PPI - Page 15

Japan Display developed a new 5.2" Full-HD (423 ppi) OLED panel, using an WRGB structure and an LTPS backplane. It seems that JDI is advancing quickly in their OLED program, this comes just four months after JDI announced a 4.5" 1280x720 (326 ppi) panel. Back then JDI said they plan to start producing AMOLEDs by 2014.

This is quite an achievement by JDI. Just to compare, Samsung's highest resolution OLED panel, the 4.99" FHD one used in the GS4 has a ppi of 441, but it uses a Pentile matrix.

Samsung unveiled their new flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S4. As expected, it sports a 4.99" Full-HD (1920x1080, 441 PPI) Super AMOLED display behind a Corning Gorilla Glass 3. This phone will launch towards the end of April worldwide (on 327 carriers in 155 countries). The S4 seems to be more of an upgrade to the S3 than a revolutionary new handset.

According to previous reports, Samsung Display started producing these 5" Full-HD AMOLED panels in February at a rate of 3 million units per moth (this will grow to almost 10 million monthly units in coming months). The S3 is Samsung's best selling and fastest selling smartphone, and obviously the company hopes that the S4 will sell even better.

Samsung has given out invitations for their new Galaxy phone (which will probably be called the S4, as you can see from the image below) launch event - on March 14th, in New York (7PM ET). Early this month it was reported that Samsung is beginning to produce the 4.99" Full-HD (440 PPI) AMOLED display that will be used in this phone. These reports come from Korea, and are apparently based on Analysts researching Samsung's supply chain companies.

However, two days ago SamMobile (a usually credible blog) posted that the S4 will in fact not use an OLED at all. They quite an "insider" claiming that the phone will use a 4.99" Full-HD SoLux LCD display. The processor will be a Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 @1.9 Ghz - and not a Samsung-made Exynos 5 processor as was previous estimated.

According to Digitimes, Samsung's upcoming "next-gen" AMOLED panels will use a new pixel layout. Reportedly, Samsung are developing hexagon and diamond shaped pixels. This means that Samsung will increase the resolution but the picture will suffer due to jagged pixel artifacts and blurring. It's probably that at such high pixel density this won't actually be noticed, but still.

In the Galaxy Note II Samsung introduced a new sub-pixel scheme, an RGB matrix in which the blue subpixel is twice as large as the red and green ones - which achieved 267 PPI. Obviously the new 4.99" Full-HD displays have a much higher PPI (440). I assumed Samsung will use the same PenTile arrangement used in most of their AMOLED displays.

As was reported before, Samsung has unveiled a 4.99" Full HD AMOLED panel (440PPI). This panel will go into production in Q1 2013, and will probably be used in their upcoming Galaxy S4 flagship phone:

Samsung managed to achieve such a high pixel density using a modified FMM technology. According to Anandtech, Samsung also adopted a new material that makes these AMOLEDs 25% more efficient. This means that Samsung finally adopted UDC's green PHOLED materials in the new panels.

LG announced that it is bringing its OLED TVs to CES 2013 (January 8-11)- and the company further enhanced its 55" WRGB OLED TV in technology and in design. The new model weighs just 3.5Kg (500 grams less than the older one shown at CES 2012) and is still 4mm thick. As LG says in its PR: "LG Display is truly laying the prologue for the new OLED TV era".

LG's OLED TV features FPR passive 3D, 100,000,000:1 contrast ratio and fast response time (1,000 times faster than LCD according to LG). The TV is based on LG Display's Oxide-TFT white-OLED with color filters (WRGB) OLED panel. The TV is expected to launch in 2013 for a price of around $10,000 at first. Earlier this month the TV (model 55EM9700-UA) passed through the FCC as it includes Wi-Fi and Bluetooth modules and so needs to get approved by the FCC before it can be sold in the US.

CNet reports that Samsung Display officials have confirmed that the company will unveil a 5.5" 1,280x720 (267 ppi) plastic-based flexible OLED display at CES 2013 (January 8). The screens on show will be curved, but apparently they will not (yet) roll up. SD still has to develop the touch panel and final encapsulation, according to CNet.

It's not clear yet how close Samsung are to actually commercializing such technology. Originally Samsung planned to release the first plastic-based OLEDs in 2012, but this was pushed back to 2013. I'm not entirely sure Samsung will actually be able to mass produce such displays in 2013.

Last week we reported that Samsung decided to use OLED technology in its upcoming Full-HD mobile phone display, and today we hear that Samsung plans to unveil this panel at CES 2013 (January 8-11). The panel's size is 4.99" which means 441 PPI (at 1920x1080). Back in October it was reported that Samsung managed to reach 400 PPI using a modified FMM technology.

A 4.99" display is quite larger than the S3 (4.8") and it's not clear whether this will be used in the upcoming S4 phone (I think there's a limit to the size of Samsung's main flagship smartphone). The Note II has a 5.5" display, so the new panel is somewhat between those two phones. Samsung may be able to put this larger display into a case with the same as as the S3 one, by narrowing the bezel and perhaps removing the home button.

Update: new reports from Korea suggest that Samsung decided to stick with OLED technology for upcoming Full-HD displays...

ZDNet in Korea reports that Samsung will abandon AMOLED technology in favor of LCD for their next generation flagship phone (which will probably be called the S4). The reason given is that Samsung will have to use Full-HD resolution (to compete with Full-HD phones from LG and HTC) - and 4-5 inch AMOLED panels cannot achieve this resolution yet. ZDNet claims that Samsung is interested in buying these panels from Japan Display.

Hopefully this is not a correct report. Last month it was actually reported that Samsung did manage to achieve 400 ppi in their AMOLED displays, and that they will be able to produce Full-HD AMOLED mobile phone panels. In any case, it's not clear whether such a resolution is actually necessary in such small screens.

Japan Display unveiled their first OLED prototype, a 4.5" 1280x720 (326 ppi) panel at the FPDI 2012 exhibition. JD is using an WRGB architecture (white OLEDs with color filters) and a top-emission device structure.

JD says that mass production of this panel will begin in fiscal 2014. Back in April 2012 they announced plans to start OLED mass production by March 2013. In any case, it's great to see their first OLED prototype.