EverDisplay Optronics is a new Chinese company (established in October 2012) that aims to become China's first AMOLED production facility. I was told that the company has acquired the investment required for this factory and have already began to purchase equipment and build the fab.

EverDisplay's fab will produce AMOLED displays based on LTPS substrate. Their plan is to start making samples by the summer of 2014, and mass production will begin by Q4 2014. The production capacity will be 15,000 monthly substrate and the focus is on small and medium size panels.

When Samsung unveiled the Galaxy Note 3 they said it's got a 5.7" Full-HD Super AMOLED display (386 PPI) - but they didn't reveal what is the sub-pixel arrangement. Some sites say it is a Pentile display while other say it not.

Galaxy Note 3 display up close

According to Chinese site RBMen, the Note 3 uses a Diamond Pixel architecture - similarly to the Galaxy S4. Diamond Pixel is indeed a PenTile subpixel scheme, and there are twice as many green subpixels as there are blue and red ones. The green subpixels are oval and small while the red and blue ones are diamond-shaped and larger. So perhaps both reports are right: it is indeed a PenTile display, but not a regular one...

Raymond Soneira, the display expert from DisplayMate finally got his hands on an OLED TV - the LG Curved 55" 55EA9800. He spent two weeks with this TV testing and measuring and now he published his results. His main conclusion? "the picture quality is absolutely stunning!" and this TV, even though it's a first generation OLED TV, outperforms all LCD and Plasma TVs.

Raymond tested for color accuracy, and he says that the factory calibration is superb. In fact, the picture quality and accuracy is visually indistinguishable from perfect based on Raymond's extensive Lab tests. This is a very impressive achievement.

Samsung announced that they sold over 38 million Galaxy Note and Note 2 smartphones since launching the original Galaxy Note in 2011 - those large "phablets" phones have been very successful for Samsung, and all of them use Super AMOLED displays. Samsung expects to sell over 10 million units of the recently announced Note 3.

The Galaxy Note 3 sports a 5.7" Full-HD Super AMOLED display (386 PPI), a 2.3 Quad-Core CPU (or a 1.9Ghz octa-core in some markets), 3 GB of RAM, 32/64GB of storage, a 13 MP camera (will be capable of 4K videos in some markets) and Android 4.3. It is smaller and lighter than the Note 2.

Last month we reported that Sony is set to update the PS Vita, and now the company indeed announced the new PS Vita PCH-2000 (Vita 2013). Sadly, the display is a 5" 960x544 LCD instead of the 5" AMOLED display in the original Vita. Sony says that recent changes in LCD technology enabled them to showcase more native colors.

The new Vita is lighter and thinner than the previous model, and extends the battery life by an hour. It features a quad-core ARM CPU, 512MB of RAM, 1GB of internal storage and two cameras. It will launch in October in Japan for ¥18,980 (about $190) and will come in several colors.

LG didn't announce it officially yet, but the 55EA9800 55" curved OLED TV just arrived on Amazon.com, with a price tag of $9,999. That's a sharp price drop from $14,999 - but it was expected after LG's OLED TV price cut in Korea. Amazon says the TV is currently unavailable, but hopefully they'll stock it soon. You can already order it and they'll ship it when available.

Up until now the EA9800 was only available via BestBuy, but it seems Best Buy's exclusive sale period is soon over. LG's 55" curved OLED TV is still more expensive than Samsung's curved OLED, the KN55S9C, which costs $8,999 (and is now shipping from Amazon). Reviews of both OLED TVs are raving, and HDGuru says both TVs are the best TVs they ever tested, with Samsung's OLED outperforming LG's.

As promised, Panasonic showed 56" 4K (3840x2160) OLED TV panel at the IFA 2013 exhibition. The company had several prototypes on display, and I believe these are the same panels as the ones Panasonic unveiled at CES 2013 in January 2013.

Panasonic panels are made using an "all-printing" method, and Sumitomo Chemical revealed that these prototypes use the company's PLED materials. Panasonic's panel uses a substrate (probably Oxide-TFT) provided by Sony (which are actually made by AU Optronics) - as part of the two companies collaboration. According to the latest reports, they only plan to start OLED production at around 2015.

True to their word, AUO demonstrated new 4.3" flexible AMOLED panels at the Touch Taiwan 2013 conference. The new flexible panels are thinner than AUO's previous prototypes at 0.2 mm (vs 0.3 mm before). They use a plastic substrate and thin film encapsulation. Here's a nice video showing those flexible OLEDs:

The video also shows other advanced panels from AUO, but unfortunately they did not capture AUO's 5" HD AMOLED displays on show.

Engadget posted a short video showing LG's 55EA8800 Gallery OLED TV. The reported says that the TV looks very sleek, the images are great and the sound is very good too. 

Engadget also reports that LG's staff says that this OLED TV willl launch in Germany by the end of 2013 for €8,999 (almost $12,000).

The 2.5-years 11 million Euro R2Flex project recently concluded. The project, which aimed to develop new technologies for efficient and affordable flexible OLEDs manufactured using a roll-to-roll (R2R) process, presented a flexible OLED desk luminaire prototype. It uses two OLED lighting panels, produced at COMEDD and serially connected via flexible contacting.

The flexible OLED panel was produced on a metal foil. Metal was chosen because it is a cost-effective substrate as one of the key goals in the project was lowering the production cost of OLEDs.