TechCrunch » AMOLED

Samsung To Bring Its Flexible AMOLED Displays To Devices And Lighting Next Year

Devin Coldewey — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 18:25:34 +0000

Remember those cool flexible screens Samsung was showing off early this year? Well, they weren’t just for show and tell. Samsung plans to mass-produce these suckers in 2012, and plans to put them in everything that isn’t flat.

While you would think that “flat” category would include mobile phones, there’s no rule saying the whole thing has to be curvy or flat. A phone design that has the screen curving off around the edge could be really cool. Samsung also wants to put these screens in wristwatches, though it doesn’t look like they’re quite thin enough (with battery and all) to fare well in that space just yet.

I’m more excited about these mass-produced things going into lighting. They can be wrapped around a 1″-diameter cylinder, and I’m sure a lot of designers are excited about the possibilities there.

[via OLED-Display.net]

No AMOLED Panels For The iPad 3, Unfortunately

Jordan Crook — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 20:40:34 +0000

There has been some speculation as of late that Apple might upgrade to AMOLED panels for the iPad 3, rumors that were effectively squashed by industry sources claiming that the current rate of AMOLED panel production won’t be able to meet iPad 3 demand, according to DigiTimes.

In other words, should Apple choose to go the AMOLED route, we’d be waiting much longer for the iPad 3 then we, or Apple, would like. Samsung, Apple’s display provider (and current patent battle opponent), just recently started production in its brand new 5.5G AMOLED factory, and two months ahead of schedule no less. Still, iPad 3 demand is bound to far out-weigh the production rate at Samsung’s new facility.

Even if we set aside capacity issues, AMOLED panels have yet to appear on a tablet. In fact, the only Samsung devices to sport AMOLED panels are its line of Galaxy S II smartphones. It would be very uncharacteristic of Apple to put unproven technology on one of its most sought-after products. Hopefully, AMOLED technology will have undergone a bit more testing by the time that Apple starts designing the fourth-gen iPad.

New Flexible AMOLED Screen Is A Tenth Of A Millimeter Thick

Devin Coldewey — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 20:40:40 +0000

We’ve seen some thin, flexible displays out there (TDK, Sony, LG, HP, and others are working on them), but I do believe this one is the thinnest yet. The others have gotten as thin as 0.3mm, but this one from Taiwanese research company ITRI is a microscopic 0.1mm.

Who knows, that last 0.2mm could be the difference that makes a breakthrough device possible. Hopefully not literally breakthrough, though.

The technical advances that made this possible took its inspiration from Taiwanese crepes, of all things: ITRI included a sort of non-stick layer that allows… man, I don’t even know. Now I just want a crepe.

[via TG Daily]

Samsung S-Pad coming in August?

Contributor — Wed, 05 May 2010 07:15:37 +0000

Well, we’re apparently in the time of the tablets. First it was the netbooks, then the e-book readers, and now the big thing is everyone has to have a tablet to peddle. Samsung is doing things a little differently, but I don’t know if it’ll be different enough to make an impact in the (soon to be) flooded market.

Word is, Samsung is making a 7-inch AMOLED tablet, expect to launch in South Korea in August. Like the iPad, it’ll sport 3G and Wi-fi, but it’ll also have USB and access to Samsung’s Apps. No word on pricing, we’ll let you know if we hear anything more.

[via Unwired View]

Samsung S8500 becomes first Bluetooth 3.0 approved handset

Contributor — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 17:40:03 +0000

There is nothing more satisfying than claiming to be the first at anything, and so far this week, Samsung must be pretty happy with itself. After announcing its plans to mass produce AMOLED touchscreens, the first to include built-in touch functions, Samsung’s S8500 will be the first consumer handset to feature Bluetooth 3.0. The Bluetooth Special Interest Group, or SIG, has approved version 3.0 for the handset and also slipped out a few details on the phone.

The Bluetooth SIG says the S8500 is a “stylish phone reinforced with featurs,” but there really isn’t much we can see so far that wows us. It has a high-resolution 3.1″ OLED screen which has an anti-glare coating for high outdoor visibility. The quad-band GSM handset is also said to be compact and slim, but that could mean anything, and it will come in a variety of different colors. Exciting? Hardly, but these specs may not be final and we’ve yet to see what the device actually looks like.

