Following Samsung's success with curved-edge smartphones, other phone makers are obviously thinking about similar designs. It turns out that LG has filed for several US trademarks last week, all of which hint at phones with curved edges.

The trademarks include G Edge, Super Edge, Dual Edge, Double Edge and Dual Side Edge. The G Edge seems to be the best name for LG's first curved-edge flexible OLED phone, and will complement the company's LG Flex 2 smartphone which is a vertically-curved flexible OLED smartphone.

US-based Polyera was established in 2005 to develop OTFT-based flexible display backplanes - suitable for OLEDs and E Ink displays. The company already demonstrated a flexible OLED based on their backplanes, and now they announced their first product, the Wove Band smartband device.

We do not have any technical details, but this looks to be an interesting device, and hopefully they will follow-up with a similar OLED-based device. Polyera will start shipping samples in December to developers and artists, and the commercial launch is planned for mid-2016.

A few days ago Samsung launched their latest phones, the Galaxy Note 5 and the Galaxy S6 edge+. Both use a similar 5.7" QHD (2560x1440, 518 PPI) Super AMOLED displays (the S6 Edge+ uses a plastic-OLED curved over the edges). Display measurement experts DisplayMate posted an in-depth review of the display used in these new phones (they tested pre-release production units).

Unsurprisingly, DisplayMate found that these are the best mobile displays they ever tested - there are many significant improvements over both the Galaxy Note 4 (which was previously crowned as the best mobile display) and the Galaxy S6. The most impressive improvements are in peak brightness, screen readability in high ambient light and the power efficiency.

Chinese smartphone start-up Zuk demonstrated a concept/prototype smartphone that uses a large transparent OLED panel. All we currently have is the video below:

It's not clear whether this is even a working transparent OLEDs. While we have seen larger transparent OLEDs (for example Samsung's soon-to-be commercialized 55" transparent OLED panels) it's not clear when smartphone-sized transparent AMOLEDs will be released commercially for such applications.

Yesterday LG Display announced a major focus shift to OLED displays, with plans to invest $8.5 billion in OLED expansion in the next three years. But is LG actually planning to do?

LGD is currently producing OLED TVs in a Gen-8 fab (which will have a monthly capacity of 34,000 substrates by the end of 2015), and a smaller Gen-4.5 fab that produces plastic-based OLEDs - with a monthly capacity of 14,000 substrates. LGD already announced plans to build a new 6-Gen (1500x1850 mm) flexible OLED fab in a $900 million investment. But what about the rest of the $8.5 billion?

IHS says that AMOLED material consumption will increase dramatically starting in the second half of 2015 as LG Display increase WRGB (WOLED) OLED TV panel production. The market will more than threefold - reaching $165 million in H2 2015, up from $58 million in H1.

IHS forecasts that the WOLED material market will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 79% from 2014 to 2019, to reach over $1.25 billion. The whole AMOLED materials market will grow at 54%, from $658 million in 2015 to $2 billion in 2019 (at a CAGR of 37%).

LG Display hosted a press conference in its Paju complex to celebrate the company's 20th anniversary. The company announced it will shift its investment focus to OLED displays - and will invest 10 trillion Won (about $8.5 billion) in the next three years to expand OLED production.

LG Display plans to develop OLED panels to be used in televisions, wearable devices, automobiles and foldable devices. LG Display cites DisplaySearch saying that the OLED market will grow to $28.3 billion by 2022.

eMagin, the OLED microdisplay maker, reported their financial results for Q2 2015 - revenues were $7 million (similar to Q2 2014 and up 17% from Q1 2015). Product revenues totaled $5.4 million and R&D contract revenues were $1.6 million. Operating profit was $0.9 million, while net loss was $0.1 million. eMagin generated $0.4 million in positive cashflow (the company now has $5.4 million in cash or equivalents).

eMagin XGA096 OLED-XL

eMagin says that they are making good progress on direct-patterned OLEDs and is continuing to enhance and demonstrate their new microdisplay-based HMD prototype.

BMW unveiled their latest top-of-the-range racing-grade road car, the Concept M4 GTS. From what I understand, this car, despite the 'Concept' part in its name, will actually be available in limited-production.

The Concept M4 GTS has some new technologies, one of them being OLED taillights. BMW has been showing several OLED lighting concepts in the past years, collaborating with Astron Fiamm, Philips, LG Chem and OSRAM. I do not know who provides the OLEDs for this new concept.

As expected, Samsung announced two new phones today, the Galaxy Note 5 and Galaxy S6 edge+. Despite the confusing naming, both phones share the same display (5.7" Quad-HD, or 2560x1440, 518PPI Super AMOLED) and hardware - with two differences: the S6 edge+ uses a flexible OLED that is curved around the edges, and the Note 5 has the S-Pen.

The rest of the features are similar - an Octacore 64-bit CPU, 4GB of RAM, 32/64GB storage, a 3,000mAh battery, 16MP camera, NFC and several sensors. Both phones will be available globally on August 21st, 2015.