LG launched two new smart watches based on Android Wear 2.0, designed in collaboration with Google. Both new devices use round flexible OLED displays, and both will launch tomorrow in the US.
The first model is the Watch Style, which sports a round 1.2" 360x360 display, 512MB of RAM and 4GB of storage. The Watch Style costs $249 - $279.
So we might as well get used to this - OLEDs have arrived at the laptop market. Dell's Alienware announced their latest gaming laptop, the Alienware OLED 13 R2 - and it uses a 13" 2560x1440 AMOLED display.
The Alienware OLED 13 laptop will ship in April 2015 starting at $1,499. It's quite similar to the LCD Alienware 13 R2, just with an OLED instead of the LCD (which has a higher 3200x1800 resolution). The LCD model currently starts at $1,068 - this means that the OLED premium is about $450 - but then again it may also have higher specs, so it is difficult to compare. Alienware themselves says that the OLED model will cost exactly the same as the LCD model.
Dell launched a new monitor, the Ultrasharp 30 OLED. This high-end monitor adopts a 30" 4K OLED panel and features a 0.1 ms response time, 100% AdobeRGB, narrow-bezel design and USB-C connection. The UltraSharp 30 OLED will ship by the end of March 2016 for $4,999.
Dell said that it developed special technologies to compensate for image-burn in (using pixel-shifting) and the relatively short OLED lifetime (using a presence detector that switches off the display when no one is in front of the monitor).
A day after Lenovo announced the world's first OLED laptop (the 14" X1 Yoga), HP announced a similar product - a model of the popular Spectre X360 hybrid laptop/tablet that comes with a 13.3" 2560x1600 AMOLED display.
HP did not reveal the price premium of the OLED model, but they said that it will ship by the spring of 2016. It's highly likely that Samsung Display is the producer of the AMOLED.
Lenovo announced a new laptop-tablet hybrid family - the X1 Yoga, which is the world's first OLED laptop. The X1 Yoga is equipped with a 14" 2550x1440 display - LCD in the lower models and OLED in the higher-end ones. The hybrid configuration goes up to Core i7 CPUs, 16GB of RAM, 1TB of SSD storage. The laptop weighs 1.27 Kg.
The basic X1 Yoga starts at $1,449 (with an LCD) - the OLED model will be released in April 2016 - price hasn't been announced yet.
A US-based company called eSight developed new glasses that enable the legally-blind (also known as having low-vision) to see. The glasses use a sophisticated high-speed camera, patented video processing software and high quality OLED displays to project a real-time image.
Check out the video above (update: the video was removed and can no longer be shared) showing Kathy Bleitz who has been living with Stargardt disease (an inherited degenerative disease of the retina that leads to progressive vision loss). Kathy can only see fuzzy, wavy shapes, but using eSight she can see better and in the video she sees her baby for the first time.
An OLED-Info reader recently raised the question - where are the OLED laptops and OLED monitors? This is an interesting question. Samsung currently produces AMOLEDs ranging in size from 1.63" for wearables to 10.5" tablet displays and LG Display is mass producing 55", 65" and even 77" OLED TVs.
Samsung 12.1 inch laptop prototype, 2009
It seems that technically there shouldn't be a problem producing 13-15 inch OLED panels for laptops or even 20-25 inch panels for monitors. In terms of pixel density, these panels will be simpler to make compared to Samsung's mobile phone panels. Even a 13" 4K laptop panel will require only 339 PPI - much lower than SDC's latest 5.1" QHD panels (577 PPI). And of course SDC can start with a 15" FHD panel (146 PPI) which is easier to produce.
In March 2013 Oculus started accepting pre-orders for the second-gen development kit (the DK2) - which adopts a new low-persistence OLED. A couple of days ago, Oculus said they are starting to ship the first batch $350 kits. In the first stage they will ship 10,000 units ouf of the 45,000 pre-orders they got (the rest will have to wait a bit, probably till August).
Oculus changed their design from an LCD to an OLED because they really want a low persistence display. They say that "it’s incredible the difference low persistence makes... It’s mind-blowing". The OLED display runs at a high refresh rate - it switches in well under a millisecond. This is the fastest OLED on the market, supplied by Samsung.
In January Oculus VR unveiled their latest HMD prototype, which adopted a low-persistence OLED display. Today Oculus started accepting pre-orders for the second-gen development kit (called DK2) - which adopts the new OLED. The DK2 costs $350 and will ship in July.
Oculus said that they chose the OLED because they really want a low persistence display. They say that "it’s incredible the difference low persistence makes... It’s mind-blowing". The OLED display runs at a high refresh rate - it switches in well under a millisecond - faster than any LCD monitor on the market. In fact, the company says that the OLED they use is much faster than any other OLED panel on the market.
A few months ago we reported that Oculus VR's CEO hinted that the company aims to adopt an OLED display (instead of the current 7" LCD) in their upcoming head mounted display (HMD), the Oculus Rift. Yesterday at CES the company unveiled their latest prototype (called Crystal Cove), and indeed it uses an OLED.
Oculus chose an OLED because they really want a low persistence display. They say that "it’s incredible the difference low persistence makes... It’s mind-blowing.". The OLED display runs at a high refresh rate - it switches in well under a millisecond - faster than any LCD monitor on the market. In fact, the company says that this is also much faster than any other OLED panel on the market.