[Bluetooth SIG via PhoneScoop]

Samsung looks to mass produce 3.3" AMOLED touchscreen displays

Contributor — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 18:00:38 +0000

Standard, boring LED screens: your days are numbered! Samsung announced today that it will begin mass producing AMOLED displays with touch functions built right in. The displays will be 3.3″ WVGA touchscreens that will be, thanks to the AMOLED technology, much thinner than your average touchscreen display on current phones. The beauty of this technology is that it produces thinner, brighter and more vivid displays because it doesn’t require the additional touch input layer on top of the screen. Samsung managed to place a touch sensor over the mirror display and made it evaporate, leaving just a 0.001mm thick sensor over the display.

Thanks to this method of manufacturing displays, Samsung can happily claim to be the world’s first in creating an AMOLED display with touch function. Now we can look forward to thinner devices, the vividness of AMOLED screens and, because it doesn’t need a backlight, much longer battery life. A Samsung rep says, “Through mass production, we want to make this touch embedded AMOLED panel number one in the LCD and AMOLED market.” Well, getting a head start and being the world’s first certainly puts Sammy in a position to be where it wants.

LG shows off their new 15-inch transparent AMOLED monitor

Contributor — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 23:30:15 +0000

LG showed off their newest project at the FPD-International 2009 show in Japan recently, a 15-inch transparent display. Are we seeing the future of TV and computer monitors? Who knows, but it’s interesting to see nonetheless.

Of course, it’s still a prototype, and we have no idea when we’ll see it in retail, how much it will cost, or anything specific. We do know that it uses AMOLED (active matrix organic light emitting diode) technology, but that’s about it. Other companies, like Philips, are also checking out this technology, and it was even rumored that Apple was going to create a device utilizing a transparent display. Nothing has really come to market yet (though the Zune HD screen has been getting good reviews), but we’ll keep you informed when and if something does.

[via OLED Display]

Video: LG's AMOLED display is mighty thin – miiiighty thin

Devin Coldewey — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 22:00:47 +0000

1.7mm. Well! I remember when I was impressed by a third of an inch — a comparably girthy 8mm. These LG TVs use AMOLED technology, which pretty much is the business except for cost and size limitations right now. Keep in mind that the guts of the TV aren’t contained in that thin part — but the fact that it can stand alone means that the CPU and such can all be hidden or even remote.

It helps to see it being interacted with, gives you a better sense of the size. I like the design. Video courtesy of Techblog.gr.

Here are the specs on LG’s baby:

1366×768
347.938×210.293×1.70mm (screen only)
Number of colors: 16.7 Million
Luminance (Peak/cd/m²) 200/440
Contrast Ratio: >100.000:1
Colour Gamut NTSC %: > 87
Viewing Angle: 180 degrees
Response Time: < 0.01ms (is that right?)

I’m sure these things are also going to be mighty expensive when they come out for you and me, so don’t get too excited yet.

[Update: Engadget notes that the TVs will be coming out in early 2010 and the 15-incher should cost about $2500. Yeah, I might have to wait a little while before I pick one up.]

Rugged LG AMOLED displays withstand hammer blows

Devin Coldewey — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 20:22:25 +0000

Thank god they’re finally making some strong screens. I have to replace my display every single time I hit it with a hammer — that’s unacceptable! LG’s display, shown here, was being hit repeatedly by a mallet during a demo at Computex. The simpler construction of an OLED display means it can be more robust to physical abuse.

This one in particular has its AMOLEDs on a glass substrate, with steel behind and a resin coating in front. I imagine that as long as the resin stays intact, the glass is unlikely to flex or break, so this display really can take a beating. Here’s hoping these super-thin, super-contrasty, super-durable displays make it onto our desktops soon.

[via OLED-display.net]

Look at how bendy this prototype Samsung AMOLED is

Nicholas Deleon — Wed, 27 May 2009 16:40:05 +0000

Some flexible AMOLED news for you. (I know, right?) Samsung just showed off a prototype 6.5-inch display that’s less of a hassle to produce in large quantities. (Temperature doesn’t need to be as closely monitored, manufacturing costs have dropped, etc.) Samsung envisages something like this being used in electronic book readers, electronic passports, etc. Paper be damned, I guess.

Other news: the response time for the prototype is said to be somewhere around 1,000 times faster than the average LCD. Sounds like it’d be good for gaming, then.

