Competing technologies - Page 34

Rohm has unveiled a new planar LED (not OLED) lighting panel. The panel is made by using LED packages on a plane surface and a light diffusion plate which makes it seem like a planar device - like an OLED lighting panel. It has a very high CRI (98) - achieved by using a white resin layer on the package which prevents the sulfuration of the lead frame.

Rohm says that the panel is superior to OLED panels - in terms of cost and efficiency (the life time is also very good at 50,000 hours). Of course OLED lighting is still a new technology which improves rapidly - and will offer features that will be hard to achieve using LEDs (transparency, flexibility, low-cost printing processes, etc). Rohm haven't yet decided when to commercialize this panel, but they say that the technologies needed are "almost completed". Israeli's Oree is already producing similar LED panels.

Update: I just talked to DisplayMate's Raymond Soneira, and he says that the power-consumption test was done on an all-white screen. This is the worst-case scenario for an OLED, and so real-world results will be better (depending on your typical phone usage of course). 

DisplayMate posted an interesting and comprehensive comparison between the iphone 5 IPS-LCD and the Super AMOLED HD display used in the Galaxy S3. They say that the iPhone's display is superior - its a very accurate display, and it's the best Smartphone display they have ever seen. It's actually quite an improvement over the display used in the iPhone 4S.

DisplayMate says that the OLED display on the S3 is not as bright as the LCD, it is less readable in high ambient lighting, it has saturated green and distorted and exaggerated colors. They still complain about Samsung not calibrating the color gamut. On the other hand, they say that OLED is a new technology and hasn't been refined to the same degree as LCDs yet. They still say OLEDs have a very promising future.

Apple unveiled the iPhone 5 - the latest generation of its popular smartphone. The new device features a light (112 grams) and thin (7.6 mm) glass and aluminum body, a fast A6 processor, LTE and a 4" 1136x640 (326ppi) Retina LCD display. It's not an OLED - but this time there weren't even rumors that Apple will use OLEDs...

One of the promises of OLED lighting is that flexible panels can be produced on the cheap using roll-to-roll processes. There is a lot of work towards this goal, but it hasn't been achieved yet. Now researchers from Sweden and Denmark have managed to produce light-emitting electrochemical cells (LEC) using an all-solution-based R2R fabrication process, in ambient conditions. They say that this process can be used to create large area panels too.

Polymer LEC panels are similar to PLEDs in structure, but in LECs the emitter polymer is blended with an electrolyte (e.g. LiCF₃SO₃ dissolved in PEO). LECs, which require only three layers, were first reported 15 years ago, but they suffered from very low lifetime and efficiency. But LECs are very easy to produce and so with steady improvements (mostly from choice of electrodes) LECs are now ready to enter the lighting market.

Nokia announced two Windows Phone 8 devices today. The lower-end one, the Lumia 820 has a 4.3" 800x480 Clearblack OLED display. Other features include a 1.5Ghz dual-core CPU, 1GB of RAM, 8GB of storage (and a microSD slot) and a 8mp camera. The Lumia 820 will ship towards the end of 2012.

The second phone is the flagship Lumia 920, which unfortunately does not have an OLED. It does have a very good LCD though - 4.5" WXGA (1280x768) resolution. Nokia claims that this new LCD is the brightest one on the market (25% brighter in fact than anything out there) and it's also the fastest LCD Nokia has ever shipped on a smartphone. Other features include a 1.5Ghz dual-core CPU, PureView 8mp camera (with hardware stabilization and good low-light capabilities)

Digitimes reports that Chimei Innolux decided to shift its focus from OLED displays to large-size 4K2K panels. While CMI is advancing its small/medium OLED program (it aims to start low-volume production in Q4 2012, see the video below), it's facing technical difficulties and low yields with large-size OLED panel production. CMI estimates that due to the high-costs involved with large OLED panels, the demand will be low in the near future.

CMI is going to produce 50" and 65" 4K2K LCD panels. It's not clear if there'll be real demand for 4K2K panels either - as there's currently a lack of content for this format.

Ynvisible (based in Portugal) is developing flexible transparent electrochromic e-paper like displays, Electrochromic materials change their color when electricity is applied. The company is already producing some displays in low volume (and offering some "demo" devices on-line), and were kind enough to send our sister site E-Ink-Info a sample gift card showing off their displays.

The display is quite impressive. It's very basic (it shows a pre-printed image and has a very low contrast), but it's transparent, and flexible and frankly very nice. The material they use in this sample changes from transparent to being blue. When off, it looks exactly like a normal piece of plastic - totally transparent and bendable (flexible).

Qualcomm announced it is scrapping Mirasol production plans. They will try to license the technology for other companies to produce. Mirasol is a MEMS based reflective color display technology from Qualcomm, once touted to be an OLED replacement. The company is producing some small displays in low volume, but plans to build a $1 billion production plans have been canceled.

Mirasol displays are rather similar to E Ink as they're very efficient and can be read under direct sunlight. The displays suffer from washed colors though, and cannot be read in the dark. The panels shown at SID were quite impressive, and it's a real shame that Qualcomm couldn't manage to overcome the low yields it was apparently facing.

There are some interesting reports that the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES) decided to reduce its backing for Foxconn's plans to establishing LCD fabs in Brazil. It seems that the Brazilian Government is not happy with Foxconn's decision to produce LCD panels and not OLEDs - as they were hoping that the company will produce next-gen technology based panels in Brazil.

Foxconn's investment in the new fab was supposed to be $4 billion (that's only the first phase, the total cost would have been around $12 billion). The BNDES was supposed to fund 30% of the project. BNDES and Foxconn are still in negotiation, trying to reach a new agreement.

I visited two companies active with Quantum Dots for displays at SID. First up was Nanosys, which developed their quantum dot enhancement film (QDEF) technology - which dramatically improves LCD color. Nanosys showed a couple of comparisons at their booth of Apple's iPad 2 and an LCD TV - with and without the QDEF film.

The comparison was quite good, and the displays that feature the QDEF films had more vibrant colors. However, compared to Samsung's and LG's OLED TVs, those LCDs were still bland to my taste. But maybe I'm not really being objective here.