Ignis Innovation announced that samples of its 20" 1296x768 (XGA) AMOLED display will be available in August 2013. Ignis will offer these samples to display makers for evaluation of Ignis' MaxLife compensation technology in their own displays (more on this below). They will sell the display for low volume, demanding applications such as medical imaging and scientific imaging.

The 20" AMOLED panels use a-Si backplane and are made by RiTdisplay. The panels are only 1.3mm thick (the complete display module is 3 mm thick). The refresh rate is 240Hz.

Blackbody announced it has opened the world's first OLED showroom - in New York's Soho district (25 Greene Street). This showroom will enable everyone to experience OLED lighting designs and will also offer OLED lamps for the general public and architects and American companies.

Update: turns out that I was wrong and Samsung did develop an OLED microdisplay, an XGA one back in 2011

The Korea Times claims that Google's next gen Google Glass HMD (or "wearable computer") will use OLED microdisplays made by Samsung Display. Or at least SDC made a proposal for Google to replace the current LCoS panels by its OLED displays. The current Google Glass prototypes use Himax' LCoS displays.

At SID 2013, SDC's CEO did mention OLED microdisplays on silicon during his keynote speech. He also says that these kinds of displays may be used for augmented-reality devices such as Google Glass. Last month Google's CEO Larry Page visited Samsung's OLED facilities, and apparently Page is "interested in Samsung's OLED business". So now the rumors are that Google are interested in small sized OLED displays.

eMagin officially announced their XGA OLED microdisplay for camera EVF (and other near-to-eye applications). The XGA096 OLED-XL is the company's smallest microdisplay ever (at 0.48" diagonal) and it features a 9.6 micro pixel design. it Actually has a resolution of 1036x780, or 12 extra rows and columns beyond XGA for optical alignment or extended image area. eMagin says they are already taking orders for samples of this new microdisplay.

We have heard a lot about this camera XGA EVF, and it's good to finally see a real product. During their latest conference call, eMagin reported that they missed their first EVF opportunity with a camera maker for an external EVF because they didn't have enough time to complete the module design. They hope to win the internal EVF contract and if so shipments wil begin in late 2013 or early 2014.

A couple of months ago Toshiba developed a unique transparent OLED lighting device structure that emits most of the light (over 95%) in only one direction. Now at SID 2013 the company unveiled more information about the new structure, calling these panels "Transmissive Single-sided OLEDs".

Regular transparent OLEDs use transparent electrodes (usually made from ITO) for both sides of the panel. When the OLED is turned on, it emits light in both directions. Sometimes this poses problems - if you want to embed such panels in windows, for example, you don't want light pollution on the outside which just wastes electricity. In addition, when such OLED panels are turned on they are no longer transparent.

A few weeks ago we reported that AU Optronics developed a new 65" Oxide-TFT direct-emission OLED panel (the largest OLED panel ever made). Today at SID 2013 AUO discussed this new panel and unveiled the prototype:

AUO says that the panel is Full-HD in resolution, and it uses an "advanced" Oxide-TFT backplane. It was made in a Gen-6 production line which uses the largest Fine Metal Mask (FMM). AUO says that the uniformity of this panel is excellent. AUO also developed new pixel compensation driving technology which is employed in this panel. As can be expected from an OLED panel, AUO reports that their latest OLED features low power consumption, high picture quality, high contrast, high brightness, fast response time and free viewing angles.

Last year Qualcomm announced that they no longer plan to mass produce Mirasol displays, but during SID they unveiled their latest panels, and obviously they are still developing the technology. The company's latest panels feature a very high pixel density (557 PPI). The 5.1" panel has a resolution of 2560x1440 while the 1.5" panel's resolution is 600x600:

Mirasol displays are very power efficient (they draw about a sixth of the power required by a similar OLED or LCD panel). On the other hand, the color reproduction isn't up to par with LCDs or OLEDs. Still this is an interesting technology to watch.

Back in December 2012 we posted a new Apple OLED rumor - about the iWatch: a bluetooth smart watch that has a 1.5" touch PMOLED, apparently made by RitDisplay. In February 2013 the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal both posted about this rumor.

Today these rumors resurfaced. This time Taiwan's Economic Times reported that Apple had made some prototypes with a 1.8" PMOLED, but decided they were too large. Now they are testing 1.5" PMOLEDs, and have ordered a thousand units from Foxconn - for internal experimentation.

Samsung and LG Display are showing these cool unbreakable OLED panel prototypes, and just in time I dropped my Galaxy S phone and the display broke - So, now I also understand why an unbreakable display is good. Until I get a new phone, I'm now back to my old Nokia 1202. A phone with real buttons and a battery that lasts for days. How charming!

So. If any phone maker has a spare phone with an OLED display (hint hint, samsung), I'd be happy to get a unit for a review here on OLED-Info. It'll spare me the decision of which phone to buy...

LG Display unveiled a 5" plastic-based bendable flexible AMOLED panel at SID 2013. LG did not release any technical details. As far as we know this panel uses polyimide coated substrate and direct-emission RGB sub-pixels (as opposed to LG's OLED TV which use an WRGB technology - white OLEDs with color filters).

Earlier this month LG Electronics reiterated their plans to release a phone with a plastic based OLEDs by the end of 2013, and it seems that at SID the LG Display officials say this is still on track. LG Display is currently using their 4.5-Gen OLED fab in Paju to work on these flexible displays, which won't provide them with a a lot of capacity. LG Display may covert its 6.5-Gen LTPS line in Gumi to flexible OLED production, but that hasn't been decided yet.