OLED Smartphones - introduction and industry news - Page 72

LG is set to launch the G Flex today in Korea (for about $940), they have released a short video teaser in Korean:

A few days ago Samsung held their Analyst Day 2013 with a lot of fascinating information regarding the company's present business and its future plans. It was clear from Samsung Display's presentation that the company sees OLED as the leading future display technology and puts a great emphasis on flexible displays. They see flexible OLED penetration into the mobile display market reaching 40% by 2018 (up from 0.2% in 2013) - this is based on research by DisplaySearch.

In fact Samsung Electronics's CEO announced that the company aims to bring fully-foldable screens sometimes in 2015. In the same statement he mentioned that there is still plenty of room for improvement for the Galaxy Gear and it's likely that the company is already developing a wearable device with a flexible AMOLED display.

LG is set to launch the G Flex tomorrow in Korea (for about $940), and according to this new video, the device actually flexes a little (you have to apply some force, though):

The G Flex has a 6" 720p RGB flexible OLED display made by LG Display. We know it is based on a plastic substrate, but it isn't known when it is covered in plastic or in a curved glass (like Samsung's Galaxy Round). If it flexes it makes sense this is an all-plastic device. But then it should have been "unbreakable" too, but LG never mentioned this in any PR so it is strange.

Bloomberg posted a rather curios story today claiming that their sources say that Apple are planning to release two new phones in H2 2014. These phones will have larger displays (4.7" and 5.5") which will feature "glass that curves downward at the edges".

Samsung YOUM phone prototype

So this is rather strange. Perhaps they simply mean that the cover glass will curve downward at the edge of the phone, or it details a plastic OLED based phone that curves around the edges - like Samsung's prototype from CES 2013 (shown above) or SEL's recent OLED prototype shown last week. But then it won't have glass at all.

LG's mobile company senior VP says that the G Flex received a good response for its design from the three major mobile carriers in Korea (SK Telecom, KT and LG Uplus). The phone is set to launch on Tuesday for 999,900 Korean Won (about $940) and LG says they are now in discussions with global carriers to bring the flexible OLED phone to the US, Japan and Europe.

The G Flex has a 6" 720p RGB flexible OLED display made by LG Display that is curved from top to bottom (unlike Samsung's Galaxy Round which is curved from left to right). Other features include a 2.3Ghz Snapdragon S800 CPU, 2GB of RAM, 32GB of internal memory, a 13MP camera, NFC, Android 4.2.2 and a 3500mAh non-removable battery (LG Chem's curved battery). The G Flex has two rear-mounted buttons and a "self-healing" back (that will heal scratches quickly).

The Galaxy Round, Samsung's first flexible OLED device sports a 5.7" Full-HD (386 PPI) Super AMOLED display is already shipping in Korea and even reviewed and tested by the display experts over at DisplayMate. Engadget now posted a short hands-on review of this device, see link below.

Engadget does not mention anything about the display's quality, only about the curvature ergonomic and mostly talk about other features of this phone. This is a shame as DisplayMate says that the curve display is a major breakthrough - mostly because it reduces ambient light reflections and so improves screen readability, image contrast, color accuracy, and overall picture quality. It'll be interested to hear what more regular consumers say about this display.

LG officially launched the G Flex today in Korea. This is the first phone that uses LG Display's flexible plastic OLED display. The G Flex has a 6" 720p RGB flexible OLED display made by LG Display that is curved from top to bottom (unlike Samsung's Galaxy Round which is curved from left to right). Unlike Samsung, LG did specifically say this is a plastic-based display, but they too don't seem to mention the fact that it is shatterproof.

The G Flex has a 2.3Ghz Snapdragon S800 CPU, 2GB of RAM, 32GB of internal memory, a 13MP camera, NFC, Android 4.2.2 and a 3500mAh non-removable battery (LG Chem's curved battery). The G Flex has two rear-mounted buttons and a "self-healing" back (that will heal scratches quickly).

Samsung posted their quarterly results for Q3 2013 - a record operation profit of $9.6 billion from sales of $55 billion. Net profit was over $7.7 billion. Smartphone sales growth is slowing, but Samsung's business was booster but memory chip profits and cheaper smartphone sales (what they call mass-market products).

Regarding OLEDs, the company says that high end smartphone OLED panel sales increased. This includes newer products such as the Note 3. For Q4 2013, the company plans to enhance OLED market leadership by "improving differentiated product offerings such as 5.7 FHD (Glass & Curved)".

Samsung announced today that they sold over 40 million Galaxy S4 phones worldwide, six months after launching their flagship phone. This is an impressive number but it's actually lower than Samsung first anticipated - the company hoped to sell 10 million devices a month and reach 100 million sales.

Samsung's GS4 features a 4.99" Full-HD (1920x1280, 441 PPI) Super AMOLED display, an Octa-core (Quadcore in some models) 1.6Ghz CPU, 2GB of memory, 13 mp camera and a 2,600 mAh battery. The GS4 includes a lot of new software features and special UI controls, include the Adapt Display which allows extensive display calibration adjustments.

When Samsung launched the Galaxy Gear, the only devices that could connect to it were the new Galaxy Note 3 and the Galaxy Note 10.1 tablet. Now Samsung announced that it is offering Android updates (to v4.3) to more devices (including the GS4, GS3 and the Note 2) and these will now be able to connect to the Galaxy Gear.

The Galaxy Gear, Samsung's first smartwatch, features a 1.63" 320x320 (275 PPI) Super AMOLED display, a 1.9 mp camera (720p videos), 800Mhz processor, 4GB of storage, 512MB of RAM, Bluetooth 4, and a 315 mAh non-removable battery.