SonyEricsson just announced a new smartphone called Xperia Arc, and it uses a new kind of LCD display that SonyEricsson calls Reality Display. It's a 4.2" TFT-LCD with 854x480 resolution, and SonyEricsson says that it provides a brighter and clearer image compared to other LCDs - thanks to the new "Mobile Bravia Engine" technology.

Universal Display and LG Display have renewed their commercial supply agreement. The current agreement will run for 6 months, until June 30, 2011. This is more of an extension than a real new agreement. UDC also extended their license with Samsung a few weeks ago.

The original agreement between UDC and LG Display (LG.Philips back then) was signed on May 2007. LG is using UDC's PHOLED materials in AMOLED displays, and pay them for the chemical sales and a license fee.

Update: It seems that the OLED microdisplays are made by Sony themselves and not by eMagin...

Sony is showing a new 3D Head-Mounted-Display (visor) prototype - that uses two 720p (1280×720) OLED microdisplays. Other features includes 5.1 surround audio and a blue LED strip on the front.

This is just a prototype, but it's good to see Sony using OLEDs there (the OLED microdisplays are made by Sony).

A few days ago Samsung announced that they will show flexible and transparent OLEDs at CES. We assumed that these will be the same displays shown at the FPD 2010 exhibition (in November 2010), and we were right. But still check out this great video of the 4.5" flexible displays:

LG says that they are still committed to OLED televisions, and will in fact expand on their existing lineup of OLED TVs in 2011. LG is currently selling the 15" EL9500 OLED TV in Europe and Asia, and has also been showing a 31" 3D model for quite some time (which will go on sale soon hopefully). Now it seems that the company will show us newer (and hopefully larger!) models in the coming year.

Those OLEDs are very expensive, but LG thinks that it helps them be recognized as "sector innovators". It's quite clear that we can't expect a commercially priced OLED during 2011 from LG - the company estimates that this will happen only at around 2013.

A few weeks ago LG showed a new bright display and a new flagship phone codenamed "B". Now they have officially announced this new display called NOVA (which is based on LCD technology). LG claims that NOVA displays are extremely bright (700 nits) but also very efficient - even more so than OLEDs. In fact LG says that an AMOLED will consume twice as much power to display a full white screen (but we already know that AMOLEDs are less efficient than even regular LCDs on white screens). NOVA displays are also highly readable under direct sunlight.

LG also announced the Optimus Black Android (v2.2) phone which has a 4" NOVA display and will ship sometimes during the first half of 2011. LG says that the Optimus Black will be the world's slimmest smart phone (at 9.2mm).

Update: We got some new details about these new displays.

Samsung has announced their latest AMOLED display, the Super AMOLED Plus. They say that the new display feature 50% more sub-pixels, and also features improvements in contrast and outdoor readability over the 'original' Super AMOLED displays. Samsung also announced the first phone to sport these new displays - the Infuse 4G. The display is a 4.5" one, the largest AMOLED Samsung ever made!

Back in July 2010, Samsung announced that they plan to soon double their AMOLED displays' efficiency, lifetime and power consumption. Perhaps the Super AMOLED Plus is the result of that research. We first heard of an upgrade to the Super-AMOLED technology in November 2010, we thought the name would be Super AMOLED 2.

There are reports that Samsung is set to release a new Android phone for the Korean market with a 4" Super-AMOLED display. The SHW-M190S will have similar specs to the Galaxy-S but will look differently, and will include an HDMI out:

Caledon Controls announced a new transparent conductive PET film which can be an alternative to ITO in OLED displays (and other applications such as solar cells, RFID, touch panels, etc). The new film uses the PDIM (Pre-Deposited Images in Metal) metal deposition techniques which was developed by Vast Films.

PDIM is a PET based film available in thicknesses ranging from .0005 to .010 with electrically conductive graphic or circuit images deposited onto its surface. PDIM offers fine line resolution - and allows for conductor traces down to 10um in width to be laid into a grid pattern allowing over 90% clarity.

Samsung announced a massive 43.1 trillion won ($38.3 billion) investment plan for 2011 - $26.5 billion will go into new plants and the rest will go into R&D. Samsung says that they will invest 5.4 trillion won ($4.8 billion) on OLED factories this year.

We already know that Samsung is committed to a $2.2 billion 5.5-Gen AMOLED plant which will go online in July 2011, but now Samsung announced further investments in 2011. A couple of months ago there were reports that Samsung plans a Gen-8 pilot line for OLED TVs that will produce 4000 55" OLED TVs monthly. Perhaps Samsung will indeed build this plant during 2011.