LG's first flexible OLED phone, the G Flex, is already shipping in Korea, and we know that Samsung wants to bring it to the US, Japan and Europe. The FCC published new filing documents that discuss the G Flex (model number D959). This usually means that we should expect this phone to launch soon in the US, for both AT&T and T-Mobile.

The G Flex has a 6" 720p RGB flexible OLED display made by LG Display that is curved from top to bottom (unlike Samsung's Galaxy Round which is curved from left to right). Other features include a 2.3Ghz Snapdragon S800 CPU, 2GB of RAM, 32GB of internal memory, a 13MP camera, NFC, Android 4.2.2 and a 3500mAh non-removable battery (LG Chem's curved battery). The G Flex has two rear-mounted buttons and a "self-healing" back (that will heal scratches quickly).

According to new rumors, Samsung plans to release a smartphone in 2014 that will feature a three-sided display. This is a YOUM OLED display that wraps around the edges, probably similar to the prototypes the company showed at CES 2013:

YOUM phone prototype, CES 2013

According to the rumors, the phone will be released in 2014 (probably the second half of the year). Samsung hasn't decided yet whether this will be a Galaxy Note phone, or a Galaxy S one, or an altogether new class of phones.

Researcher from Korea's Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) developed a new transparent OLED electrode. They report that this electrode material, developed using colloidal lithography, is efficient, transparent and avoid the "haziness" apparent with thin metal or oxide based electrodes.

The researchers have already obtained patents for this invention in Korea and they hope that this technology could be commercialized in transparent OLEDs within three years.

Earlier this month we reported that First-O-Lite established a volume production fab, producing 55 lm/W OLED panels that use the company's external light extraction technology. The company already started producing panels, and they tell us that currently they are only providing OLEDs for installations inside China.

First-O-Lite sent us a couple of photos from two existing installations. The one you see above is the company's own demonstration room, and below you see an installment at Nanjing University Science Park, which features their 8 shaped logo made of OLED panels. Both installations use over 600 OLED Panels.

Taiwan has a large display industry, but in recent years it seems that it is lagging behind Korea, Japan and China in AMOLED technologies. We asked a local industry expert to check out the three main Taiwanese AMOLED companies (AUO, Innolux and RiTDisplay), and now we post on his updates.

AUO

As we reported already, AUO started producing AMOLEDs in their 4.5-Gen fab in Singapore after years of delays. According to our source, AUO is actually only producing samples. Those 5" 720p (295 ppi) panel samples have been been submitted to a company based in China. Earlier reports suggested AUO is going to supply HTC and Sony but it appears these two companies will keep using LCDs for now.

Reseachers from the Universities of Bonn, Regensburg, Utah and the MIT developed a new method to make triplets radiate directly in OLEDs rather than harvesting the triplets by reverse intersystem crossing to generate delayed fluorescence. Basically this means they enabled phosphorescence OLEDs without any heavy atoms at room temperature.

The researchers created new emitter molecules that can store electrical energy for significantly longer than is conventionally assumed. This means that these molecules can exploit the spontaneous jumps in spin orientation in order to generate light - so the energy that is lost as heat in regular fluorescent OLEDs is released as light in those molecules.

The Oculus Rift is a VR HMD being developed by Oculus VR. The high profile company raised $16 million (partly by crowdfunding) and already offer "development kits" HMDs. Their consumer version (Oculus CV) will hopefully be released in 2014 and will feature improved components, for example a Full-HD display. The current versions use LCD displays (7" in size, although early prototypes used 5.6").

Oculus VR development edition

Yesterday, at Oculus' development forums, a new discussion suggested that Oculus aims to adopt an OLED display in the Oculus CV. They quote Oculus CEO Brandon Iribe as saying that the need a much faster display than the current one, and that OLED was the technology that could achieve that.

The EU launched a new project called GLADIATOR (Graphene Layers: Production, Characterization and Integration) that aims to improve the quality and size of CVD graphene sheets and reduce the production cost. They will demonstrate this new graphene by producing large area flexible OLEDs.

GLADIATOR directly targets the transparent electrodes market and will demonstrate that ITO can be matched on performance (over 90% transparency and a resistance of less than 10 W/sq) and cost (under 30 €/m²).

A couple of weeks ago we reported that TCL plans to invest 24.4 billion yuan (just over $4 billion) to build a new 8.5-Gen TV fab in Shenzhen, owned by CSOT. This fab (called Huaxing Power Two) will have two lines, one for a-Si LCDs and one for Oxide-TFT (OLED TV and LCD TV, it seems) panels. The Oxide-TFT capacity will be 30,000 monthly substrates.

Now there are reports that the TCL Group announced that the Huaxing Power Two proposal was passed during a recent shareholders meeting. Also it was reported that TCL plans to use the AMOLED line to produce 55" OLED TV panels. It is not clear but it seems that TCL still needs to raise the money for this new fab.

Blackbody recently launched their new OLED lighting showroom in New York's Soho district. One of the installations there is a cool I.RAIN chandelier (designed by Thierry Gaugain) that is animated (using a detector unit):

I.RAIN chandeliers are modular, and this one uses 504 OLEDs. It's actually considered a rather small one (the area in total is 5 meter square). Blackbody tells us that the OLEDs are driven at 1,500cd/m², and the color temperature is between 2500K to 2900K - they say that the temperature isn't uniform and it creates a nice diversity of whites. This specific I.RAIN seems to have the OLEDs at more or less the same height, unlike other installations (shown in the images below).