Competing technologies - Page 40

Researchers led by John Rogers from the University of Illinois have developed a stretchable/bendable sheets of LEDs and light sensors. They are interested in applications that interface with the human body, and so they prefer inorganic LEDs to OLEDs as they are brighter, more reliable and are more easily made waterproof.

The team has printed an interlaced array of LEDs, on a rigid wafer, then dissolved the top layer of the substrate to release a thin network of LEDs that can be transferred to a flexible, waterproof polymer sheet. Each LED is just 100 microns across (about the width of a human hair) and 2.5 microns thick and is connected to its neighbors by serpentine strands that can accommodate the deformation of stretching and twisting. They managed to put the arrays on aluminum foils, leaves ,sheets of paper and around nylon threads.

Densitron is introducing new industrial TFT-LCD displays that are mechanically compatible with AMOLED displays. Densitron also says that the performance is similar to AMOLEDs. The displays come in three different sizes (2.4", 2.8" and 4.3"), and offer 800:1 contrast ratio. They use Fringe Field Switching (FFS) which gives up to 170° viewing angles (both horizontal and vertical). There's also resistive touch versions.

There's a shortage of AMOLED displays, and many manufacturers are moving to LCDs instead. Samsung plans to get their 5.5-Gen AMOLED plant on line by 2H 2011, but reports suggest that they actually sold all capacity to Apple already... so supply issues may last a while.

A few days ago we reported about rumors that Samsung have sold all their Super-AMOLED capacity to Apple, and will switch to LCDs in their Galaxy-S and Wave phones. Today we hear that the Wave II phone will indeed use a Super-LCD screen (3.7") instead of the Super-AMOLED used in the original Wave.

Update: Samsung's Wave II phone will indeed use a S-LCD... so this part of the rumor is true...

There a couple of interesting rumors about Samsung. The first one says that they have sold all of their Super-AMOLED production capacity to Apple for 2011. Apple-OLED rumors never die. This is interesting as Samsung's new 5.5-Gen AMOLED plant (that will produce ten times the current capacity) will go on line in the middle of 2011 - so theoretically Samsung might indeed have enough capacity to satisfy Apple. But will they really stop using these displays in their own products?

The second rumor is that both the Samsung Wave and Galaxy-S aren't in production anymore. Samsung simply do not have enough Super AMOLED displays. Samsung are working towards Super-LCD versions of these phones. Indeed both the Captivate (AT&T) and the Fascinate (Verizon) are currently unavailable in Amazon. The Galaxy-S unlocked is still shipping, but Amazon says that just 5 units are left. But this is strange - who is buying all those Super-AMOLED displays now if Samsung is not using them in their best-selling phones?

DisplayMate has perform extensive testing of LCD, IPS-LCD in Apple's iPhone 4, AMOLED (in Google's Nexus-One phone) and the Super-AMOLED as used in Samsung's Galaxy S phones. The bottom line is that the Super-AMOLED and IPS-LCD are both great displays, but they say that the iPhone's display is the ultimate winner.

The IPS-LCD is brighter, has higher pixel density and consumes less power. The Super-AMOLED is better in sunlight (less glare) and has much better contrast ratio - blacks are really blacks. The colors on the Super-AMOLED are oversaturated, while the colors on the IPS-LCD are undersaturated. Interestingly, a 'plain' LCD as used by the Motorola Droid has the best picture quality and accuracy.

HTC has already switched to S-LCDs in their Desire and Nexus-One phones - due to AMOLED supply shortage. They say that they look pretty much the same, but the S-LCD actually uses less power. Now we hear that they might do the same for the Droid Incredible phone - which was also suffering from supply issues.

HTC Incredible

Samsung announced that they can't meet customer demand in their AMOLED plant - and they won't be able to do so until early next year (at the earliest).

Engadget has posted an interesting post about the HTC Desire SLCD and AMOLED displays. While the AMOLED is more vibrant and bright, the S-LCD shows a sharper image (this is due to the AMOLED's PenTile pixel matrix that uses two subpixels per pixel instead of three). They also claim that the SLCD offers a better contrast - even though the AMOLED's blacks are much blacker. This is again due to the PenTile arrangement.

In the sunlight visibility test, the AMOLED actually comes on top, but both are hardly readable. HTC's glossy glass is to blame for this, really. In terms of power efficiency, Engadget say that the AMOLED comes on top - after 5 hours of showing movies, the LCD-Desire ran out of power while the AMOLED one had 30% power left (HTC and Samsung say otherwise, by the way). Here's a video comparing both phones:

A Samsung executive talks about the Galaxy Tab display. He said that while Super-AMOLED is the best-in-class display, they are using S-LCD because it's cheaper, there's no supply issues, and it's actually more efficient than AMOLEDs currently (that's not the first time we hear this).

The good news is that next year we're expecting AMOLED supply to rise sharply. And Samsung are planning to double the efficiency of their AMOLED displays soon.

Back in June, we reported about an upcoming Samsung 'Galaxy' PMP (YP-MB2) - a device rather similar to the Galaxy S phone - without the phone capability. We even found a video of the device. Today Samsung launched their Galaxy Player 50, which is probably the same player - but it does not have an OLED - it has an LCD instead.

It's possible that Samsung wanted to use a Super-AMOLED indeed, but had to go for LCD because, as we posted a couple of days ago, Samsung can't keep up with AMOLED production demand as it is. It's also possible that this device isn't the YP-MB2, really, and Samsung is yet to announce it.

Samsung has officially launched the Galaxy Tab today - and it has a 7" TFT-LCD display. Even though we had rumors of a Super-AMOLED display for months, an LCD was expected. Like we posted earlier today: Samsung can't keep up with AMOLED production demand as it is, and there's no way they can use OLEDs in new devices.

Samsung Galaxy S and Galaxy Tab

Beside the 7" TFT-LCD 9that has a 1024x600 resolution, by the way), the Tab runs Android 2.2 on a 1Ghz A9 processor, has 16/32GB of internal memory and a microSD slot, 1.3mp front camera and a 3mp rear camera, 3G for data and voice (but no earpiece - you have you use bluetooth or a speakerphone), Wi-Fi and Full-HD video playback.