» Samsung OLED

Samsung OLED company spotlight

OLED is an emerging display technology that is fast becoming the mainstream display technology in many markets, as OLED enables display panels that offer the best image quality and free design as they can be made flexible and transparent. The Samsung OLED displays are considered to be the best in the industry and the Korean company is the clear lead in AMOLED production for mobile devices.

SDC 5.7'' FHD rollable OLED at SID 2016

Over the pay years Samsung invested billions of dollars in OLED research and production facilities as the company sees OLEDs fast replacing LCD displays in all mobile applications.

Samsung AMOLED displays

Samsung is currently producing over 300 million AMOLED displays in a year, used mostly in smartphones - such as Samsung's own Galaxy S7 (and S7 edge ) - but also in smartphones from Gionee, Meizu, Acer, HP, Vivo, Microsoft, Lenovo, ZTE, Hisense, Konka and others. Samsung also produces large mobile OLEDs for tablets, laptops and monitors.

Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge photoSamsung Galaxy S6 Edge

In August 2013 Samsung launched the company's first OLED TV, the KN55S9C, which used a curved 55" OLED panel. The TV was priced at around $8999 in the US and Korea, but is no longer in production, and was never in real mass production. Samsung has yet to return to OLED TV production.



Samsung flexible OLED displays

Following its initial flexible OLED production launch in 2013, and the huge success of its edge-type phones, Samsung is currently producing around 9 million flexible OLEDs each month to satisfy demand for the Galaxy S7 edge and its other flexible OLED products. Samsung has reportedly been chosen to supply 100 million flexible OLED panels to Apple's future iPhones.

Future Samsung OLED devices

Samsung is developing several next generation display technologies based on OLEDs. Samsung has been developing a foldable OLED device for a long time - which may dramatically change the mobile device market as it could enable smartphone to turn into tablets or phones that can be folded into smaller devices.

Samsung is also developing transparent OLEDs (see the company's 55" FHD transparent and mirror-type OLEDs here) for retail application, and also readies next generation displays for the automotive industry.

Several years ago Samsung released the following video, showing a concept transparent flexible AMOLED tablet device. It will be years before Samsung can commercialize such a display, but it's nice to see what the future holds:

Further reading

Latest Samsung OLED news

Samsung is ramping up its foldable OLED production. Or is it?

Samsung recently re-launched its foldable OLED smartphone, the Galaxy Fold - and the $2,000 smartphone seems to be selling well. In September it was reported that Samsung is seeing strong demand in Korea, and now there is a report from Korea that Samsung Display is ramping up its foldable OLED production.

Samsung Galaxy Fold photo

According to the Korea Herald, SDC has produced 40,000 foldable in August, and had planned to increase that to 67,000 units in September. But it actually produced 92,000 foldable panels in September, and it plans to increase production rate to 102,000 units in October and 99,000 units in November. Samsung's foldable OLED capacity is 3,300 units per day - so it is pretty much running at full capacity now.

Read the full story Posted: Oct 15, 2019

Samsung releases a video to help you find burn-in marks in your OLED TV, suggests a switch to QLED

Samsung released a short video that may help you find burn-in marks in your OLED TV. The video should be run on your OLED TV, and it shows a red image that will (according to Samsung) show visible marks if there are any issues in your TV.

If you did find such marks - Samsung suggested to contact a service center - or switch to one of its QLED LCDs... I wonder if this is a mart marketing move as Samsung itself is now committed to OLED TV technology and will start producing QD-OLEDs in 2021. Samsung is probably hoping that no one will remember this video by then...

Read the full story | 2 comments | Posted: Oct 15, 2019
Transparent OLEDs Market Report

Samsung Display formally announces its $10.8 billion investment in QD-OLED TV production

Samsung Display formally announced its decision to invest ₩13.1 trillion (around $10.85 billion USD) in QD-OLED TV R&D and production lines. The investment plan will span 6 years (2019-2025) and the first step will be to convert an LCD production line in SDC's L8 fab in Tangjong, Korea to QD-OLED production.

Samsung Display production hub, Tangjeong, South Chungcheong Province

The Tangjong line will be converted from 125k monthly substrates of LCD production to 30k monthly QD-OLED substrates, and mass production will begin in Q1 2021. In the long run SDC plans to convert all its 8-Gen LCD lines (360,000 monthly substrates) to QD-OLED production (which will yield around 100,000 monthly QD-OLED substrates).

