Power consumption - Page 24

Universal Display announced it has awarded a $150,000 SBIR phase I program from the US DOE to develop low cost single layer outcoupling solution for OLED lighting. UDC says that to date no one has demonstrated an approach to achieve desired extraction efficiency targets in a thin form factor and cost-effective manner. UDC's solution has the potential to increase the light extraction by greater than a factor of two while being cost-effective and compatible with low-cost OLED manufacturing techniques.

UDC is also developing single-layer thin-film hybrid organic-inorganic encapsulation layer (they call this UniversalBarrier). Obviously these two technologies can be combined to create thin-film low-cost and efficient OLED lighting 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.

Google filed an interesting patent in 2012, in which they suggest to reduce the image on a screen when the device is idle. The idea is that when the user is not active, the display size is slowly reduced, until it is invisible. The patent specifically says that this is useful on OLED displays - as it would save power and still present a somewhat useful image to the user.

A few months ago Samsung said that the new Galaxy S3 has a Pentile display (a 4.8" 1280x720 HD Super AMOLED one to be exact) because PenTile increased the lifetime of OLED panels. I have discussed this with Joel Pollack, an Executive VP at Nouvoyance (Samsung's company that developed the PenTile matrix scheme), and he explains this claim further.

An OLED display is made from colored (RGB) sub pixels. A blue OLED has the lowest luminous efficiency (lower then red and green) and so needs to be driven at higher current - which means a lower lifetime.

Lumiotec announced new "natural white" OLED lighting panels (P06 panels) that feature the world's highest color rendering index (Ra93*1, a CRI of over 90). This is very close to natural light, and Lumiotec targets high-end retailers and museums. The panels come in five different sizes (up to 14.5x14.5 cm in size) and cost between ¥13,000 ($165) and ¥40,000 ($508).

The panels feature an efficiency of 28 lm/W, and Lumiotec told us that they use a hybrid design, comprising of both fluorescent and phosphorescent materials (provided by UDC). We do not know what is the exact mix. Lumiotec signed their license agreement with UDC back in April, and are already producing pure-phosphorescent panels, the P5, which feature 40 lm/W.

Raymond Soneira, our friend and display guru from DisplayMate have posted a very interesting and detailed comparison of the OLED displays in the Galaxy S, SII and SIII phones. He says that while all three OLED panels performed very well, there has been a rapid and significant improvement in OLED performance (especially power efficiency) in just 2 years.

Raymond says that high-end LCDs are brighter and more power efficient than OLEDs for text and web applications. OLEDs are better for photos and videos. He also says that while the performance is excellent, it's been compromised by Samsung's implementation choices - especially the low brightness due to power constraints (although low reflectence on those devices mean that high brightness is not critical in most situations).

Verbatim started shipping the Velve OLED lighting evaluation kit back in May 2011, and last month they sent us a unit for review. This is the world's first (and only) color-tunable OLED lighting panel, and it's pretty exciting.

Dupont published some new OLED material specification, you can see them in the photo below. The lifetime (LT50) of their Blue fluorescent material is now over 33,000 hours (the the 0.14c0.13 blue, anyway) - which they say is good enough for OLED TVs. Their solution-processed materials are now more efficient than their evaporated-materials, but lifetime is probably lower (it's a bit hard to know since they only publish LT95 for those materials).

I had an interesting discussion with a Dupont employee involved in their OLED program. In January 2012 it was reported that the company is building a $30 million pilot production line for OLED TV displays using their new nozzle printing technology. It turns out that the report wasn't accurate - the facility that DuPont is building is a material production facility. They have no intention to start producing displays...

LG Display had a very big booth at SID 2012, showing lot's of displays. The main item on show was the 55" OLED TV panel, but all the rest of the displays were LCDs. As I said in my first post from SID, LG's OLED TVs stunning with great colors, amazing contrast and excellent 3D effects. Unlike Samsung, LGD had only one TV on show, showing 2D and 3D convent sequentially (the 3D uses passive glasses). LG's OLED panel is extremely thin - 4 mm, you can hardly see it looking from the side.

During LG Display's keynote speech, they made some very interesting comments about their OLED technology and business. First of all, LG expects OLED TVs to grow at 320% (CAGR) from 2012 to 2016, reaching 11% of the TV market, while the rest of the market - LCD/PDP/CRT will only grow at 1.1%. OLED TV is the "next evolution" of TV technology.

Samsung had a very big presence at SID 2012 - showing all sorts of OLED panels, from small ones to large 55" panels. Obviously the most interesting item on display was the 55" OLED TV. As I said before, these OLED TVs are simply stunning, beautiful colors and images and even the 3D effects were great.

Samsung was showing 3 TVs: one showing regular 2D images, the other 3D images (you needed to use active shutter glasses of course) and the final one showing dual-view images (you use the glasses but each user sees and hears a different Full-HD image altogether). I went to the booth several times (and was also invited for a one-on-one guided press tour) - but in all the excitement I forgot to actually shoot a video...