Imerj and Frog has unveiled a new Android phone (or is it a mini-tablet) prototype that has two 4" WVGA AMOLED displays. When closed it's just like a regular phone (although quite thick), and when open you get a 6" 800x960 tablet - although the displays are separated by a few millimeters. In the 'open' mode the device is rather thin - just 7mm. This is just a prototype - but the companies say it's a few months from production.

The specs of this unnamed prototype: a dual-core TI OMAP processor, 1GB of RAM, 32GB of internal storage (there will be more models, up to 128GB!), micro SD card, Android, 5Mp camera (720p video).

According to reports, LG Display started to provide OLED displays to Nokia (the deal to supply OLEDs to Nokia was announced back in January 2011). Currently it's only a small amount of displays, but they say that Nokia is already shipping phones with LGD's OLEDs. The rest of Nokia's OLEDs come from Samsung Mobile Display. LG Display started producing AMOLEDs in their 4.5-Gen plant in February 2011.

The same report says that LG Electronics will release an OLED phone in the second half of 2011. LGD's "main display" will remain IPS-LCD, but they are ramping up OLED capacity in their Paju plant.

Future now produced a nice video about The Fraunhofer IPMS OLED program. The video features sample lamps, OLED production and testing equipment, Tabola lighting panels and even a short visit to Novaled. Professor Karl Leo (the IPMS director) is interviewed throughout the video. It's a nice introduction to OLED lighting:

Engadget posted a short hands-on review on the new Nokia N9. They claim that the display uses Nokia's Clear Black Display (CBD) technology - although Nokia's own press release never mentioned that. CBD adds a special filter on top of the display which blocks light reflection - and helps the AMOLED perform better outdoors.

In any case, Engadget say that the AMOLED display "is truly a sight to behold, with stunning viewing angles, a curved Gorilla Glass front, and some pretty excellent (for AMOLED) performance out in the sunlight... It's easily one of this new phone's great strengths".

LEDON OLED lighting is showing a new OLED module that is the brightest ever at 1001 lumens. The new lamp (which is aimed towards professional lighting applications) uses 9 LG Chem OLED panels and LEDON's own outcoupling and electrical contact system. The color temperature is 4077K and the efficacy is over 30 lm/W. The total lamp size is 300x300² with a thickness of 5 mm. The average luminous flux area density is over 11,000 lumen/m².

We talked to LEDON and they say that they expect LG Chem to start producing their OLED lighting panels in 2012. Acuity Brands who are also using LG Chem's OLED panels say that they expect to start shipping lamps in Q1 2012. LG Chem announced their OLED lighting product plans back in 2009. Back then, LG Chem planned to use green and red PHOLED materials made by Universal Display, and SFC's deep-blue fluorescent OLED.

AUO originally planned to start producing AMOLEDs in their Taiwanese Gen-3.5 fab in Q2 2011. A few weeks ago their CEO admitted that they still have some technical issues to solve, and today we have more information. It appears that AUO is still struggling with the vacuum evaporation deposition of the organic layers, and will have to delay production - probably to Q3 or (more likely) to Q4 2011.

AUO 14-inch OLED prototype

AUO is still installing equipment in their Gen-4.5 fab in Singapore (converting a production line from LTPS LCD to LTPS AMOLED). They have decided to adopt half-size Gen-4.5, because of the same deposition issues. Production in that larger plant is scheduled for Q3 2012. 

OSRAM announced it has developed a new white OLED panel that achieve record efficiency - 87 lm/W. The tested panel had a brightness of 1,000 cd/m² and a color temperature of about 4,000K. At 5,000 cd/m² brightness the panel offers almost 75 lm/W.

OSRAM used a pure thin-film approach. The current was distributed evenly over the active surface using a special injection electrode on the light-generating surface and offers homogeneous light density from every angle.

Nippon Seiki announced a new line-up of 0.8" and 2.7" monochrome energy efficient PMOLED modules. Those new panels offer around 50% energy saving compared to Nippon Seiki's older modules. The green panels have been available since 2010, but now the company added red, white, blue and amber options.

0.8-inch PMOLEDs

The 2.7" panel offers 64x256 resolution (0.26x0.26mm pixel pitch) and 90 nits brightness. The active area is 16.6x66.5 mm.

We've got some interesting updates regarding Chimei Innolux (CMI) OLED program. As a reminder, CMI was born as a merger between Innolux, CMO and TPO. Both CMO (through its CMEL subsidiary) and TPO had active OLED programs, and CMEL were even producing panels up until the merger. CMI's own OLED plans are still unclear.

Back in February 2011 we reported that CMI indeed plans to start producing OLEDs in two plants - a Gen-3.5 (620x750mm) LTPS/OLED Plant in Jhunan, Taiwan and a Gen-5.5 (1,300x1,500) IGZO-TFT plant in Tainan (also in Taiwan). Later on there were reports that CMI actually scrapped all OLED plans for now. But in March the company unveiled a couple of new AMOLED prototypes (3.2" and 3.5", shown above).

Remember Mitsubishi's Geo-Cosmos 6-meter PMOLED globe? The company installed this at the Tokyo Science Museum and now they published a beautiful video showing it:

The Geo-Cosmos is a spherical Diamond Vision OLED - which means that it's made out of small PMOLED modules. In fact it uses 10,362 panels (!) - each 96x96mm in size - total resolution is more than 10 million pixels. Each module has 32x32 resolution - and it's made out of 4 smaller sub-modules.