Update: The Light Photon is made by Blackbody, using a single 47cmx37cm OLED device. See below for more infromation.

The Light Photon is a new OLED lamp, designed by Philippe Starck. It is made by Blackbody for Flos, and hand-made pre-production prototypes are now available for $5900. The lamp’s light source is a 47cm x 37cm single evaporation OLED device, with an active area of 1001cm², a color temperature of 2800K and a CRI above 80.

Light Photon OLED lamp

The small cross on the metal base allows the light to be turned on and off (by placing the finger completely over the cross) or dimmed (by holding the finger slightly above the cross for several seconds).

Philips is offering a new OLED lamp (using their Lumiblade OLED panels) for sale, called The Edge. It was developed in collaboration with Established & Sons (Amanda Levete). According to Philips: "The EDGE is a flat ribbon of steel twisted into a self-supporting form. A groove is then cut into the steel, off center, to allow the cable to be expressed and to exaggerate the movement of the piece. With this project, Amanda Levete has succeeded in revealing the wafer-thin essence of OLEDs and creating a light that is completely reductive in its simplicity".

The EDGE OLED lamp

Philips will also start to sell another OLED lamp soon, The O'Leaf. This one was developed in collaboration with Modular Lighting Instruments. In O'Leaf, the form of the fixture is based on the organic shapes. It can be used as a table-lamp (shown below) or fixed on the wall.

Philips O Leaf OLED lamp

The Flexible Display Center (FDC) at Arizona State University announced that Sunic System has become an industry partner in the center. The FDC, together with Sunic, will develop flexible OLED displays. The FDC has purchased a Gen-II OLED SUNICEL Plus 400 vacuum evaporation and encapsulation process tool from Sunic for its Tempe development facility.The tool will be installed in the fall (2010), with first devices anticipated in 1Q 2011.

The SUNICEL Plus system is designed to simplify OLED technology development and manufacturing, and is equipped to handle plastic substrates without interrupting the vacuum process. The system enables full color AMOLED and mono-color panel production with high electro luminescence (EL) performance and long lifetime.

Samsung is building a new 5.5-Gen AMOLED plant, and today they tell us how much they're spending on it: $2.2 billion US. In the press release, they also say that the plant will go online in 2012 (we thought it'll be sooner in 2011). The new plant will have 3 lines (1300X1500mm).

A few days ago, DuPont has unveiled new printable OLED materials. DuPont now say that they can print a 50" OLED TV in under two minutes. They are using a custom-made printer from Dai Nippon Screen Manufacturing Co.

Dupont worked with Dai Nippon Screen to develop a multi-nozzle printer for the new inks. The Dai Nippon printer generates a continuous stream of ink, rather than droplets, and moves over a surface at rates of four to five meters per second while patterning a display.

There's an interesting article over at EETimes, about Samsung's VP of OLED R&D Center, Brian Berkeley (an ex-Apple engineer). They say that Berkeley's presence in Korea is a proof of Samsung's commitment to lead the industry by recruiting the "best and the brightest" from all over the world.

Samsung 40-inch OLED TV Prototype

There are rumors that T-Mobile's upcoming new Sidekick phone (project Emerald, to be known as the Sidekick twist) will run Google's Android v2.1, and have a large 4.3" super-AMOLED display. It's expected to be released in the summer.

Google announced that they'll stop selling the Nexus-One phone. The N1 was only available online, and didn't get any real carrier support. Google will eventually stop selling handsets online and instead promote "a variety of Android phones available globally."

Google Nexus One

eMagin has posted strong financial results for the first quarter of 2010 - $5.9 million in revenue and $880,000 net income. eMagin says two custom OLED microdisplays will enter production this year, and they are also on track for the ultra high-res 3D OLED microdisplays for the US army.

eMagin reiterated their guidance of $28M to $32M in total revenue during 2010.

Samsung's super AMOLED
packing S8500 Wave phone is now available unlocked for £350 in the UK. Amazon say it'll ship within 1-3 months... We don't have a US release date yet. This will be the first shipping phone with a Super-AMOLED display.

Samsung Wave s8500

The wave is running the Bada-OS, has a 3.3" 800x480 super-AMOLED display, and is also the first phone with Bluetooth 3.0. Other features include Wi-Fi, a 1Ghz processor, 5Mp camera, a-GPS, accelerometer, 2GB/8GB of internal memory, micro-SD slot
DivX/XViD support and 720p recording/encoding.