Solomon Systech announced a new PMOLED driver, the SSD1360, that supports super high brightness (up to 600 cd/m²) OLEDs. This character display driver can handle 2-line displays (each with 16 to 24 characters) or a dot display of 120 X 16.

The SSD1360 supports ASCII, English, European and Japanese characters with three built-in ROMs. The driver supports I²C (up to 400kbit/s) and also 4/8-bit parallel and serial interfaces.

As we get closer to Samsung's Galaxy S5 flagship launch (which will probably take place at around March), the rumors keep flowing. Only a week ago we posted that a Chinese site claims that the GS5 will sport a 5.25" WQHD (560 PPI) LCD (made by Sharp), but this time the Samsung-focused blog SamMobile says that the upcoming phone will use an AMOLED. Indeed it will sport a WQHD resolution and the size will be around 5.25".

SamMobile also confirms that the S5 will come in two models, a plastic one and a premium one made from metal. Other features include a 16mp camera (which may or may now feature hardware optical image stabilization), an Exynos 6 eight-core CPU (or a Snapdragon 805 in some markets) and Android 4.4 (KitKat).

UK mobile phone retailer Carphone Warehouse is now offering LG's G Flex for pre-order. There are several plans available (on both O2 and EE), but the best value one is suggested at £79 ($129) up front and a £52 ($85) monthly cost (the 24-month contract includes unlimited talks, SMS messages and 5GB data).

If you order before March 31st, you'll also get a chance to win an LG 55EA9800 55" curved OLED TV.

Global OLED Technology (GOT) filed a complaint in the Supreme Court of the State of New York against eMagin for breach of license agreement. eMagin has been a licensee of GOT's patent portfolio (which originated at Kodak) since 1999.

GOT says that eMagin breached its patent license agreement by failing to pay annual minimum royalty payments, neglecting to report or pay royalties for the sales of licensed products, and breaching certain confidentiality obligations.

So CES 2014 is now over, and one thing is certain - at least in that event, LG is making a much stronger push into OLED TVs than their arch rival Samsung. While Samsung only showed new 55" bendable 4K OLED prototypes, LG showed many prototypes and two new products, including a 77" curved 4K OLED TV that they plan to launch soon for $29,999.

But it seems that it's not just about TVs on display at CES. A Samsung visual-display VP says that there are significant OLED manufacturing issues and they only expect cheap OLED TVs to enter the market in 3 or 4 years. LG on the other hand sees a "rapid shift into OLED TVs". The market will remain small in 2014 (30,000 to 50,000 units) but LG expects the market to ramp up quickly.

According to ETNews, during CES Samsung Display has been privately showing a new foldable display prototype. SDC continues to develop their foldable OLEDs, and they are still only track to release the first foldable mobile phone in 2015.

SDC Foldable OLED concept, 2013

According to the report, the prototype panel was 5.68" in size, it uses a polyimide (plastic) substrate and it includes a touch panel. The touch panel uses metal-mesh electrodes instead of ITO (which is brittle and cannot be used in foldable displays).

Samsung's Visual Display Business executive VP, HS Kim, says that OLED manufacturing issues have been more significant than previously though, and he expects that it will take 3-4 years before cheap OLED TVs really arrive. In the meantime, Samsung will put more focus on UHD (4K) televisions, and they expect the market to really take off in 2014.

Samsung's rival LG, on the other hand, sees a "rapid shift to OLED technology". We're not sure how rapid is that though, as according to LG the OLED TV market will remain small in 2014 - about 30,000 to 50,000 units globally.

A couple of days ago we reported that China's Hisense is showing a 55" flat OLED TV prototype at CES 2014. According to the video below, company officials say they plan to bring their OLED TV to the market by Q4 2014:

As far as I know, the OLED panel itself is provided by LG Display (who's also providing OLED TV panels for China's Skyworth).

A couple of days ago we reported that Samsung is showing 55" bendable OLED TVs at CES, and today we found this video showing Samsung's flexible OLED TVs in action:

According to the video, those bendable TV prototypes feature UHD (4K) resolution. As a reminder, Samsung is also showing 85" bendable TV prototypes, but those are apparently LCD panels. LG, of course also unveiled a bendable OLED of their own - a 77" 4K one.

Update: it turns out that researchers from Durham University have also published an article on OLEDs for Li-Fi networks, just a couple of months ago

Researchers from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland are investigating how OLEDs can be used to enable better Li-Fi networks. A Li-Fi network uses rapid flickers in room lighting to send communication signals which complements Wi-Fi and increase bandwidth.

The idea is that patterned OLEDs are placed on top of small blue LEDs (which are themselves driven by high-speed chips). The OLEDs actually perform as a color conversion layer - they multiplex the signals into other colors. The researcher imprint a diffraction grating into the OLED panels, and these gratings control the direction in which the signal was sent. This is used for relatively slow-speed direction-controlled communication - to provide increased security or reduce power consumption.