PPI - Page 13

Yesterday Samsung unveiled their latest Galaxy S series smartphone, the Galaxy S5. Samsung says that the new phone was designed to "focus on what matters most to consumers". The display is a 5.1" FHD (432 PPI) Super AMOLED display (seems to be the same display as on the GS4, only a bit larger).

Other features of the GS5 include a 2.5 Ghz quad-core CPU, 2GB of RAM, 16MP camera (4K video support). The GS5 is dust and water resistant, and it packs a finger scanner and a heart rate sensor. The new flagship device will launch on April 11 in 150 countries worldwide.

The SID Display Week, the world's leading display industry showcase is scheduled for June, but the organizers already published the list of papers to be presented in this show. Hiding in this long list of technical achievements and research projects are some interesting new OLED developments. So here's some of the achievements to be announced during the show (at no particular order).

TCL's China Star Optoelectronics Technology (CSOT) managed to fabricate a 7" QVGA (320x240) flexible PMOLED display. The display uses a thin PEN substrate, processed at Gen-4.5. The company also proposes a design for a 14" QVGA PMOLED panel. CSOT also developed a 31" Full-HD AMOLED panel that uses a IGZO backplane. The 31" direct-emission panel was produced on a Gen-4.5 glass substrate using FMM.

Even though earlier rumors suggested Samsung will adopt an LCD for the upcoming GS5 phone, it was later reported that the GS5 will actually adopt a 5.2" WQHD (2560 x 1440, 560 PPI) AMOLED panel. Today, at a display technology roadmap seminar, Samsung confirmed that indeed they are developing a QHD AMOLED panel.

Samsung will not stop at 560 PPI. The company is actually planning an even higher density panel - a UHD panel that will feature 860 PPI. It will be very hard to justify such a high density on a mobile device, but I guess it's a marketing race that is hard to stop. At any case, it seems that Samsung will be adopting the Diamond Pixel architecture for those high resolution displays.

Samsung is expected to launch the Galaxy S5 in a few months, and there are many rumors regarding this upcoming phone. The latest report from Korea says that SDC started producing 5.25" WQHD (2560x1440, 560 PPI) AMOLED panels that will be used in the GS5. The display uses the same Diamond Pixel arrangement as in the GS4.

Earlier rumors suggested that Samsung will adopt a flexible YOUM OLED for a premium version of the GS5. As a reminder, the flexible OLED in the Galaxy Round (which can be considered a Note 3 variant) is not a YOUM display as it is uses a glass cover.

In August we heard a report from Japan that Taiwan's Hon Hai (Foxconn) is establishing an OLED R&D center in Japan (possibly in partnership with Sharp's Sakai Display Product) with an aim to start AMOLED panel production in 2015. Today Taiwan's OFWeek reports that Hon Hai is developing high resolution OLEDs aimed for mobile phone and tablets with plans to start volume production in 2015.

According to the report, Hon hai will first develop OLED panels with 350 PPI, and will supply them to Chinese mobile phone makers. Then the company will produce high-resolution panels (up to 450 PPI) as they hope to supply OLED panels to Apple.

Kateeva is a US based startup that was established in 2009 to develop OLED ink-jet deposition technology originally developed at MIT. The company has been been in stealth-mode for years, and now finally they have unveiled their technology and system, branded YIELDJet.

So YIELDJET is an inkjet printing system that can be used to produce OLEDs in high volume. Kateeva claims that their system, the first one engineered from the ground up for OLED mass production, will dramatically improve yields and drive production costs lower. Kateeva says that this was achieved by three major technical breakthroughs: is features a production-worthy pure nitrogen process chamber, which doubles the lifetime in certain applications, it reduces particles by as much as 10X thanks to a specialized mechanical design and it offers exceptional film coating uniformity with a process window that’s 5X wider than standard technologies.

Taiwan has a large display industry, but in recent years it seems that it is lagging behind Korea, Japan and China in AMOLED technologies. We asked a local industry expert to check out the three main Taiwanese AMOLED companies (AUO, Innolux and RiTDisplay), and now we post on his updates.

AUO

As we reported already, AUO started producing AMOLEDs in their 4.5-Gen fab in Singapore after years of delays. According to our source, AUO is actually only producing samples. Those 5" 720p (295 ppi) panel samples have been been submitted to a company based in China. Earlier reports suggested AUO is going to supply HTC and Sony but it appears these two companies will keep using LCDs for now.

A few days ago Samsung held their Analyst Day 2013 with a lot of fascinating information regarding the company's present business and its future plans. It was clear from Samsung Display's presentation that the company sees OLED as the leading future display technology and puts a great emphasis on flexible displays. They see flexible OLED penetration into the mobile display market reaching 40% by 2018 (up from 0.2% in 2013) - this is based on research by DisplaySearch.

In fact Samsung Electronics's CEO announced that the company aims to bring fully-foldable screens sometimes in 2015. In the same statement he mentioned that there is still plenty of room for improvement for the Galaxy Gear and it's likely that the company is already developing a wearable device with a flexible AMOLED display.

Sharp is showing new 7" MEMS-Shutter Display prototype at Ceatec 2013. MEMS-Shutter displays are similar to LCD in that they have a LED backlighting unit (BLU), color filters, and a component that blocks the light. But instead of liquid-crystals and polarizers, these displays use MEMS shutters.

A MEMS-Shutter Display is about 6 times more efficient than a regular LCD. This is mostly due to the fact that you do not need a polarizing filter like in LCDs. The displays also use a WRGB structure in which there is a white subpixel which increases brightness and efficiency. The panels on display had a resolution of 800x1,280 (220 PPI). The backplane is an IGZO. Sharp co-developed these panels with Qualcomm.

DisplayMate, the display testing, measurement and calibration experts just got their hands on a pre-release Galaxy Note 3 production unit, with its 5.7" Full-HD Super AMOLED display (386 PPI, PenTile). They put the unit to extensive testing (and also compared it to the Note 2). The conclusion? This is the best performing OLED display ever and it beats LCDs across the board!

The most notable advancement in this new panel is the high brightness. It can achieve 660 cd/m² in high ambient light. It's not just 55% brighter than the Note 2, it's actually the brightest display ever tested at DisplayMate. A very notable achievement for Samsung's OLEDs, which were lagging behind LCDs in brightness.