OLED-Info: the OLED experts

On October 19 Samsung held its 2018 Samsung OLED Forum, in Shenzhen, China, during which the company highlighted its OLED technology roadmap.

In an interesting slide, Samsung shows its roadmap for integrating sensors into the OLED display. Samsung's vision includes putting a fingerprint sensor, a camera (Under Panel Sensor, or UPS), speaker (Sound on Display) and also Haptic capabilities.

China-based OLED producer Visionox announced plans to establish its 2nd flexible OLED production line in Hebei. The new line will have a monthly capacity of 30,000 1500x1850 mm substrates (6-Gen), similar to the company's first line in Hebei.

The construction of the new line will take 25 months - so mass production will not begin before the end of 2020. Total investment in the new production line will be $6.3 billion, out of which $3.15 billion will be raised with debt and the rest by equity - by Visionox and the Hefei Municipal People's Government.

According to a report from ETNews, LG Display is collaborating with Lenovo to develop a foldable tablet. The tablet will use a 13" foldable OLED - which LGD aims to start producing in the second half of 2019.

The 13" display will be around 9" when folded. So this device will stay in the tablet size category when folded, this will not compete in the smartphone market. This is the first time we hear of such a device under development - which could make sense as a tablet is not used as much as a smartphone is - and so the number of supported folding cycles can be lower.

The South Korean government announced a seven-year project to establish an OLED R&D and manufacturing facility in Cheonan, South Chungcheong Province.

The Korean government will spend 528 billion Won (around $468 million USD), it's largest ever R&D project, to build the R&D center and manufacturing facility, which will include 61 manufacturing and production systems, including several OLED evaporation systems. The R&D facility will conduct over 66 planed projects, focusing on technologies such as flexible OLED encapsulation, cost-cutting methods, next-generation displays and more.

Huawei launched several new devices yesterday, including four new AMOLED ones. The top of the line is the Mate 20 X, a large smartphone that features several high-end technologies - a 7.2" 1080x2244 (346 PPI) AMOLED display, a triple Leica cameras setup, a GoodixTech under-the-display fingerprint sensor, a 5000 mAh battery and a graphene thermal management film.

Huawei also launched the smaller Mate 20 Pro - another high-end smartphone that features a 6.39" 1440x3120 (538 PPI) AMOLED display (reportedly produced by BOE), an Octa-Core Kirin 980 (7 nm) chipet, 6GB of RAM, 128 GB of storage, an NM card slot and a triple Leica optics camera setup. The Mate 20 Pro is the first smartphone to adopt Synaptics' complete display system solution - which includes Synaptics’ flexible chip-on-film (COF) ClearView display driver and the company's ClearPad touch controllers.

In 2017 Apple introduced its first OLED iPhone (the iPhone X), and in 2018 its smartphone range include 2 OLED phones (the iPhone XS and XS Max) and one LCD phone. Earlier estimates suggested that in 2019, Apple's will move exclusively to OLED in all of its smartphones. But a new report suggests otherwise.

Known Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo says that in 2019 Apple will continue to use an LCD display in its entry-level smartphone. The 2019 range will include two OLED iPhones (5.8" and 6.5") and the LCD model will use a 6.1" display - a similar lineup to the one they have in 2018.

Display measurement experts Display Mate posted an in-depth review of the Google Pixel 3 XL 6.3" 1440x2960 AMOLED display. The display wins DisplayMate's highest ever Overall Display Assessment Grade of A+ together with a DisplayMate Best Smartphone Display Award.

DisplayMate says that Google now joins Apple and Samsung as the top tier of smartphone displays. The Google 3 XL display is on par with the AMOLED display used in Samsung's Galaxy S9. Interestingly, it turns out that Samsung Display provides this 6.3" AMOLED display to the Pixel 3 XL, while LG Display is likely to be the supplier for the smaller 5.5" 1080x2160 display used in the Pixel 3.