PPI - Page 14

As expected, Samsung launched two new mobile devices today with Super AMOLED displays. First up is the Galaxy Note 3 that sports a 5.7" Full-HD Super AMOLED display (386 PPI), a 2.3 Quad-Core CPU (or a 1.9Ghz octa-core in some markets), 3 GB of RAM, 32/64GB of storage, a 13 MP camera (will be capable of 4K videos in some markets) and Android 4.3. Samsung managed to pack all this in a phone that is smaller and lighter than the Note 2.

The Galaxy Gear is Samsung's first smartwatch and it features a 1.63" 320x320 (275 PPI) Super AMOLED display, a 1.9 mp camera (can do 720p videos), 800Mhz processor, 4GB of storage, 512MB of RAM, Bluetooth 4, and a 315 mAh non-removeable battery. The watch will support third-party apps and 70 partners signed up to supply applications at launch.

LG Display developed the world's first QHD (2560x1440) AH-IPS LCD panel for smartphones. This 5.5" display is the world's highest resolution mobile display and is features the highest density (538 PPI).

LG says that this is also the world's thinnest mobile LCD at 1.21 mm. They say it's 12% thinner than LG's previous world record announced just last month. Something does not add up as the previous panel was 2.2 mm thick... so maybe the real thickness of this new panel is about 1.9 mm. 

A slide detailing the upcoming Blackberry A10 has been leaked, and it details a phone that is not very much different from the Z10, except for the display - which is a 5" 1280x720 (295 PPI) S-Stripe OLED. If this is true, this will be Blackberry's second OLED phone following the Q10 with its square 3.2" 720x720 OLED.

Other features of the A10 include a dual-core 1.7Ghz CPU, LTE, NFC, BlackBerry OS 10.2, 8mp camera, 2GB of RAM and 16GB of flash memory and a large 2,800 mAh battery. Interestingly back in October 2012, a slide detailing the upcoming Aristo phone was leaked, with specs that are pretty similar to this, although the display was a bit smaller at 4.65" - but still an OLED with a resolution of 1280x720.

Sumitomo Chemical announced it has developed a new PLED inkjet-printing technology that achieves 423 PPI on glass substrates sized 370x470 mm. We don't have more information about Sumitomo's new production process, but apparently it isn't ready for commercialization yet as the company says they will "continue to improve the performance and process of PLED materials".

Panasonic printed P-OLED 56-inch OLED prototype

Panasonic used Sumitomo's PLED materials in their 56" 4K2K printed OLED TV prototype shown at CES 2013. Panasonic and Sumitomo has been collaborating on OLED TVs since 2009. The companies hope that ink-jet printing will enable them to lower the production costs of OLED panels compared to evaporation based production. Panasonic aims to launch their first OLED TVs in 2015. The company is collaborating with Sony, and may setup a production-JV together (although if this happens, it's not clear which production technology will be used).

Japan Broadcasting Corp (NHK) and Nippon Shokubai developed a new OLED structure (called inverted OLED, or iOLED) that drastically improves oxygen and moisture resistances. The two companies demonstrated a prototype 5" QVGA (320x240, 80 PPI) red monochrome panel that uses the new structure.

The basic iOLED idea is to invert the structure between the electrodes of a bottom-emission OLED. So in an iOLED, on top of a transparent negative electrode (ITO), you place the EIL, ETL, emitter layer, HTL and finally the positive electrodes. According to the two companies, this structure makes the OLED more resistant. The brightness (or light emitting area) of a normal OLED will decrease by half within 100 days if it is exposed to air (due to the oxidation of the negative electrode). An iOLED will will hardly deteriorate in these conditions.

Several companies announced new flexible OLED panels at SID 2013. None of the panels were demonstrated (except for Toshiba which showed the OLED but it was not powered). First up is Toshiba, which showed a 10.2" 1920x1200 (223 PPI) panel. Toshiba's OLED has an Oxide TFT backplane and uses the WRGB (white OLED with color filters) architecture.

Toshiba flexible OLED prototype

Panasonic developed a 4" flexible OLED with 224x224 resolution (only 80 PPI, direct emission). Panasonic used PEN as a substrate and the panel can be bent up to a curvature radius of 10 mm. This is also an Oxide-TFT panel. To produce it, Panasonic attached the PEN sheet to a glass substrate, deposited the OLED materials and then de-laminated the glass.

Last year Qualcomm announced that they no longer plan to mass produce Mirasol displays, but during SID they unveiled their latest panels, and obviously they are still developing the technology. The company's latest panels feature a very high pixel density (557 PPI). The 5.1" panel has a resolution of 2560x1440 while the 1.5" panel's resolution is 600x600:

Mirasol displays are very power efficient (they draw about a sixth of the power required by a similar OLED or LCD panel). On the other hand, the color reproduction isn't up to par with LCDs or OLEDs. Still this is an interesting technology to watch.

When Samsung launched the GS4, they said the Super AMOLED display uses PenTile. Back in January, it was reported that Samsung will adopt a new subpixel scheme that uses diamond sub-pixels, but up until now we didn't hear anything official from Samsung. Today the company finally did acknowledge the new design, and published two closeup photos of the GS4 display.

Diamond Pixel, as Samsung's calls their new design, is a PenTile subpixel scheme, in which there are twice as many green subpixels as there are blue and red ones. The green subpixels are oval and small while the red and blue ones are diamond-shaped and larger (the blue subpixel is slightly larger than the red one). DisplayMate says that this is because green is the most efficient (and long lasting) OLED emitter while the blue has the shortest lifetime.

A couple of week ago we reported on AUO's new 5" Full-HD AMOLED panel that features the world's highest resolution density at 443 ppi (which means it's probably a 4.97" panel). AUO is showing this panel at China's Display Expo, and we found this nice video showing the display (for about two minutes, and then showing new LCD panels: small, large and transparent ones):

We still do not know when AUO will actually start to produce these panels, hopefully this will happen in 2013. In the meantime AUO is also working on large sized panels: it is making 56" substrates for Sony and Panasonic prototype OLED panels and the company also developed the world's largest AMOLED panel to date at 65".

AUO developed a new AMOLED panel that features the world's highest resolution at 443 ppi. The panel is Full-HD and 5" in size (or actually 4.97" if it's 443 ppi). AUO will show prototype panels at China's Display Expo in Shenzhen starting tomorrow. AUO didn't reveal any technical details besides saying that this panel was made using a fine shadow mask process.

AUO previous OLED panel was the 4.65" 1280x720 (317 ppi) shown at October 2012. AUO keeps upgrading their AMOLED densities. But of course what we really want is for AUO to actually start producing AMOLED panels. Some reports suggest that AUO's yields are still very low (around 40%) and the company won't stat mass production until 2014.