Samsung Display - Page 65

According to reports from Korea, Samsung has started construction of a new flexible OLED fab, which will be called the A4 line. This will be Samsung's first Gen-7 line as the company is aiming to expand its technology gap over its upcoming OLED competitors who are all building Gen-6 line.

A Gen-7 line substrate is 1870x2200 mm in size - as opposed to 1500x1800 mm for Gen-6. This means that you can produce more displays per substrate and price per screen is lower. Scaling up evaporation OLED production is not so easy, but it seems that Samsung managed to solve its technologies hurdles - mainly the FMM metal masks and the LTPS annealing process.

Samsung started shipping its Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ phones in Korea, and some of the first customers are complaining that the display have a reddish tint - which did not go away even after correcting the color display settings. This issues was quickly labeled as "Red Gate"... will Samsung face a new crisis?

Samsung itself says that there are no quality issues - and that the problem can be adjusted. Customers are welcome to replace their device, though, at service centers in Korea.

Genesis (a premium sub-brand of Hyundai) unveiled its latest concept car, the GV80 SUV. The car sports several new technologies (including a hydrogen fuel cell) - including a long curved OLED display - 22" in size.

Earlier this year Chrysler unveiled its Portal concept car - which sported an elongated flexible OLED that seems very similar to the one used by Genesis. According to reports the Chrysler flexible OLED prototype was produced by Samsung Display.

Samsung's latest flagship phones, the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+ are not shipping yet, but according to reports that early reaction from retailers suggest that the larger S8+ variant is more popular than expected.

Samsung first aimed to produce 50% more Galaxy S8 variants than Galaxy S8+, but have decided now to increase the ratio of S8+ devices to 45%. The new phones will start shipping globally on April 21th.

DisplayMate posted a comprehensive review of the 5.8" Quad HD+ Super AMOLED display used in Samsung's latest flagship, the Galaxy S8. DisplayMate says that this display is the most innovative and high performance smartphone display that they have ever lab tested - and it earned DisplayMate’s highest ever A+ grade.

Samsung incorporated several innovations in this new displays. First of all of course is the "Inifinity" design - the full screen display. This display is also a high-resolution 3K (2960x1440) one and it features a new and accurate 100% DCI-P3 color gamut, certified by the UHD Alliance for Mobile HDR Premium. The native color gamut is actually larger - it has a very impressive 113% of DCI-P3 and 142% of sRGB / Rec.709 gamuts. Samsung's latest AMOLEDs are brighter than before - with a peak brightness of 1,020 nits.

The Nikkei Asian Review says that its sources claim that Apple ordered 70 million 5.2" flexible OLED displays for its first OLED iPhone, that will be launched by the end of 2017. IHS estimates that SDC actually plant to produce 95 million OLEDs for Apple in 2017 as it expects higher demand from Apple.

This report follows several reports of Apple's OLED orders in the past years. In 2016 it was suggested that Apple paid $4.3 billion upfront to secure 100 million panels, and in February 2017 it was reported that Apple ordered an extra 60 million OLED panels from Samsung Display.

ETNews reports that Samsung Display's OLED production investment in 2017 is expected to reach $8.94 billion, slightly higher than last year's $8.76. 2017 will be the second year in which SDC invests large amounts (investment in previous years were about $3.5-$4.5 billion) as demand for OLED panels is increasing.

According to the report SDC recently started to convert it's LT-1 line (6-Gen) from LCD production to flexible OLED production (the new line will be called the A4 line). This conversion was decided upon in 2016. SDC's L7 fab will have a capacity of 30,000 substrate per month and the convesrion will cost about $2.7 billion. OLED production will commence by the end of 2017.

Samsung announces its latest flagship phones, the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy S8+. Both phones sport what Samsung brands as an Infinity Display - a curved flexible Super AMOLED that is almost without any bezels. Samsung did not release an edition with a non-flexible rigid OLED, but this isn't really a surprise.

The Galaxy S8 has a 5.8" Quad HD+ (2960x1440, 570PPI) OLED while the S8+ has a larger version (6.2") but with the same resolution (529 PPI). Both phones feature a 10nm Octa-core 64bit CPU, 4GB of RAM, 64GB of storage, microSD slot, IP68 water and dust resistance, Android 7.0, Samsung Bixby assistant and a Dual-Pixel 12MP OIS camera. Both phones will launch globally on April 21st 2017.

Samsung's Galaxy Tab S3 is now shipping in the US for $699 (Wi-Fi edition). This gaming and entertainment optimized Android V7 tablet features a 9.7" QXGA (2048x1536) Super AMOLED display, a quad-core Snapdragon 820 CPU, 4GB of RAM, 32GB of storage, microSD slot and quad-stereo speakers.

According to report from Korea, Samsung Electronics has decided to start adopting OLED displays in all of its tablet devices and to increasingly use OLEDs in laptops. The Galaxy Tab S3 is the company's latest OLED tablet.

According to the Korea Herald, Samsung Electronics demonstrated several new display technologies in a private room during the Mobile World Congress last month. All of these technologies are expected to enter production within the next year or two, according to the source quoted by the report.

1,200 PPI AMOLED for VR

The report claims that Samsung demonstrated a high-resolution AMOLED panel for VR applications. The AMOLED on display featured a 1,200 PPI - much higher than Samsung's current highest density displays which are 577 PPI. Samsung's aim is to reach 1,500 PPI which will greatly enhance the VR experience.

In November 2016 Sunic Systems announced that it developed an plane-source evaporation-FMM based AMOLED production process that can reach very high densities. The 100um mask announced in November can achieve a PPI of 1,500. This may be the system that Samsung is now testing. Sunic says that eventually this technology will enable even 2,250 PPI.