OLED devices - Page 13

Samsung announces that they got 3 million pre-orders globally for the Galaxy S II (as of the end of April). Samsung will release the S II to 140 carriers in 120 countries - and they expect even more pre-orders soon.

Just a few days ago Samsung said that they plan to sell 10 million Galaxy S II phones in 2011. This seems rather modest. But perhaps Samsung Mobile Display will not be able to provide so many Super AMOLED Plus displays so soon. Samsung Electronics says that "We will do our utmost best to ensure that all the global demands should be met as quickly as possible".

T-Mobile now offers the Nokia Astound for free (with a contract of course). The Astound offers Symbian^3, a 3.5" 640x360 AMOLED display and a 8mp camera that can record 720p video. Other features include 8GB of memory, GPS and Wi-Fi.

Samsung's Galaxy II started selling in Europe a couple of day ago (and it's got raving reviews) - and it now appears in Amazon.com too - unlocked for $899 (the 16GB version). It will probably start shipping cheaper soon (with carrier contracts) - but if you must have the best Smartphone on the market, you can buy it now.

Samsung's Galaxy S II (or S2) is the successor to the popular Galaxy S. It has a 4.3" WVGA Super AMOLED plus display, 1.2Ghz dual-core processor, NFC, Bluetooth 3 and HSPA+. It's only 8.49mm thick at its thinnest point.

Engadget posted a very positive review of the Samsung Galaxy II, saying that this is the best Android smartphone, and it might well be the best smartphone today. Regarding the 4.3" Super AMOLED Plus displays, they say that the screen is nothing short of spectacular. Great contrast and colors and supreme viewing angles.

"We'd even go so far as to say it's better than the iPhone 4's screen, purely because, at 4.3 inches, it gives us so much more room to work with. It's almost impossible to split the two up in terms of quality of output, they're both top notch.". Engadget says that the original Super AMOLED displays exhibited slightly grainier images due to the PenTile matrix, but the new Plus displays (which use a real-stripe matrix) has great resolution and detail. The new display also has got rid of the oversaturated colors. The only down side of the screen is the auto-brightness feature (but that has nothing to do with the OLED...).

Back in November 2010 we reported about a new phone by Lenovo which uses a transparent display called the S-800. We thought it might be a transparent OLED, but we weren't sure. Today Dialog Semiconductor reveals that they supplied the driver IC to that phone, and indeed it's a transparent PMOLED. Hopefully the S-800 will actually launch soon, unlike the Samsung IceTouch MP3 player.

Dialog's driver (the DA8620) is the first one to use their SmartXtend PMOLED technology, and it's now shipping. The SmartXtend technology boosts PMOLED displays so they can achieve video quality and performance on par (almost) with AMOLEDs - at a much lower cost. The maximum resolution is QVGA. Here's more technical info on this technology.

Samsung officially announced that the Galaxy S II will launch on May 1st in the UK. There were some reports that the handset was already shipping, and some said it'll ship sooner, but now it's official.

Samsung's Galaxy S2 is the successor to the popular Galaxy S. It has a 4.3" WVGA Super AMOLED plus display, 1.2Ghz dual-core processor, NFC, Bluetooth 3 and HSPA+. It's only 8.49mm thick at its thinnest point.

There are rumors that Sony's upcoming A77 DSLR will have an OLED viewfinder with 3 million pixels (more than double the pixel count in the current A55/33 LCD viewfinder). The new viewfinder will also have a faster refresh rate and better brightness (which is to be expected from an OLED micro display...). It is said that the same viewfinder will be used in next-gen Sony NEX cameras, too (as an optional external EVF or a built-in one, it's not clear).

This is not the first we hear of Sony's OLED microdisplays: back in January 2011 Sony unveiled a 3D head mounted display with two OLED microdisplays. Those displays were said to be made by Sony and feature 720p (1280x720) - which means 921,600 pixels. This makes us wonder whether the 3 million pixel count in the rumor is correct. After all, even eMagin's highest resolution OLED microdisplay (the SXGA OLED-XL) offers only 1280x1024 resolution (1,310,720 pixels). Perhaps (as some commenters suggested) these are 3 million sub-subpixels - which fits 720p more or less.

You can now order Nokia's E7 smartphone for $679 unlocked over a Amazon.com. The phone will start shipping on March 31st. The E7 is a QWERTY slider running the latest Symbian^3 OS. It has a 4" Clear-Black AMOLED (640x360), 8mp camera, 16MB flash memory, 720p video recording, FM radio, W-Fi and GPS.

Update: The Astound is now shipping - and it's actually free with a T-Mobile contract.

T-Mobile USA launched the Nokia Astound - a rebranded C7. The hardware is the same as the C7 but Nokia made some changes to the software - added a QWERTY keyboard with Swype and upgraded the browser. The Astound also has free Ovi Maps GPS with US, Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean maps pre loaded. The Astound will start shipping on April 6 for $79.99 (with a contract, after rebate). If you don't want to wait, you can buy the C7 unlocked for $549.

The Nokia C7 is running on Symbian^3, and has a 3.5" 640x360 AMOLED display and a 8mp camera that can record 720p video. Other features include 8GB of memory, GPS and Wi-Fi.

According to reports Microsoft decided to stop developing their Zune music players - which were never a big success. The second generation Zune-HD was actually considered a very good device - but it never managed to sell in big enough numbers for Microsoft.

The Zune-HD is a flash based Wi-Fi PMP capable of HD radio and video and had a 3.3" 480x272 multi-touch AMOLED display.