OLED devices - Page 33

PhoneArena has posted an interesting review of the Samsung OMNIA HD i8910. Basically they think the phone is great for geeks - with so many features built in. There are some concerns over voice quality (which personally I think is the single most important thing in a phone, no?) and that the phone is a bit sluggish at times. The sure love the display: "The OMNIA HD sports an awesome 3.7-inch touch sensitive AMOLED screen".

Samsung i8910 HD

This is the largest OLED display in a mobile phone to date, it'll be interesting to see how the phone sells. We're sure waiting for more OLED smartphones, not just from Samsung...

Read the full review here

Today Universal Display is showing their PHOLED technology at EcoFocus NY. 

UDC Flexible OLED Display Concept

Among the product prototypes will be Universal Display’s wrist-worn,
flexible PHOLED display, developed jointly with LG Display and L-3
Communications for the U.S. Department of Defense. In addition, the
company will showcase a scaled white PHOLED lighting atrium, transparent
PHOLED pixels, and commercial products that currently use Universal
Display’s PHOLED technology.

We don't have any new photos yet, but hopefully we'll get some during the day.

The Samsung S8300 "Tocco Ultra" is now available in the UK. Contracts can go as low as 20GBP (around 30$). The S8300 is a 3G slider phone with a 2.8" touchscreen AMOLED, 8Mp camera, A-GPS, FM radio and a microSDHC slot.

Samsung S8300 Tocco Ultra

The S8300 is also available on Amazon (in the US it is called S8300 Ultra Touch), for around 500$ unlocked.

So it's now exactly 4 months after I got my Unitedkeys OLED keyboard. It's a regular 103-keys keyboard, that includes also 9 customized yellow OLED keys.

When I first reviewed it, I said that the OLEDs look good, the keyboard itself is great, but the software is a bit clunky. Now I want to update the review, after having used the keyboard for a while.

Unitedkeys OLED keyboard

My major complains are still about the software - there are some annoying bugs (for example, many times it won't work after a reboot, and you need click on the taskbar icon, and then close the software window for it to work). As far as I know, they haven't issued any updates yet. Also I'd like more options, for example having a key that will change to a different running application.

Unitedkeys major marketing message is that the keyboard is a productivity tool, not just a cool gadget. About the coolness there's no doubt - it's a great looking thing. But I wanted to test the productivity bit. So I enabled the keyboard to work with the two applications I use most:

• Firefox. That was easy, because they sent me ready text icon...
• Eclipse (PHP development). I had to make my own icons. I made text ones, which actually only took a few minutes to make.

When not running these two applications, the icons launch different programs (like Explorer, GIMP, Delphi...). This is actually very useful.

Anyway, now when I want to search for a text in my code, or open a file, or find text in firefox, or close a tab, I can do it with a single keystroke. The main problem? I don't always remember that the keys are there, and after all using shift-F is not so difficult to begin with... and I already remember all those key combinations anyway. When I do remember to use the OLED keys, they are fun to use, and can save a bit of time.

So my main conclusion? The keyboard is cool, and can help with productivity, a little bit, but you have to get used to using it - it won't happen immediately. It might be more useful to use it for less common key combinations, those that you do not remember, or maybe for software tools that have more options (like a word processor, photoshop, etc.).

If you want to try it yourself, the keyboard now sales for 260$, through amazon.com.

Wired reports that OQO has canceled all pre-orders for the OLED-equipped Model 02+. It turns out that OQO are in trouble - and are struggling to survive.

OQO Model 02+

The Ulta-mobile PC had a 5" touchscreen OLED, 800x480 (WVGA). I hope OQO will find funding and start producing it.

Marshall electronics announces the world's first OLED camera top / field monitor,  the V-OL761. There are actually 3 models, depending on connection type - HDA, HDMI or 3GSDI (which supports 3Gb/s).

Marshall OLED V-OL761 camera top

The OLED is 7.6", which means it's the same one used in Kodak's wireless OLED frame - and made by CMEL -  16:9 aspect ratio, 800x480 resolution, white to black contrast ratio of 30,000:1.

Samsung Mobile Displays says the growing smartphones sales and touchscreens can boost the sales of OLEDs. They say that in a slowing market, makers will want premium displays for high-end devices.

They also predict that within 5 years, OLEDs could be used on 50% of all mobile phones, 20% of digital cameras and 30% of portable game players. 

As there are over a billion phones sold in a year (and it'll probably be more in 5 years...) then this means Samsung are predicting over 500M OLED displays, just from cell phones!

Samsung already said they will have AMOLEDs in 50% of their new touchscreen phones this year, and they seem to be using OLEDs more and more in mobile devices.

DigInfo news has released a short clip of Sony's 21" OLED prototype unveiled yesterday:

Will this be Sony's XEL-2 TV? We don't know yet (it was supposed to be a 27" panel).

eMagin is showing their microdisplays at this year's SPIE Defense, Security and Sensing conference. eMagin is showing two kinds of OLED microdisplays:

• SXGA OLED-XL™ microdisplay (1280 x 1024 triad pixels) offers digital signal processing in a compact package (0.77-inch diagonal active area) requiring less than 200 mW of total power under typical operating conditions of 100 cd/m2 in full-color.
• SVGA+ Rev3 display offers the most power efficient OLED solution for near-eye personal viewer applications such as thermal imaging, using less than 115 mW power in monochrome and lower than 175 mW at 100 cd/m2 for full color video. The SVGA+ Rev3 microdisplay allows for a simpler calibration over temperature and is ideal for demanding binocular luminance and color matching.

More than a dozen new systems on show are using eMagin's OLED displays, from companies such as Intevac, Elbit systems, Liteye, Oasis and Thales.

Read the full PR here

Cowon has released a new version of the S9 Curve with 32GB. Currently only available in korea, it costs around 290$. The S9 Curve has a 3.3" (480x272) touch screen AMOLED display, FM radio, 500Mhz dual-core CPU, T-DMB, TV-Out and more.

Cowon s9 PMP

The 16GB version if available for just over 200$ at amazon today.