Power consumption - Page 32

Back in February, Pioneer and Mitsubishi Chemical has announced an OLED Lighting JV. Pioneer will produce OLED lighting panels, Mitsubishi Chemical will supply chemicals and will market and sell the panels through their Verbatim daughter company.

We had the good chance to speak with Verbatim regarding this new OLED business.

Q: Are there any updates on the OLED JV?
Mitsubishi Chemical Corp will start to supply samples at the end of 2010, and mass production in the middle of 2011.

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.

Remember NKK's programmable OLED pushbutton switch? Introducing in July 2008, it includes a 65K color OLED module capable of full-motion video. Today NKK announced that they have released a new version that doubles the lifetime of the OLED display (to 30,000 hours) and reduced the power consumption by 30%.

Someone did a battery-life comparison of several android handsets, and according to that test, handsets with AMOLED has the poorest battery life. LCD handsets are better (the Galaxy S, with its large Super-AMOLED display is in the middle). They tested mostly web-browsing, which means a lot of white, which is not good for OLED displays. Also of course the AMOLED display is not the only difference between those handsets.

AMOLED should theoretically offer lower power consumption, but this is not the first time we hear that newer LCDs are actually better. For example, when HTC replaced AMOLEDs with LCDs in the Desire phones (and others), they said that the battery life is better with LCDs. The good news is that Samsung plans to soon double the efficiency of their AMOLED displays. AMOLEDs are at an early stage soon, so we can expect fast advances in all aspects, including efficiency.

Andrew Rinzler, professor of physics at the University of Florida has developed a new driving method for large OLED panels which basically brings the source and drain electrodes of a transistor closer together by stacking components on top of one another instead of side by side. The transistors are made from thin aluminum oxide film on a glass subtrate (as the drain electrode) and a layer of organic molecules as a channel. This enables good performance without the need for high-resolution lithography techniques. The new device also uses a tenth of the voltage of current OLEDs - which saves power.

Transistors on glass

They haven't yet made a large-sized panel, but it should be possible with the new design. It can also be used to make flexible OLEDs. They are currently working to simplify the architecture in hope to bring down the cost and complexity even further.

Samsung is finally announcing the Galaxy Tab - they have released a short video showing the device, saying it'll be revealed on September 2nd. We know it runs Android 2.2, supports flash, video calling, plays HD movies and has a GPS. It's also an e-reader. The display is 7", but we don't know whether it's an LCD or a Super-AMOLED display.

A few weeks ago it was rumored that HTC will start using Super-LCD displays instead of OLEDs in the HTC Desire and Nexus-One handsets. HTC says that the displays are comparable, and that the S-LCD actually consumes less power than the AMOLED displays.

GE and Konica Minolta announced that they have achieved a "major breakthrough" in their white OLEDs: an efficient 56Lm/w flexible white OLED that is made using solution-coatable materials in a roll-to-roll printing process. The materials have "commercially viable lifetime" (we do not know exactly what they mean by that).

GE and Konica Minolta flexible desk lamp prototype

GE and Konica Minolta plan to introduce their flexible OLED lighting products next year (2011), and have already displayed some early prototype lamps (one of which is shown above). They are working together since 2007. KM hopes to see $1 billion in OLED Lighting sales by 2018. KM has licensed OLED IP from UDC.

Update: According to Novaled, this report is not true. They are set to remain in the IP & Material business, in both OLED displays and lighting.

According to OLEDNet, Novaled is set to become a manufacturer of OLED Lighting panels (instead of being a supplier of OLED materials and technology/IP). They are moving away from displays because they lost the "competitive edge" to Korean companies.

Novaled is focusing on flexible OLEDs based on stainless steel substrate. They will introduce a 150x150mm, 25lm/W, 10,000 hours white-OLED panel in 2010. In 2011 they will add a 200x200mm, 40lm/W, 25,000 hours panel. In 2012 they will improve this to 50lm/W, 50,000 hours. By 2012, their OLEDs will be flexible, too (using roll-to-roll manufacturing process).

A google employee (Jeff Sharkey) has posted an interesting post - testing how using different color filters in Android (on the Google Nexus One) to test the OLED's battery life. He use SurfaceFlinger (Android's low-level window composer) and created several options: from red-only to full-color.

Using just red halves the power consumption, and using red+green results in 25% better consumption. Jeff shares his patch online , so you can download and see for yourself. The phone remains usable, so this is an interesting way to save power... Jeff also posted a short video showing how the phone behaves using the different filters: