May 2018

Only four months after LG installed 69 OLED TVs at Seoul's Incheon Airport it was reported that the TVs suffer serious permanent image-retention, or burn-in. ZDNet now reports that LG replaced the problematic OLED TVs at the airport's Korean Air Miler Club Lounge with LCDs.

The report suggests that LG was not sure it could solve the burn-in issues with this particular display, and so opted for an LCD. LG denies that burn-in is a serious issues and says the TVs's lifetime are over 30,000 hours.

China PMOLED and AMOLED producer Visionox demonstrated its first transparent OLED at SID Displayweek, a small transparent blue panel (60% transmittance).

The tag next to the display said this was a transparent AMOLED, but it is more likely that it was a PMOLED display - after all it was a simple monochrome blue one. In any case it is great to see Visionox developing transparent displays, in addition to the other next generation technologies it demonstrated at DisplayWeek.

Thermal activation sensitized fluorescence, or TASF, is a new type of TADF OLED emitter material developed at China's Tsinghua University. During SID Displayweek, Visionox demonstrated the first TASF prototype display.

We do not have a lot of information on this new emitter technology, except what Visionox provided at the conference: a sky-blue color (468 nm, CIE: 0.153, 0.201), a luminous efficiency of 26.6 cd/A and an external quantum efficiency of over 17%. The brightness of this OLED PMOLED display was 800 nits.

IHS estimates that a notch-design increases the production cost of a smartphone display (whether LCD or OLED) by more than 20%. A notch-type 5.9" OLED (like in the iPhone X) costs $29, 25% higher than the cost of a regular 5.8" OLED.

IHS explains that cutting the notch results in yield loss, which is the main driver of the higher costs (the panel itself, of course, is also larger before cutting the notch in the comparison IHS makes). In theory, cutting a plastic OLED is easier than the glass-based LCDs, and IHS forecasts that manufacturing costs for notch OLEDs will fall far more rapidly than the costs of notch LCDs.

Samsung announced three new entry level smartphones in its Galaxy J series, all with Super AMOLED infinity displays.

The three phones are the Galaxy J4 (5.5" 720x1280, 267 PPI), the Galaxy J6 (5.6" 720x1480, 294 PPI) and the Galaxy J8 (6" 720x1480, 274 PPI).

Sony only started to ship its 2018 AF8 OLED TVs last month, but apparently the company is already getting ready to release its next-generation OLEDs. Sony accidentally listed some new models on its support website - including the XBR-55A9F and the XBR-65A9F.

The page has been already removed, and we don't really know whether these new TVs are real, or maybe these are just future 2019 model numbers.

China-based OLED producer Visionox announced that it started to produce flexible AMOLED displays at its new 6-Gen OLED fab, in Hebei Province. The new line has a monthly capacity of 30,000 substrates (although it is likely that it will take some time before the new fab runs at full capacity).

Visionox's first flexible OLED fab total investment is around $4.5 billion. Visionox is already producing rigid AMOLED and PMOLED displays.

Sony launched a new OLED microdisplay, the ECX339A, which has the world's smallest pixel pitch (according to Sony) at 6.3um. The 0.5-inch microdisplay's resolution is 1600x1200 (UXGA) and it supports a frame rate of up to 240 fps. The maximum brightness is 1,000 nits.

Sony already started sampling this new microdisplay in January 2018, and mass production is planned for November 2018. The price of each sample is ¥50,000 - or about $460 USD.

Samsung Display had a large booth at SID DisplayWeek, showcasing its latest OLED technologies (and also its QD-enhanced LCD TVs).

A large part of SDC's booth was dedicated to the company's automotive OLED technologies which included a wide range of flexible and rollable OLED displays - including flexible, transparent, rollable and a lightfield display.

Samsung Display unveiled new OLED technologies and displays at SID 2018 - including some new and enhanced VR AMOLED prototype panels.

The first panel on display was a 3.5" 1440x1600 (616 PPI) 90Hz display, and the second was a 3.2" 1824x1824 (806 PPI) 90Hz display.