TDK shows flexible and transparent PMOLED prototypes

TDK is showing new PMOLED panels at Ceatec 2010. The first one is a 2" (320x240) transparent OLED with a 50% transmittance. TDK says that unlike AMOLEDs, the transmittance of PMOLEDs is not lowered by driver elements. TDK is using a driver chip made by Dialog Semiconductor, and says they can mass-produce this if device makers request it.

TDK is also showing 3.5" (256x64) flexible panels, only 3mm thick. There are two variants: a color one and a monochrome one. TDK is using a resin substrate, and the displays can be bent to a curvature radius of up to 25mm. The contrast, brightness and lifetime are "almost the same as TDK's existing glass-subtrate PMOLEDs". The OLED inside is a white emitter, with RGB-color filters. TDK will start mass production at the end of 2011.

Read the full story Posted: Oct 03,2010

D Signed and the Fraunhofer Institute presents a new modular OLED lamp design

D Signed, the Serbian design studio run by Irena Kilibarda is presenting a new modular OLED lamp design, called "Lamped", on which they worked on for over 2 years. The idea is to use OLED tiles that are joined with "ball joints" so you can move it all directions - and use it as a floor lamp, hanging lamp, desktop light, etc. They have demoed the lamp in Tent London (during the London Design Festival in September) with 12 OLED tiles (provided by the Fraunhofer Institute), but they say that the idea is that you can use as many tiles as you want.

We do not have any more information currently (update: we have now posted the OLED lamp's technical specs) but we do have a couple of more great photos:

Read the full story Posted: Oct 03,2010

Osram is building a $70 million OLED lighting pilot production line

Osram is building an OLED Lighting production line in Regensburg, Germany. The company will invest 50 million euros (around $70 million) in the production facility (it will have about 200 employees initially) and in research on LED applications. Commissioning of the production line is scheduled for mid-2011.

OSRAM Orbeos OLED panelOSRAM ORBEOS

The company research will focus on the manufacturing process of the production line, and also in brightness, efficiency and lifetime of the OLED panels.

Read the full story Posted: Oct 01,2010

Upcoming Samsung Continuum to have two OLED displays?

There are rumors that Samsung is set to release a new phone called Continuum (SCH-i400). Beside the large AMOLED (probably Super-AMOLED as it might be Galaxy-S branded) it will also have a secondary OLED display just below the main. It's called the "Ticker," and it'll show weather, RSS feeds and other kinds of notifications. The
Ticker will automatically turn on when you grasp the bottom of the
phone. The idea is to get the information you need without turning on the large power-hungry main display.

Read the full story Posted: Oct 01,2010

Nokia starts shipping the N8 in Europe

After several delays, Nokia are finally shipping the N8 flagship smartphone to pre-order customers. If you order one now, it'll ship on October 18th (in the UK it costs £419.99 sim-free over at Amazon.com). The N8 has a large (3.5", 360x640) touch OLED and runs Symbian^3 on a 680Mhz CPU. It also has Wi-Fi, a microSD slot and a 12mp camera.

Nokia will also release soon three new AMOLED using smartphones: the E7, C6 and the C7. The E7 and C6 displays use use Nokia's new ClearBlack Display technology (CBD) - which is said to deliver better outdoor visibility.

Read the full story Posted: Oct 01,2010

Kia POP car concept uses a transparent AMOLED display

Kia is showing a new car concept called POP. It's an electric car that has a transparent OLED panel behind the steering wheel. The OLED displays the speed, battery charge and more information.

Kia POP inside photo

It's not really a 'heads-up-display' as it's rather low, but it still enables the driver eyes to be closer to the road when he views information compared to regular dashboard displays.

Read the full story Posted: Oct 01,2010

Toshiba scrap plans for OLED production, focus on LCDs

Update: Toshiba will still do OLED R&D for lighting equipment, see below

Toshiba Mobile Displays plans to scrap plans to produce OLED displays. They will focus on LCD panels. TMD's spokesman Mashahiro Kume said: "The plan (for mass-production) is currently frozen. We'll review the production plan again from scratch". Hopefully they'll be back into OLEDs in the future.

Toshiba 2.5-inch AMOLED prototype (2008)


Reportedly, TMD has invested $190 million in 2008 on an OLED production line back in 2008. They had plans to produce 1.5 million small OLED displays a month, with the first 3.x" panels coming 2010 and 4.3" panels in 2011. Back in 2009, Toshiba has unveiled a long-lifetime 4.15" AMOLED prototype. Toshiba and Panasonic were reported to collaborate on OLED TVs, but we haven't heard about that in a long time.

Read the full story Posted: Oct 01,2010

A couple of interesting Samsung rumors

Update: Samsung's Wave II phone will indeed use a S-LCD... so this part of the rumor is true...

There a couple of interesting rumors about Samsung. The first one says that they have sold all of their Super-AMOLED production capacity to Apple for 2011. Apple-OLED rumors never die. This is interesting as Samsung's new 5.5-Gen AMOLED plant (that will produce ten times the current capacity) will go on line in the middle of 2011 - so theoretically Samsung might indeed have enough capacity to satisfy Apple. But will they really stop using these displays in their own products?

The second rumor is that both the Samsung Wave and Galaxy-S aren't in production anymore. Samsung simply do not have enough Super AMOLED displays. Samsung are working towards Super-LCD versions of these phones. Indeed both the Captivate (AT&T) and the Fascinate (Verizon) are currently unavailable in Amazon. The Galaxy-S unlocked is still shipping, but Amazon says that just 5 units are left. But this is strange - who is buying all those Super-AMOLED displays now if Samsung is not using them in their best-selling phones?

Read the full story Posted: Oct 01,2010