Amazon has launched a new, larger Kindle e-book reader yesterday: the Kindle DX. The display is a large 9.7" 1200x824 (at 150 ppi) E Ink, with 16 shades of gray. It will cost 489$, and it's available for pre-order. 

Amazon Kindle DX

The older Kindle had a 6" display, and is available for 359$. 

Can OLEDs compete against ePaper displays such as E Ink? I'm not sure. Those screens have better battery life, look more paper-like, and are great in direct sunlight. They are also much cheaper currently.

The SID (Society for Information Displays) conference is the leading Display trade show. SID 2009 will take place at the end of the month (31/5 till the 5/6). What can we expect from this show?



First of all, we shouldn't expect any new OLED products or TVs... Companies do not usually use SID to announce new products - this is not a consumer show. But we can still hope to catch sight of medium/large OLED panels from Sony, LG, CMEL or Samsung.

In the past few years, OLEDs have taken center stage at SID, and I guess this trend will continue, as OLEDs are now widely considered the best choice for next-gen displays. In the past year we've seen several flexible, foldable and transparent displays. In SID 2009 we'll surely see new flexible OLED prototypes. It'll be interesting to see whether UDC and LG can update on their joint flexible-OLED work. We know that LG are planning to actually introduce products based on these panels in a few years.  In SID 2008, Samsung showed their 'foldable' phone prototype. Perhaps we'll catch an update on this concept. Samsung have said they are actually closer to introduce transparent OLEDs, so they might unveil new transparent OLEDs as well.

Companies might also use SID to announce technical advances in OLEDs. We'll probably see efficiency and lifetime improvements, alongside new panels and design concepts. Let's hope for good news!

Last week we reported on Polymertronics - a new company that's working on an OLED plaster to cure skin related diseases. Now we have some more information and a nice new photo.

Polymertronics OLED plaster

Polymertronics are making their own Small-Molecule OLED materials, called OLED Red Diamond. One of the formulation can actually be printed via inkjet, and is also UV curable. That version is cross-linkable polymer.

They acknowledge the fact that using an array of OLEDs, rather than a single large one is more complex, but they say it does have a number of benefits.

Polymertronics are also working on the electronic interface of the OLEDs, and claim to icnrease the lifetime of the OLEDs by several orders of magniturde using a 'clever design'.

Lumicure, the 2nd UK company working on a similar device, is using one 'large' OLED panel.

We've just added 4 new reports from IDTechEx to our reports database. There's one report on displays (OLEDs, epaper, etc) and the rest are  printed-electronics related reports.

We now list reports from DisplaySearch, NanoMarkets, IdTechEx and ResearchAndMarkets. Altogether we now list 20 reports.

Engadget reviews the new Sony OLED Walkman. Here's what they say on the OLED display (3" Touchscreen 432x240):

"[The OLED is] nothing short of awe-inspiring. The first time we spotted the home screen, we couldn't help but be taken aback -- colors were dramatic, crisp and downright lovely. It really shines when viewing album art, photos and video..."

Sony OLED Walkman The 16GB version costs 400$ in Japan, and Engadget doesn't think the OLED display is worth the price:

"So yeah, the OLED panel itself definitely lives up to the hype, but unfortunately we're not so sure a fancy display justifies the steep increase in price versus LCD-based rivals."

Osram is showing a model "Light House' to showcase OLED lighting. OSRAM are using thin, flexible and even transparent OLEDs, applying them to all sorts of surfaces - windows, ceilings and floors:

OSRAM light house model

Digital Foci has dropped the prices on their OLED photo frames. The 1.5" one is only 24$ (down from 50$) and the larger 2.8" one goes for "less than 89$").

Digital foci pocket album

So 24$ can now get you an OLED display. Interestingly, it's not the cheapest OLED around! The cheapest OLED online is the JWIN JP121, a 1.2" OLED frame, which costs 17.26$.

One of the great things about OLEDs is that they are power efficient. Interestingly, for OLED displays, the application makes a great impact on the power consumption. The more bright-pixels, the more power is consumed.

If OLEDs are adopted widely, it will start to make sense to design software in such a way as to maximize power efficiency. This will be very useful for mobile devices - be it phones or laptops.

Here are a few ideas that can be used to maximize battery life with an OLED:

• Use a black or dark background.


• Hide parts of the application that is not used - like menus, for example. The less displayed, the better.


• Use only a part of the screen: in OLED laptops, it will make sense to allow for modes in which not all the screen is used. For example - use only half the width, to save half the energy.


• Dim the background: if you have a window that is not in focus, for example, it can be dimmed. This also saves power.


• Instead of just a screensaver after several minutes (which will actually save power if mostly black), one can have the display slowly dim after a few seconds.


• Use color wisely: to show white on an OLED, you'll have to emit light from 3 different pixels (Red+Green+Blue). To show true red, only one pixel is required. This basically means that showing a colored font will be more efficient than a white one. Showing red is more efficient than orange, too.


• Use a flickering display: This might be a bit drastic - but perhaps we can have a mode in which each pixel is turned off at half the time. It'll save half the energy. An "interlaced" display is a similar idea.

So, okay, some of these can be annoying, and have only a slight effect. But these may prove a great option for long battery life. If I'm taking a digital camera on a long trek for a few days, I might be happy to be able to take more photos in exchange for a red menu on the OLED monitor.

Do you have other ideas to save power? Please comment and share!

A couple of weeks ago we reported that Cowon is releasing a 32GB version of the S9 Curve player. It's now availabe in the US, for 300$. Here's the product page on Amazon.

Cowon s9 player, now at 32GB

The S9 Curve has a 3.3" (480x272) touch screen AMOLED display, FM radio, 500Mhz dual-core CPU, T-DMB, TV-Out and more. 

We still can't get enough of Philips new OLED Lighting panels. DesignBoom is showing great new photos of the various OLED lamps and "wall" Philips were showing last week. Here are a couple of photos I really liked:

Philips ceiling OLED lamp

Philips standing OLED lamp