CSR Pls developed the world's thinnest wireless touch keyboard and demonstrated the device at IFA 2013. This flexible keyboard is only 0.5 mm thick and connects to any device via CSR's low-power Bluetooth technology.

The keyboard is produced using printable electronics technology provided by Atmel and Conductive Inkjet Technology (CIT). Atmel provided their touch silicon and CTI enabled the flexible membrane using their printed conductor technology. They use a reel-to-reel printing process to apply copper (or other conductors) to the surface of the ultra-thin and flexible membrane.

Last month I posted about the new wave of UHD (4K) TVs. 4K resolution usually means 3840x2160 and offers four times the pixels of FHD (hence the 4K name). In my post I quoted DisplayMate's Raymond Soneira that said a human being can't really tell the difference between 4K and FHD panel in a 55" TV viewed from a normal viewing distance.

LG UHD OLED TV prototype

This sparkled a lively debate. Some people say that 4K images are superb to Full-HD ones. Only today Paul Gray, DisplaySearch's director for EU TV research posted his thoughts on the IFA exhibition - and he says 4K provides a completely new way of viewing and enables immersion even better than 3D.

AUO's president Paul Peng says that large-size OLED panel will not challenge LCD panels in the next few years due to low yields and high costs. In fact, he says that OLED TVs may end up like SED and FED TVs which never really entered the market.

AUO 65-inch AMOLED panel prototype

As far as we know AUO is still struggling with small-size OLED panel production, but Peng claims that the company already produces those panels. In the past few months AUO demonstrated several small OLED panels - a 4.4" 1900x600 (413 PPI) panel,  a 5" Full-HD (443 PPI) AMOLED panel and their newest 5" HD720 AMOLED panels which seem to be closer to production. If Peng is right and the company indeed started production this will be great news. Earlier reports suggested that HTC and Sony are both waiting to integrate AUO's AMOLEDs in the mobile devices.

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So the IFA 2013 event is now over - and there has been a lot of interesting OLED TVs on display, so I thought I'd post a short summary post. The most impressive OLED TV was probably LG's 77" curved UHD (4K) WRGB one. I don't think this huge OLED panel will enter production soon, but it was still an impressive feat and it's the world's largest OLED panel ever. LG also showed their new flat-panel Gallery OLED TV.

LG 77-inch curved OLED TV prototype

Samsung also unveiled 4K OLEDs - one curved and one flat. These were smaller at 55", and Samsung says this is just a "proof of concept". Samsung had curved LCDs on display as well, 55" and 65" in size and both offering 4K resolution. Sony also unveiled a curved LCD: the S990A curved LED-backlit LCD. Sony's panel is 65" in size and only offers Full-HD, but it is closer to market (they are accepting pre-orders now for $4,000) and it features the color-enhancing Triluminos display technology (QDVision's Quantum-Dot films).

Cynora and the Karlsruhe Institute for Technology (KIT) launched a new project called cyFLEX that aims to develop develop flexible and luminescent surfaces for smart packaging and advertising applications based on OLED lighting panels. The project follows-up to Cynora's cyFLEX panel demonstration shown in October 2012 and uses the company's solution-processable copper-based TADF OLED emitters.

Cynora will develop OLED materials that can be applied for mass-market applications - integrated into packaging. They hope to develop a low-cost, efficient manufacturing process based on printing and coating.

Update: these front-lights are most likely LEDs and not OLEDs...

Ford unveiled a new concept car, the S-MAX passenger-van at the Frankfurt Motor Show. The headlights are made from OLED lighting panels:

I'm not sure who makes these OLEDs, but I guess it's either Osram or Philips. From what I can see in those photos, it looks somewhat similar to the 3D OLEDs Philips developed with Merck and Audi a few months ago. Osram is also actively looking at the automobile market for its OLED lighting panels and promised us some new prototypes during the exhibition (they also promised commercial availability by 2016).

Researchers from the University of Utah developed a new polymer light emitting device that can be tuned to emit light of different colors, including white (without the need to mix several emitters). The new material is a polymer molecule doped with platinum. The same material can also be used to develop efficient OPVs or Spintronics-based memory devices.

The device currently being developed at Utah isn't an OLEDs as it only emits light when stimulated by other light (such as a laser) and not when simulated by an electrical current. But the researchers say that a white OLED based on this technology is possible and predict that it will be developed within two years. The current device isn't actually white, it emits colored color (more on this below) and they say it will take about one year till they manage to develop a white Pt-1 device.

Apple introduced two new iPhone smartphones: the high end 5s and the "colorful" 5C. Both phones use the same display used in the iPhone5: a 4" 1136x640 (326 ppi) Retina LCD display.

The new iPhone 5s sports a 64-bit A7 CPU, the new M7 chip (monitoring motion data in real-time), LTE, a new image sensor 15% larger than before and a 170-micron-thick fingerprint sensor built into the Home button. The 5C is a plastic polycarbonate colorful phone that basically has the same hardware as the iPhone 5.

Yesterday it was reported that Japan Display is planning to raise ¥200 billion (around $2 billion USD) in an IPO on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. JDI will be valued at around ¥700 - $800 billion ($7 to $8 billion USD) and will use the money to invest in new capacity and OLED technology.

JDI was formed in November 2011 by Sony, Hitachi, and Toshiba who combined their small/medium panel production capabilities and received $2 billion from Japan's Innovation Network Corp (INCJ). The company is currently the largest small/medium display producer and reportedly supplying displays to Apple an Google among others.