Images have surfaced of an unannounced Samsung handset running on the LiMo platform and headed for Vodafone. The images, posted on the Boy Genius Report, show a brushed steel housing and an OLED screen with haptic feedback. The device is said to get an 8-megapixel camera, although further hardware specs remain unknown.
Samsung's first deployment of OLED notebooks should occur in about a year, an executive from the company explains. Samsung's head of worldwide sales and marketing for computers, Kyu Uhm, revealed the information at this week's IFA expo in Berlin. "Samsung is the largest OLED screen manufacturer. And as soon as it's available commercially for laptops we will adopt it," says Uhm. "Probably sometime Q3 next year."
The world's biggest cellphone maker, Finland's Nokia, has applied for a patent that could eventually result in a phone or other portable electronic device that folds in four. According to the concept illustrations, two of the folding panels might be dedicated to the screen, while the other pair might form a large QWERTY keyboard, allowing for a notebook-like interface. It is not known whether the device will indeed be a smartphone, a UMPC or something in-between.
In a speech made last week at a seminar in Tokyo, Woo Jong Lee, the Vice President of the Mobile Display Marketing Team of Samsung SDI, said the joint venture between Samsung Electronics and Samsung SDI will bring active matrix organic LED (OLED) displays to market in notebooks by 2010. Lee pointed out advantages of the new display technology, saying by 2010, burn-in for active-matrix OLED panels won't happen for more than 2,000 hours of use. The OLED panels will be used in notebooks first because of their demanding requirements.
South Korean scientists say they have developed a new material they call "true blue" that should speed up the development of organic light-emitting displays (OLEDs), according to a weekend report. The announcement comes from a chemistry professor at Pusan National University, Jin Sung-Ho, who led the state-funded project, which was performed in conjunction with engineers at Seoul National University. Up until now, scientists had trouble developing efficient blue lights for the application. OLEDs require green, red and blue lights in their screens for proper color reproduction.
Samsung concept phone features folding OLED screen At the FPD International show recently held in Japan, Samsung showed off a cellphone with a flexible folding OLED screen that, when opened, is larger than displays from any competitor. The handset features a vertical hinge and opens like a book. Once opened, the OLED display is about 5 inches in size. The unnamed handset also has a more conventional LED display on the front panel. That front panel also sports basic phone buttons, but there is no physical keypad, suggesting the smaller display is touch-sensitive.
At the Plastic Electronic 2008 show, the Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems showed the first touch-controlled flat light source. Because Organic Light Emitting Diodes (OLEDs) are cold to the touch, they could act as ideal touch controls. The innovation lies in the lack of any additional foils traditionally required to operate the light, which is both a switch and a source. Therefore, no additional hardware is required as the OLED is used to read the touch signal.
At its dealer convention held in Japan on Wednesday, Sony introduced a new Organic LED (OLED) TV prototype that uses batteries for installation or mounting flexibility along with a wireless connection to its tuner. While speakers are built-in and must therefore be powered by the battery as well, Sony executives say the lower power consumption of an OLED panel make batteries a viable solution to powering the TV, though they did not reveal battery life or more details on the wireless HD video and audio signal transmission.
Kodak has placed an order with Chi Mei EL (CMEL) for 7.6-inch OLED displays for use in the company's digital photo frames, according to today's report. CMEL specializes in manufacturing OLED panels and is owned by LCD maker Chi Mei Optoelectronics. The supplier is expected to start production of the 7.6-inch panels in September and ship them to Kodak in time for sale during the holiday shopping season.
Toshiba Matsushita Display (TMD) and Idemitsu Kosan say they have devised a new form of screen, one which could substantially improve the performance of cellphone displays. The technology is based on an OLED variant called SMOLED -- Small-Molecule Organic LED -- and in a sample, 2.2-inch QVGA screen, consumes an average of just 100mW of power. Its luminosity half-life is meanwhile rated at 60,000 hours, close to seven years of continuous operation, or 30 times longer than previous TMD designs.
Panasonic will not bring a 37-inch OLED TV to market by 2011 as reported on Tuesday, according to the company. Panasonic executives are instead hinting its OLED TVs will be sold to consumers closer to 2015, although they are officially keeping tight-lipped about specific timelines, saying only that research and development is ongoing in Japan.
Panasonic under its current Matsushita parent name said on Tuesday that the company is in the last stages of drafting plans for a 37-inch, OLED-based HDTV. Actual designs and development are still in the future but should see a screen available within three years that should be priced below $1,400, putting the new display technology within competition of today's existing LCD screens.