Look how bendy it is!

(That’s actually pretty impressive. Let’s start a company, get VC funding, and develop games with narrative where the gameplay mechanics are based on bending the screen.)

Samsung: Chicks dig it. Puppies, hedgehogs, and hamsters as well

Devin Coldewey — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 02:40:08 +0000

This absurd little video is ostensibly to show off the sweet new AMOLED screens gracing the S8300, OmniaHD and others. But I’m thinking it was more of a way for their internal viral team to get to play with a whole bunch of baby animals.

What if that was your job? I mean, I’m not complaining — I’m doing my job sitting here without a shirt, drinking pomegranate tea and eating hot hot hot ramen. But if someone said “take this HD video camera and get lots of cute footage of baby animals, with our phones in the background,” I might be conflicted.

[via Crave]

Samsung S8300 AMOLED Touchscreen Slider lacks kitchen sink

Greg Kumparak — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 18:36:06 +0000

While I can’t say I agree with the color scheme (Orange and black? I can’t decide whether it looks like a Halloween toy or a cheap pair of Reeboks), it looks like Samsung has managed one hell of an engineering feat with the just-leaked S8300.

According to DailyMobile.se, this thing comes packed tight with a 2.8″ WQVGA AMOLED touchscreen, 8 megapixel camera with autoflash, GPS, microSD support, FM radio (with RDS), Bluetooth 2.1, and 7.2 Mbps HSDPA. It’s nothing we haven’t seen before in brickphones, but in a 12.8mm thick (just a millimeter thicker than the Samsung-made Helio Mysto, and one thinner than the Samsung Soul) slider? We’re impressed.

Samsung shows a practical use for OLED screens

Contributor — Fri, 16 May 2008 13:30:14 +0000

OLED screens are nice but small. Perfect for a notebook but impractical for, say, a television. This prototype of a laptop by Samsung has a keyboard that’s made me agitated just by looking at it, but features a 12.1-inch 1280×768 active matrix OLED screen, which I bet is gorgeous. Now we just need the price of these screens to come way, way down and before you know it, laptops with screens that are just a few millimeters thick will be commonplace.

via Ubergizmo

Big, cheap OLED displays mainstream by 2009-2010

Contributor — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 15:00:05 +0000

It’s just a matter of time before you’ll be able to point at friends, family, and co-workers and laugh at them about how stupid their LCD monitors look compared to your sweet active-matrix OLED monitor.

According to DigiTimes, Samsung’s betting that its active-matrix OLED (AMOLED) production should reach economies of scale by the end of next year, with 3 million panels produced versus the current 1.5 million panels this year. By 2010, that number should reach 6 million. AMOLED screens will also get larger, too, extending their use into bigger TVs and computer monitors.

Samsung's AMOLED phone has the longest acronym

Devin Coldewey — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 19:30:50 +0000

Samsung has created another good-looking phone, and this time it even has a few chin-stroke-worthy features. Sure, everyone loves LEDs, and OLEDs I’m told are the future. So what about AMOLEDs? Surely more letters = more quality. The AM stands for Active Matrix, and Samsung and LG have used it in a few very thin TVs. To you, the consumer, this means low power consumption, bright sharp screen, and a wide viewing angle. And since it’s for sale in Korea, you know the SPH-W2400 has all the good features like Bluetooth, a decent 2-megapixel camera, multimedia player and so on. Since they get that stuff standard.

Samsung comes up with a new AMOLED cellphone in Korea [Akihabara News]

Samsung and LG Announce Skinny AMOLEDs

Peter Ha — Thu, 17 May 2007 23:41:34 +0000

What are we teaching the children of the world when companies are constantly telling AMOLEDs they’re too fat? In their quest to rid the world of fatty, fat, fat AMOLEDs, Samsung and LG have both announced uber-thin displays today.

Samsung is touting another ‘world’s thinnest’ with a 2.2-inch display that’s 0.52mm thick-about the same size as your credit card. Screen resolution is at 320×240 with a 10,000:1 contrast ratio and it’s already in mass production. Not to be outdone by its SK counterpart, LG has brought out a 4-inch display that flexes and it’s only 0.15mm! But, yeah, that’s about all it brings. Looks like Samsung takes the trophy on this one.

LG Press Release

Samsung OLED [AVING]