May 2012

AGC announced that it developed a carrier glass technology that can be used to laminate its 0.1 mm-thick ultra-thin glass on carrier glass. This means that current manufacturing processes can be used with AGC's ultra-thin glass without modification. AGC's ultra-thin glass offers excellent transparency, heat resistance and electrical insulation and is also flexible.

AGC is aiming towards roll-to-roll production methods, which could not use ultra-thin glass until now. The new technology uses a 0.5-mm thick carrier glass laminated on the ultra-thin glass itself. The laminated glass substrate can be handled much the same as an ordinary glass sheet: it protects the glass (from heat, chemical processes and direct contact with processing equipment) and can be easily be removed after processing.

Update: more information on this panel from SID 2012 here

The Flexible Display Center (FDC) at Arizona State University (ASU) have manufactured the world's largest (7.4") flexible (bendable) OLED using advanced Mixed-Oxide TFTs. The panel was developed in collaboration with the US Army Research Labs.

The FDC says that Mixed-Oxide TFTs deliver high performance (fast switching speeds and reduced power consumption) and are quite cost-effective and can be produced on existing amorphous silicon production lines.

Here's a nice video showing Verbatim's tunable OLED lighting panels (Velve), taken at the L+B 2012 exhibition:

These panels are Verbatim's 2nd-Generation panels, which are twice as bright than the original panels at 2,000 cd/m². The company offers two panel sizes: 131x44 mm and 65x72 mm. Verbatim can also create custom-made OLED panel sizes, and indeed in the video you can spot three different sizes. The Velve OLED lighting panels are made together by Mitsubishi and Pioneer, and are the world's only color-tunable OLED lighting panels.

Chimei Innolux announced today that they will be able to start producing AMOLED panels in Q4 2012. According to earlier reports, CMI is prepping its 3.5-Gen AMOLED fab, which will be able to produce about 3,000-5,000 substrates a month. CMI's AMOLED panels will be branded TRUEOLED (CMI first started using this brand in February 2011). CMI will show 3.4" and 4.3" panels at SID next week, hopefully we'll bring more information from the conference.

CMI's TRUEOLED panels use a WOLED (RGBW) architecture, the same design used by LGD in their upcoming 55" OLED TVs. CMI's panels will achieve 300 ppi and a very wide view angle (80% of vertical luminance even at a viewing angle of 45°).

Engadget posted a review of the Galaxy S3, and while they think the phone is excellent, they're not sure if the S3 is the best Android phone on the market, with the main competitor being the HTC One X. They love the 1280x720 4.8" Super AMOLED HD display, and say that there are real visual improvements over the Galaxy Nexus. The colors aren't over-saturated and there's no unnatural blue-ish tint.

Regarding the controversial PenTile technology, Engadget says that it isn't so visible because the screen is large and you tend to hold it from a little bit further than in smaller phones. But it still makes text a bit fuzzy, and so if you like reading on your book, maybe it's better to choose a non-Pentile phone (I personally think it's better to use a dedicated e-paper e-reader if you actually want to read).

Audi's R18 sports prototype cars just got a new addition: an AMOLED digital rear view "mirror". They say that the AMOLED display was chosen because of the high density, excellent image quality and very fast response time - even at 330 km/h (92 meters per second) the image is still fluid, according to Audi. It's also quite light, in fact probably lighter than a traditional mirror.

A digital mirror also providers other advantages of course: it can display information (current gear, warnings, etc) and it also behaves better than a traditional mirror in bad weather. The camera is installed behind the antennas on the roof.

Reports say that AUO will start shipping 4.3" qHD AMOLED panels next month in June, and will supply panels to both Sony and HTC. HTC will use those panels in their One S smartphone. The One S currently uses a 4.3" qHD Super AMOLED display, which is a Samsung trade mark, so it's not clear how they will handle two suppliers.

SMD will still be the primary supplier of AMOLED panels to both companies, and currently the quality of the SMD panels is still superior to AUO's ones. Indeed the reports say that AUO suffers from very low yields (around 20%) in their first AMOLED 3.5-Gen line in Taiwan.

There's an interesting article in HDTV Magazine about Samsung's and LG's OLED TV program. The author says that an LG Executive old him that Samsung has given up on direct-emission OLED technology and will instead opt for LG's WOLED (RGBW) in their upcoming OLED TVs. According to the article, this is because of issues with manufacturing and scalability.

I personally find that hard to believe, but of course, like the article's author says, "anything can happen". Months ago, when we learned that LG will use a WOLED design in their TVs, it was assumed that we'll see some ugly marketing battles between those two different OLED architecture. So perhaps this is all there is to this rumor. Hopefully we'll hear something from SMD soon.

Global OLED Technology (GOT) announced today that it hired a new management team to "lead its efforts to fully monetize its OLED patent portfolio". GOT's new president and CEO is Daniel S. Carlineo, Esq.

The new team can "comprehensively cover the full scope of a patent monetization program from inventing, prosecution, and acquiring new IP assets to licensing and litigation" according to Mr. Carlineo, the new CEO.

We already heard reports that Samsung got nine million pre-orders for the upcoming Galaxy S3 already, but today we got some confirmation from UK carriers. Carphone Warehouse says that the S3 is the "quickest-moving pre-order of the year so far" and Vodafone UK say it's the most pre-ordered Android device to date. The S3 is also available unlocked in the UK, for £499.95, or $808 (that's a sim-free, 16GB model). According to Amazon it will ship on May 30.

It seems that the S3 is set to  surpass the company previous best-seller, the Galaxy S2 which in February 2012 passed the 20 million units mark.