Sony executive Yoshito Shiraishi has revealed at the SID display expo that his company is confident enough in the development of OLED technology that it plans to make a major investment in the technology for the second half of this year. The TV producer will invest the equivalent of $210 million to help it produce larger OLED displays and expects medium-sized and larger versions of the ultra-thin screens to enter production in the same second-half 2008 timeframe. The company expects a larger-still range of OLED panels between 2009 and 2010, Shiraishi says.
LG will be rolling out its 8G television line at least half a year ahead of other Taiwanese rivals, including S-LCD, AU Optronics, and Chi Mei Optoelectronics. According to DIGITIMES, the Korean electronics manufacturer already completed its fabrication shells, and has scheduled production to begin by March 2009, and full-scale production of 32 inch OLED TVs to commence in 2011. LG's competitors will start production in late 2008.
Production of AMOLED panels should finally reach mainstream levels in 2009, according to Woo-Jong Lee, the VP of Samsung's mobile display marketing group. AMOLED is one of several display technologies that may replace stalwarts like plasma or LCD; in particular, AMOLED is said to provide higher contrast and response, as well as wider viewing angles and longer battery life. The difficulty so far, according to Lee, has been production costs -- at present, AMOLED is only economical for smaller products such as cellphones, and continues to be rare regardless.
The technology and costs are in place that Apple may still introduce an organic light-emitting diode (OLED) screen with an upcoming generation of the iPhone, according to an interview Electronista has conducted with Gartner analyst Ken Dulaney. While making it clear that claims of mass production of a 3G iPhone last week were not predictions but rather just "credible" numbers based on expectations, the researcher maintains that OLED is a realistic possibility for the iPhone's display due to power requirements for 3G radios, which almost always consume more energy than 2G radios.
Sony will spend roughly $203.5 million on developing technology to build medium to large Organic Light-Emitting Diode (OLED) panels for use in TVs and monitors, the company announced today. While Sony already has an OLED TV on the market that exemplifies the ultra-thin design of OLEDs at 3mm (0.12in) thick, the XEL-1, its display measures just 11 inches across and is priced out of most hands at about $2,500 in the US.
Technology partnership Toshiba Matsushita Display on Friday unveiled a new spin on organic light-emitting diode (OLED) TVs that should ensure they last as least as long as LCD or plasma with the color accuracy and thinness of the newer technology. Using a new metal membrane, a 20.8-inch OLED set can output light more efficiently than earlier OLEDs. This allows the screen to run at half brightness without sacrificing the already bright picture of an OLED screen. Resulting screens can last twice as long as recent OLEDs, which themselves last for 10 years of constant use -- enough to more than match the typical lifetime of an LCD, the company says.
Digital Foci today unveiled two new Pocket Album OLED photo viewers, which will be on display at its CES 2008 booth. The Pocket Album OLED 1.5 features a 1.5-inch screen, with 32MB of internal flash storage – enough to hold approximately 120 photos. The integrated, rechargeable battery holds up to four hours of life, and can be charged through USB. Slideshows can run in either automatic or manual modes, which can display images randomly or in sequence. Digital Foci includes its Photo Viewer Software that allows users to crop and rotate images, which it then will automatically resize for optimal viewing and storage. The Pocket Album OLED 1.5 will be available in April for $50.
Next month's Consumer Electronics Show, scheduled for January 7th to the 10th, may see the arrival of some long-awaited TV technologies, according to reports. Laser sets -- which are said to be lighter, less power-intensive and cover 90 percent of the visible color spectrum -- should finally make their public debut, as Mitsubishi has announced a formal unveiling. Models from Samsung and Mitsubishi were originally supposed to premiere by the end of 2007, but unspecified delays pushed the date forward.
Samsung's SDI division on Thursday morning announced that it had developed a 31-inch TV using active matrix organic LED (AMOLED) technology. The screen is the largest to ever have been completed, eclipsing a 27-inch Sony OLED demonstrated early this year. As OLEDs need no separate backlight, the Samsung set measures just 4.3mm (0.17 inches) deep -- a tenth of the size of a contemporary LCD display, Samsung boasts. Nonetheless, the technology also has a far better contrast ratio than typical flat-panel displays and consumes half the power of a 32-inch LCD.
Samsung will soon be displaying the world's largest OLED TV to the public, the company has announced. At next month's Consumer Electronics Show, scheduled from January 7th to the 10th, Samsung will be displaying a 40-inch OLED set (not pictured), several times larger than Sony's flagship XEL-1, which is due to ship to the US within the next few months. OLEDs appear likely to replace LCD and plasma screens in the 2010s, due to several factors: they are first of all able to operate without a backlight, not only allowing true blacks, but also consuming less electricity.
