Competing technologies - Page 31

DisplayMate, the experts on display optimization, testing and evaluation, posted a new article comparing the GS4 display (4.99" Full-HD, 441 PPI) to the iPhone 5's LCD and the GS3. The GS4's Super AMOLED is a "very impressive display", and DisplayMate says that OLEDs have now reached the stage when they challenge the best LCD displays. There are advantages and disadvantages to both technologies, but we have to keep in mind that OLEDs are advancing at a much more rapid rate compared to LCDs which is now a mature technology.

Samsung Galaxy S4

Compared to the S3, the S4 is brighter by 25% (and when using Automatic Brightness, it's 68% brighter as this setting allows the brightness to reach a high level unreachable in manual brightness mode), it's 20% more power efficient (due to the green PHOLED materials) and it's got 44% more pixels per inch (and more than double the total number of pixels).

A couple of weeks ago Sony updated their TRIMASTER EL professional OLED monitors with the new "A" Series". These new monitors sport an improved OLED panel that has a redesigned pixel construction which enabled a major improvement in viewing angles and a greatly reduced color shift. Today Sony released a new short video ad showing how their professional OLED monitors compare to LCD ones:

Sony OLED technology enables accurate color reproduction, precision imaging and quality picture consistency.

The European AEVIOM (Advanced Experimentally Validated OLED model) project, a 3-year collaboration between leading academic and industrial groups in Europe has concluded - and the researchers managed to develop a new technique that precisely calculates the color of light produced from OLED lighting panels.

This new technique could simplify and improve the OLED design process (currently manufacturers had to rely on trial and error to see the exact color produced in a new panel). The new software can also be used to optimize OLED panels and make them more efficient.

Update: now it seems that a different Panasonic executives claims that Plasma R&D will continue. Panasonic will continue to produce PDP and perhaps they will also update models, but perhaps what they mean is that they will not improve on the plasma panel technology itself (but rather add features such as smarter interface, etc)?

In December 2012 we heard reports that Panasonic may stop plasma R&D by March 2013, and focus on OLED TVs and other display technologies instead. While Panasonic still makes Plasma TVs, today the company confirmed that plasma development has ceased and some of the engineers were indeed shifted to work on OLED displays.

In January 2013 Panasonic unveiled a 56" 4K2K OLED TV panel prototype that was produced using an all-printing method. Panasonic is using Sumitomo's PLED materials and is collaborating with Sony on production technology. Some reports say that Panasonic aims to release their first OLED TVs in 2015.

QD Vision announced that they raised $20 million that will be used to ramp up Quantum-Dots film production capacity. This latest round of financing includes support from all existing investors. QD Vision's Color-IQ product (QD film that enhances LCD's color gamut) is used in Sony's Triluminos LED-backlit LCD TVs and in some of their digital cameras LCD displays as well.

QD Vision says that their Color IQ film can enhance an LCD film color performance by up to 50%, and help it reach 100% of the NTSC standard. I interviewed QDVision's CTO and co-founder back in 2009 - and this still gives a good introduction to Quantum Dots.

Raymond Soneira, Displaymate's display guru (and our friend) has previously criticized Samsung for the lack of calibration on their AMOLED displays - the colors are too saturated, the whites are too blue, and the intensity scales are too steep. This is hopefully going to change with the S4 however. Samsung is including a new feature in the S4 called Adapt Display that offers seven automatic modes and four manual modes - to provide the optimal viewing experience.

As Raymond points out, Samsung's own S4 site shows a CIE chromaticity diagram and a gray scale level picker (see screenshot above). This leads Raymond to believe that the S4 will have extensive color, white-point, and display calibration adjustments. This could be a "major display advancement and a win for Samsung and AMOLED displays" - according to Raymond.

A couple of weeks ago SamMobile reported that according to their sources, the S4 will use an LCD not an AMOLED display. A week later they posted that the S4 will actually use an OLED. Samsung will announce the S4 tomorrow and we'll know for certain, but in the meanwhile the same blog now reports that the Note 3 may use an LCD, according to their sources.

I don't know whether we should regard those SamMobile reports as serious, but they do still create a hype and a lot of sites re-post these articles - so I wanted to post on it as well. According to the new rumor, an insider from Samsung says that the company is still in internal discussions regarding the upcoming display. If they choose an LCD, they might go with the latest ones from Sharp.

Plastic Logic developed a new OTFT-based flexible 42" e-paper (E Ink) display, made from 16 10.7" flexible panels tiled together. This display is thin (less then 3 mm) and very light. Plastic Logic will collaborate with Toppan printing to bring these new displays to the market.

The two companies will find new applications in the signage market. This display can be hung like a poster, has very low power consumption (it's non-volatile and only requires power to change the image) and is readable outdoors. Apparently the first application will be used as information signs that can provide disaster-related information in an emergency situation where battery-operation is required.

Samsung has given out invitations for their new Galaxy phone (which will probably be called the S4, as you can see from the image below) launch event - on March 14th, in New York (7PM ET). Early this month it was reported that Samsung is beginning to produce the 4.99" Full-HD (440 PPI) AMOLED display that will be used in this phone. These reports come from Korea, and are apparently based on Analysts researching Samsung's supply chain companies.

However, two days ago SamMobile (a usually credible blog) posted that the S4 will in fact not use an OLED at all. They quite an "insider" claiming that the phone will use a 4.99" Full-HD SoLux LCD display. The processor will be a Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 @1.9 Ghz - and not a Samsung-made Exynos 5 processor as was previous estimated.

Back in January it was reported that HTC decided to use AUO's 4.65" OLED panels in their upcoming code-named M7 flagship phone. Yet other reports suggested that AUO still faces production issues and HTC decided to use Sharp-made LCD panels instead. Today HTC unveiled the HTC One phone, and sadly it is indeed using an LCD (4.7" 1080p Super LCD 3, 468 PPI).

So it appears that AUO still hasn't started to mass produce AMOLED displays. Digitimes says that it's likely that they wouldn't be able to start real mass production until 2014, which is a real shame.