It's been a while since we heard anything about the LG EL9500 OLED TV (and we're not even sure if LG is still making those panels) but today we found an extensive review of this TV. The conclusion? OLED offers great picture quality ("perfect black levels...Response time is lightning fast...amazing color detailing...Shadow detailing was great, too). The only problem? The price of course...

LG EL9500

The LG EL9500 is a 15" OLED TV with 1366x768 resolution that's only 1.7mm thick. It is shipping in the UK (for £1970) and in Korea and it's not clear whether it'll be sold in the US.

There are some reports that the Google Nexus-S phone will have a 4" curved OLED display : a flexible OLED made by Samsung (the whole phone is actually made by Samsung, based around the same hardware as the Galaxy-S phone). This is very interesting...

The Flexible Display Center (FDC) at Arizona State University and AU-Optronics will co-develop mixed oxide thin film transistors (TFTs) for flexible AMOLED displays. AUO and the FDC will work in active partnership with dedicated engineering teams to advance mixed oxide transistor technology and the handling capabilities of conventional flat panel display (FPD) manufacturing processes to accommodate the thin, plastic substrates used for AMOLED flexible displays. Mixed oxide TFTs offer a better ability to drive currents and improve the lifetime and stability of transistors used for OLED displays.

Flexible AMOLED by ITRI

AUO is also working towards flexible displays together with Taiwan's ITRI. AUO plans to start mass producing AMOLED displays in Q2 2011 (but these will not be flexible...).

On the 8th December Polymertronics shall be delivering a free evening lecture at the University of Oxford (in the UK) on OLED technology. This Presentation will describe what OLEDs are, how they work and some of the people that have made the technology possible.

Explained will be some of the challenges in manufacturing and the limitations when making white coloured light. The market will be shown, along some innovative lighting from various companies, plus insight will be given into some of the work being carried out in flexible OLED displays and inkjet printing OLEDs. They will also show working demonstrations of OLEDs.

eMagin reported their quarterly earnings, and posted a record net income of $2.8 million on revenues of $8.3 million. eMagin says they shipped a record number of OLED microdisplays in the quarter - with a strong growth in the military market.

eMagin plans to have over $30 million revenues in all of 2010.

LG is showing a new OLED 3D panel for mobile devices. This is an autostereoscopy (glasses-free) panel with a 360x640 resolution in 2D and 360x320 in 3D.

Samsung Electronics is showing a new 19" OLED TV that was produced using an ink-jet printing method. The resolution is only 960x540 at 58ppi and the luminance is 200cd/m². And it has a 62% color gamut.

Samsung declined to say whether they have plans to commercialize this technology. They only said that it's "still under development".

We've got some more information about AUO's OLED Lighting panels (unveiled at the FPD 2010 exhibition). AUO is showing two panels. The first is a large (245x295mm active size, the module measure 314x333mm) and thin (1.6mm) with 50lm/W efficiency. The color temperature is 3,000K, the luminance is 1500cd/m² and the color rendering index (CRI) is over 80.

The OLED is made from both phosphorescent and fluorescent materials. This probably means that they use phosphorescent Red and Green and fluorescent Blue. Back in 2006, AUO used Universal Display's PHOLED materials for their AMOLED displays, so it's pretty safe to assume that UDC is also providing materials and/or IP for AUO lighting panels.

Update: Samsung officially announced their new display, and it's called Super AMOLED Plus.

There are some very interesting reports about an upcoming flagship Android phone from Samsung coming in February 2011. The most interesting bit is the large (4.3" or 4.5") sAMOLED2 display - apparently Super AMOLED 2. Back in July 2010, Samsung announced that they plan to soon double their AMOLED displays' efficiency, lifetime and power consumption. Perhaps the Super AMOLED 2 is the result of that research.

Other features of this new phone include a 8mp camera (capable of Full-HD 1080p), 1.2Ghz processor, 14.4Mbps HSPA, Bluetooth 3 and 16GB of onboard memory. And it runs Android Gingerbread. This is all un-official yet, and in the above slide (which is said to be from Samsung) the photo is of an old VOiP phone which is strange.

Nanomarkets have released a new report called "transparent conductor markets in the OLED Industry - 2011 and beyond". This report analyzes and quantifies the opportunities that the rise of the OLED industry will create for suppliers of transparent conductive materials. According to the new report, the market for transparent conductors in 2016 will be almost $500 million - for both OLED lighting and displays.