Read the full story | 3 comments | Posted: Oct 10, 2019

HP announces a laptop with a 13.3" 4K AMOLED display

HP announced a new edition to its 13.3" Spectre x360 13 laptop - which comes with an optional 13.3" 4K AMOLED display. HP will start shipping the Spectre x360 13 OLED in October 2019.HP Spectre x360 13 (2019) photo

This is the first time we hear of this new 13.3" 4K AMOLED display. In 2016 and 2017 Samsung produced 13" laptop OLED displays - but with a lower 2560x1440 resolution. This was used in an 2016 HP Spectre x360 13 laptop and also in some Alienware gaming laptops. In February 2019 Samsung started to produce 15.6" 4K AMOLEDs for laptops - and it's great to hear that it is now adding a smaller laptop display as well.

Read the full story Posted: Oct 02, 2019

ETNews: Chinese OLED producers are attempting to find customers in Korea's smartphone industry

In July we reported that LG Electronics is in talks with China-based BOE to supply OLED panels for future smartphones, to replace LGE's current supplier - its sister company LG Display. A new report from Korea's ETNews confirms this, saying that LG Display is focusing on Apple as its future customers, and LGE's small shipments is not critical for the company.

LG V50 ThinQ 5G photo

ETNews also suggests that Samsung Electronics is in early talks with China's CSoT for flexible OLED supply for low-end and mid-tier smartphones. CSoT is not yet producing flexible OLEDs in volume - the company started pilot production in its Wuhan fab in May 2019.

Read the full story Posted: Oct 02, 2019

TechCrunch got a Galaxy Fold for review... and the screen got damaged within one day

Samsung recently re-launched its foldable OLED smartphone, the Galaxy Fold. The company took several months to redesign and make the phone more durable... but it seems as if things are perfect yet.

Screen damage at TechCrunch's Galaxy Fold (September 2019)

TechCrunch reporter Brian Heater got a review unit, and the screen got damaged within one day (27 hours, to be precise) of normal use - see photo above - there's a large defect at the center of the photo. Brian said he took good care of the device - just as Samsung suggests. Ironically, when Samsung launched the phone in April, Brian got a unit that worked okay for a few days (until Samsung collected the device back).

Read the full story | 1 comment | Posted: Sep 29, 2019

Business Korea - Samsung to invest $10.85 billion in QD-OLED TV production

Business Korea says that Samsung Display has finalized its QD-OLED TV production plans. The company will invest 13 trillion Won (around $10.85 billion) to convert its L8 LCD production line in Tangjeong to QD-OLED production.

Samsung Display production hub, Tangjeong, South Chungcheong Province

According to the report, SDC's investment will be the single largest investment in Korea's display industry ever. The L8-1-1 LCD line will be shut down immediately, and converted to QD-OLED production. SDC will also shut down its second line (L8-2-1) and in total the two fabs will be able to produce 200,000 8-Gen glass substrates each month (down from the current 360,000 substrates in LCD production today). Mass production of QD-OLED panels will begin in 2022.

Read the full story Posted: Sep 25, 2019

Samsung says there is unexpected demand for its Galaxy Fold phone in Korea

Samsung started shipping its first foldable smartphone, the Galaxy Fold, on September 6 in Korea, and the company now says that demand for this innovative (and highly expensive at $1,980) phone was strong.

Samsung Galaxy Fold photo

Around 4,000 units where sold within ten minutes, and Samsung will now allocate more Galaxy Fold units for the Korean market. Samsung will start offering the phone outside of Korea soon - and in all it hopes to ship around 1 million units within one year of the launch.

Read the full story Posted: Sep 24, 2019

DisplayMate: the OLED used in the latest iPhone 11 Pro Max is a top-notch mobile display

DisplayMate tested Apple's latest OLED display, the one used in the iPhone 11 Pro Max (6.5" 2688x1242 458 PPI) and unsurprisingly found that this is top-notch display. Apple improved on the display used in the 2018 iPhone XS Max in several aspects - including 17% higher full-screen peak brightness and up to 15% higher display power efficiency.

Apple iPhone 11 Pro Max photo

DisplayMate especially notes Apple's high-precision display calibration and color accuracy - which is visually Indistinguishable from perfect.

Read the full story Posted: Sep 23, 2019