FED and SED are practically dead, Plasmas never really took off and OLED are still too expensive  to produce. Now Hitachi Displays wants to change this by dramatically improving the good old LCDs, at least for mobile devices (even for these, OLED are far from being a regularly used).

While conventional LCDs screens used in mobile devices may boast a resolution of 800 x 480 pixels, the new Hitachi model can offer 960 x 540 pixels and outperforms every other screen on the market. By way of comparison, the LCD screen used for the iPhone 3G has a resolution of 480×320.

Hitachi hopes to target customers wanting better screens when they access the web or watch TV on their handsets. The first cell phones featuring the new type of LCD screens will be shipped at the beginning of 2010, likely in Japan first. First samples have been already shipped to manufacturers.

The pictures shows Toshiba’s Biblio (soon for sale in the Japanese market), which boasts a 960×480 resolution because it has to: It’s supposed to be a e-book reader, too.

Via Nikkei [registration required, paid subcription]