHD AMOLED prototype

It's great to see AU Optronics stepping up its AMOLED involvement, even though the company's current production capacity at its AFPD Gen-4.5 LTPS fab in Singapore is quite limited.

Last month Samsung Electronics reported high demand from mobile carriers for their Galaxy S6 and its curved-display variant the Galaxy S6 Edge, and reports suggested Samsung may want to increase the GS6 Edge output. We speculated that this won't be as easy as it sounds as Samsung Display's flexible AMOLED capacity may be enough.

Today Reuters reports that Samsung expects record shipments for the GS6 smartphones, and it will struggle to meet demand for the S6 Edge variant, due to production constraints. Analysts estimate that demand for the GS6 Edge will exceed supply throughout 2015.

Samsung will start shipping the Galaxy S6 and its curved-display variant the Galaxy S6 Edge in the US next week, and the reviews are in. Engadget says that the GS6 is Samsung's best phone ever, and the display is absolutely gorgeous. We're not surprised - we already know that the new Super AMOLEDs are best mobile displays ever.

Both the GS6 and the GS6 Edge sport a 5.1" 2560x1440 (577 PPI) super AMOLED display, curved on both edges on the S6 Edge. Engadget says it the curved flexible OLED looks very cool - but as expected it is not very useful.

As some of you know, I've been following OLEDs for over 15 years (OLED-Info itself is over 10 years old) - and the promise of flexible displays has always been there. In fact most people believe this is the true major benefit of OLED displays.

In 2013, both Samsung and LG started to produce flexible AMOLED displays. This was a watershed moment for the OLED industry - but only for people in the know. The production capacity was small, the adoption was limited and most people never heard of the G Flex, the Galaxy Round or the numerous Samsung wearable devices that used flexible OLEDs.

Earlier this month, Samsung Electronics reported high demand for their Galaxy S6 and its curved-display variant the Galaxy S6 Edge - in fact the GS6 Edge received 5 million orders (from mobile carriers, not final customers).

Now we hear reports from Korea that Samsung Electronics may decide to increase the GS6 Edge output - in fact they may want to triple the planned production, as they think the GS6 Edge may sell as many units as the 'regular' GS6.

During the Mobile World Congress last week, Blackberry unveiled a prototype phone that has a curved display - similar to the Galaxy S6 Edge one. Besides the touch display, the new prototype also has a slider keyboard.

Blackberry did not reveal anything regarding this phone or when they plan to release it. But it's great to see them try out what is undoubtedly a flexible OLED display for a future phone, and it's interesting to know that either Samsung Display or LG Display is supporting Blackberry with such a display.